The Fourth Durango Read Online Free PDF

“We can discuss a rumor.”
    “Concerning?”
    “Somebody offering twenty thousand cash money to make sure you don’t make it out the front gate. Not alive anyhow.” The associate warden’s gaze fell from the ceiling and landed on Adair. “And since your mouth’s not exactly hanging open—and since even I heard it—it must be kind of old and stale as rumors go.”
    “Not so old,” Adair said. “And not particularly stale.”
    “Whose money?”
    “No idea.”
    “Bullshit.”
    Adair shrugged. “But rumor or no, I presume you’d rather have me walk out the front gate than be carried out all zipped up in a bodybag.”
    Loom apparently had to think about what he really wanted but finally nodded his agreement.
    “Then I have a proposal.”
    The associate warden glanced at the oak-encased Regulator clock that resembled those that once hung from schoolroom walls. “Think you might slice a little off its end?”
    “Condense my argument?”
    “Try.”
    “All right. I want Blessing Nelson to see me through the gate and all the way to the visitors’ parking lot.”
    Loom rejected the proposal with a shake of his head. “I’ll give you two guards instead.”
    “How much’re you paying hacks these days?”
    “A princely sum like always. That’s why I’ve got a whole file drawer full of Federal job applications filled out in pencil by guys who don’t spell too good.”
    “For half of that rumored twenty thousand,” Adair said, “all two guards would have to do is look left instead of right for two seconds, maybe three, and snicker-snack, I’m dead and they’re each five thousand richer, if you follow my math.”
    Loom’s mouth was already open, a rebuttal obviously prepared, when the green telephone rang. There were two phones on his desk: a cream console model with twelve clear-plastic buttons, indicating twelve lines, and the green phone, which had no buttons at all, not even an anachronistic dial. Loom dropped his feet to the floor, snatched up the green phone and barked his surname into it.
    After listening for less than five seconds, he gave Adair a bleak look, picked up his fountain pen, used his teeth and right hand to uncap it, and began jotting down notes on the answers he got to his mostly one-word questions that dealt with where, when and how, but not with who or why. After promising to be right there, Loom hung up the phone, recapped his pen, rose quickly and stared down at Adair with a curious mixture of embarrassment and accusation.
    “Somebody just did Blessing Nelson,” Loom said, his tone matching his face’s mixed expression.
    “Did?” Adair said, condemning the word’s imprecision by spitting out its consonants.
    “Killed. Speared him. With a mop handle—or something that had a sharp point.”
    As part of Adair instantly rejected the notion that Blessing Nelson was dead at twenty-nine, another part counseled that his rejection was merely the automatic denial that accompanies grief. But when Adair went probing for grief, he discovered only shame caused by grief’s absence. Yet he did turn up sorrow, regret and a sense of utter waste. And because he despised waste, anger turned Adair’s next question into a near indictment. “You weren’t by any chance waiting for that call, were you?”
    All sympathy vanished from Loom’s expression, replaced by total indifference. “No more than Blessing expected to get speared six times. Maybe seven. They’re still counting.” Loom started for the door but turned back. “Stay put. Understand?”
    “Here?”
    “Right here. Don’t even stir until you get four guards I’ll pick myself.” Loom again started for the door and again turned back. “Who’s meeting you in the parking lot?”
    “Kelly Vines.”
    Loom recognized the name. “That high-priced lawyer of yours that got himself disbarred?”
    “And consequently, my former lawyer.”
    Curiosity made Loom almost forget his hurry. “Why’d he get disbarred anyway?”
    Adair