Assassins Have Starry Eyes Read Free Page B

at breakfast just for old times’ sake. I expected to get here just in time to hear your last words.”
    I whispered, “I’ve always been a disappointment to you, haven’t I, Natalie?”
    “Go to hell,” she said, and grinned. “You certainly are a helpless-looking character in that bed.”
    Then the grin faded, and she turned abruptly away to remove her hat and pick up the purse she had laid aside while messing with the flowers. I could see her both front and rear as she stood before the dresser mirror lighting a cigarette; her eyes were tired, but her navy-blue dress was fresh. She had obviously taken time to shower and change somewhere before hastening to my deathbed. I suppose any woman would.
    She said, “I suppose it’s all right to smoke.”
    “Sure,” I said. “But this kind of louses up your legal residence requirements, doesn’t it? I thought you weren’t supposed to leave Nevada for six weeks, or something.”
    She said, “That’s gratitude for you. I practically kill myself to get here, and the man quotes the law at me.” She swung back to face me. “Aren’t you just a little bit glad to see me, darling?”
    “I’m always glad to see you, darling,” I whispered. “Looking at you is the only thing that never ceased to be a treat—well, almost the only thing. But when people leave I kind of like them to stay left, if you know what I mean. What are you trying to prove, Princess?”
    She drew on her cigarette, looked at it, and blew smoke at it. “What if I wanted to come back?”
    I said, “I appreciate the thought, but you’re not Florence Nightingale. They’re taking fine care of me here. The fact that some damn fool shot a hole in me doesn’t change the situation at all, as far as I can see. If you couldn’t stand it before, what’s going to make you stand it now?”
    “What,” she said, “if I told you how much I’d missed you?”
    I said, “It’s sweet of you to say so, and I missed you, too. So what? If you’d lived three years with a dog, you’d miss it when it wasn’t around any more.”
    “My God,” she said, “you are a bastard, aren’t you?”
    “You’ve said so before.”
    “Here I drive across that damn desert a hundred miles an hour with tears streaming down my face…” She grinned abruptly. That grin always looked misplaced on her delicate face; it belonged on a tomboy. “Good old Greg. You don’t know what a relief it is to hear you talk like that. If you’d been gentle and grateful I’d have known you were dying. Do they let you kiss the patients in this institution?”
    I whispered, “I don’t know. Try it and see.”
    She leaned over the bed and touched her lips to mine chastely. I recognized her perfume as something I had given her, a local product called “Nightblooming Cereus,” made from the desert flower.
    She looked down at me. “You ought to do something about those whiskers. Look, you are going to be all right, aren’t you? Greg, what the hell are we going to do?”
    “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s a complex situation.”
    “It’s a very simple situation,” she said. “If you weren’t such a louse, and had a halfway civilized job in a halfway civilized place—”
    I whispered, “New Mexico was settled while Massachusetts was still a howling wilderness, not to mention your home state of New York. And if there’s a more civilized job than mine, I don’t know what it is.”
    “Then God help civilization,” she said and kissed me again lightly, and straightened up. “I don’t suppose you can get a drink around here.”
    “No, I don’t suppose so.”
    “And you couldn’t drink with me, anyway.”
    “You might run over to La Fonda and bring back a pitcher of martinis,” I whispered. “Take a sip yourself, and pour a slug into this equipment for me. I think the mouth is over there.”
    She laughed and stood looking at me for a moment; and said abruptly, “You will be all right, won’t you, Greg?”
    I said,