The Scared Stiff by Donald E. Westlake Read Free Book Online

her plate, and mechanically ate her food.
    Food. I really should eat something. I put down a couple of mouthfuls, which gave our neighborhood a moment of blissful rest, and which I ended by abruptly hurling my fork down onto my plate with a hell of a clatter, as I jumped to my feet, threw my napkin at the jungle — it floated downward through the air like a flawed parachute, in all that light — and yelled, "I can't take it anymore! Do what the fuck you want!
Stay
here in this godforsaken place, if that's what you want!"
    Stunned silence all around, except of course for the river, which went on with its own busy shushing sounds just as though some person weren't making a scene right overhead. And now, as no one in the entire room ate, and no one spoke, and no one looked directly at me, I spun about, corrected myself in time so that I didn't march into space, spun about in the other direction, and marched out of the joint.
    "You
pig
!" — said in clear tones of utter outraged contempt by Lola — was the only sound that followed me.
    Mike, near the door, looked as though he wasn't sure whether he was supposed to hit me or I was supposed to hit him, but whichever it was he was going to hate it. As I swept by him — no fisticuffs — I snarled,
"She
can pay for dinner. About
time
she paid for something!" And out I went.
    The Impala now was parked to the left of the Beetle, and as I ran from the Scarlet Toucan's front door across the parking lot, Arturo got out from behind its wheel and came around to the car's right side. The Impala's interior light had never worked, at least not during the car's years in Guerrera, so when he opened both right doors no lights went on. Nevertheless, I could see me slumped in the passenger seat. I recognized me, of course, from my royal-blue shirt.
     
9
     
    In a small poor South American country with few records, where people still emerge from the jungle not knowing how old they are or how to write their names, unknown bodies are not rare. People live their lives, and then they die. If they're still in the jungle, their families bury them right there. If they've come to the city, solitary, doing casual labor, living on the margins of society, when they die there's nobody to claim them or bury them except the government. My undertaker, tensing over his dinner in the Scarlet Toucan at the moment, in addition to his regular family trade also had a contract with the government to deal with the unknown and the indigent. And that's how we'd gotten our body at a reasonable price.
    Very reasonable. In addition to the meal at my expense that my undertaker was I hoped enjoying this evening with the companion of his choice, he could expect to be paid at American rates for his services to the late Barry Lee, not at Guerreran rates. Arturo had provided him with a second set of clothing identical to what I'd worn this evening, he had provided the clothed body, and I had provided dinner.
    "Quick!" Arturo whispered.
    "One second, one second."
    The only thing I carried that mattered was my wallet. I went to one knee beside the Impala and pushed my substitute leftward so I could slide the wallet into his hip pocket. He was cold but not stiff; in fact, he was unpleasantly soft, not at all what I'd expected.
    The Beetle's interior light switched on when I opened the driver's door, but no one else was in the parking lot and it wouldn't be lit for long. I grabbed the royal blue shoulders and Arturo grabbed the chino knees, and we lugged him out of the Impala and behind the wheel of the Beetle. I put one of his hands on the steering wheel, and in the brightness of the interior light I saw his hand was soft and pudgy, with a clear mark on the third finger where a ring had been removed. And wasn't that a recent manicure?
    What was this? This was no indigent, no unknown peon. I tried to see his face, but he was slumped too far forward, I could only see that his cheeks and neck were not scrawny and his hair was neatly