Sweet Women Lie Read Online Free PDF Page B

fold of stiff paper from my breast pocket and laid it on top of the pack of Winstons.
    “What is it?” She didn’t pick it up.
    “It was easier to carry than the briefcase. I’ll send that around tomorrow. It isn’t my color.”
    She picked up the money order and unfolded it, looked up at me from the forest of zeroes. Before she could speak I said, “I used my favorite teller for the conversion. The expression I got was almost worth the day lost. I’m hanging on to the retainer, by the way. My time’s worth something. About half the cost of that dress.”
    “You saw Sam?”
    “I saw him. He didn’t see me.”
    “I didn’t think you’d get to him that quickly.”
    I had some whiskey. There was more sour in it than spirits, or maybe that was just me. “It’s none of my business,” I said. “I used to charge just two hundred a day. The extra fifty is the surcharge for being lied to. You paid for the privilege. But it was a lot of cash to let me lug around to buy your freedom from that living waxwork at St. John’s.”
    “It was a test.”
    I said nothing. The boy in front of Sam Lucy’s room had nothing on me.
    “I had to know if you could be trusted with this much cash. I used hard currency because it’s more tempting.” She refolded the money order and tucked it between her breasts.
    “Suppose I skipped.”
    “You wouldn’t have gotten far. You were followed.”
    I watched a couple dancing the Twist near our table. The boy was all elbows and Adam’s apple in a shiny black leather jacket and white chinos carefully smeared with grease and the girl had on a poodle skirt and her hair in a ponytail. I wondered if they were following me. It seemed to be the national pastime.
    “Where’s Lucy figure?” I asked.
    “He doesn’t. Everything else I said about him is true. He’s just not in a position to stop me from leaving him even if I wanted to now.”
    There was an interior fallacy there, but the music was making my head hurt, so I didn’t tinker with it. “I’m bonded up to a million, but I guess you knew that.”
    “Anyone can post a bond. I had to know. Now I do.” She put a hand to Fort Knox. “I’m in trouble.”
    “Um.”
    “A lot worse trouble than having to get out from under a bad relationship,” she continued. “I made a mistake once, a big one. I’m being bled.”
    “Who’d you kill?”
    The music had stopped unexpectedly. I said it loudly and it hung there on the sudden stillness like a sour note on the bass. A couple in early middle age seated at the next table glanced our way, then back. The man said something to his companion. They both laughed.
    When the next number started, Gail said, “How’d you know someone was killed?”
    “Seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars is a lot of blood. It’s the current price in certain circles. You didn’t answer the question.”
    “Not here. Not tonight. I’ve got another show later. Can you meet me tomorrow?”
    “Where?”
    “The bookstore in the New Center Building. Take the concourse from the Fisher. I’ll be coming in the front door. That way it will look as if we met by accident. Is ten o’clock okay?”
    “If that’s the hour you like. You bought three days.” When she started to rise I touched the back of her wrist. “One lie’s all you get. After that we go into overtime.”
    “I understand. Thank you.” She gave me the smile she would reserve for an autograph hound. Then she left.
    The band was playing “Dancing in the Street.” I didn’t hear much of it. My built-in smoke alarm was still hooting.

6
    I T WAS AFTER ELEVEN when I got home from the Club Canaveral. The air inside the house felt as clammy as a wet galosh. The indoor thermometer read fifty-two. I checked the thermostat, which was set at sixty-five, and went down into the little half-cellar, where I spent a cozy hour cleaning the nozzle of the oil furnace that had come over with Cortez and knocking particles out of the filter. I used a twist