Free April Evil by John D. MacDonald Page B

together, and some laughs together, with him knowing all the time, every second of every minute. Watching her eyes and the way she moved her hands, and knowing all about it—knowing something she didn’t know. It gave him a funny excited feeling to watch her and touch her and know she was going to end—click—like you turn off a light. He remembered how when the time was right he had put on the yellow knit gloves and hit her sharply and suddenly, and used her boyfriend’s neckties to lash her wrists and ankles and then, changing the plan a little, had waited until she woke up before taking hold of her throat with his hands in the yellow gloves. It hadn’t lasted very long, but it lasted longer than a knife and much longer than a bullet. Then he had left the way he had come in. Out the window to the shed roof and off the roof to the side yard, and out through the back and down the alley to the next street and down the street to the lot where he had parked the car he had rented a hundred miles away.
    He walked down Bay Avenue until finally he saw, coming toward him, a girl who was sufficiently pretty. He stopped her and smiled and said, “I beg your pardon. Could you tell me where the Chamber of Commerce is?”
    “It’s right down at the foot of this street, just to the left when you get to the causeway.”
    He looked into her eyes until she looked away nervously.“Thank you very much.”
    She tried to edge by him. “That’s all right,” she said.
    “Can I buy you a drink for being polite to a stranger?”
    “No. No thanks. Really. I’ve got to run.”
    He let her go. He turned and watched her. She walked quickly and when she was forty feet away she looked back and saw him standing there, still smiling. She ducked her head and hurried along, clutching her parcels. Ronnie chuckled and turned and went on his way.
    The girl behind the desk in the Chamber of Commerce pointed toward the big open notebook and said, “They leave the messages in there—alphabetical.”
    He moved down the counter to the notebook and looked under R. Only a very few in the business knew the full name he used in the tire business, Ronald Crown. No one knew the name he had been born with, Ronald Dearlove. It was his name that had given him his first acquaintance with the law, and with himself. Goaded beyond reason by schoolyard taunts, he had beaten an eight-year-old contemporary into unconsciousness with a short length of pipe. He kept striking after the other boy was down. Wild anger changed by slow degrees into hot rising pleasure. The other child was four months in the hospital. For a time it was thought he would not recover.
    He found the message under R.
Dear Ronnie—While you’re in town give us a ring at 4-6040
. It was signed “Alice.” The
li
part of the name was written faintly, the
Ace
bold and black. He thought it a typical example of Ace’s childishness.
    He walked back up Bay Avenue and phoned from a drugstore booth.
    A man answered, saying, “Hello?”
    “Ronnie speaking.”
    “Where are you calling from?”
    “A drugstore booth.”
    “Be at the corner of Bay Avenue and Palm at eight tonight. The southeast corner. The Ace will pick you up. Gray Buick, three beeps on the horn.” The man hung up. Ronnie shruggedand hung up. He stood in the doorway of the drugstore. Young girls walked by in shorts and halters. Heavy women in print dresses. Men in slacks and sandals and T-shirts. Sun was bright on the street, blazing from chrome trim. New traffic lines were bright yellow against the gray blue of the asphalt.
    He sensed that Flamingo was too small to permit complete freedom of motion. Strangers would be noted and remembered. He had a drugstore sandwich and walked down to a small city park and sat on a bench and watched the traffic and the blue bay water and the cars heading out across the causeway to Flamingo Key. People fished from the bridge. A mother and child stood by the sea wall and fed bread to the gulls. He