A Man of Affairs by John D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online Page A

sharp pale nervous face, more than his quota of nervous mannerisms: ear tugging, head scratching, lip pulling. His smile went off and on like a timed electric sign. In shorts he looked somewhat like the pictures you have seen of self-conscious chickens defeathered by a tornado. He had a fiercely protective attitude toward Bonny Carson.
    There was another woman who stood out, Amparo Blakely, Mike Dean’s indispensable secretary. She would have been noticed anywhere. She was big. She was nearly six feet tall, and she was big-boned and she was close to forty; but none of those attributes detracted from her look of being a completely feminine and forceful and desirable woman. I had seen her in photographs featuring Mike Dean. In those pictures she had usually been a few steps behind him. I had not realized how big she was, but I had a clear memory of her striking face. I knew that Amparo was a not unusual Spanish name and I had wondered if she was partly Spanish. But now, seeing her in the flesh, I suspected that she was half Mexican Indian. Though her eyes were pale, her face, tanned to a red-bronze, had that Aztecan look of humid passions hidden behind the Indio mask.
    I had heard the many legends of Mike Dean’s Amparo Blakely. It was said that she had become independently wealthy by riding along with Mike on his deals. She had been with him a long time. And now, with ease and assurance, she was acting as his hostess. I had heard it hinted that their relationship was more than professional. As I looked at her, at the mature, magnificent and superb body in a white and aqua dress, I did not see how any platonic relationship between Mike and this total woman would be possible. They both had a look of being more alive than the rest of us.
    Her hair was dark when she was in the shade, but the sun brought out coppery glints in it. She wore crude gold earrings in a barbaric design. And as she moved among the guests she had that inimitable look of being utterly at home in her world and within herself.
    I looked around and I knew there were one hell of a lot more people on the island than I had expected, and I knew I should get them all sorted out as quickly as possible. I wanted to know who was working for and with Mike Dean, directly and indirectly. You can tell a lot about a man by the attitude of the people who work for him. Fletcher Bowman was a younger, more suave, less forceful edition of Mike Dean. But he was so obscured behind all his masks of mannerisms I could not detect his actual attitude toward his boss man.
    I wanted information and so I looked around and detected what I thought might be the most pleasant way of acquiring it. The blond cutie I had seen on the veranda was back at the pool, and she had changed to a blue blouse and a white skirt. She sat on a couch built like a trampoline, a yellow canvas cover spring-fastened to a tubular bronze frame. She had a new drink and she was humming her little song and half-smiling into the middle distance and tapping a slender foot in a tall blue shoe as she sat facing a dull fireball of a sun that was sliding down into a sea that had turned to oiled slate.
    I stood over her and said, “On the first go-round I got it that you’re called Murphy, but I didn’t get the rest of it. And I’m lousy on names and so I need maybe a briefing on you and the rest of the throng.”
    She came back out of her middle distance and focused on me, warm and friendly as a pup.
    “In my file folder it says here that you’re the biggest thing on the island and your name is Sam Something.”
    “Glidden.”
    “Have it your way. And I am a shade drunk from drinking, and you may sit down and be briefed.” She patted the yellow canvas beside her and I sat down. “About this Murphy,” she said, “I am Bridget Hallowell and I used to be called Bridey until that damn book came out and then it became Murphy. I am starting an international movement to get it back to Bridget where it