The Far Side of the Dollar Read Online Free PDF Page A

happens with habitual users.”
    “My son was not a drug user.”
    “A lot of young people are, nowadays, and their parents are the last to know about it.”
    “No. It wasn’t anything like that,” he said urgently. “The shock of the accident affected his mind.”
    “Did the doctor think so?”
    “Dr. Shanley is an orthopedic surgeon. He wouldn’t know about psychiatric disturbance. Anyway, he didn’t know what happened that morning, when I went to the judge’s house to arrange for bail. I haven’t told anyone about it.”
    I waited, and listened to the windshield wipers. A green and white sign on the shoulder of the road announced: “El Rancho.” Hillman said, as if he was glad to have something neutral to say:
    “You turn off in another quarter mile.”
    I slowed down. “You were going to tell me what happened that Sunday morning.”
    “No. I don’t believe I will. It has no bearing on the present situation.”
    “How do we know that?”
    He didn’t answer me. Perhaps the thought of home and neighbors had silenced him.
    “Did you say the Carlsons had a down on Tom?”
    “I said that, and it’s true.”
    “Do you know the reason for it?”
    “They have a daughter, Stella. Tom and Stella Carlson were very close. Jay and Rhea disapproved, at least Rhea did. So did Elaine, my wife, for that matter.”
    I turned off the main road. The access road passed between tall stone gateposts and became the palm-lined central road bisecting El Rancho. It was one of those rich developments whose inhabitants couldn’t possibly have troubles. Their big houses sat far back behind enormous lawns. Their private golf course lay across the road we were traveling on. The diving tower of their beach club gleamed with fresh aluminum paint in the wet distance.
    But like the drizzle, troubles fall in or out of season on everybody.
    The road bent around one corner of the golf course. Hillman pointed ahead to a deep gouge in the bank, where the earth was still raw. Above it a pine tree with a damaged trunk was turning brown in places.
    “This is where he turned the car over.”
    I stopped the car. “Did he explain how the accident happened?”
    Hillman pretended not to hear me. We got out of the car. There was no traffic in sight, except for a foursome of die-hard golfers approaching in two carts along the fairway.
    “I don’t see any brake- or skid-marks,” I said. “Was your son an experienced driver?”
    “Yes. I taught him to drive myself. I spent a great deal of time with him. In fact, I deliberately reduced my work load at the firm several years ago, partly so that I could enjoy Tom’s growing up.”
    His phrasing was a little strange, as if growing up was something a boy did for his parents’ entertainment. It made me wonder. If Hillman had been really close to Tom, why had heclapped him into Laguna Perdida School at the first sign of delinquency? Or had there been earlier signs which he was suppressing?
    One of the golfers waved from his cart as he went by. Hillman gave him a cold flick of the hand and got into my car. He seemed embarrassed to be found at the scene of the accident.
    “I’ll be frank with you,” I said as we drove away. “I wish you’d be frank with me. Laguna Perdida is a school for disturbed and delinquent minors. I can’t get it clear why Tom deserved, or needed, to be put there.”
    “I did it for his own protection. Good-neighbor Carlson was threatening to prosecute him for car theft.”
    “That’s nothing so terrible. He’d have rated probation, if this was a first offense. Was it?”
    “Of course it was.”
    “Then what were you afraid of?”
    “I wasn’t—” he started to say. But he was too honest, or too completely conscious of his fear, to finish the sentence.
    “What did he do Sunday morning, when you went to see the judge?”
    “He didn’t do anything, really. Nothing happened.”
    “But that nothing hit you so hard you won’t discuss it.”
    “That’s correct.