Jimmy the Kid by Donald E. Westlake Read Free Book Online

saw he was weakening. “I don’t promise anything,” he said.
    â€œBut you will read it?”
    â€œBut I don’t promise anything.”
    Jumping to her feet, she said, “You won’t be sorry, John, I know you won’t.” She kissed him on the forehead, and ran off to the bedroom to where she’d hid the book.

6
    K ELP WALKED INTO the O. J. Bar and Grill on Amsterdam Avenue at five minutes after ten. He hadn’t wanted to make a bad impression by showing up too early, so he’d hung back a little and the result was he was five minutes late.
    Two customers at the bar, telephone repairmen with their tool-lined utility belts still on, were discussing the derivation of the word spic. “It comes from the word speak ,” one of them was saying. “Like they say all the time, ‘I spic English.’ So that’s why they got the name.”
    â€œNaw,” the other one said. “It didn’t come like that at all. Don’t you know? A spic is one of those little knives they use. Din’ you ever see one of the women with a spic stuck down inside her stocking?”
    The first one said, “Yeah?” He was frowning, apparently trying to see in his mind’s eye a spic stuck down inside a woman’s stocking.
    Kelp walked on down to the far end of the bar. Rollo the bartender, a tall meaty balding blue-jawed fellow in a dirty white shirt and dirty white apron, came moving heavily down the other side of the bar and pushed an empty glass across to him. “The other bourbon’s already here,” he said. “He’s got the bottle.”
    â€œThanks,” Kelp said.
    Rollo said, “And the draft beer with the salt on the side.”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œGonna be any more of you?”
    â€œNaw, just the three of us. See you, Rollo.”
    â€œHey,” Rollo said, in a confidential manner, and made a head gesture for Kelp to come in closer.
    Kelp went in closer, leaning toward him over the bar. Was there trouble? He said, “Yeah?”
    Rollo, in an undertone, said, “They’re both crazy,” and made another head gesture, this one indicating the two telephone repairmen down at the other end of the bar.
    Kelp looked down that way. Crazy? With all those screwdrivers and things, they could get kind of dangerous.
    Rollo murmured, “It comes from Spic-and-Span.”
    A confused vision of people eating a detergent and going crazy entered Kelp’s head. Like sniffing airplane glue. He said, “Yeah?”
    â€œOn account of the cleaning women,” Rollo said.
    â€œOh,” Kelp said. Cleaning women had started it apparently, drinking the stuff. Maybe it was a kind of high. “I’ll stick to bourbon,” he said and, picked up the empty glass.
    â€œSure,” Rollo said, but as Kelp turned away Rollo began to look confused.
    Kelp walked on down past the end of the bar and past the two doors marked with silhouettes of dogs and the words POINTERS and SETTERS , and then on past the phone booth and through the green door at the back and into a small square room with a concrete floor. All the walls of the room were lined floor to ceiling with beer and liquor cases, leaving only enough space in the middle for a battered old table with a green felt top, half a dozen chairs, and a dirty bare bulb with a round green tin reflector hanging low over the table on a long black wire.
    Dortmunder and Murch were seated together at the table. A glass was in front of Dortmunder, next to a bottle whose label said AMSTERDAM LIQUOR STORE BOURBON —“ OUR OWN BRAND .” In front of Murch were a full glass of beer with a fine head on it, and a clear glass saltshaker. Murch was saying to Dortmunder, “… through the Midtown Tunnel, and—oh, hi, Kelp.”
    â€œHi. How you doing, Dortmunder?”
    â€œFine,” Dortmunder said. He nodded briefly at Kelp, but then looked away to pick up his