April Evil by John D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online Page A

another person? I love him. He needs me. He isn’t very much, but he’d be even less without me. I make him feel he belongs somewhere. He knows there’s someone on his side. He needs that. We had to leave Los Angeles. I guess you didn’t know that.”
    “No, I didn’t.”
    “He started getting money. He lied about how he got it. He was running around with the wrong people. A man named Dingle was a bad influence on him. Joe likes to act like a big shot. He was picked up. I found out he was working for a bookmaker. Then he was picked up again on suspicion of robbery. One of the police sergeants was nice to me. He said I ought to get Joe to leave. He said if Joe stayed in town he wouldn’t stay free very long. He said we should leave. It might help Joe and it would save the state of California some money. That’s why we left and why we came here.”
    “The small amounts of money I’ve given you for your personal use, Laurie. You’ve given some of it to him.”
    “He has to have
some
money in his pocket, even if it’s only a dollar or two. I didn’t want to take any money, anyway. I can get a job here. I’ve told you that, Doctor Paul.”
    “I don’t want you to. You do enough right here, in this house.”
    “I don’t do much of anything.”
    “Arnold thinks differently.”
    She smiled. “You two were in a rut. The same menu every week. The same routine. I’m afraid we’ve spoiled the routine.”
    “For the better.”
    “I should get a job. I feel like I’m sponging.”
    “You’re not. Laurie, would you feel better if I gave you some sort of a title and regular pay? Housekeeper or something?”
    “I … I might. But I didn’t plan that we’d stay on here.”
    “I want you to. I think I need you here, Laurie. I needed to be stirred up.”
    At other times he told her about his life, about what had happened to him. And one day when Joe had gone to town and Arnold was on an errand, he took her to the study, slid thepaneling aside and showed her the big safe and its contents, the brown-wrapped bills stacked with the dusty profusion of magazines in a basement, behind and around the large tin box that held important papers.
    He watched her face, saw her eyes go wide and then saw the puzzled frown.
    “But why?” she asked. “It doesn’t even look real. It seems … grotesque.”
    He closed the door of the safe, spun the dial. “I guess it is grotesque.”
    “Why do you keep all that here?”
    “My dear, you can call it affectation. And a gesture of defiance. I treated their bodies for years, the people in this town. I knew their bodies well. The laboring lungs and the overworked hearts. The cancers and the infections. There is something impressive and awe-inspiring about the resiliency of the human body. I couldn’t treat their bodies without learning about their minds, the way they thought. Bitterness and envy and greed. Dirty little machinations to gain this advantage and that. And their sorry little god was and is money.
    “I was fortunate enough to make a great deal of money in land. I had captured their god. To their way of thinking, once the god has been chained, you put him to work for you. And he faithfully brings in your three per cent or your eight per cent, depending on the risk of the work you assign him to. It is inconceivable to them that once you have captured the god, you don’t put him to work. So, as a gesture of defiance—probably childish—I imprisoned the god in this safe and would not let him work. There is enough there for a dozen lifetimes. There is no necessity to make him work for me. Whatever I spend, it comes out of capital. I suspect I am the only millionaire in the world with absolutely no income whatever.
    “Perhaps it is a product of my original hurt—to defy the rules of the clan, break the taboos of the village. Through the years I have taken a certain satisfaction in being a man of mystery, in knowing that they whisper and point and envy me. It has been