The Quick Red Fox Read Online Free PDF Page B

Otherwise I would have borrowed some muscle from an old buddy in Vegas and turned them loose on this clown photographer. They’d be smart enough to handle that, but they’re not smart enough to handle what I need now. Actually, if Mr. X had no knowledge of my friend, and how long it takes to bull something through that Vatican crowd, he made a very stupid pitch. But with my friend in the background, there was just too much chance it might backfire. Before you bet, you count what’s in the pot. All my potential plus my friend’s heavy purse. So I paid off.”
    “And hoped that was the end of it. And it wasn’t. Incidentally, can he clear you with his church?”
    “I was never married in his faith, so nothing counts. I get a clean bill. By the way, McGee, Dana doesn’t know a thing about my plans for my friend.”
    I asked her how she thought the pictures had been taken. “It had to be a long lens,” she said. “You can see the flattening and foreshortening effect. Off to the left, south of the house, I remember a little rocky ridge higher than the house with some knotty little trees clinging to it. It had to be from there. The angles match. But he had to be part mountain goat, and it had to be a tremendous lens.”
    “Is there any clue at all in that letter itself, any hint that’s made you think of a specific person?”
    “No. I read it over and over. He’s been around the industry in some connection, and I think he tried to sound as if he knew me, but he calls me Lysa instead of Lee. That could be a cover-up, of course. And it has a phoney kind of limey slant to it, calling me ducks.”
    “What size were the negatives?”
    “Little. Like so.” She indicated a 35mm frame size.
    “You checked them against the prints each time?”
    “Sure did. But in a lot of cases the prints were just an enlargement of part of the negative, even less than half sometimes.”
    “So you were all paid up well over a year ago. And you thought it was over. When was the next contact?”
    “Two months ago. Less than that. Early in January. An old friend, trying to make a comeback, was opening at The Sands in Vegas, and a bunch of us were rallying around to give him a good sendoff. It was in the papers that we were all going to be there. Dana was with me. We had a suite at the Desert Inn. Somebody left this envelope for me at the desk at The Sands. I guess they thought I was staying there. They sent it over. Dana got it. I was just waking up from a nap. She came in with the damnedest expression on her face and handed it to me. She had opened it. It was another set of the pictures. There wasn’t any return address. The desk had no idea who had left it off. Dana wanted to quit right then and there. She is a strange gal. I had to explain the whole thing the way I explained it to you, Trav. She knew right away that it was the same thing that had cost me all the money. She still wanted to quit. I had to beg her to stay. Our relationship hasn’t been the same since she saw the pictures. I don’t blame her. I’d still hate to lose her. This is the envelope. You can see how it was addressed. Somebody just cut my name off the front of a fan magazine, something like that. Here is the note that was with it.”
    It was quite different. Individual words and letters had been cut from newsprint and newspaper stock and pasted to cheap yellow copy paper. It said: Shameless whore of Babylon youwill be cut down by the sord of decency and money will not save your dirty life this time but you better have money ready you whore of evil I will come to you and you will no the truth and I will set you free.
    She hugged herself. “That one just scares the hell out of me, Trav. It’s kind of sick and crazy and terrible. It just isn’t the same person. It can’t be.”
    “So you went and saw Walter?”
    “No. I just got more and more jittery the more I thought of it. I’m still shook. I was at a big party at the Springs and I got a little stoned and