The Sinister Pig - 15 Read Online Free PDF

thousand. Used a bit more chloro. Removed subject’s duds. Added that to the stuff in her suitcase. Put in two lead ingots. One ingot in purse. Flew deep water. Ejected suitcase and purse. Flew to ten miles, assured no air or watercraft in sight. Ejected subject. Windexed all points in aircraft possibly touched. Landed. Went home.
     
    Ejected subject.
    Winsor flinched at that. Glanced up at the back of Budge’s head. Had the man looked back to see Chrissy’s body falling? In his own imagination Winsor saw it [31] tumbling toward the water, saw the splash. He shook his head, erasing the image. This wasn’t like him, this sudden sentiment. But Chrissy had been with him more than a year. They’d had great times together at his place in Florida while his wife was doing her annual London-Paris-Milan fashion-shopping binge. But Budge had known her only from the times he’d been sent to pick her up or drive her home. No reason for sentiment. Quite different situation for Budge.
    Winsor had moved across the seat to a position from which he could see Budge’s face in the mirror. His expression was relaxed, unreadable.
    Winsor leaned to the intercom. “Did you look back? Watch her fall?”
    “What?” Budge sounded surprised. “Why? Something falls out of an airplane, there’s no place to go but down.” Then Budge shook his head. He had been smiling.
    Winsor considered that.
    Winsor compared it with his own reaction. Well, he hadn’t had the sort of experience Budge would have gone through flying for the Guatemala military, or whoever he was flying for, in that endless war against that country’s crop of rural rebels. Budge had never talked about that—at least not to him—but it must have been pretty heavy stuff to get him a place on the Human Rights investigators’ list of government war criminals. Unless the CIA arranged that when they needed to get rid of him. Something to keep their handle on him. No doubt lots of indiscriminate killings went on in those rainy mountains. Anyway, it had all worked out well for him. The CIA had gotten Budge out of Guatemala, into Washington, and [32] onto the payroll of one of a war hawk congressman’s committees as a temporary. And Winsor had made a powerful friend by hiring him as a favor to the congressman.
    It had proved to be a favor to himself. A man he could count on to get a job done right. And a man who could be trusted, too—as far as Winsor could trust anyone. And Winsor could trust Budge because he came with a gun at his head and Winsor’s finger on the trigger. All Winsor had to do to draw the line through Budge, just as he had drawn it through Chrissy, was call a certain man in the Secretary of State’s office, who’d call the Guatemalan Embassy, and Budge would be flying south in handcuffs to a Guatemala jail. Of course Budge knew this. Thus Budge was trustworthy.
    Budge, smiling still, was tearing the note in fragments, which he put into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. Endlessly careful, Winsor thought. Burly as Budge was, even with Chrissy being a little thing, she might have been hard to handle in the close quarters of his Falcon 10. Bringing along the chloroform to put her to sleep was smart. Why take risks in a little plane. A dependable workman, Budge. Then he had another thought and spoke into the intercom.
    “You told me you had five of those lead weights. You mentioned three.”
    He heard Budge sigh. Then he stuck up his hand, snapped his fingers, said: “Gimme some paper.”
    Winsor clipped the notebook page to the clasp on his fountain pen, handed it back through the window. Budge scribbled and handed it over his shoulder.
    The scrawl read: “Wired to cuffs on wrists.”
    Winsor relaxed into the comfort of the limo seat. [33] Pretty girl, Chrissy. Fun. Had she really gotten pregnant? Maybe. Anyway she was strongly into marrying him. Determined. Making lightly veiled threats. He had imagined her running, tears falling, to tell his wife. Not that