The Brat Read Online Free PDF Page B

didn’t touch her.
    “Evis, for that much money they’ll hunt us forever. You think the Law will sit by while this happens? While we walk off with over a hundred thousand dollars?”
    She spoke in a rapid whisper, leaning across the table, her fingers crumbling a slice of pumpernickel. “You like to sleep with me, honey. You like what I can do—you like that a lot. Maybe I’m your wife, but I can keep you knocking on my door. Can’t I?”
    “Knock it off, Evis.”
    “No. You’ll do what we planned. I want that money. I want it so bad it’s an itch. You think I’m playing games, you’re crazy.” Her mouth was wet and red, her eyes were dark. “It’s the end of the month. Two more days and that money won’t be there. It’ll be in the bank, and another month to wait—maybe six months—for a pile like that. Ray’s going out for coffee, and
you’re
going to come in and we’re going to clean that safe out. And we’re going away—tonight!”
    The clatter of lunchtime eating was remote.
    “I’m leaving a note,” she said, “saying you picked me up. That we had to leave. That I finished my work, found the error. And I will have. He’ll have no reason to check the money. The money box will be there, so why should he look inside? He won’t. He’s stupid. Nobody’ll be there tomorrow or Sunday. By Monday we’ll have vanished. The cops will know we did it—but it will be too late.”
    “I’ll turn you in before I let it happen, Evis.”
    “Like hell you will. Like hell—” She started to slide off her chair, then turned toward me. Her skirt was up over her round silken knees and a red-faced guy at the next table ogled her legs over a pastrami sandwich. She let him look.
    She started to say something, then got up and stalked out of the place. It got jumbled then. I went after her. I had to pay the check. I saw her meet Ray Jefferies outside on the street. I called to her to wait. There was a sudden line-up at the cashier’s stall. I flung money into the girl’s lap and ran.
    She waved at me, from Jefferies’ car, as he drove off into traffic.
    • • •
    I kept pouring the whisky down.
    Sometime in the afternoon, I ran into Ed Fowler. He tried to get me to head for home and sober up. Said something about his heading for the West Coast. He kept asking me what was the matter.
    “It’s the shop,” I said. “Don’t want to lose the shop. It’s got me down.”
    “You’re lying in your teeth.”
    I kept thinking how I was supposed to meet Evis at home for dinner. She’d said she would cook a big meal, so we wouldn’t have to worry about eating until later on.
    “All right,” I said. “It’s not the shop. Something else. She fought alligators barehanded as a child.”
    “Evis? What the hell you talking about?”
    “She’s ashamed of fighting alligators barehanded. Running through the Spanish moss in her bare feet. Of eating fish. Swinging on the watermelon vines. All she ever wanted was to get out of that swamp.”
    Ed kept staring at the wet wood of the bar. He had heavy brows, like a thick block of wood, and a nose that must have at some time been broken and reset off center. He was wearing an old blue sweater and white flannels.
    “Like a disease, it was,” I said. “Like she was burning up with some kind of fever, and it would spread. Maybe it even spread to me. I don’t know. She had to get out of that swamp. But she’ll go back there, just to show them.”
    “Show who what?”
    “Her family, for Christ’s sake. Just show them, that’s all.”
    He didn’t say anything and I shut up. Because that was the plan for tonight. She’d have to go back there. That was the one thing she had to do. Get the money and return to that God-damned misty place in the sun and just show them how rich she was. Then she’d be free. It wouldn’t matter any more.
    Ed was gone.
    The bar was dark, quiet, and I was talking fast and low with this tall blonde with the overabundant breasts who had