The Lime Pit by Jonathan Valin Read Free Book Online Page B

better off left alone.
    "Jones is his name. Abel Jones," he said to
me. "But, believe me, it should have been the other one--Cain.
He's a very tough customer, Mr. Stoner. I get snapshots from him once
and a while. Polaroids. He's the only one who sells me Polaroids.
That's why I know the ones you showed me are from him. I bought 'em
maybe a month ago. Always they're different girls. And sometimes I
can't even display them."
    Rich laughed hollowly. "He ain't a family man,
Mr. Stoner. Not like me. He likes to hurt. I'd advise you to stay
away from him."
    Morris Rich didn't want any trouble, from the police
or the F.B.I. or anyone who might bring a curse on his house and
business. But he'd made me think twice before I got out of the Pinto
and hiked down to that lone frame house. In the flats, the nearest
help was a good two hundred yards to the east, which meant that
anything short of a canon blast would die away in the hot, fetid wind
coming off the river. It really did smell like jungle warfare in the
yard, although the only tree in sight was a dead elm painted white on
the trunk.
    I tried to shake the bad memories out of my head as I
walked up to the porch. There was no bell by the screen door, so I
rattled the frame with my fist. A few seconds later, a young woman
dressed in a long red shift padded up.
    "Are you from the gas?" she said
belligerently.
    She had long black hair braided in a ponytail, black
eyes of the dull, opalescent sheen of oil paintings, and a round,
Indian face that would have been pretty if it weren't for a yellow
birthmark that ran down her left cheek like Ahab's ivory scar.
    I told her I wasn't from the gas.
    "Well, somebody better come out," she said
wearily. "'Cause we paid the damn bill over a week ago."
    She made a little smile of excuse, while her eyes
worked me over. "You're a cop, aren't you?" she said.
    Some people have that gift. But they've usually paid
a price for it. This one looked too young to have paid in full. So I
guessed that cops and gasmen were no strangers to the house.
    "I'm a P.I.," I told her. "I'm looking
for Abel Jones."
    "He's not here."
    "Then I'll wait."
    She shook her head slightly, as if what I'd said had
amused her. "No, you won't. He won't want to see you."
    "How can you be sure?"
    "Because I don't want to see you," she said
flatly. "Now, beat it!"
    She started to walk away from the door when a man's
husky voice called to her from upstairs. "Who is it?"
    She gave me a quick amused look over her
shoulder--half-warning, half-reproach. It made me like her a little,
though I'd be damned if I knew why.
    Abel Jones came trundling down the stairs. I got him
a little at a time. First his bare toes. Then three feet of black
gabardine slacks. Then three more feet of thin pink belly and
hairless chest. Then his face, shaded with a day's growth of beard.
He looked to be around forty, and he had the sharp mean features of
the Appalachian tough--narrow lips, a nose that could open an
envelope, black eyes, and gaunt, grooved cheeks.
    He passed a hand through his dark, unkempt hair and
said, "What is it? What do you want?" in a drunken, hostile
voice.
    "I'd like to talk to you, Mr. Jones."
    He laughed a little when I said "mister."
    "You would?" he said. "What about?"
    "This porch is no place to talk."
    "It's my house!" he shouted, as if I were
about to put a torch to it. "Don't dare talk down my home!"
    He looked me over, the way the girl had. "Well,
come in, then."
    He pushed at the screen door and I walked through.
    "You dicks is all alike," he said. "Think
you can come in and run down a man's home."
    I followed him through an archway into a living room
that could have been decorated by Hugo Cratz. All plaid and plastic
and faded stripe, dotted like a prize booth at a county fair with
stuffed animals and plastic trophies. The same stale smells hung in
the air, mixed with a tang of whiskey and tobacco.
    Jones sat down on a torn vinyl recliner. "Get us
something to drink, Coral," he