Free No One Rides For Free - Larry Beinhart by Larry Beinhart

me, and it's not something to worry about
unless the guy who makes the threats has the goods and the guts to
back it up. So if someone was worried enough to kill your father, it
was because your father had the goods and they believed that he had
the will to use it. And nobody seems to know what that could have
been."
    "I'm sorry, I don't know. I'm sorry."
    "By the way, " I asked, "was your
father involved in anything in South America? In Colombia?"
    "Not that I know of. Why?"
    "What about cocaine?"
    "Daddy! Cocaine!" She sounded as
incredulous as Choate Haven had. "Oh Lord, no way."
    "Not even strictly as a money thing?"
    "Why are you asking?"
    "Would he?"
    "I can't, I guess I'm not allowed to say no."
Her lovely face broke again and she turned to the bathroom.
    "I'm . . . sorry," I said to her retreating
back.
    I heard the splash of water as she rinsed her face.
"Why? Why did you say that?" she said when she came out.
"Is it to finish, finish destroying what's left of him?"
    "Look, I'm sorry. It was a stab in the dark. A
couple of years back I ran into a case, a guy was killed the same
way, pretty much, by some Colombians over a coke deal, and they tried
to make it look like a mugging and stole the guy's car."
    "Is that true? Is that really why you asked?"
    "Really why I asked? Because I have nothing to
go on and that might have been an idea, and until I find something
else I'm taking wild shots."
    My business was done. There was no excuse to stay.
There was an illusion weaving thick through the air that we had other
things to say and do. Sea-green eyes, an emotional vibrato in her
throat, long flanks so live they glowed, dark hair livened with
sunstreaks and a great ass, I told myself, were shallow things. Not
with a structure so solid, so real and so fine as Glenda and Wayne
made of my life. It was a foolish time to be foolish. As it always
is.
 
    9
LIGHTNIN'-STRUCK
TREE
    THE 0NLY TRACE of Edgar
Wood in the Virginia farmhouse was his crystal brandy snifter and the
bottle of VSOP with one good shot left. I sat in what had been his
chair, swirled his brandy in his glass.
    "Tell me, ghost, what was your secret? Was it
worth killing for'? In your estimation was it worth dying for? Did
you tell it to Mel Brodsky? Or were you saving it for last, your ace
in the hole? Tell me, Mr. Wood, did you know how beautiful your
daughter is? Looking back on it all, if you had to choose between
another ten or twenty or something years and eight million dollars,
which would it be?"
    I sipped at his brandy, giving him plenty of time to
answer. But he was, as I had suspected, as silent as the grave.
    " I gotta talk to a bunch of people about you,
Edgar. I like talking to your daughter best, but I gotta talk to the
police, I gotta talk to Brodsky, and I'm not sure where I'll find the
leverage for that; and Charles Goreman, even more leverage. And the
Colombians. To tell you the truth, I feel real shy about that. Maybe
'cause I don't so much want to talk as to hurt them, or maybe I'm
scared of them . . . see, there is a point where you and I, we
coincide. Fear and vengeance, that's a swell meeting of the minds.
    "So long, Edgar," I said, finishing his
brandy, "our first and last meeting of the minds. I gotta go to
work now."
    I wanted to retrieve my microphone and recording rig,
expensive little toys that they are. Everything was intact, the
waterproof box had done a hell of a job though the batteries were
shot. I was also intensely curious to know if someone else had left
something similar about the premises.
    I looked in the phones, inside the air conditioner,
under the radiator cover, behind the pictures on the wall—not one
of which was worth looking at unless you like English
hunty-doggy-horsy--and through the largest collection of Readers
Digest condensed books I had ever seen. I looked through anything
that had an underside, an inside or a backside, including all 112
dusty panels of dropped ceiling.
    I looked until there was nothing to