Waltz of Shadows Read Online Free PDF Page B

used that as our focus. You know, like we’re filming some historical bit, which considering all the renovation going on down on Main Street and the Square these days, fits in for a good cover.
    Doc shows up like usual, goes in the bank. No fat guy this day. So we don’t take any video. We wanted to know if there was something to really see before we got down to business, this stuff with the envelope being so intriguing and all.
    Next day we hung out in my car. Parked across the street from the bank in front of the library. Got the video ready. Doc comes on time, and the fat man’s there again. They go through the same envelope routine. Doc dropping. Fat man picking it up and trading with him.
    Comes to us then that possibly the fat guy’s got some pictures of the Doc doing something he shouldn’t do. Maybe when the fat guy switches envelopes, he’s giving the Doc negatives or something.
    Whatever reason, this fat guy, he’s got Doc by the short hairs, and he’s giving them a tug, you know. And Doc, he’s got it arranged where he can pay off in a public place so he doesn’t have to be alone with the fat guy. Scared of him, maybe. Something like that.
    So, we had a joker in the deck. That made it better. We decided to play the Doc like a fiddle. Kidnap him, make like we’re in with the fat guy. Tell the Doc whatever’s been paid isn’t enough. More’s got to come. Or else. He could make up his mind what “or else” meant.
    I was thinking, guy like this, kind of money he’s got, we could put a serious bite on him. Maybe ten-thousand apiece. More. We get our kicks any way we go, and get a little money out of the deal, which personally I could use, and nobody gets hurt.
    We set shifts following him. Me and Sharon doing one. Dave and Carrie one. Bob odd man out. Then we’d mix it up. We took turns parking nights down in the University lot so a couple of us could cross the highway, go into the patch of woods and work our way over the creek and up the hill. From there, we could watch the house.
    We got damn good at shadowing. Got Doc’s pattern down perfect. Saw he did have a blond wife with a good ass, if no kids, and he and the blonde seemed to run in pretty different paths. When he came home in the afternoon, she went out and didn’t come back until late. Hour or so after she left, he’d come out dressed in tee-shirt, shorts and tennis shoes, and drive over to the Court Club.
    Hour or so later he’d come out of there red and sweaty, drive back home. Stay until seven-thirty. Then he’d come out dressed the way he dressed during the day. Suit and tie. Most nights he’d go down to the Chinese restaurant on University.
    I ended up following him there and watching him a couple of nights. He took a table at the back, semiprivate, halfway behind one of those screens with the butterflies and birds painted on it. But if you sat up front, looking in the big wall mirror there, you could see a lot of what was going on in the back, behind the partial screen.
    Not that he was doing anything unusual. But there was this waitress always waited on him. College girl. Dark haired. Pretty. Tits like zeppelins. She talked to him extra friendly-like, showed a lot of teeth. They got pretty handsy now and then.
    Didn’t take a genius to see something more than polite conversation was going on. Whenever he got ready to leave, he scooted a fifty dollar bill under his plate. I know, ’cause on my way to the restroom I took a look.
    Saw too he wasn’t any thirty years old. He was quite a bit older, but those workouts kept him pretty well preserved, that and the fact I figure he’d had some of his colleagues pull his face up and tie it behind his ears.
    After the restaurant he’d run a few errands, then go home. About midnight, the wife’d come home. Early in the morning, two or three, Doc’d go out the back door and down the hill into his private park in the woods by the creek. There was a wooden bridge over the water and stone