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

a source of wry pleasure to have them envy me forthe possession of something I value very little. I am a contrived eccentric. It is my small revolt against society. Do you understand?”
    “I think I do, Doctor Paul.”
    He closed the panel and said, “Locked away in here are the services the imprisoned god will perform for you. Cars and planes and cruises. Or charities that bear your name. All manner of gleaming things. But I won’t play the game their way. Because of that they respect me and they despise me, and maybe it makes them doubt a little. This is a god who does not work.”
    “What will happen to it?”
    “When I die? Don’t blush, Laurie. It’s a perfectly normal question. I will set up two trust funds. One will be for you. Then the balance will be divided among medical research organizations, with one lump sum set aside for taxes.”
    “I don’t want it.”
    “Be honest, Laurie.”
    She smiled then. “Of course I want it. I don’t want you to think that’s why I asked.”
    “I don’t.”
    “Then … thank you.”
    “With an income for the rest of your life, you can do as you please about Joe. You can support him or not, as you please. I suggest you’ll be happier if you do not support him.”
    “There’s something good about him. You don’t see it.”
    “I’m afraid I don’t.”
    He stood at the window and looked down at her as she worked in the yard. There was a new zest in living since she had come into his life. Had his child lived, this was the granddaughter he would have wanted. He went down the wide stairs and out the side door. She looked up as he approached.
    “I never sleep late in the morning,” she said, imitating his voice. “Good morning.”
    “We talked too late. Past my bedtime.”
    She stood up. “And now you need your breakfast. I sentArnold off with a mile-long shopping list. You walk around in the sun. It will make you hungry. I’ll whistle when it’s ready.”
    She went into the house. The grounds enclosed by the high stone wall were not large. The sun was warm on the back of his neck. The garage doors were open, and the black Packard was gone. He could see Joe Preston’s ancient car in the other stall, behind closed doors. Arnold lived over the garage. The curtains at his windows were crisply white. Tomlin walked down the drive and saw that the front gates were open. Before Laurie and Joe had come, Arnold Addams had been ceremonious about locking the gate each time he left the house. He seemed to feel there was security in added numbers.
    Dr. Paul Tomlin stood in the entrance, his hands in the pockets of the robe. Across the narrow street there was an empty house, a relic of the boom of the twenties, a great crumbling yellow cement monstrosity, heavy with Mediterranean arches, bastard offspring of mixed Spanish and Moorish ancestry. Off to the left, beyond the sad yellow house, he could see the bright new homes of a low-cost housing development, houses in shades of raspberry and lime, aqua and peach. Homes with terrazzo, Floridy rooms, and coaxial television from a community aerial, with small yards afflicted by chinch bugs and sand spurs. Carport homes where once there had been dry flats with palmetto scrub and the raw grasses. Now the flats were bisected by the thin skin of asphalt, and robins in migration no longer rested there.
    A car moved slowly down the narrow street. It was a travel-dusty Buick, with a big man behind the wheel who stared curiously at the doctor and at the stone house behind him. The doctor stared calmly back. The car speeded up after it had passed the house. He noted that it had Illinois plates.

CHAPTER FIVE
    Through the glass of the office wall Mooney could see Dil Parks. Dil had a friend in there with him. Even though somebody was beating out a fender in the adjoining service garage, Mooney could hear the juicy ripeness of Dil Parks’ laughter. Mooney moved to a place on the showroom floor where he could not see Parks and where he