Free A Flash of Green by John D. MacDonald Page A

for advice on those wiser heads in the party for the next four years.” He took Jimmy Wing’s hand in a hard clasp and said, “You come back, hear? You make it a habit dropping by. There’ll be a lot of stories to write up in the next four years.”
    “Write them your way?”
    Elmo laughed. “Jimmy, let’s you and me write them our way, and see what happens. We’re going to get along better than ever.”
    “Kibby could lick Stan Freeberry, but what if you can’t?”
    He rocked back and forth, heel to toe, and cracked his fist into his palm. “Old Stanley? If I was ever to get really worried, I’d tell you all about a little ol’ Pigeon Town gal name of Darcy Miller, came and cooked and kept house for Stan about nine years ago, that time Miz Freeberry had to spend three months in California nursing her dying sister. I’d tell you about how this Darcy Miller has a slew of kids, and there’s a bright yellow eight-year-old one she calls Stanley and keeps dressed up fine on some money comes in a plain envelope every month, money sent local.”
    Jimmy had stared at him. “That’s if you get worried.”
    “If I get that worried. There’s other things before I’d have to use that. Just put it this way, Jimmy Wing. Tonight I’m over theworst hump. I’m not about to be stopped short by things easier to do than whipping Elihu Kibby.”
    Jimmy Wing had other cause to remember that same night. After he had filed his stories, he went home to find that Gloria, after over a month of perfect behavior, had suddenly fallen back into her black private world. She had pulled down all the shades, turned on every light in the house, stripped, packed herself with pins, buttons, pencils and other small household objects, rubbed herself raw on the sharp edges of the furniture, and then had lapsed into a catatonic state more nearly complete than any he had seen. She sat on a footstool in a corner, her eyes open, snoring with every slow breath, bleeding, ropes of saliva dangling from her chin, gone so suddenly and completely away, unreachable, unknowing. That time it had been three months before she began to recognize him when he visited her, and six months before he could take her away from the hospital for short drives through the surrounding countryside.
    By now he had been to the Lemon Ridge home of the county commissioner many times. He strolled through the humid night toward the lighted pool, hearing voices and laughter and music. There were always people around, friends, relatives, business associates, politicians. There was a protocol as rigid as any tribal ceremonial taboo behind the apparent casualness. Visitors were sorted into four categories. In the lowest group were the ones Elmo would talk to outdoors, usually by the pool, or, when the weather was foul, inside the “workshop” beyond the pool. The second category had access to the workshop in all weather. The third category were those whom Elmo would invite into his big study in the main house. The study had a separate outside entrance. Very close friends and relatives had the run of thehouse. Jimmy Wing was one of that group which could be invited into the study.
    The gravel crackled underfoot. The night jasmine had opened, vulgar and sensuous as pink lace garters. When the path turned, just beyond a thickety patch of yucca and flame vine, he came in sight of the big screened pool. He stopped there in the darkness, thinking it looked so much like one of the color advertisements in magazines it was artificial and improbable.
    The cage was so high the upper portion of it was in darkness. The screening had been recently extended to include the broad fan-shaped apron beyond the west end of the rectangular pool. The water was a brilliant, luminous green in the diffused radiance of the underwater floodlights. The pool lighting and the spotlights at the base of the plantings in the pool area made a reflected glow across the apron area where three men sat talking at an