The Girl, the Gold Watch & Everything by John D. MacDonald

Author:John D. MacDonald
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2062-11-30T16:00:00+00:00

But all that came later. At the time she gifted him with the pipe, the ring and the roses, he wasn't certain he'd ever see her again. And that very probably wasn't what Uncle Omar had planned for him, if, indeed, the old man had arranged things in some pattern he had yet to discern. He put the ring in his pocket, flipped the pipe into some plantings and jettisoned the roses in a trash basket. The continuous blare of horns from the expanding traffic jam was making the day hideous. There seemed to be a lot of women in swimming, screaming instructions to people on the shore. Suddenly he realized that an impressive number of police had begun to appear on the scene, blowing whistles, yelling at each other and expressing confusion.

As a tall young officer came hurrying by, Kirby turned away too quickly. The cop stopped abruptly and came toward him, staring at him intently. "Take off them glasses, buddy," he said.

"But I'm only—"

An ugly-looking revolver was suddenly poised, aimed at the middle of his chest. "Hand over some identification, real slow and easy. Make me nervous and I twitch. My whole hand twitches something awful. Trigger finger and all."

Kirby placed his wallet in the cop's hand, very, very gently. The cop flipped it open, took one quick glance at it and began to grin and bounce up and down on his toes. "Oh, you fine handsome ten thousand bucks! Oh, you pretty package, you! What you say is that Corporal Tannenbaumer collared you. You keep mentioning that, hah? Promise me now, or I bust those teeth off at the gum line. Can you remember the name?"

"Corporal Tannenbaumer."

"Now grab the back of your neck with both hands. That's nice. Harry! Hey, Harry! Come see what I got!"

Harry, too, was lean and bronzed, with that look of eagles marred only slightly, as was Tannenbaumer, by a minor look of adenoidal vacuity.

Harry glanced at the wallet identification and said, "Honest to God, Tanny, you could fall in a sewer and come up wearing a gold bridge. Want I should go get the Sergeant?"

"No, Harry. For one grand you ignore the Sergeant. For one grand we take him in all by ourselves, and let the Sergeant worry about all this other crap."

"For two, Tanny."

"One and a half tops."

"We got to walk him a hell of a ways, Tanny."

"So cuff him to me."

"Why not to me?"

"Because for ten grand, Harry, you would sap me and leave me face down here in the cruddy sand, so don't squirrel around with me. What's going on down the beach there anyhow?"

"The report said there was a lot of naked broads, Tanny, and there are a lot of naked broads. And the other report said like forty guys lost their car keys in traffic, and the tow trucks are working on it. And there is one guy painted green they're still trying to catch. But the way it figures, some smart-ass crowd set up all the confusion so as they could clean out them stores across the way.

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