Dirty Money by Donald E. Westlake & Richard Stark

Author:Donald E. Westlake & Richard Stark [Westlake, Donald E. & Stark, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mystery, noir, crime
ISBN: 9780446536226
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2008-04-23T07:00:00+00:00

The week at the doctor’s house was grueling. Nick had a terrific sense of urgency, a need to take action, but there was never anything to do. All week the television news told him the heat was still on, and he knew he was the reason why. If it was just the bank’s money, they’d ease off after a while, but he’d killed one of their own, and they weren’t about to let up.

He kept trying to make plans, come to decisions, but there was simply not a single move he could make. If he left Dr. Madchen’s house, how long would it take them to catch up with him? No time at all. But how could he stay here, like this, as though his feet were nailed to the floor?

He had never thought before that he might some day go crazy, but now he did. The jangling electric need to do something, do something, when there was nothing to be done; there was nothing worse.

He thought sometimes he’d kill the doctor, take his car and whatever valuables he had in the house, and head north. But then he’d remember the roadblocks, and he knew it couldn’t happen. He didn’t have safe ID. They had his picture. What was he going to do?

By Friday evening, when the doctor told him the maid would be coming back tomorrow and Nick couldn’t stay at the house any longer, Nick was ready to go, it hardly mattered where. He’d been more beaten down by the week of inaction than if he’d spent a month in a war zone. When the doctor gave him the ultimatum—too timid for an ultimatum, but that’s still what it was—he actually welcomed it, as a change, any change from being in this paralysis, and he knew immediately what he was going to do.

“Tomorrow,” he told the doctor, “when you go get this Estrella, you’re gonna drive me somewhere,” and the next day he had the doctor drive him past the church, but without stopping or pointing it out or making it seem as though the church had anything to do with his plans. But then, a little farther on, where the road curved and dipped down to a bridge over a narrow stream, Nick said, “Stop here, I’ll get out and you drive on.”

The doctor stopped, beside the road just before the bridge, and Nick got out, then stooped to look back into the car and say, “We never met each other, Doctor. If you make no trouble for me, I’ll make no trouble for you.”

“I won’t make any trouble.”

Nick believed him; the doctor’s face looked as whipped as his own. “Thanks,” he said, and shut the car door, and the doctor’s Alero wobbled away over the bridge and out of sight.

Nick saw no other cars as he walked back to the church. Would it all be the same? He was counting on it. His idea, if it could even be called an idea, was to grab as

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