Read 1953 - I'll Bury My Dead for Free Online

doesn’t it?’
    Julie put her hand on his arm.
    ‘If that’s what you want, Nick, I want it, too.’
    ‘I guess that’s right,’ he said, suddenly thoughtful. ‘But this business of Roy’s may slap a lid on it.’
    ‘But why?’
    ‘Believe it or not, Julie, it took me a hell of a time to persuade the commission to let me finance the hospital. You wouldn’t believe that, would you?’
    ‘What commission?’
    ‘The City Planning Commission,’ he said patiently. ‘It’s unbelievable what a bunch of stuffed shirts they are. All from the best families, of course, but not one of them has ever earned a dime. They’ve inherited what money they have, and they’re damned miserly with it, too. Although I bet their private lives wouldn’t stand investigation, on the surface they are about the finest collection of plaster saints you’ve ever set eyes on. They didn’t approve of me. Two of them even said I was a gangster. The senator had to talk pretty sharply to them to get them to accept my money. At the time, nothing was mentioned that the hospital was to be named after me. If it turns out that Roy was in bad trouble, that he did blackmail his clients, the chances of my name being used is as remote as the snows of Everest. Morilli knows that. The police commissioner knows it, too. They’ll expect to be taken care of if this is to be hushed up. But Corrine’s the difficulty. She may try to cut off her nose to spite my face. If she lets on that I wouldn’t finance Roy, and Roy was forced to raise money by blackmail, I shall be ruled out. A scandal like that will make the commission give birth to pups.’ He tossed the cigar into the fire and went on in a suddenly harsh voice, ‘Why couldn’t the louse have shot himself next month when this was in the bag?’
    Julie stood up.
    ‘Let’s go to bed, Nick,’ she said, and slipped her arm through his. ‘Don’t let’s think any more about it tonight.’
    He gave her bottom an affectionate little pat.
    ‘You’re full of good ideas, Julie,’ he said. ‘We’ll go to bed.’
     

VI
     
    A t the back of a modest walkup apartment house on 45th East Place, a small, shrub-infested garden ran down to an alley hedged in on either side by a six-foot brick wall. During the summer months this alley was popular among courting couples as it had no lights and was shunned by pedestrians during the hours of darkness.
    For the past two hours, a man had been waiting in the alley, his eyes fixed on a lighted window on the third floor of the apartment house. He was a man of middle height, with broad and powerful shoulders. He wore a wide-brimmed brown slouch hat pulled down over his eyes, and in the dim light of the moon, only his thin-lipped mouth and square-shaped chin could be seen. The rest of his face was hidden by the black shadow cast by the hat brim.
    He was expensively dressed. His brown lounge suit, his white silk shirt and polka-dotted bow tie gave him the appearance of a well-to-do dandy, and once when he lifted his arm to consult a gold—strap watch, he showed two inches of white shirt cuffs and the tail of a white silk handkerchief he wore tucked up his sleeve.
    While he waited in the alley, he remained motionless. He chewed a strip of gum, his jaws moving rhythmically and continuously. His two-hour vigil was conducted with the patience of a cat waiting for a mouse to appear. A few minutes after midnight, the light in the third-floor window suddenly went out and completed the darkness of the rest of the apartment house.
    The man in the brown suit remained motionless. He leaned his broad shoulders against the brick wall, his hands thrust into his trousers’ pockets while he waited a further half-hour. Then, after consulting his watch, he reached down into the darkness and picked up a coil of thin cord that lay near his feet. A heavy rubber-covered hook was fastened to one end of the cord.
    He swung himself over the wall and walked silently and rapidly up the cinder