Madonna of the Apes by Nicholas Kilmer Read Free Book Online Page B

a couple of men wanted to sleep together, that issue hadn’t come up. But any coupling threatened the balance in a democracy. Besides, it wasn’t really a democracy, because Fred’s name was on the mortgage, and everyone knew that. And it was Fred who must meet the payment every month, whether the guys could manage their rent or not.

Chapter Eleven
    Lester wandered down at six in the morning, looking unkempt and distracted. He was too lean. The recruitment of new tenants was haphazard. Bart had brought Lester in one day after they got talking at the bus station. The guys had agreed Lester would stay while they took his measure.
    Fred told him good morning. “I’m not crazy,” Lester said. “Not bonkers, crackers, missing a wheel, half-baked, half-assed, off my rocker, one sandwich short of a wedding, three sheets to the wind, or nuts.”
    “Good,” Fred said.
    “The other thing,” Lester said, “I am not missing a wheel. Or a two-wheeler or a three-wheeler or four wheels and I am not the fifth wheel nobody knows what it is except it’s a good thing. It helps steer. On a carriage. It’s like a gear. And I’m not three sheets short of a picnic.”
    “You with the IRS?” Fred asked. “You’re working pretty hard.”
    “Peanuts,” Lester said. He turned and walked out into a day that was beginning with rain. The trees outside the house had put on enough leaves to be dripping generously, letting the rain wash itself off onto the sidewalks. Lester was dressed for it, wearing a waterproof jacket from whose pocket he pulled a cap as he crossed the porch. If he was playing a part, he wasn’t going to push it far enough to get too uncomfortable.
    They’d had a spy a year ago, and this might be another one. Some government agency or another might have developed an interest in the operation. It wasn’t a good part of town where you really had neighbors. Still, a neighbor might have developed curiosity about a house where single men came and went at all hours, some of whom looked like people you’d rather lived somewhere else.
    Lester was a plant or a spy. Fred would bet money on it. But there was nothing to find. No secrets. Nothing interesting. Nothing to reward curiosity. Nothing to look forward to.
    Nolan, ten minutes late, parked his big frame back of the desk, taking over for the day shift.
    “I may sleep in town the next day or two,” Fred told him.
    Fred’s room was on the second floor, over the front door, a small room called a “borning room” in these parts, large enough for the single mattress and the chair. His clothes he kept in three cardboard boxes, all the same size, so they could be stacked. One held clean clothes, one dirty, and the third clothes that did not qualify for either of those two categories. Hooks on the back of the door did for the parka, the windbreaker, and the blazer that came in handy for visits to the bank concerning mortgage questions. A small steel box downstairs held anything else he cared about keeping.
    Fred showered, considered his mattress, and rejected it. It wasn’t his business; still, his mind wouldn’t rest. “It’s tomorrow Reed said he’d go back,” Fred said. “Three P.M. It was a date but Reed didn’t mean to keep it. Did Tilley?”
    It wasn’t his business.
    He had laundry to do, and he might as well do it. He’d noticed a Laundromat on Charles Street, not far from Bernie’s, in the neighborhood where he’d spent the last couple of days. That would give him something to do, as well as a change of clothes if he decided to stay in the area, keep his eyes open.
    The walk to Charles Street took forty minutes and was a good way to stretch the kinks out of his legs. Eight hours behind the desk was a punishing stretch. There’d been no mail but crap. The phone hadn’t rung. He was ready for something else.
    There was no activity at the place on Pekham Street. Someone had taken his cardboard from the alley. He walked on uphill to the corner of Bolt