The Man Everybody Was Afraid Of Read Online Free PDF

after him. He hadn’t seen another black all day. “Channel Ten’s token?” he asked.
    “This isn’t exactly Tanzania,” she said. “He’s in communications arts at the college. Senior students rotate through here. For working experience. We get state funds for the program. God knows what they learn. It probably warps them for life.”
    “He makes fair coffee,” Dave said. But maybe after the shrub anything would have tasted good. “His last name wouldn’t be Lester, would it?”
    She was using shiny red talons to tear open little envelopes of sugar and cream substitute. The question made her stop moving for a split second. Then she said lightly, “It would be Harris.” She stirred her coffee with a plastic spoon. “Why the funeral? I mean, that’s a bit after the fact, isn’t it?”
    “It can sometimes help to see who was there. You went down to interview Anita after the fact—right?”
    “You have been busy!” She said it lightly but her eyes went watchful. “We have a little news bureau in La Caleta. When they learned Ben Orton had been murdered, I expect there was quite a scramble to get out of swim fins and into shoes. They had plenty to do.”
    “So did the police,” Dave said. “They didn’t do it.”
    Daisy Flynn twitched an eyebrow. Her hand moved to the tape recorder again but stopped when she saw him watching it. She said, “Anyway, I was up here. So was Anita.”
    “Only she wasn’t,” Dave said.
    Daisy Flynn found a glass ashtray and set it between them. “She’d only have made a footnote anyway.” She poked her cigarette among the lipsticked butts already there. “What do you want with her?”
    “I don’t know. I didn’t find her, either,” Dave said. “So … Orton had other women, did he?”
    Daisy Flynn’s eyes opened wide above her paper cup. “Did I say that?” She sipped the creamy coffee. “Let’s put it this way—if he did, it was a well-kept secret.”
    A bearded youth clutching a scribbled yellow pad and flapping into a jacket hurried past, trailed by a paunchy man swinging a movie camera with a padded shoulder saddle. They pushed out a door into stunning sunlight. Before the door had time to fall shut, car doors slammed, an engine thrashed into life.
    Dave asked, “From them? From your viewers—the lonely ranch hands in their bunkhouses back in the hills? The wine bottlers? The tuna-fleet wives? The college kids?” He eyed her steadily. “Or from you?”
    “What Ben Orton wanted kept secret was kept secret,” she said flatly. “He had what’s politely called power. There are nastier words for it.” She moved a hand to get rid of the subject. “The point is, Louise would have been the last to know.”
    “Because he could destroy anyone who told her?”
    “And she wouldn’t believe them anyway,” Daisy Flynn said. “You met her. You’re bright. You saw that.”
    “Maybe,” Dave said. “But nobody likes to be made a fool of. Certainly not for a lifetime.”
    She stared. “You can’t believe she’d kill him.”
    “She was alone in the house with him.”
    Daisy Flynn crushed out her cigarette. Her laugh was mournful. “That’s a real definition of ‘alone.’” She looked up quickly. “Or so I would imagine.”
    “She has a little list,” Dave said. “Radicals, dope addicts, degenerates—and reporters. You in particular and by name. Why?”
    “We filmed his public utterances.” She rose. “As you, lucky fellow, are about to see.” Dave stood, tossed back the last of his coffee, and followed her between the crowded desks, frantic humans, frantic phones, frantic typewriters. “He always ended up appearing ridiculous.” The hush of the hallway shocked Dave’s ears. “She couldn’t understand why people laughed. I’m sure she never laughed.” Daisy Flynn pushed a door. Back of it was a shadowy room. Up a sharp rise, nine theater seats faced a blank white screen. “It had to be someone’s fault. It must have been