Hush Money by Max Allan Collins

Author:Max Allan Collins [Collins, Max Allan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Perfect Crime Books
Published: 2012-06-27T06:00:00+00:00

9

FRANK DIPRETA BUTTERED his hot Danish roll. Even before Frank had begun stroking the butter on, the pastry was dripping calories, sugary frosting melting down into cherry-filled crevices. But Frank had been born thin and would die the same; nothing in the world put weight on him. He bit into the sweet circular slab and chewed, in a bored, fuel-consuming way that could make a fat man weep.

He was sitting in the back booth of the Traveler’s Inn coffee shop. Alone. Elsewhere in the shop, strangers were sharing booths and relatively cheerfully, too, but not Frank. His was in a rounded, corner booth that could have seated six, and this was the busiest time of morning—it was seven-thirty now, the peak of the seven-to-nine rush—but Frank seemed blissfully unaware that the rest of the rectangular shop was a sardine can crammed with people as hungry for room to breathe as food. The regulars knew better than to say anything, however, and most of the non-regulars were too busy just trying to get some food and get it down to bother complaining. Complaints, of course, came on occasion, and to take care of that a sign was placed in front of the back booth: this section closed, sorry. This was all part of a routine that dated back to the day the motel and its coffee shop first opened, eleven or so years ago.

The coffee shop was aqua blue: the booths, the counter and stools, the mosaic tile floor, the wallpaper, the waitresses’ uniforms; even the windows that ran along the side wall by the booths were tinted aqua blue. It was like eating in a fish tank. Nobody seemed to mind; nobody seemed to notice. The food was not particularly reasonably priced, but it was good and attracted an almost exclusively white-collar clientele; and then there were the guests at the motel who mistakenly wandered in for a leisurely breakfast and became a part of this morning madhouse instead. It was this latter group who most often expressed displeasure about the man in the big back booth who was sitting all by himself, eating a buttery Danish roll. And Frank ate three or four of the Danish every morning, and he took his time.

It would have been hard to guess, looking at this calm, self-absorbed man, that very recently he had suffered a great personal loss; the death of his brother Joey did not show through the mask that was Frank DiPreta’s face. His eyes were not red. His appetite was certainly unhampered; he was now engaged in the consumption of his second Danish and looking forward to his third. He was not wearing black; in fact, the tie he wore with his tailored powder-blue suit was colorful: red and white speckles on a blue background, like an American flag exploding. There was no apparent tension in him either—no tapping foot, no drumming fingers. No, the only way to know the condition of this man, to understand the extent of

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.