What of Terry Conniston?

What of Terry Conniston? Read Free Page A

Book: What of Terry Conniston? Read Free
Author: Brian Garfield
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money.”
    â€œA few hundred bucks isn’t worth five years in Florence.”
    â€œYou ought to know about that.”
    â€œI haven’t been in any trouble since I got out. I want to keep it like that.”
    The street dipped under a railroad overpass and Mitch leaned forward to see into the dimness underneath. When they emerged on the downtown side the street narrowed between austere new high-rise buildings and they inched forward in traffic clotted like blood. Mitch said, “When I asked you for a job I told you I’d done a few months’ time. You said that was all right so I thought you were doing me a favor, but I’m getting the feeling you hired me because I’d done time, not in spite of it.”
    â€œI don’t know what you’re complaining about. You’ll never make a living playing that guitar of yours—if you’ve got any talent it must be in your grandmother’s name.”
    â€œThat’s not true and you know it.”
    â€œI do?”
    â€œI hold up my end. I’m the best you’ve ever had in this third-rate band.”
    â€œTo be sure,” Floyd murmured. “But that does us a fat lot of good when we can’t get booked.”
    A light turned green and they started to move ahead. Floyd said, “Turn left up ahead and start looking for a phone booth. I want to make a call.”
    Mitch made the turn into the southbound boulevard. It was a woebegone strip of lumberyards, motels and bars. There was a tight string of intersection gas stations, pennants flapping, bitterly engaged in a furious price war.
    Floyd said, “Listen, there are millions of musicians around—do you really want to spend the rest of your life picking at a guitar in fifty-cent bars? How old are you?”
    â€œTwenty-three.”
    â€œGrade B jobs for Grade B wages. All you can get, Mitch. You want to eat beans the rest of your life? You want to get old and retire on your union pension? I don’t.”
    â€œIt’s better than prison.”
    â€œOnly the stupid ones end up there.”
    â€œHere’s your phone booth.”
    The sun was going down fast; neon signs were lighting up. Mitch stopped by the roadside booth and Floyd got out, leaving the car door open. He didn’t shut the phone-booth door and Mitch could hear the coins drop in the phone. After a minute Floyd spoke into the mouthpiece:
    â€œThis is Rymer. I’ve got a car that needs fixing…. No, I’m afraid it won’t move at all. I’d like to have the mechanic come over here and look at it. I’m at the Twenty-first place, same as last time…. Sure, you’ve done some work for me before. It’s a 1949 Studebaker.… Yes, right away—say ten minutes.”
    Floyd hung up and got back into the car. “Let’s go down Twenty-first.”
    â€œYou haven’t got any 1949 Studebaker.”
    â€œThink of that,” Floyd said.
    Don’t get uptight , he told himself. Don’t bust your mind until you find out what the bastard’s up to .
    It was a dingy maculose street. Shanties of corrugated metal, junkyards, here and there a squat adobe bar isolated by dusty yards. Floyd said, “That one on the corner under the Schlitz sign.”
    A wheelless Model-A Ford stood on bricks in the vacant lot beside the bar. Mitch pulled into the dirt yard by the billboard; dust hung around the car when Floyd got out. The door chunked shut and Floyd leaned his shaggy head in the window. “Come in with me.”
    â€œWhat for?”
    Floyd came around the car and opened Mitch’s door.
    â€œYou going to rob another till?”
    â€œRelax. Nothing like that.”
    Twilight fanned gray and pink across the clouds. Mitch got out of the car and followed Floyd into the bar. It was dim and pungent, lit by blue bulbs and beer ads and redolent of stale beer and tobacco smoke. Four or five patrons—Mexican laborers and an old

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