Too Old a Cat (Trace 6) by Warren Murphy Read Free Book Online

get the stereo to play a tape or a record. How would he ever hear an opera again if he couldn’t play a record? It was a certifiable fact that not once in the history of Las Vegas radio had an opera sound ever emerged from a radio receiver.
    This was it, the end of his comfortable life as he had known it. From here on in, it was radio and cold canned beans—if he could figure out how to work the electric can opener. Answer your own phone all the way, no matter what detestable person might be on the other end of the line.
    It was in a sour mood that he finally growled, “Hello.”
    It was his father. As usual, the easy seen-it-all voice of Retired New York City Police Sergeant Patrick Tracy made Trace feel instantly better.
    “What’s up, Sarge?” Trace asked.
    “Just wanted somebody to share my misery.”
    “What happened?”
    “Your mother won a cruise in some kind of raffle or something at the Hadassah.”
    “That doesn’t sound so bad,” Trace said.
    “It’s a cruise for two, son,” Sarge said. “I’ve got to go.”
    “Oh. That is bad news. You have to go with Mother? You can’t take somebody else?”
    “No. I’m stuck. You know what’s really rotten?”
    “I don’t know how anything can top taking a cruise with my mother,” Trace said, “but try me. What’s really rotten?”
    “She won the damned thing a month ago and kept it a secret. She wanted it to be a surprise.”
    “Always the incurable romantic,” Trace said.
    “So yesterday I get this pretty good case and I go home last night and she’s packing our bags. We’re leaving on freaking Monday. God, I hate your mother’s surprises.”
    “Did you try the old bad-back trick?” Trace asked.
    “Right away. She wasn’t buying. I guess I’ve gone to that well too often,” Sarge said. “So I faked a coronary attack. She said if I died she’d bury me at sea. I even went over this morning to that old quack, Doc Johnson, to get him to write a report that I was allergic to sea air. You know what he told me? He told me I should stop complaining. That I should enjoy all these moments, that I should live in the present and learn to enjoy the present.”
    “You ought to send him on the goddam boat ride,” Trace said.
    “I offered, but the quack turned me down. No use, son, I’m hooked. I’ve got to go.”
    “Where’s the cruise to?”
    “Puerto Rico or some other goddamn place where the sun’s going to shine all the time.”
    “Might be nice,” Trace said.
    “Hey, I see enough Puerto Ricans around here,” Sarge said. “If Puerto Rico’s so nice, why the hell are they all living in New York?”
    “They wanted to be close to you and Mother,” Trace said.
    “God, I hate this city,” Sarge said.
    “I know. More Puerto Ricans than San Juan, more Jews than Tel Aviv, more blacks than Kenya.”
    “Hell with that,” Sarge said. “It’s got your mother. Phooey. I didn’t call to complain about my life.”
    “Sure you did,” Trace said.
    “Okay, so I did. Stop me before I wimp again. How’s it by you?”
    “Not so good, Sarge.”
    “What’s the matter?”
    “Chico’s going to leave me,” Trace said.
    “She catch you in the sack again with somebody else?”
    “Nope.”
    “You steal money from her savings account to buy liquor?”
    “Not even that.”
    “I bet you rearranged the cans in her kitchen,” Sarge said.
    “Innocent.”
    “Then what’s on her mind?”
    “She says I don’t amount to anything and probably never will,” Trace said.
    “Well, hell, she’s known that for a long time,” Sarge said.
    “Thanks a lot, pal. That isn’t exactly the reaction I wanted.”
    “Hey, son. The only good thing that ever happened to you in your life is that little girl. You’re leading me one to nothing. Don’t blow it.”
    “I don’t know how to unblow it,” Trace said.
    “What do you have to do to keep her?”
    “Change. Maybe get a job or something. Settle down a little bit. Try to make something out of