More Better Deals by Joe R. Lansdale

Author:Joe R. Lansdale
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2020-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

(36)

I miss you,” she said.

“You too. You all right?”

“I think so. I want you in my bed or me in yours.”

“You know we can’t. Not now. In a month or after you get the money, depending.”

“Walter was asking about Frank. He asked where he was. I told him he’d gone fishing.”

“Why was he asking?”

“I don’t know. I think he likes me. I mean, it’s like a little boy liking a girl in grade school. But he wonders about Frank because he thinks if I’m alone, maybe he’s going to get lucky.”

The way she said that, it sounded very rote. I guessed she was still in shock. Probably we both were. “I don’t think I like that,” I said.

“You shouldn’t. If you’re not a little jealous, then what am I worth to you?”

“Tomorrow, you call the police and report him missing. Say he was going to go fishing down at Marvel Creek. There’s a lot of Marvel Creeks, so they’ll ask where is that, and you say, ‘Not the town, the creek. He said it was nearby.’ But you don’t give them directions. You don’t know nothing, but you’re worried, because he had been drinking and you told him not to drive, but he got his gear together and went anyway. Took some beers with him. You got all that?”

“Yeah. I got it.”

“Then they’ll go look, and I bet they find the car right away and probably him too.”

“After they find him, you sure I should wait a month to get the insurance?”

“It makes it look like you’re so upset, you’re not thinking about the money. That you’re mourning, and then one day you realize you got to find out about it, and you go in and see your insurance man.”

“Yeah. I’m up at the drive-in on Friday nights lot of the time, and my insurance man, Mr. Rose, his daughter and her boyfriend come in. I see them, I always think about that insurance money and how it’s waiting there if something should happen to Frank, and now it has.”

“He had a car accident. He was drunk and drove off the bridge.”

“Right.”

“I’d say call the police pretty early tomorrow. You can tell your story about the fishing but say you thought he might not come straight home, fishing or not, ’cause he liked to do the honky-tonks, but now you’re worried. It’s been too long. That shows why you weren’t on this right away. He has some habits, like drinking late, staying out. You weren’t really concerned, because that was just his way. We got to create a story, but it needs to be simple and tied to things he really does. That way you can keep up with it.”

“I miss you.”

“You too. Just follow the script, baby, and we’ll be farting nickels through silk pajamas.”

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