The Scarlet Ruse by John D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online

them fits. Rewire the place, then redo the plumbing, then put in some kind of sprinkler system. Then change the kitchen over somehow. They say somebody wanted that land. Every time something had to be done, they'd have to close until it was all okay and approved. Then Rosa had some kind of breakdown, and Vito went down to a meeting and broke the nose on one of the commissioners. They jailed him, but some of his old customers with clout got him out and got it all quieted down. They went away someplace. I heard one of the commissioners was in the group that bought up that whole two blocks for the shopping plaza and Chicky-Land."
    "If you wanted to find a meal that good right now, where would you go?" I asked him.
    He took my money and made change as he thought it over. Finally he said, "Damn if we just don't eat that good anymore anywhere. Funny, sort of. Big, rich country like this. Everything starting to taste like stale sawdust. Maybe it's just me."
    "We are all living in chicky land," I told him.
    Back in the car, heading home, I told Meyer about the little sculpture garden Vito and Rosa Grimaldi had fixed up. White cement statues of swooning maidens and oddly proportioned animals. With a dozen complicated floodlights which all kept changing color, focused on the statuary and the three small fountains and the plantings. "So incredibly vulgar, it was somehow very touching."
    "As vulgar as that big red and white electric chicken?"
    Meyer is often unanswerable, an annoying habit.
    We ate in one of the less offensive steak houses, at a table made from an imitation, wooden hatch cover. They are sawing down forests, strapping thick green planks together with rusty iron, beating hell out of them with chains and crowbars, dipping them in a dark muddy stain, then covering the whole thing with indestructible transparent polymer about a quarter inch thick. Instant artifact.
    We talked our way up, over, across and around the Sprenger situation, after I had given him the Willy Nucci perspective.
    It was agreed that Sprenger had the contacts to get an accurate reading on Hirsh Fedderman before opening negotiations. So it was possible that he could have set Hirsh up, that by devising a way of switching the rarities, he had invented a way of doubling his money. The stuff had a ready market. And Hirsh would pay instead of run. But it did not seem to be Sprenger's style, even without knowing the man. If he wanted to play tricks and games, wouldn't he rather play them in his own jungle?
    We decided that if we could figure out how the switch had been made-and that might involve walking Hirsh and Miss Mary Alice through a typical bank visit complete with philatelic props-it might be possible to work backward from the method to the conniver.
    Which would mean letting Mary Alice McDermit know for the first time that important stuff was missing.
    "I’d say she's about twenty-seven," Meyer told me. "One of those big, slow, sweet, gentle girls. You know the type? Dark hair, fair skin, blue eyes, expression always on the edge of a smile. A beautiful disposition. Five years with Hirsh. I think I heard him say the other woman had been there fifteen years. She would be close to forty. Jane Lawson. A service widow. Teenage kids, I think. Small woman, quick and cranky and very smart. I don't think Mary Alice has any children. I'm sure of it. She is separated from her husband. This is the way I read that store and the relationship. They are dependent on Hirsh and on the job. He pays them more than they could get elsewhere. So between them they make it up to him by making that little store pay off. It's kind of a family, the three of them. They take care of each other."
    We both agreed that any frontal approach to Frank Sprenger had an unhealthy flavor. Nucci had marked him high for hard, high for smart. He was in a slot where he had to be suspicious of any approach from any direction.
    Meyer came up with one faintly promising thought.
    "Even though those