Chip Harrison #02 - Chip Harrison Scores Again by Lawrence Block

Author:Lawrence Block [Block, Lawrence]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780451187970
Google: FRQLAAAACAAJ
Amazon: 0451187970
Barnesnoble: 0451187970
Goodreads: 442706
Publisher: Signet
Published: 1997-04-01T04:00:00+00:00

NINE

SHERIFF TYLES SAID, “WELL, I HEAR TELL you got a salary increase, boy. I hear you’re coming up in the world.”

“Oh, I’m getting rich.”

“Reckon Geraldine thinks a lot of you.”

“It was because I finally won a game of chess,” I said. “So she decided I ought to have an extra five dollars a week.”

“You wouldn’t be getting it if she didn’t like the way you were doing the job.”

“There’s not much job to do. Playing chess with her is about three-quarters of the job.” I took a sip of Coke. “Anyway, I don’t guess it’s enough to retire on.”

He clucked. “Well, it’s all in how you look at it, isn’t it? An extra five dollars a week, look at it that way and I’ll admit that it ain’t so much. But since you were only getting five dollars to start with, what you got amounts to a hundred percent increase, and I never heard of anybody kicking at a one hundred percent increase that they didn’t even have to go and ask for. Even a goddamn nigger labor union ought to be happy about a hundred percent increase.”

“I never thought of it that way.”

He winked. “You keep doubling up that way, you’ll be rich in no time.”

“Guess you’re right.”

“On the subject,” he said, “how you making out as far as money is concerned? You able to get by all right?”

“Oh, sure,” I said. I had been buying clothes from time to time, and other things, and I was only making twenty a week from the two jobs—well, twenty-five now—but there was really nothing to spend money on. I even got my books free from the local public library, not because I was too cheap to buy a paperback but because the only ones in town were at the Atlantic station, and all they had were four shelves of swinging swapper garbage and one rack of Brian Garfield westerns. Every once in a while I would go back to see if they got something new, but they never did. I guess they were waiting until they sold the ones they had.

The library had a lot of good books. The only trouble was that they had all come out before the Second World War. This was okay as far as the fiction was concerned, I could get into old stuff well enough, but when I wanted to figure out how to fix the Lathrop television set I ran into a stone wall. There was nothing in the card catalog under Television.

“I’ve even been putting some money aside,” I told him.

“Thought you might be. Probably got more than enough for the fare to Miami, I’d say.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, probably.”

“Be summer in a few months,” he went on. “Florida weather’s no attraction that time of year. Not that it’s a bargain here. Myself, I don’t mind the heat one way or the other. I’ll sweat on a hot day, but I never minded sweating. Must do a man good. Otherwise you wouldn’t do it, the way I see it.

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