Free Spider Kiss by Harlan Ellison Page A

saw Asa Kemp for the first time.
    Only a fink could worry about cheating such an easy mark. Asa Kemp was born to be had. He wore wire-frame glasses. And a bow tie. Clip-on.
    "Luther!" His face looked like a bonito-bettor's at hit-time. "Son, how ah you!" He didn't really want an answer. He grabbed the boy around the shoulders and hugged him carelessly. "Ruth was askin' after you, boy."
    Then he noticed the silk-suited accompanists, and his smile broadened, became a company grin for the folks at large. "Afternoon," he beamed.
    "Mr. Kemp," Shelly began, and never finished.
    " Luther! " the fat little woman came through the curtains at the rear of the shop. She seemed out of place here among the frames and wheels and rubber tubes strung about the walls, yet she moved between the rough wooden benches and the racked bicycle parts with the ease of familiarity. She held Luther at arm's length and blinked at him myopically.
    "Where have you been , Luther Sellers?" she chided him with false severity. "You've had poor Asa and me about worried to death! Do you know we didn't even know you'd entered the Talent Show at the Fair till we saw't in the paper this morning that you'd won. Lord, son, you mustn't worry us like that!"
    Luther stared at her coldly. Even to Shelly there was a warmth here, and though he did not do it openly, he felt like smiling at the pleasant Kemps. But Luther stared at them coldly.
    "This is Colonel Freeport from New York," Luther said briskly. "He wants he should talk to you." He opened the door for Freeport, and stepped back.
    The Kemps turned their glances to the massive, leonine head of Colonel Jack Freeport, and a wash of fear marred the placid features of Ruth Kemp for an instant. Asa was just behind, as though the wave had found him an instant later.
    Then they composed themselves, their fear of the big town strangers sublimated. "How do ya do, suh," Ruth Kemp beamed a gingerbread smile at Freeport.
    "Mrs. Kemp." Freeport angled his head in that peculiarly charming and disarming manner only three kinds of people can manage: true aristocrats, well-bred cavaliers, and con artists.
    "It's a pleasure to meet you." Asa Kemp extended his gnarled and oil-stained hand. Freeport took it without hesitation. Shelly noted the stepping-down to the common man's level with approval. His admiration and fear of Freeport's amazing way with all types continued to grow as their association lengthened.
    "Mr. Kemp, it's more than a pleasure to meet you. Luther here has been telling us what a wonderful thing you did for him, getting him his start, and now that he's on his way, we had to come along and say thank you, thank you very much." Freeport piped his snake-charming tune while Shelly made a silent background accompaniment of nods and reassuring smiles.
    Ruth Kemp's face began to alter, subtly. Shelly watched.
    There was something afoot here, and while her bumpkin husband might get laid out in his grave and have the dirt dumped in his face, smiling and unaware all the while, this woman knew the slickers were here to rob her. She may not have been Polish by descent, but there was the hard, lined look of the babushka-wearing, shopping bag-toting peasant about her. Suddenly. Her voice was no longer its rhythmic pleasured style. "What are you heah foah, Mr. Freeport?" she asked.
    "Nothing, really, Mrs. Kemp." Freeport tried to smooth out the surface of the discussion, sensing intuitively that a true light had begun to shine through his words.
    Shelly interjected, "When we heard Luther sing and play, Mr. Kemp —" trying to draw Asa Kemp further into the dealings, rather than leaving them in the mouth and hands of the suddenly-too-competent Ruth, "— we felt he was destined for better things than Louis …"
    "My husband manages Luther," Ruth Kemp inserted flatly.
    "Yes, we under stand that," Freeport said, almost obsequiously, "and that's why we've come to —"
    "Are you taking Luther to New York, is that it?" Asa asked