Wolf Whistle by Lewis Nordan Read Free Book Online

well be living there. To the left stood a fountain with water spilling out of some fool concrete animal’s mouth.
    Solon grasped the bars of the fence with both hands and put his face up to the opening between them. The trees above him were old and big and were hung with long gray beards of Spanish moss.
    There was something just slightly too Mexican about this place, it seemed like to Solon. Seemed like, any minute, somebody might be jumping out at him and jabbering his head off in the Mexican tongue about tortillas and jumping beans, habla-habla.
    He felt the weight of the pistol in his pants pocket, and he put his hand on the heavy mass of it, for comfort. It was one thing to pull a gun on a queer in New Orleans and roll him for a blow job and his money and his suit, butSolon couldn’t quite picture himself holding a gun on Lord Poindexter Montberclair.
    He took out his steel comb and raked it once through his hair and tidied himself up a little and felt better.
    Actually, Solon had no notion in his head of robbing Lord Montberclair in the first place. Well, perish the durn thought! He might try to extort a few dollars out of him, sell him a little information, maybe, but he didn’t have no thought of robbing him.
    Solon was in the driveway now, unsteady on the cobblestones. The white Cadillac was not in the driveway, but Lord Montberclair’s little El Camino was, the little red hybrid of car and pickup truck.
    Lord Montberclair surprised Solon. Scared the shit out of him, more like it. He stepped around a bend in the cobblestone path, from behind some big fan-shaped ferns, and said, “Hold it right there, Mister. State your business.”
    Lord Montberclair had been a captain in the army, served in Korea. He had his pistol drawn and aimed straight at Solon’s head. The pistol was a German Luger, solid black, and Lord Montberclair held it out at arm’s length, with ease. He looked like somebody just itching for an excuse to shoot somebody else’s brains out.
    Looking back on the scene, Solon could imagine it going worse than it did. He could have gone for his own pistol,which would have taken five minutes at least to pull out of the pocket of his blue gabardine pants—the hammer always got snagged in the fabric—and Lord Montberclair, in his calm, savage way, could have squeezed the trigger on that dangerous-looking Luger and shot Solon straight in the face and then blowed the smoke off his gun barrel and walked back up to the house and called Big Boy Chisholm, the town marshal.
    What happened, though, was this. Solon regarded the pistol in his face with mild interest. He placed his finger alongside his nose and blew snot onto the cobblestones, left side, right side, and then wiped his finger on his blue gabardine pants and left a silver streak of mucous in the fabric, just below the lump his pistol made where it was outlined in his pocket.
    The barrel of the pistol that Solon was looking into was like a long tunnel with the meaning of life inside. Deep in the tunnel Solon saw what the queers in New Orleans must have seen when they looked into his own gun barrel, a long permanent darkness.
    Solon said, “Morning, Mr. Dexter. I was about to despair of raising you this morning. I just dropped by with some information, won’t cost you a red cent.”
    The Luger stayed pointed in his face. Solon said, “It’s about your wife, Sally Anne.”
    Lord Montberclair lowered the pistol to his side.
    He said, “Has something happened to her?”
    Solon looked past Lord Montberclair’s face, over his shoulder, as if to say, “Well, I notice she ain’t here and you don’t seem to know where she’s at.”
    Lord Montberclair raised the pistol again.
    He said, “Tell me what you know, trash.”
    Solon did not shrink from the pistol. He raised his hands slowly out in front of him, palms up. He said, “I ain’t trying nothing funny.”