Winter Kills Read Online Free PDF

money. He’d like to buy hisse’f the mental comfort of knowin’ they was two men shootin’ at Kegan instead of just the one, and he’d feel best of all if one of them was a shooter like you.”
    “I sure as hell don’t seem to be able to get any other kinda work.”
    “Sixteen thousand, five hunnert net for doin’ what you do better’n anybody alive. For maybe sixty seconds of work. Sixty seconds to pot the most famous man in the world and push yourself right into history.”
    Fletcher turned his head slowly and stared at Casper with all of his catcher’s-mitt expression. Casper kept his eyes on the road. Fletcher enjoyed talking about good-sized chunks of money. He had obliged a fellow once before and had shot down a tortilla politician in the State of Vera Cruz because he’d been paying for his momma’s keep in Winship Falls, New York, for twenty-seven years. Money didn’t berry out on bushes.
    “Shoot a man like Kegan and you never get to spend the money,” Turk said tentatively.
    “Oh, yes, you do. My boss is just as big a man as Kegan. They ain’t nobody he don’t know and he’s talked around about it to alla them. I mean, everything is settled. You goin’ to get top cooperation from the very top people.”
    “Who is your boss, Casp?”
    “My boss is a man who knows the cool-headed wayyou handled a job of work in the State of Vera Cruz, Mexico. And he admires you for it.”
    “A fact?”
    “Sure is. Now—what do you say?”
    “I got to think about it,” Fletcher said. “I am not quick, but I am thorough.”
    Fletcher made a chart in his room in East Dallas after mulling things through with two bottles of Pearl. He wanted all the facts right in front of him in good-sized letters so he could think the proposition through. A man who took a running jump into anything deserved to sink up to his hat. He stared at the chart, sipping beer.
ALL DALLAS FRETS.
HE IS A TRAITOR.
SAVE AMERICA?
MOMMA—HISTORY IS MEMORY.
SIXTEEN FIVE—IS IT ENOUGH?
THINGS TO WATCH FOR.
WHO LEAKED VERA CRUZ?
    No reason to trust Casper any more than anybody else. Hell, the man who had hired him for Vera Cruz was dead for over four years, and they had already hung somebody for killing the fellow he had shot. But, by God, Mexico didn’t have the budget of the government of the United States. Boil up the federal people and they could really go after you. There were a lot of newspapers back east that were sure to make a big thing out of somebody shooting down a President. Man, they’d sure have to grab somebody—though it would all cool off as soon as they settled on who was to blame. He wondered if it had been that little fucker Casper who got him fired off the crane. Goddam pissmire. Sure, Casper made everything look easy, but the money wasn’t right. The money was an insult to the President. The head honcho had to have so muchmoney he could never count it. Shooting a President was a big job. They needed the best man there was.
    Two nights after Turk got back from some ranch in the west country somewhere, when he and Casper had settled down over a couple of bowls of red and some good cold Pearl beer, Casper said, “Did y’all think of what I was sayin’ to you on the ride back from Fort Peters?”
    “Yes, I did.”
    “How do you see it?”
    “The basics is what bothers me.”
    “That was a mighty generous price, Turk.”
    “I do not agree.”
    “How much do you have in mind?”
    “Fifty.”
    “You just have to know that cain’t be.”
    “I know what cain’t be all right. It’s your figure of sixteen five net.”
    “We are willin’ to come up a little, Turk, but you gotta know our overhead. The other rifle, his assistant, paying police, sweetening Feds, flyin’ us up and back, hotel bills, tips, meals, laundry, rifles and rounds, car rentals—I mean, you are just part of the over-all.”
    “I bet you are paying the other rifle plenty more.”
    “I’m not so sure about that. We are Texas people and so