Where Is Janice Gantry? by John D. MacDonald Read Free Book Online

later on, Charlie.”
    “No trouble. That’s a damn fine fish.”
    “I can let you have twenty bucks to take along with you if it would help out.”
    “Thanks, Sam. It’ll help. Even if I find out I don’t need it, it will help the morale to have it in my pocket.”
    We left the cottage at twenty minutes of eight. During the four-mile trip to the city line the neon gets more frequent and more expensive. He crouched on the floor beside me, one shoulder tucked down under the glove compartment. He had asked to be let off in town handy to some pay phone he could use with a minimum chance of being seen and recognized. I had suggested the outdoor booth at West Plaza, at the big shopping section, not far from the mainland end of City Bridge. The booth was brightly lighted, but set so deepin the parking area, so far from traffic that it was unlikely anyone would come within a hundred feet of him.
    Charlie said it sounded all right. I pulled off into the shadows of the lot, away from the street lights. The stores were closed, their night lights shining. The big drugstore was open, with fifteen or twenty parked cars clustered close to it. All the rest was a dark desert of empty asphalt. He moved up onto the seat, poked the cotton into place, tugged the bill of the cap down to eyebrow level. The sunglasses were in the breast pocket of the sports shirt, along with the cigarettes I had brought him. “Thanks a lot, Sam,” he said.
    We shook hands. His hand was hot and dry, leathery with callouses. “Best of luck, Charlie.”
    He got out of the wagon and walked toward the booth. I could see nothing furtive about the way he walked. He did not look back. I saw him step into the booth, close the folding door and open the phone book. I swung around in a big arc and headed out onto the street.
    I could have gone home. That was what I wanted to do. I wanted to cook myself a meal, put the sheets and pajamas he had used in the laundry bundle, clean the place up, put Peggy Lee on the changer and go sit on my screened porch in the dark, in the canvas womb of the safari chair, and drink some big drinks and think small, random, unimportant thoughts, and listen to Peggy and forget the existence of Charlie Haywood. Sis was to be married. Judy was forever lost to me. Charlie would never bring me into his problems again.
    I will never know why I didn’t do just that.
    It’s what I should have done.
    But there was something particularly touching about the gallantry of the new Charlie Haywood. He had been an ineffectual boy. They had ground him into a man. Maybe I wanted to help him. Or maybe I just wanted to watch. Maybe he had stung me a little with his remarks about having crawledinto a hole and pulled it in after me. I knew how true it was. I knew why I had done it. But it hurt my pride to have it pointed out. The big wheel had gone too fast for me, and it had flung me off, and I wasn’t about to climb back on.
    So instead of heading on home, I hit the brake at the first cross street and doubled all the way back and came back onto the parking lot from the far side.
    It wouldn’t hurt me at all, I told myself, to kill another ten minutes and see what Charlie did next.

3
    I parked on the far side of the group of cars near the drugstore. I slid out and stood up cautiously and looked out across the roofs of the cars toward the distant booth. He was still in there, and he was talking over the phone. I saw him hang up and step out of the booth. He walked a dozen feet, paused in a hesitant way, and then came angling over toward the drugstore, giving a perfect imitation of a man killing time. I could guess at what the casual manner was costing him.
    I pleaded with him mentally not to go into the drugstore. There was a gift shop beside the drugstore. The night lights were on in the gift shop. The show window was illuminated, but not brilliantly. He stopped there and stood with his hands in his pockets, looking at the merchandise.
    It was a perfect