Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter Read Free Book Online

there was a small white shack with a night light showing through the window in the door.
    “Let’s bust in there and see if they left any gold around,” he said to Denny.
    Denny looked surprised. “Okay,” he said. He followed Jack across the gravel of the lot and watched as Jack picked up a rag, wrapped it around his fist and punched the glass in the door. Jack reached through and opened the door from the inside, and they both stepped in, Denny throwing one glance back at the street.
    There were two desks with barely room to get between them, papers all over the tops; a few calendars on the walls, and a large rack with keys on nails. Jack started going through the drawers of one desk, and after a moment’s hesitation, Denny started in on the other. All they found were blank forms, messy files of completed loan applications and title changes, and half an apple, which Denny threw in the wastebasket.
    “Shit,” he said. “We left fingerprints all over the goddam place.”
    “So what? Nobody’s got my prints. They got yours?”
    “Hell no. Fuck it. No money. Let’s get out of here.”
    “You scared?”
    “Course I’m scared, you nut. Let’s go.”
    Jack was looking at the board of keys. “Let’s take one of their goddam cars and race hell out of it.”
    They took the keys to a 1946 Cadillac, found the car, and drove it off the lot, smashing through the thin guard chain across the driveway, hearing the posts holding the chain splinter and crunch. They drove up Burnside, Jack behind the wheel. It never entered his mind that he had just committed grand theft, among other major and minor crimes. All he knew was that at last he was behind the wheel of a fine automobile, there was plenty of gas in the tank, and the evening was ahead of them. He did not think about money again for almost an hour.
    After taking the Cadillac out on the highway and opening it up a few times, Jack and Denny came back to Portland, and for a while drove through the expensive curved streets of Council Crest. Driving the big, powerful car at top speeds had been terribly exciting, and now they were calming down, not talking, just looking out the windows at the rich people’s houses. The plan was to abandon the car up here and walk back down to the downtown section.
    “Hey, I been in that house,” Denny said, pointing. Jack pulled the car over, and peered through the gloom. The house Denny meant was back behind a hedge and trees, and the second story, which they could see from where they were, was dark and deserted-looking.
    “You remember that kid Weinfeld?” Denny asked. “This is his joint. I come up here and had
lunch
. He owed me eight bucks from snooker an we come up here to collect. God, what a mansion! You never seen anything like it. They got a room for every fuckin thing you can think of; the old man’s got his own bar, all that crap. They must be damn near millionaires.”
    Jack looked up at the blank dark windows of the building, set in its framework of damp firs, beneath a roof that seemed to have a dozen chimneys. “God,” he said.
    “They’re really rich bastards,” Denny said. “In fact, they’re takin a vacation in Mexico. Weinfeld come around last week askin if anybody wanted any dirty pictures or anythin.”
    “The place is empty?”
    Denny looked at Jack. He began to grin. “Empty as hell, man. What’er we waitin for? Let’s ditch the car an
bust in!
”
    “Sure to be money laying around someplace,” Jack said. “What a fuckin
break!
”
    The Weinfelds were not rich and the house was not a “mansion,” but the boys had no experience at all with the really rich, and so could not tell the difference. Weinfeld owned a small shoe store specializing in work shoes and odd sizes. He made a comfortable living, and his home was a comfortable one; in 1947 it would have been worth about $20,000. It was surrounded by hedge, lawn, and trees, and there was heavy, ornate-looking furniture in all the rooms; deep,