Even the Wicked by Lawrence Block Read Free Book Online Page B

myself killed. Elaine came even closer. She got stabbed, she had her spleen removed. She almost died.”
    “Didn’t you say she left the country?”
    “That was another woman, a former girlfriend. Elaine’s my wife.”
    “I thought you didn’t have any women in your life at the time.”
    “We weren’t married then. We’d known each other years previously. Motley brought us together again.”
    “Motley was the guy who wanted to kill you.”
    “Right.”
    “And after she recovered—Elaine?”
    “Elaine.”
    “After she recovered you resumed seeing each other, and now you’re married. A good marriage?”
    “A very good marriage.”
    “My God,” he said. “Maybe if I stick around and see this thing through I’ll wind up back in Connecticut with Barbara. But it’s hard to imagine her without her spleen. It’s the key element of her character.” He took a drink. “In the meantime, my friend, I’ve got a law practice to run and a case to try. Tempting as it may be to fly off for a couple of weeks in Oslo or Brussels, I think I’ll stick around and face the music. But that doesn’t mean I want to get killed, nor do I think it makes much sense to leave the task of protecting me to the NYPD. I’m safe here—”
    “Here?”
    “In this apartment. The building has good security.”
    “I don’t think Will would have much trouble getting in here.”
    “Didn’t the guy on the desk make you show ID? I told him to.”
    “I flashed a card at him,” I said. “I didn’t give him time to look at it, and he didn’t insist.”
    “I’ll have to speak to him about that.”
    “Don’t bother. You can’t expect very much from the building personnel. The elevator’s self-service. All anybody has to do is take out the doorman and he’s in.”
    “Take him out? You mean kill him?”
    “Or just slip past him, which wouldn’t be on the same level with getting into Fort Knox. If you want a good shot at getting through this alive, and if you won’t leave town, you need bodyguards around the clock. That means three shifts a day, and I’d recommend you employ two men per shift.”
    “Would you be one of those men?”
    I shook my head. “I don’t like the work and I don’t have the reflexes for it.”
    “Can you supply bodyguards?”
    “Not directly. I’m a one-man operation. There are people I can call for backup, but not as many as you’d need. What I can do is recommend a couple of agencies who can be counted on to furnish reliable operatives.”
    I took out my notebook, wrote down the names of two firms, along with a phone number for each and a person to ask for. I tore out the page and handed it to Whitfield. He read it, folded it, and tucked it in his breast pocket.
    “No point in calling now,” he said. “I’ll call first thing in the morning. If Will lets me live that long.”
    “You’ve probably got a few days. He’ll wait until the story runs, and until you’ve had time to worry about it.”
    “He’s a real prick, isn’t he?”
    “Well, I don’t suppose he’s on the short list for the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award.”
    “Not this year, but then he’s got a lot of competition. Ah, Jesus, you think your life’s in order and then something like this comes at you from out of nowhere. Do you worry a lot?”
    “Do I worry a lot? I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
    “It seems to me that I do. I worry about a stroke or a heart attack, I worry about prostate cancer. Sometimes I worry about having some bad gene that’ll have me coming down with one of those rare diseases. I can’t think of the word I want and I start to worry about early-onset Alzheimer’s. You know something? It’s a big fucking waste of time.”
    “Worrying?”
    “You said it. You never worry about the right thing. I never worried about this son of a bitch, I’ll tell you that, and now he’s got me on his list. Tell me what else I can do. Besides hiring guards. You must have a few ideas on the kind of