Read The Thomas Berryman Number for Free Online Page B

Quinn.
    He listened for noises around him in the big Shepherd house. Heard the cold wind in the firs outside. The soothing fire crackling under his water pan.
    A plastic clock on the stove read five of two.
    At two, Berryman pushed himself back from the table. He held back a yawn and pinched grit out of the corners of his eyes. He went outside into the winter cold.
    The night air was better for his concentration. Still, he felt that he was sleepwalking for a while.
    He was carrying a duffel bag the size of a lunchbox. Also an oversized pistol, a five-inch Crossman air pistol.
    His tennis shoes made a padding sound across the patio. Then he was stiff-arming tree and bush forms in the dark.
    Following a skinny, winding creek that carried the moon’s reflection like a boat, Berryman was eventually turning a dogleg right in the woods. In time he saw-amber floodlights from the Shepherd airfield. Saw how they seemed to pin down the planes like guy wires.
    Down under one plane’s nose an old Chevy BelAir was parked alongside a slender clapboard sentry house. Berryman could read I BRAKE FOR ANIMALS on a big orange sticker across the car’s trunk. Farmers with night jobs, he considered. Maybe down-and-outers.
    A hairy gray head was in one sentry house window. A muffled radio played country and western music. Charlie Pride, it sounded like.
    About a quarter mile down the field he could see the jet he’d come in on that past Friday. Staying about ten feet inside the woods, he made a way, the long way, down toward the jet.
    He noticed several lean Dobermans roaming loose, prancing on the shiny tarmac, apparently liking the sound made by their paws on stone.
    Out beyond the main lights the field got dark enough for Berryman to walk out of the bushes again. Far down the airfield, a younger guard came up to the little pillbox with a leashed Doberman. He tied up the muscular animal, and for a minute or two it stood around front snapping at its old lady, also tied.
    As Berryman stood watching the pair, a hidden Doberman flew out of the tree shadows. It barked no warning, growled late.
    Berryman fell, and the long Crossman flashed up with an airy
pffssss. Pffssss.
The pretty dog twisted around itself and collapsed. It lay still with its teeth bared, the way dogs look after they’ve tried, too late, to bite killer automobiles.
    The Doberman would sleep for hours. Then, it would wake up yipping and limping. With religion.
    The younger of the two watchmen wasn’t going to be so fortunate. Berryman needed him.
    He pushed himself up from the cold airfield tarmac. Felt where his coat and sweater were ripped at the elbow. He started off toward the jet, and a long night’s work.
    The following morning, Berryman prowled around the Shepherd kitchen like a sick man. He had butterflies in his stomach and he was trembling slightly. Among other things, he hadn’t slept that night.
    Across the room, a little blacklady cook was doing a slow burn.
    Morality had never been ambiguous with the woman and she highly disapproved of a party held there the night before. She held Thomas Berryman responsible.
    He’d arranged the bash.
    “Hmmpff. I jus won’t work ’round here no more, things being like this,” she complained around the kitchen. “Hmmpff.”
    She scrambled a bowl of eggs and kept shaking her head in disgust. “Women’s underwears in the garden. Little maraschinos cherries in the swimmin’ pool. Hmmpff. Hmmpff.” She turned to Berryman and looked him squarely in the face: wise little acorn face to big mustache face. “I thought you was a gentleman,” she said. “Wrong. Wrong again,” she shrugged. “Won’t be the first time. Won’t be the last.”
    Berryman was fiddling over by her stove, looking half-contrite. He appeared to be sorry to have caused her displeasure, if nothing else. “What’s this here?” he asked after a respectful pause.
    “Hmmpff,” the old lady bit her tongue. She beat her duck eggs dark gold. “Now what