Under the Skin Read Online Free PDF

gesture that said she had nothing to do with this. You could see she
wasn’t wearing anything under her white slip.
“What the hell ?” Ragsdale said. He started to reach for his pants
but I pointed the Colt at his face and shook my head. He raised his
hands chest-high and sat back. I picked up the pants to make sure
they didn’t have a gun in them and tossed them aside.
LQ ordered the other two guys to stand with their noses and palms
against the wall and they were quick to do it. A girl in just bra and
panties appeared at the bedroom door, looking scared but keeping her
mouth shut. Another cool pony. I took a look in the bedroom to be
sure there was no adjoining door, then waved both broads in there
and shut them inside.
There was an open valise on the table against the wall and I sidestepped over to it and saw that it held a .380 semiautomatic and a few
lean packets of greenbacks held together with rubber bands. One
pack of hundreds, a couple of fifties, the rest all twenties and tens.
Three, four grand at most was my guess.
“Listen, can I say something?” Ragsdale said. He was bouncing
•• back fast from his surprise—and he’d figured who was running the
show and was talking to me. Rose said they called him Willie Rags.
“Just let me say something, okay?” he said. I stood there and
stared at him.
    “Look, I know who sent you boys. Just tell me what them wops
want. You aint wop, are you? Look Mex to me—no offense, hell, I like Mexes. Anyway, what they want? Money? Want to know whose slots
I’m pushing? Well, all right, all right, we can discuss all that. We can
straighten everything out, guys like us, right?”
    He’d probably fast-talked his way out of plenty of jams before.
Rose had spoken to him on the telephone once. “Talks like a guy on
the radio,” he said.
    “Listen, I know you guys aren’t gonna shoot me,” he said. “Not here .
Hotel fulla people. Shit, it’s Houston but it aint Dodge City. They
probably told you get the money I made off those slots, right? Plus a
little interest on top? Probably said knock me around some, teach me
a lesson. Okay, all right, won’t be the first ass-kicking I ever took.
But look, the money on the table’s all I got on me. You want more
than that you gotta wait till morning. I’m meeting a guy in the
morning with lots more cash. But you don’t want me all beat up
when I meet him, right? Might make him suspicious, know what I
mean? Would you hand over a bunch of money to a guy all beat to
shit? What you oughta do, you oughta hold off on the ass-whipping
till after I get the dough from this guy. That’s good business sense,
and you boys are businessmen, I can tell. So let’s talk a little business
while we wait for the man with the money, what do you say?”
    I stared at him with an expression like I might be thinking it over.
“Listen,” he said, “tell me what kinda deal you got with the
Maceos. Maybe I can cut you something better, you know what I
mean? I mean, no harm in talking, is there?” He pronounced their
name MAY-cee-o, the same way the Maceos themselves said it, like
Texans, which is what they considered themselves to be. •• I looked at LQ. He pursed his lips and shrugged like What the hell.
Ragsdale caught LQ’s expression and took encouragement from it.
He patted the sofa and said to me, “Come on, pal, sit down. No harm
done. Let’s talk business.”
    I lowered the gun, and he chuckled and patted the sofa again. I uncocked the .44 and slipped it into my waistband under my coat as I
started to step past him to the other side of the sofa. Then brought
the ice pick out of my inside coat pocket and drove it into his heart.
    If you can get them off guard like that you can do it quick and
neat and fairly quiet. They give a little grunt and that’s it. I yanked
the pick out and he started to fall forward but I caught him and positioned him so he’d stay seated. A red spot the size of a