The Friends of Eddie Coyle Read Online Free PDF

turned up, a sophomore in Weston High could produce on a warm afternoon.”
    “I’ll see what I can do,” Waters said. “Suppose you get off. What’re you going to do then?”
    “Eddie Coyle is a creature of habit,” Dave said. “I’ll work from that angle.”

5
     
    Seven and a half miles east of Palmer, Route 20 bends to the north at the top of a hill, then banks away toward the south, leaving a rest area in a grove of pine trees. Late in the evening, a bearded young man swung a gold Karmann Ghia coupe onto the gravel parking area, shut off the headlights, and settled down to wait while his breath condensed on the inside of the windshield and the frost descended on the metal.
    In the dark, Jackie Brown brought his Roadrunner off the Massachusetts Turnpike at Charlton, sent it hard through the ramp curves, and then vigorously west on Route 20. He arrived at the rest area fifteen minutes or so after the bearded man in the Karmann Ghia. He parked and switched off the ignition, then waited five minutes. The right directional signal of the Karmann Ghia flashed once. Jackie Brown got out of his car.
    There was a strong smell of plastic, oil, and paint inside theGhia. Jackie Brown said: “It’s a good thing you told me you got a new car. I wouldn’t’ve figured you for this. What happened to the Three-ninety-six?”
    “I got my fucking insurance bill,” the bearded man said. “Then I went out for a ride and I had to fill the goddamned thing, and it cost me nine bucks worth of superpremium, and I said the hell with it. Goddamn car was eating me blind.”
    “Went like a bird with a flame up its ass, though,” Jackie Brown said.
    “I’m getting too fucking old for that,” the bearded man said. “I bust my ass all day to take home a hundred and seventy bucks a week and I just can’t swing the kind of money it costs. I’m thinking about getting married and settling down.”
    “You been taking almost that off me,” Jackie Brown said.
    “Shit,” the bearded man said. “Last six months I got you for thirty-seven hundred dollars. I spent that easy. I got to stop hacking around, is all. I keep this up, I’m gonna be behind bars before I’m through.”
    “Okay,” Jackie Brown said, “it’s a bad night. You got the stuff, is all I want to know. I got the money.”
    “I got two dozen,” the bearded man said. He wrenched his body around and lifted a shopping bag out of the luggage bin behind the seats. “Most of them’re four-inchers.”
    “That’s all right,” Jackie Brown said. “I got the money right here. Four-eighty, right?”
    “Right,” the bearded man said. “How come it’s all right, four-inchers? Six months ago you used to piss and moan something awful, I brought you anything but two-inchers. All of a sudden it doesn’t matter any more. How come?”
    “I got a better class of trade,” Jackie Brown said.
    “Who the fuck’re you dealing with?” the bearded man said. “You hooked in with the goddamned Mafia or something?”
    Jackie Brown smiled. “Let me lay it right on you,” he said. “I don’t honestly know any more. I got this black guy that comes around every so often, but he’s kind of short on dough, and besides, what he wants, you can’t give. I got to get that from somebody else. Then I got this fat guy, about, oh, thirty-six, thirty-seven, and I’ll be goddamned if I know what he does. Looks like a mick, but I don’t even know his name. He wants me to think it’s Paul, but I’m not sure. That son of a bitch’ll take every piece I can deliver. Never seen such a man for guns. Four-inchers, six-inchers, thirty-eights, mags, forty-ones, forty-fives, forty-fours, you name it. He’ll take anything, cash on the fucking barrelhead. That motherfucker’ll go through a dozen guns in a week, come up begging for more. Now, you was to ask me, I’d be inclined to think he was in somewhere with the Mob, but then, he isn’t about to tell me, and I’m not about to ask. He pays