A Key to the Suite by John D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online

covered in case Jesse and Alma got togetherthis trip. But Jesse had thought it over and said, “Why not? No matter what happens to me, I’d like to catch one of those little bastards acting human just one time.”
    “It could be a good piece of money, Jesse.”
    “Now are you trying to talk me out of it?”
    “No. Nothing like that. But Hubbard shouldn’t find out about it.”
    “Are you going to tell him? Am I? And Alma wouldn’t send over anybody who’d pull anything cute. As far as the money goes, I’m not about to pinch a penny on a thing like this. If Alma says she’s good, that’s enough. How is Alma?”
    “Same as ever. She’s telling the girl she has a personal interest in this working out. And she’d like you to phone her. I’ve got her new number. She wants to thank you for the way the stock thing worked out.”
    “Go ahead with it, Freddy. Set it up. You make an outlay, you’ll get it back. But Hubbard isn’t going to be easy.”
    So now he was in it, and nervous about it, convinced it was a mistake before it had even begun.
    At the knock on his door he hurried to it and opened it and got his first look at Corinna Barlund. Though he maintained the smile on his salesman face, he felt acute disappointment. She was of medium height, and to Frick she looked more scrawny than willowy. Her hair was more nearly brown than blonde, soft, cropped, casual, with a careful-careless arrangement of bangs. She wore a blue sheath dress, a little white cape effect, blue high-heeled sandals, white gloves, smoked glasses, and a Jacqueline pillbox hat. She carried one of the largest handbags Frick had ever seen.
    “Mr. Frick,” she said gravely.
    “Nice you could make it, Cory,” he said as she walked in.
    “Thank you.”
    He stared at the rearview of her as he closed the door. She certainly walked in a pleasant, classy way, but who goes for the walk? Most teenagers had her whipped in front, and all she had in back was tan skinny legs and about as much can on her as any eleven-year-old boy.
    “Sit down, Cory. Sit down. Drinks will be right along.”
    She turned and smiled and lifted the big handbag. “I didn’t know the uniform of the day, so I brought a change along, dinner dress and goodies to go with it.” She turned the straight chair away from the desk, sat down and put the bag on the floor beside her. She put her dark glasses on the desk, shrugged her cape off her shoulders onto the back of the chair, and pulled her gloves off. She bent and delved in the big bag and came up with cigarettes. Frick hurried to light her cigarette. He sat on the bed and smiled at her and said, “Well, now!” Her bare shoulders were nicely tanned, but they looked too bony to him.
    There was a second rap on the door. A waiter brought the two drinks in. He seemed far more polite and attentive than waiters usually were, Frick realized, when they brought you and a broad a drink. She had style, certainly. And what he classified as a society manner. This was the kind of bitch you’d see playing tennis when you looked over the wall into one of the private clubs. He suddenly decided she was maybe some society house-wife Alma had lined up, a bored doll short of money and looking for kicks.
    She sipped her drink. He smiled at her. He wondered what was the most graceful way to bring up the problem.
    “You
do
have the money, Mr. Frick?”
    “Uh? Oh, yes. Yes, I got it right here.” He took the envelopeout of his inside pocket and took it over to her and went back to sit on the bed.
    She counted it and put it in her purse. “And you do understand the way it’s set up?”
    “Alma said you’d make up your own mind, as you always do, and if you say no dice, you give me the money back, except for a hundred bucks.”
    “Fifty for me and fifty for Alma. But she’ll try to find somebody else for you, of course. As I understand it, an old friend of yours and Alma’s will be helped out if a certain youngish married man makes a fool