Such Men Are Dangerous by Lawrence Block Read Free Book Online Page A

his head sadly. “Don’t you even want to know why I’m here?”
    “No.”
    “Not interested at all?”
    “No. You’re on my island, you threw a grenade at me. I just want you to go away.”
    “The Noble Savage,” he said. “We need you, Paul.”
    “We?”
    “The Agency.”
    I looked at him. “You’re crazy.”
    “No. And neither are you, although you sound it right about now. The Agency has a job for you.”
    “The Agency already sent me away.”
    “Things have changed.”
    “Go to hell.”
    “And you’ve changed, too, Paul. In plenty of ways.”
    I didn’t say anything. I took a tentative step toward him, but the gun came up and stopped me. He told me not to come any closer.
    “You won’t shoot.”
    “One more step and you’ll find out the hard way.”
    “You wouldn’t come all the way out here just to shoot me. You want me for something. You don’t want to kill me.”
    “I don’t want to get killed by you, either. I’ll shoot you in the leg, Paul.”
    I stayed where I was. “Talk,” I said.
    “You’re ready to listen? You’re calm enough?”
    “I’m ready.”
    He drew a breath. “You had me worried for a minute there,” he said. “What I’ve got to say is simple enough. We kept a watch on you because we thought you might come in handy sooner or later. You were going through a bad time emotionally, and we couldn’t risk hiring you because the odds were very long against your coming out of it in a form we could use. But men with your qualifications aren’t easy to find. So even though we couldn’t make any use of you just then, it didn’t hurt to tie a string on you.”
    He paused for no apparent reason. I decided he wanted some sort of assurance that I was listening, so I nodded.
    “Then this job came up. When I give you the details you’ll see why it’s just right for you. Pull it off and there’ll be a job open for you.”
    “I don’t want a job.”
    “You might change your mind. But think of it as an open contract, no strings on either side. You’ll be paid for your work on this one, and our rates for freelancers are more generous than you might think. There’s a lot of money in it for you.”
    “I don’t need money.”
    “Everybody needs money.”
    “I don’t.”
    “And everybody needs something to do.”
    “Nothing is plenty.”
    He grinned. “I read your list,” he said. “I like it.”
    He read my list. He found me, he came to my island, he went into my house, he read my list.
    I turned to look across the island. I couldn’t see his boat from where I was standing. All I had to do was get him to realize that there was nothing that would make me leave my island. Then he would get back in his boat and head back to Little Table Key and Key West and Washington and never bother me again.
    He said, “We need you, Paul.”
    “That doesn’t make sense. How many men work for you? Use one of them.”
    “We can’t use a regular employee.”
    “Why not?”
    “There are reasons, believe me. I’ll get to them later.”
    “You’ve got hundreds of men under deep cover. Use one of them.”
    “Can’t be done.” Smile. “You’re the one we need, Paul.”
    “You had your chance once. The computer said I was no good—”
    “Then you weren’t. You are now.”
    “No.”
    “You really came alive when that pineapple landed at your feet, didn’t you? As though you’d been waiting all winter for something to happen. You finally got a chance to use yourself.”
    “I’m happy here. I like it here.”
    “Oh, I’ll grant that it seems to agree with you. That’s a hell of a tan you’ve got. You can come back here, Paul. Just do what we want and you can take your fee and spend the rest of your life here.”
    “I can spend it here anyway. Without doing jobs for you.”
    “Not jobs. Just this one job. And don’t be so sure you can.”
    I looked at him.
    “A man named Fenstermacher owns this island. He doesn’t even know you’re here. Someone could tell