Read Hard Case Crime: Baby Moll for Free Online

voice was calm again.
    “Macy will tell you about me,” she said. “I’m supposed to be a little bit crazy.”
    “Are you?”
    She laughed girlishly. “I suppose so. I suppose I am. But I’m harmless. Macy must think I’m all right. He trusts me to take care of Aimee.”
    “Aimee? Who’s that?”
    “You’ll meet her in the morning. You’ll like her. She’s a lot like me. She has a wildness like me, tied down inside.” She turned toward the bay. “Right now I want to go swimming.”
    “You ought to wear more clothes around here,” I advised.
    She laughed again. “It doesn’t make any difference. Nobody will touch me. Macy wouldn’t let them. Besides, I told you I’m supposed to be a little bit crazy.”
    She walked close to me, and I felt her fingers light against my shoulders. I had the scent of her and my heart beat too fast.
    “I like you, Pete,” she whispered to me, and then she was gone, running through the sand to the water and diving in with a hushed splash.
    I pulled on my pants and slipped into socks and shoes, walked leisurely back to the house with my shirt over my arm.

Chapter Six
    On the terrace I looked down the drive. Through the trees I saw a thin border of light in one window of the small gabled gatehouse. The thought of sleep wasn’t right for me yet and the thought of Elaine was a gathering misery deep in my stomach, so I walked down the drive and knocked at the door.
    “Who is it?” Rudy said. I told him. He came and opened the door timidly. He wore nothing but the old hat and a pair of underwear shorts pulled high over his sagging, stuck-out belly. In one hand he held an Italian automatic. His pinkish skin glistened wetly.
    It was hot in the one-room house. The windows were open but Rudy had drawn the blinds. A slow-turning fan kept the air from becoming stifling. On a hot plate coffee bubbled in a glass percolator.
    He offered me a chair and sat down in another, stuck the automatic into a shoulder holster hanging by the strap from the back of the chair.
    “Where’s the other fellow?” I asked Rudy.
    “Reavis? Up at the house. One of us always sleeps in the room next to Macy’s.”
    “Feel any better?”
    He shook his head. “I cleaned up. I won’t be able to move tomorrow.”
    “Thought you’d be in bed by this time.”
    He gave me a bleary look. “I don’t sleep much these days.”
    “That gate outside doesn’t look very sturdy to me. Fence wire won’t hold back anybody who wants in bad enough.”
    He chuckled and got to his feet. “Want to see something?” There was a small control panel with three knife switches beside the door. Rudy pried one up. He opened the door. Outside, tiny spurts of blue flame along the wires accompanied the crisp sounds of frying insects. Rudy shut the heavy door and locked it, turned off the electricity.
    “Enough juice to kill a cow,” he said. “There’s a fence operating on another circuit slung halfway around this island.”
    “Why no sleep, Rudy? You waiting for somebody to come along?” I was sorry for the cruelty in my voice.
    “Get off it, will you?” he said. His tone was defeated. “You saw what happened tonight. I almost got it tonight. You would have got it right along with me if I hadn’t been able to drag that carbine from under the dash.” He took the percolator from the hot plate and poured coffee. He had to hold the cup close to his face to keep from spilling too much as he drank. As it was, some of the coffee trickled through the discolored hairs of his chest and stomach. He didn’t bother to wipe the drops away.
    “You been around a long time, Rudy,” I told him. “You won’t be as easy to get to as the others were.”
    He banged the cup against the table. “This guy,” he said, swallowing hard, “this guy — ” His eyes wandered helplessly as he tried to find the right words to tell me what he was feeling, what had been building inside him as he saw himself earmarked for a quick, bloody