Jimmy the Stick by Michael Mayo Read Free Book Online Page A

After their marriage, she came to share his passion for aviation, and they have literally circled the globe, seeking out and mapping new air routes. When Charles Jr. was born, they purchased several hundred acres of land in New Jersey’s Somerset and Mercer Counties. Work on their graceful stone home was finished last year.
    â€œSo, to recapitulate the situation as we understand it now . . .”
    When I finished shaving, I dug into my Gladstone for my notepad and fountain pen. I opened the pad to the first partially blank page and wrote recapitulate , sounding it out as I wrote the letters. Also on the page were
    liminal
    biddable
    gormless
    fasade façade .
    The radio continued, “Police have identified two pairs of footprints, likely made by a man and his female accomplice. The wooded area around the house was thoroughly searched last night and today. Thinking that a stolen car might have been involved, law-enforcement agencies in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania have identified sixteen stolen vehicles and are on the lookout for them.”
    The voice paused and the man said, “What?” and then “I don’t think so,” and “All right” to someone. “Here are the makes and models of those sixteen stolen cars. Police welcome any information the public can provide.”
    I finished shaving and thought that the guy had been right. I still couldn’t believe what had happened to the Lindbergh kid. That feeling of things not being completely real was in the background of everything that happened for the next seven days at Valley Green, and the really strange stuff was just getting cranked up.

Chapter Four
    THURSDAY, MARCH 3, 1932
    VALLEY GREEN, NEW JERSEY
    I turned off the radio and started worrying about Connie Halloran again. Then I decided I was being a sap.
    I didn’t realize how she’d got under my skin. As I thought about it, for the first time, really, I remembered how little we actually spoke. At least, I didn’t say much, and she wasn’t a talker herself. For the most part, we screwed and walked and went to the movies. I thought it was great, and she hadn’t complained about any of it. She was fascinated by stuff we saw on the crowded crush of city sidewalks—the charging kids, the peddlers, the pushcarts, all the tired guys looking for something to do, and the guys who had work and tried to look like they were heading somewhere important.
    And she loved the movies, most of them anyway. Sometimes she surprised me by not liking the ones I thought she would, but that was OK because it was fun when she got bored. We always sat in double seats in the balcony, my arm over her shoulder, tickling her hair or her ear. Sometimes she’d brush my hand away. But if she really didn’t like a movie, she’d slip off her coat to crawl over me. We could always go to the Chelsea of course, but there was something different in those dark seats where I could look up to see the gray smoky light playing over us. There was Connie on my lap, busy little hands working at the buttons of my shirt, and me tugging her blouse out of her skirt, carefully unbuttoning it from the bottom, one button after another, my hands rubbing across her soft stomach, fingers teasing at the edges of her brassiere, feeling her lips smiling against mine as she reached back to help me. I loved the smell of the stuff she put on her hair, the feel of it against my face. They don’t make movies like that anymore.
    I always tipped the usher on our way in to make sure we weren’t disturbed. We never were.
    Damn, where the hell was she?
    I put on a black pinstripe single-breasted and a turtleneck sweater. It was too cold in that house for a shirt and tie. When I strapped on my watch, I was a little surprised to see the time: after midnight. I slipped my brass knucks into a pocket, notepad and pen into my coat, and bounced the little pistol in my hand. That’s when I saw the