Nightmare in Pink by John D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online

business. They had taken it away from him, and he had worked too hard at it, and he killed himself."
    Blue eyes came closer and the voice was more of a whisper. "Mike said you have a strange thing about women."
    "I happen to think they are people. Not cute objects. I think that people hurting people is the original sin. To score for the sake of scoring diminishes a man. I can't value a woman who won't value herself. McGee's credo. That's why they won't give me a playboy card. I won't romp with the bunnies."
    With her lips two inches from mine and her lids looking heavy, she said, "Mike said it's a disaster to play poker with you."
    "I live aboard my winnings. It's called the Busted Flush."
    "Take me for a boat ride," she said, and rested her fists against my chest and fitted a soft sighing mouth to mine. It started in mildness, and lifted swiftly to a more agonizing sweetness of need than one can plausibly expect from a kiss. Her arms pulled, and she gave a wrenching gasp, and I held her away. She stared, blind and wide, then plunged up and wandered away, went over to her push pin wall and began idly straightening drawings.
    "We have to decide where to eat so you can get dressed."
    "Trav?"
    "Go with the basic black something suitable for baked mussels, pasta, a big garlic salad ice cold, a bottle of Bardolino, espresso."
    "Trav, damn it!"
    "And shoes you can walk in, because we'll want to walk a little while after dinner and look at the lights and look at the people."
    She turned and looked at me and shook her head in a sad exasperation and went into the bedroom and closed the door.
    I held it all off until we were down to the second cups of the thick bitter coffee. I held it off by regaling her with folksy legends of the palm country, and bits of marina lore-such as my neighbor boat which housed the Alabama Tiger's perpetual floating house-party, and how to catch a snook, and the best brand of rum in Nassau and such like. I paused for a moment.
    "Trav?" she said, in that same old tone of voice, and I was locked into the intensity of her blue eyes and we were back with it.
    "As you told me in the beginning, you are a darling girl. And a darling vulnerable girl because somebody dimmed your lights back on August tenth, and because last night you whooped and coughed up enough of yourself to be equivalent to ten sessions on the couch and you want to transfer to me more than you should. You are just too damned willing to give all that trust and faith and affection, and it scares me. And when a damn fool shoots fish in a barrel, he also blows hell out of the barrel."
    "Is that all?"
    "When I think of more, I'll let you know."
    "I don't need a den mother. I can take my own risks. For my own reasons."
    "Just like a grownup?"
    "Oh shush. You don't do my vanity much good, McGee."
    "Concentrate on your five-hundred-dollar bonus."
    After long thought she gave a little shrug of acceptance. "So be it, den mother. What's your Saturday program?"
    "Charlie Armister's sister-in-law. Terry Drummond. And hope to pick up some guide lines from her. Ready? Let's take that walk."
    We walked a long amiable way on Fifth, making small jokes that seemed funnier than they probably were, and nightcapped with George at the Blue Bar at the Algonquin, and then taxied her home and held the cab.
    "Coward," she whispered, and gave me a child's simple kiss, and started up the stairs with a great burlesque comic show of exaggerated hip-waving, turned and waved and grinned and hurried on up.

Five
    I CALLED Mrs. Drummond again on the house phone at ten minutes of eleven and she told me to come up. There was a man with her in the sitting room of the small suite. He had wire glasses, a tall forehead and a deferential manner. She introduced him as Mr. King.
    "What do you want to talk to me about?" she asked. She was tall and slender, and brown as a Navajo. She had dusty black hair pulled back into a careless bun. She wore tailored gray slacks, gold strap-sandals, a