Free Hard Case Crime: Honey in His Mouth by Lester Dent Page B

stuff. The puce and tan was touched here and there with gold, a gold edging around the television screen, a gold filigree on the door latches.
    The two crewmen helped Walter Harsh up the steps into the plane. He was very weak, but he could walk. Moving about had made him feel better, or at least feel more like he was going to live. He noticed the wrist watch the pilot was wearing had a tan dial with puce hands and gold figures. Jesus, he thought. They lowered him into a comfortable chair and buckled the safety belt about his middle. From the windows he could see the wingtips and parts of the engines. The engines puzzled him, because he saw no propellers. Jet? he wondered. The airplane was some buggy.
    Brother came in and sat in an upholstered seat near him and fastened the safety belt. He then waited for the plane to take off, sitting there with his mouth open slightly, tips of teeth showing, waiting almost visibly. Harsh decided the man was uneasy about flying.
    A taxicab arrived outside. The co-pilot/steward left the plane and soon returned with a large tan canvas bag from the taxi. Harsh eyed the bag. “That’s mine. Is my camera and clothes and stuff in there?”
    “Yes, Mr. Harsh.”
    Harsh leaned back, trying to relax. This was one hell of a thing, he thought, the whole thing from beginning to end. They had sold his car for nineteen hundred dollars, which was a roast, because Harsh had paid four hundred for the iron a year ago and gotten a skinning at that. He was amazed when he signed the assignment form on the back of the certificate of title of the car, and Brother counted nineteen hundred dollars into his hand. He knew nobody had been fool enough to pay nineteen for the old iron, so they were just keeping him happy. He could feel a bulb of sweat move down his spinal column under his shirt, and he knew what was making him sweat. Money. The way money was coming at him, he thought, it would make an iceberg sweat. He looked down at his right arm, realizing he had suddenly formed the habit of keeping it across his chest, the hand pressed where the middle vest button would be, if he wore a vest. Like Napoleon. He tried to recall whether Napoleon kept his right or his left hand tucked in his waistcoat front. He wondered if Napoleon carried fifty thousand dollars taped to the skin of his belly under the hand.
    What they were waiting on turned out to be Vera Sue Crosby. A taxicab arrived and Vera Sue got out wearing her new hat, a tight skirt, and a bushy fur stole which was also new and emphasized her round little bottom. The stole was mink-dyed muskrat, her skirt was yellow, her slippers gold-colored with very high heels. She looked like she was headed for the Yukon gold rush, Harsh thought.
    He swung around in his chair. “Hey, I don’t want that dame around me. She double-crossed me and I don’t want any part of her.”
    “Harsh, you take orders, not give them.”
    Harsh saw the glazed expression in Brother’s eyes, and did not press the matter. The man was afraid of the airplane and was forcing himself to take the flight. The fact that Brother owned such an elaborate private plane and was so nervous about using it indicated what was probably a long-standing psychological battle between the man and the airplane. Let him sweat his own troubles out, Harsh decided.
    He pointedly ignored the tentative smile Vera Sue flashed in his direction as she moved to a seat. He had a pretty good idea how she felt. The fancy puce uniforms and the plane had knocked her for a loop and she probably felt as out of place as a blowfly in a perfume bottle. He grinned at the thought, liking the comparison.
    The plane now moved quietly out to the runway and took off. It made much less commotion than any plane Harsh had flown in. There was none of the roaring and shaking that characterized airplanes with propellers. The takeoff was smooth as grease.
    Harsh watched Brother sit there and hate it. Brother gripped the armrests of his chair and