The Long Ride Read Free

you right away. But he gave us some money and I put it in the bank.”
    He blinked. “How much?”
    “You won’t be mad because I took it? He wanted us to have it, Allan.”
    “How much?”
    Her eyes sparkled. “A hundred dollars.”
    He looked at her for a long moment. His profit for that job in Mexico that he’d never gotten to would have been eight thousand dollars, and it would have taken only a few days. Now she was telling him her old man had opened his great big Italian heart and laid a hundred on them. He couldn’t answer her.
    “Isn’t that wonderful, darling? You’re not mad about my taking the money, are you?”
    He laughed bitterly and reached for her, pulling her over on him roughly, squeezing her left breast tightly.
    “I can’t now, darling,” she whispered, her breath coming very quickly. “I’ll be all mussed up. When I get home—just as soon as I get home.”
    He let go of her suddenly.
    She stood up and had to recomb her hair. “Beast,” she smiled. “But I love it.” She finished combing her hair again and smoothed her dress. “Anyway—remember we’ve got a hundred dollars in the bank.”
    “Let’s fly to Paris,” he said thinly.
    “Allan, don’t be discouraged. You’ll find something you like one of these days. But you don’t have to worry about it. I like to work. And, if I do say so myself, I’m a very good typist. Aren’t we getting along all right? Now look in the want-ad section of the paper. I’ve got another surprise for you.”
    “I don’t think I can stand it.”
    “Go on. Page sixty-two in the want-ad section.”
    Carelessly he placed the newspaper on the sofa and flipped the pages.
    “First column, third item down.”
    “‘Wanted,’” he read, “‘to share ride to San Francisco with widowed lady. Call Mrs. Landry. Walnut seven five nine one.’”
    “Now. You see? I’ll bet it wouldn’t cost very much that way. The things we couldn’t carry with us, we could ship—there isn’t much, only the wedding gifts. And I’ll bet I could get a good job the day we got there. They pay more there too, I’ve heard. So you think about it, dear husband of mine. All right?”
    He shoved the paper aside.
    She bent down and kissed his cheek. “Don’t be depressed, darling, because I love you.” Then she was gone.
    He sat silently for a moment, drumming his fingers on the newspaper. Then he gathered the paper into his one hand, crumpled it and threw it viciously across the room. Finally he got up and walked to the window, staring down at the litter of the back lot. Two people appeared walking quickly along the alley crossing in front of the lot, east to west.
    One was a rather solidly built man in a tan tropical suit whose shoes glistened in the sun as he walked. The other was a younger man in badly fitted gabardine who wore dark glasses and a bandage over one eye. Allan Garwith looked at them disinterestedly.
    He turned his eyes back to the lot beneath his window. A large yellow and tan Tom had suddenly appeared on the edge of one of the side fences. It came down into the lot with a smooth, off-handed grace and prowled toward one of the discarded garbage buckets.
    “Christ,” Allan Garwith said aloud, the increasing heat of the city beginning to burn his face, “What a view!”

 
    CHAPTER
3
     
    The Midwest Federal Trust Bank, at the end of the alley that bordered the lot below Allan Garwith’s apartment, was a modern building. A vintage business building had been condemned and knocked down five years ago. Now the Midwest Federal Trust had taken its place and rested in imposing contrast to the otherwise old and fading buildings of that downtown block. Heroic Grecian figures were frozen in sandstone bas relief on its exposed sides. Its front entrance, just around the corner from the alley, was a pair of very thick glass doors, attended by a white-haired guard named Mike.
    Before turning the corner, Willy Tyler and Harry Wells stopped near the 17th Street