The Erection Set Read Online Free PDF Page B

more.”
    â€œOh?”
    Hunter spun around in his chair, pulled a file drawer open and extracted a stiff yellow folder. He handed the contents across the desk to me. “Nothing much, but part of my obligation. Your grandfather once purchased a large tract of land in New Mexico, speculating that a government irrigation project would be instituted in the area. The bill never passed Congress and the land is still there ... beautiful, rocky and arid. It’s a snake collector’s paradise and tourists take pictures of it. He left it to your mother and now it’s yours.” He tapped the paper in front of me and handed me a pen. “If you can find a sucker you might get him to take it off your hands at a quarter an acre. That would net you an even thousand dollars. At least it’s something. Taxes are negligible and paid to date.”
    I scratched my name on the papers and shoved them back to him. “Thanks a lot,” I said. “Now how about my ten grand?”
    â€œYou just signed a notification of availability for it. Delivery may take place to you, Alfred and Dennison simultaneously at a formal meeting at Grand Sita, your former palatial residence. Let’s say day after tomorrow?”
    I scowled in disgust. “Do I have to?”
    Leyland nodded. “I’m afraid so. Besides, think of the reunion you’ll have.”
    â€œLike meeting a pack of cobras,” I said.
    A ghost of a smile crossed the old man’s face, but I didn’t catch what he said. I asked, “What?”
    He shook his head and smiled. “The day after tomorrow. We’ll leave from here. Four P.M.”

REFLECTIONS: LEYLAND HUNTER
    â€œLike meeting a pack of cobras,” Dog had said, and didn’t hear me when I answered, “But who’s the mongoose?”
    Dogeron Kelly, the kid they could never figure out or pin down. He didn’t give a damn for anything then and he sure doesn’t now. Anybody else would take him for just another big guy who had been around the world and had seen and done as he damn well pleased, a guy who wasn’t anything and didn’t want anything.
    But me, I’m old in the trade. Too damn many court-rooms. Too damn many times looking through wire screens at clients and watching their minds work. There are types and types, but they all fall either on one side of the fence or the other. Dogeron Kelly was walking around behind a disguise. He was a predator in camouflage, always stalking, but so much at home in whatever world he lived in he was completely at ease.
    Idly, I wondered how many men he had killed. The ones he didn’t get medals for killing. Once Interpol had queried me about a possible identification of a man whose description answered his, a man who had hijacked a shipment of stolen Nazi gold destined for Moscow. The picture was indistinct, Moscow denied the incident, and, upon further investigation, the man was reported supposedly dead or missing. I still had the photo in my desk drawer. I took it out and looked at it for the hundredth Time. It was still indistinct. It could and could not be Dogeron Kelly. Or anybody else for that matter.
    Who are you really, Dog? That look that comes from the back of your eyes isn’t new to me at all. It has violence in it and something I can’t pin down at all, something that doesn’t belong there.
    I glanced at the calendar and wondered how much longer it would be before the explosion went off.
    You’re a bomb, Dog, a damned walking bomb, but I like you anyway. You bring excitement into an old man’s life.

III

LEE SHAY ... REFLECTIONS
    Oh, boy, when I buy trouble I buy it in big, fat bundles wrapped in FBI WANTED posters smelling of cordite and burning rubber. Already I could hear the hum of the spectators as the jury filed in and the rap of the judge’s gavel and the clanging of steel bars. How the hell does it feel to have your hands braceleted behind your back with