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

barbered.
    Something was wrong here, but there wasn't time to do anything about it. I'd have to ask Arturo later. Who are we getting rid of here?
    "Come on,
hermano
."
    "Yes, yes," I said, "I'm coming!"
    I stood up out of the car and shut its door and the light went off. He was a peon again; he was me again; he was no longer a mystery. I reached in past him to start the engine, which immediately coughed into life. I shifted into DRIVE and got my arm out of there, and the Beetle moved forward to poke the rail fence, insistent but not strong enough to break through.
    Now, while I stood there, Arturo ran to the Impala. He got in, started it without switching on the headlights, and backed up to get behind the Beetle. As I stepped backward out of the way, he suddenly accelerated as fast as he could at the rear of the Beetle, hitting it with a
crunch
that popped the smaller car forward, through the fence and off the edge.
    Out it arched, into all that light above the river, a white descending balloon. No. A white descending refrigerator.
    Arturo slammed on the brakes, and the Impala stopped just before the drop. He backed around in a tight circle, and I turned away from the dramatic instant of my death. As I ran for the Impala and jumped into the backseat, I heard the screams start inside the restaurant.
    I could pick out Lola's scream. It was the loudest one of all.
     
10
     
    When next I saw her, Lola described for me the scene after my departure from the Scarlet Toucan. Into the at-last-calm atmosphere of the restaurant, the shiny white Beetle made a sudden dramatic appearance in the middle of the air, hung there like a surrealist painting, then crashed with a great geyser of foam and spray and auto parts.
    The patrons, of course, were horrified and began to scream and point and leap to their feet. Naturally, Lola had recognized the car, and she made it clear that she knew at once what must have happened, and after her first horrified shriek she blamed herself, loudly and inconsolably: "It's all my fault! I never appreciated him! I drove him to it!"
    The first thing that happened was that two guys in dirty aprons from the kitchen scrambled down the boulders and among the support pillars under the restaurant, carrying flashlights. They came out into the floodlit area, standing on the brink of the rushing river, while the observers above crowded dangerously close to the edge of the platform to watch. The staff guys couldn't get very close to the car, but they stood on wet boulders and shone their flashlights into it and saw the royal-blue mound slumped in the front seat. Then they looked up at the people on the restaurant rim and shook their heads. One of them made a horizontal motion in the air with one hand, palm down, while the other drew a finger across his throat. The driver is dead; no hope.
    Fortunately, there just happened to be, among the diners in the Scarlet Toucan that evening, one Señor Ortiz, a well-known and widely respected mortician from the city of Marona. Grasping the situation at once, Señor Ortiz promptly volunteered his services, which Mike was happy to accept.
    Señor Ortiz ordered Mike to take down the names and addresses of all the patrons in the restaurant, as witnesses to the tragic accident, while he himself got on the phone. First he called his staff in Marona and told them to rush to the Scarlet Toucan with the ambulance used for dead bodies. Only then did he phone the police, but he didn't call the small local constabulary in Vista Alegar, just up the road, but police headquarters instead, in San Cristobal, 170 miles away.
    Meanwhile, other patrons gathered around poor Lola to calm her, give her solace, and reassure her (without quite saying so) that once she was over the shock she'd realize she was better off without that bum. And Mike and his waitresses moved among the patrons, taking down names and addresses and distributing free drinks of the patrons' choice.
    People didn't want to leave, but