Ron Goulart - John Easy 03 - The Same Lie Twice by Ron Goulart Read Free Book Online Page A

and all the bullshit about starting life over south of the border isn’t going to help one bit.”
    “They were planning to run away to Mexico?”
    Lana nodded. “To live an idyllic life among the peons. I need another one. You?”
    “I’ve still got four more.”
    “Back in a minute.”
    Easy noticed a new sound outside, a faint scuffling crackling sound. He left the sprung sofa, and crossed to the window which looked out on the overgrown side garden. He pushed aside the brittle dusty lace curtain, frowning at the rainy dusk.
    “What’s the matter?” asked Lana.
    “Heard something out here.” There was no sign of anyone out in the weedy near-darkness.
    “Jesus, I hope it’s not that schmuck of a monkey.” She pushed by Easy, handed him her drink and grabbed at the window frame. She got it two inches up. Squatting, she shouted, “Is that you out there, Hernando? Get yourself on inside, you offensive little prick.”
    The monkey, if he was out there in the rain, did not respond.
    “The chief trouble with monkeys, outside of their bathroom habits, is they catch cold so readily. I’d hate to see poor little Hernando catch pneumonia.” She put her mouth to the opening to shout once more. “Get your little hairy ass in here, Hernando.” Shrugging, she shuffled back to her chair.
    Easy took her manhattan to her. “How were they going to finance it, their escape?”
    Moseson’s gaunt sister gulped down half of her drink. For a moment her face went completely expressionless, then it began to give way. Her mouth first and then her eyes. “That bitch, that terrible rotten bitch.” Lana caught at Easy’s arm, pulled him toward her and began sobbing against his chest. “That bitch made Phil do it, she worried him and she worried him.”
    Easy stroked her narrow back with one big gnarled hand. Through the rayon and the flannel her bones felt as though they had no flesh on them. “He stole money from Darlington & Sons, from his accounting job?”
    Lana took two breaths in through her mouth, sniffling. “No, it wasn’t money. Money would have been clean and simple compared.”
    “Compared to what?”
    The thin woman pressed her head harder against Easy. “I don’t have all the details. Somebody in the government … I mean our local government here in San Ignacio … someone had the unfortunate habit of writing memos about everything. Phil somehow when he was doing an accounting job for Darlington found this file of memos and related matters. It … it was enough Phil said to make a lot of trouble for Mayor Zibelli and a lot of other people in town. Only one little file drawer of carbon copies was going to be worth maybe as much as a quarter of a million bucks to him.”
    “Your brother was going to sell it back to the mayor?”
    “I’m not sure who exactly he contacted,” said Lana. “Even your stupid kid brother won’t confide everything.”
    “He didn’t plan to give the material to the DA or to the newspapers?”
    Crying still, Lana said, “Not with that bitch around. You don’t know what a nice kid Phil once was. He was in the Cub Scouts and the Boy Scouts and he made sergeant in the army. Then, I don’t know, he all of a sudden got to be thirty. After that, I don’t know, he …”
    “Where did your brother keep the stuff he’d taken?”
    “Not at home,” answered Lana. She sank back away from him, remembering her drink. “He wouldn’t tell me where he had it concealed. I bet he told that stupid cunt, though.”
    Easy said, “That’s why he was killed then.”
    “What do you think? All this crapola in the papers about psychopaths is just that,” said Moseson’s sister. “There are still a lot more plain everyday crooks around here than crazed hippies.” She sucked in more of the bourbon. “Whoever it was, they beat Phil to make him tell where he hid that file drawer. I’m fairly certain of that. The poor asshole was new at blackmail, didn’t handle it at all the right way