The French Kiss Read Online Free PDF Page A

that same sullen expressionless way that went along with her face, like the scars. Then finally, level-eyed and extending the receiver toward me:
    â€œHe wants to talk to you.”
    I stood up. Suddenly I felt tired beyond the hour. I was going back a ways mentally, in space and time, to the guy in fatigues and grinning under his crewcut, and back beyond that and forward to a lot of flickering images I’d long since stopped looking at.
    â€œIs that you, Cagey?” his voice said.
    â€œThat’s right, Al. And it’s late and I’m tired. I think it’s time you told your friends to stop fucking with me.”
    â€œ Me tell my friends!” He laughed into the phone. That familiar licorice sound. “If anybody should be doing that, it’s you, baby. Only I think it’s a little late in the day.”
    â€œYou’ve got it wrong, Al. Whoever’s trying to stick it into you, I’ve got no part in it.” Which was pretty close to the truth. “And anyway I don’t see what I could do that’d hurt you now.”
    â€œYou don’t?”
    â€œNo, I don’t.”
    â€œLike if I let you go, how long would you keep your mouth shut? Would you give me twenty-four hours? Cross your heart and hope to die?”
    â€œKeep my mouth shut about what, Al?”
    â€œKeep your mouth shut about what,” he repeated. “Tell me, how much will twenty-four hours cost me? That’s right in your line, Cagey, name your price. You’ve got a going rate, don’t you? Hey, how about Binty? Remember Binty? Suppose I threw Binty in, would you give me a discount? Just for old time’s sake?”
    There was more to it than that, but I let him run it into the ground without answering. Somewhere along the way he started to laugh again. Maybe it was nerves, high-roller’s nerves. Or something else. But what he was saying left me in no mood for analysis.
    â€œAre you still there, Cagey?” His voice low.
    â€œYeah, I’m still here.”
    â€œYou never do forget, do you.” This needed no answer either. “Well, only this time, ole buddy, you’re the one who’s in deep.”
    â€œIt doesn’t look like I’m alone, Al.”
    â€œThat’s right,” almost in a whisper, “and too bad I don’t have you to help me this time. But I’m not in over my head yet. And you are. You are, Cagey. You chose the wrong side. If I was in my right mind, it’d be finished for you, ole buddy, all she wrote. But I owe you one. I don’t forget either, baby. I’m going to pay you back, and then we’ll be quits.”
    I started to say something, but the line had gone dead. I guess that was the signal they’d worked out.
    I saw the brother stand, the cannon reversed in his paw.
    Rillington and Helen Raven were standing too.
    At times like that, friend, you’ve got two choices. Either you take it like a lamb, Auschwitz-style, or you give it the old college try. It’s mostly a question of style, because either way the end result’s the same.
    I swung away from the phone and dove for him, driving low for his legs. I got there too, all the way in. Not that it mattered. Because meanwhile Black Thor had come thundering out of the spotlit heavens again, and there was a terrific crashing, like the old Kenton brass giving it the Grand Finale inside my skull. My muscles turned the consistency of doughnuts, and when he shrugged his knees I slipped off the deep end, out past the stars and the crashing, to where there’s no music at all.

THREE
    Let’s leave the body lay there. It won’t wake up for a while, not even in what must have been a pretty considerable commotion.
    I guess it stood to reason. Like when people asked me what I was doing in Paris, I used to say: “Call it a cross between early retirement and extended amnesia.”
    Actually a pair of numbers from Air France had been responsible