Cast a Yellow Shadow

Cast a Yellow Shadow Read Free Page A

Book: Cast a Yellow Shadow Read Free
Author: Ross Thomas
Tags: thriller
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yours, Mac?”
    â€œIt’s okay.”
    â€œMush’ll be here any minute,” Hardman said. “He’ll take you down to the hotel.”
    â€œWhere am I staying?” Padillo asked.
    â€œAt your suite in the Mayflower.”
    â€œMy suite?”
    â€œI booked it in your name and it’s paid for monthly out of your share of the profits. It’s small—but quietly elegant. You can take it off your income tax if you ever get around to filing it.”
    â€œHow’s Fredl?”
    â€œWe got married.”
    â€œYou’re lucky.”
    Hardman looked at his watch. “Mush’ll be here any minute,” he said again.
    â€œThanks for all your help—yours and Betty’s,” Padillo said.
    Hardman waved a big hand. “You saved us having a big razzoo in Baltimore. What you mess in that for?”
    Padillo shook his head slowly. “I didn’t see your friend. I just turned a corner and there they were. I thought they were after me. Whichever one had the knife knew how to use it.”
    â€œYou off that boat?” Hardman said.
    â€œWhich one?”
    â€œThe Frances Jane .”
    â€œI was a passenger.”
    â€œDidn’t run across a little old Englishman, name of Landeed, about fifty or fifty-five, with crossed eyes?”
    â€œI remember him.”
    â€œHe get off the boat?”
    â€œNot in Baltimore,” Padillo said. “His appendix burst four days out of Monrovia. They stored him away in the ship’s freezer.”
    Hardman frowned and swore. He put heart into it. The chimes rang and Betty went to open the door and admitted a tall Negro dressed in a crow-black suit, white shirt, and dark maroon tie. He wore sunglasses at two-thirty in the morning.
    â€œHello, Mush,” I said.
    He nodded at me and the nod took in Betty and Hardman. He crossed over to Padillo. “How you feeling?” His voice was precise and soft.
    â€œFine,” Padillo said.
    â€œThis is Mustapha Ali,” Hardman told Padillo. “He’s the cat that brought you down from Baltimore. He’s a Black Muslim, but you can call him Mush. Everybody else does.”
    Padillo looked at Mush. “Are you really a Muslim?”
    â€œI am,” the man said gravely.
    Padillo said something in Arabic. Mush looked surprised, but responded quickly in the same language. He seemed pleased.
    â€œWhat you talkin, Mush?” Hardman asked.
    â€œArabic.”
    â€œWhere you learn Arabic?”
    â€œRecords, man, records. I’ll need it when I get to Mecca.”
    â€œYou the goddamndest cat I ever seen,” Hardman said.
    â€œWhere’d you learn Arabic?” Mush asked Padillo.
    â€œFrom a friend.”
    â€œYou speak it real good.”
    â€œI’ve had some practice lately.”
    â€œWe’d better get you to the hotel,” I told Padillo. He nodded and stood up slowly.
    â€œThanks very much for all your help,” he said to Betty. She said it was nothing and Hardman said he would see me tomorrow at lunch. I nodded, thanked Betty, and followed Padillo out to Mush’s car. It was a new Buick, a big one, and had a telephone in the front and a five-inch Sony television in the back.
    â€œI want to stop by my place on the way to the hotel,” I said to Mush. “It won’t take long.”
    He nodded and we drove in silence. Padillo stared out the window. “Washington’s changed,” he said once. “What happened to the streetcars?”
    â€œTook ’em off in ’sixty-one,” Mush said.
    Fredl and I lived in one of those new brick and glass apartments that have blossomed just south of Dupont Circle in a neighborhood that once was made up of three- and four-story rooming houses that catered to students, waiters, car washers, pensioners, and professional tire changers. Speculators tore down the rooming houses, covered the ground with asphalt, and called them parking lots for a

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