Troublemaker Read Online Free PDF Page A

way here. He drew it on Monday, just before closing time —three."
    "Yeah. Well —" A nerve twitched beside Kegan's eye. He scratched his belly, shifted his feet. "That was for — uh — for the bar. Alterations. Yeah. I forgot about that." He leaned across the table to take the envelope. He turned it over in clumsy fingers, staring at it. "Where's the bread?"
    "That's what I came to ask you," Dave said. "I found the envelope on the desk in his den. Empty except for the straps that had held the bills. Twenties, I'd guess. Why should he get cash in small bills for alterations? Why not a business check?"
    "Mmm." Kegan's tongue pushed at his shut mouth. Then he let go it helpless grin. "Okay. But understand —he was handling it. See, we're lowering the bar. No, raising the floor, really. So what we needed would be chairs, not stools. What we had in mind were barrel chairs on swivels, deep leather, you know? But they cost a lot. He must have got some deal right off the truck, you know? Lost shipment? You'd need cash for that kind of deal."
    "You were his partner," Dave said.
    Kegan looked at him hard and handed back the envelope. "I didn't know anything about it. Who got the money? The Johns kid?"
    "There was a house key, three dollars and change in the pants the police found on Wendell's bedroom floor. A pack of cigarettes and a throwaway lighter in his shirt. The sarape didn't have pockets."
    "What does Heather say?" Kegan picked up his empty glass and Dave's full one and took them to the kitchen. The smack of rubber stripping said he'd opened a refrigerator door. Ice cubes rattled into a glass. The door clapped shut. Kegan stood beside the flowers with what looked like whiskey in an Old Fashioned glass. Tasting it made him wince.
    "She says it must have been for the bar."
    "Yeah, well, like I said . . ." Kegan gave Dave a wan smile on his way to the doors to stand looking out. "Fifteen hundred. That hurts."
    "Maybe Wendell delivered the money." Dave got up from the couch and went to stand by the short man. "Maybe the chairs will show up today."
    Kegan shook his head. "That kind of deal, they get the bread when they turn over the goods." He looked at Dave. "Jesus, I'm a hell of a host. Here. This is for you. I don't even drink." He pushed the glass at Dave. "It's Canadian. All right?" Dave took it to keep it from falling. The breeze off the sea was warm. Sandpipers hemstitched the wet edge of the sand.
    He said, "What happened with Monkey, exactly?"
    "He walked into the bar out of nowhere —the way Savage did before him. Now, you have to understand Rick. Ten thousand guys come and go in our place. The Hang Ten and The Square Circle before that. Out of that number, some are on the hustle. And that big, soft bear —all you had to do was look at him to know he was a mark. And listen to him—talk, talk, talk. No secrets."
    "If the weather was hot," Dave said.
    "Yeah, well —" Kegan watched a gull swoop on a potato chip bag the wind was tumbling along the sparsely populated beach. "He could smile and talk and leave nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine of them strictly alone. Then along would come a Monkey or a Savage and he'd be gone. Right out of his skull. And you never knew when it would be. You had to watch him. Every minute."                         
    "How did Larry Johns get past?" Dave asked.
    "I never heard of him," Kegan said, "till that night. We were on to Rick. But he was on to us, it looks like. Normally, he'd have yakked on and on about the kid. Not this time. Sneaky."
    " 'We'?" Dave said. "Meaning you and his mother?" Kegan nodded glumly and Dave tried the whiskey. Nice. "Maybe the fifteen hundred was for him —Johns. Another Monkey, another Savage.  
    " When was Savage?"
    "Christ, who remembers? Maybe sixty-four, -five. See, years could go by. You could forget about it —what a jackpot Rick could turn into when he saw something he wanted. He gave Monkey a car, a new MG.   Savage