Dead Aim by Thomas Perry Read Free Book Online

grandmother’s kitchen garden into a tennis court, torn out his father’s swimming pool and put in a better one to please Andrea. He had, by default, been this generation’s caretaker, holding the house for the next. When it went, he had mourned it like a death, but the house had not been a surprise. She had not liked the place.
    The sale of the construction business Mallon owned had been a surprise, because he had never before seen Andrea make a decision that seemed contrary to her own best interests. He had offered her a monthly income that would have consisted of half his profits. But shehad insisted on having the company appraised—trucks, tools, trailers, telephones—and getting half of the total in cash immediately.
    Andrea’s demand came just at a time when northern California was gripped in its most frantic growth spurt. Mallon had run out of land that he had already paid for or inherited, and had begun borrowing to buy more empty land and build developments on it. He had needed to use all his credit, so when her demand came, all Mallon had been able to do was agree to sell out and give her what she had asked for. But her timing was perfect. A much larger company made a preemptive offer just so they could keep the buildings going up without a pause. None of his crews even got a day off when the exchange was made. Mallon had told his lawyers to handle the sale, pay off the debts, give Andrea’s attorneys a check for her half of what was left, and send his share to Wells Fargo bank.
    A week later, Mallon had been given an appointment with two women in the private banking office in Palo Alto who were specialists in managing people’s investments. He had explained that he needed to have them invest his money conservatively so he would not be left short before he found a job. The two had looked at the printout that contained his balance, and looked at each other. The older one, who had silver eyeglasses on a silver chain, wrote something on a piece of paper before she spoke. “Mr. Mallon. This is what your investments will throw off in an average year.” She had spun the paper around to face him so he could read the number she had written.
    Mallon had thanked the women, signed the various forms they handed him, and then walked out of their building. He’d looked up and down the sidewalk, then up at the sky. As he’d stepped along, the implications of the numbers had begun to demand his attention. The figure the woman had shown him was five or six times what he had spent even when Andrea had lived with him.
    He could not stand to live in San Jose anymore, to take circuitous routes just to avoid passing by his family’s farm or his old construction business or Andrea’s new house. He stopped at the office one lasttime to say good-bye to his former employees, then drove two hundred and eighty miles south to an apartment in Santa Barbara because he had visited the city a few times and had no unpleasant memories of it. After a month he had invested in an old brick colonial house above Mission Street near State. He spent nearly a year remodeling it, doing most of the work himself, and trying to think about his future but failing. He knew nothing about the future, but the past was full of problems he had not solved. During that year, the investments he had left with the private banking people up north had begun their steady growth. At the end of the year, instead of selling the house, he moved into it. There had never again been any practical reason for Robert Mallon to do anything in exchange for money.
    In his new life in Santa Barbara he walked everywhere he went, driving only when he needed to carry something bulky or fragile. He acquired a great many acquaintances, because he had plenty of leisure time, spent much of it in public, and spoke to anyone who spoke to him. He made sure he spent two hours a day getting some form of outdoor exercise and two hours reading. But at the end of ten years in the city, Mallon