A Deadly Shade of Gold by John D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online Page A

several small sips and said, "I'm pretty flippy today Trav. Don't listen too hard to anything I say."
    "Shaj took off at quarter to nine. She said the shop is under control."
    "Bless her. And you too, my friend."
    She had not put on makeup. Her face had a new dry papery texture, as though it would crackle to the touch.
    I told her about Branks. I gave her the same detailed report I'd given Shaj.
    "Can you handle it?" I asked.
    "I guess so. You mean, on the level that he was nothing more than a friend who'd been away.
    Yes. I can manage. But why?"
    "Maybe I don't want him to know that we have a very intense personal interest in finding out who...."
    "Who killed him. Don't hunt for easier words. Use the brutal ones. Let them sting. Why shouldn't he know we have that personal interest, Trav?"
    "Because we don't want him interfering with any looking we may want to do. If it is personal. If it is intense, we want a part of it, don't we?"
    She put the empty juice glass down.
    "Do you know something about it?"
    "I think so."
    "Did you tell that man?"
    "No.
    I cannot describe the look on her face then, a hunting look, a merciless look, a look of dreadful anticipation. It reminded me that the worst thing the Indians could do to their enemy prisoners was turn them over to the women. "I want to keep it very very personal," she whispered.
    "Then don't give Branks the slightest clue. He's a sharp man."
    "If I thought there was no point to it, if it was just some murderous animal trying to rob cabins...."
    "More than that."
    She locked icy fingers on my wrist. "Then what? The thing he had to take care of. What?"

Page 28
    "Later, Nora. It will keep."
    I saw her accept that promise. I had polarized her, with one of the most ancient and ugly emotions. It was irresponsible of me, perhaps. I plead a shining motive. Without direction she had nothing but pain, loss, grief. I gave her a bullet to bite on while they amputated her heart. It is a temporizing world, fading into uncertain shades of grey, so full of complexities all worth and value are questioned, hag-ridden by the apologistics of Freud, festering with so many billions of us that every dab of excellence has to be spread so thin it becomes a faint coat of grease, indistinguishable from the Eva-Last plastics. In this toboggan ride into total, perfectly adjusted mediocrity, the great conundrum is what is worth living for and what is worth dying for. I choose not to live for the insurance program, for creative selling, for suburban adjustments, for the little warm cage of kiddy-kisses, serial television, silky wife-nights, zoning squabbles.
    But what is the alternative? I know just enough about myself to know I cannot settle for one of those simplifications which indignant people seize upon to make understandable a world too complex for their comprehension. Astrology, health food, flag waving, bible thumping, Zen, nudism, nihilism-all of these are grotesque simplifications which small dreary people adopt in the hope of thereby finding The Answer, because the very concept that maybe there is no answer, never has been, never will be, terrifies them.
    All that remains for the McGee is an ironic Knighthood, a spavined steed, second class armor, a dubious lance, a bent broadsword, and the chance, now and again, to lift into a galumphing charge against capital E Evil, his brave battle oaths marred by an occasional hysterical giggle. He has to carry a very long banner because on it has been embroidered, by maidens galore, The Only Thing in the World Worth a Damn is the Strange, Touching, Pathetic, Awesome Nobility of the Individual Human Spirit. The end of the banner trails on the ground way the hell behind his horse, and people keep stepping on it.
    So in polarinzing the lady, I had at least given hera simplification she could live with and, if the need should arise, die for. But when I looked into the depths of her dark eyes, there was something there which made me wish I hadn't pushed that