Winter Kills by Richard Condon Read Free Book Online Page A

virtually none of the finger strokes would be entirely exact. Fortunately he had short forearms, which were most advantageous for the velocity of octave technique and let him execute swing strokes easily and surely.
    He began with the slow practicing of fast scales in order to limber up, decomposing every movement into its components. To keep his finger action clean he executed the swinging movements of his fingers in a way exactly corresponding to the way they would be executed in fast tempo. He decomposed the action of his thumb and divided its movements into the preparation and the stroke, instead of executing a single, unbroken swing stroke.
    Nick was equally thorough in everything he did, once he had decided it was important. He had the gift/curse of total commitment totally arrived at because he was a literal, systematic man. As he thought of the invisible face that had ordered Tim to be made dead, he started to break down all of the movements that might have been initiated within such a man’s mind.
    As with: what to do if he found Fletcher’s rifle? As with: the succession of broken comma chords in the transition in the first movement of the Waldstein Sonata. His upper arm performed energetic vertical movements added to the rotation of the forearm, the passive movement of the wrist and the slight bending of the elbow joint. Everything worked together interdependently, capable of being stopped only if the censor in the mind ordered all of it to stop.
    The Pickering Commission had operated like arms, elbows and fingers upon a silent keyboard. They hadplayed all the notes—the score was surely there to be read, but they would not allow it to be heard. The commission had announced Stephen Foster when they were actually playing Wagner. Surely, critics who had followed the true score should have pointed that out.
    As he played, two immediate decisions became apparent. He had to find the murderer-hirer; and somehow his father would have to be persuaded to help him. Then he felt sleepy. He put the keyboard and the score book back into the attaché case, lay down on the bed, forgot he was wearing white pajamas, and went to sleep.
    A car picked him up at eight o’clock in the morning. It drove him to Keifetz’ office in Brunei, but Keifetz wasn’t there. Nick put in calls to his father in Palm Springs, to David Carswell, his manager in London, and to Jake Lanham on the Teekay . Daisy, Keifetz’ gorgeous Filipina secretary, lined up plane tickets to Philadelphia from Singapore via London. While he waited for the calls to come in he tried to figure out the time-zone ratios to keep from thinking of the holy hell Pa was going to raise when he heard that Nick had left the Teekay . Well, maybe not. Maybe even Pa would rate nailing Tim’s murderer over, at the most, six hours more on a drilling ship. The Lanham call came in first. Nick told Jake he was to take over as drilling superintendent until Pa’s people came aboard, and he emphasized that Jake was to get a written release from them certifying that the Teekay was in perfect condition. The London call came in about ten minutes after Jake’s. Carswell had a hard time fighting his way out of a sleeping-pill haze. It was eleven o’clock the night before in London. Nick had to repeat his name several times to get through to Carswell’s recognition level.
    “You know who I am now?” Nick abominated Carswell because he was a fink of Pa’s.
    “Perfectly all right,” Carswell said. “Missed the name at first. Playing the wireless too loud, I suspect.”
    “That is a transparent lie, David.”
    “What? Will you repeat that, please?”
    “Write this down,” Nick snarled.
    “Try to speak more clearly, Nick.”
    “I arrive at Heathrow at ten o’clock Tuesday morning on BOAC 713 from Singapore,” Nick shouted. “Go to my flat and pack a bag with winter clothes for me. Meet me in the VIP lounge and bring me a heavy overcoat, a muffler, a hat and long woolen underwear.