What's The Worst That Could Happen? by Donald E Westlake

Author:Donald E Westlake
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: det_irony
Published: 2011-02-10T03:42:14.390000+00:00

34

Sunday, 9:00 P.M. Max should have left hours ago for DC, but he was restless, troubled in his mind. So many things had gone so badly lately. Two burglaries. The loss of the Carrport house. The added complications of the bankruptcy, difficulties he had never anticipated. The insane detective in New York who so clearly believed that Max had arranged to burglarize his own homes, and who seemed perfectly capable of rooting around in Max’s affairs until he did find something illegal that Max might have done. It was all as though some black cloud were hovering above his head, confusing him, keeping him off-balance.

Nine P.M. The Hilton Head condo was dark and empty, except for himself in the spacious living room, seated on the broad canvas sofa, the table lamps on both end tables the only illumination. The secretary who had been here to help him with his statement before the congressional committee tomorrow, among other things, had come and gone, leaving him alone in the house. In a guest cottage half a mile away, a nameless chauffeur awaited his call, already well overdue. Here in the condo air-conditioning hummed, and beyond the broad uncurtained front windows stretched the wide porch, the regular narrow pickets of the porch rail, and then the Atlantic, extending far out eastward under a pale moon and a black sky, the sea’s black surface glinting here and there and over here, as though tiny men in black armor were creeping ever closer.

Open on the glass coffee table in front of him was The Book, the I Ching. He’d been reading it, dipping in here and there, hoping for general guidance, somehow reluctant to open the door to his own particular situation. But why? He’d never been afraid to know his destiny before. That destiny, whatever by way of destiny he might still have out ahead of himself, was all lagniappe anyway, a treat from the master of the house, an extra serving of dessert, a long and delicious overtime following the brief harsh course he was supposed to have led. So why be afraid now?

I’m not, he decided, and reached for the three shiny pennies on the glass coffee table, and six clattering tosses later—loud, the copper pennies on the glass—he had his current reading, this moment in his life, and there was Tui! His own Joyous trigram, in the upper half of the hexagram, with the only moving line at the base of it, the nine in the fourth place. The lower trigram was Chên, the Arousing, Thunder, and the number of the hexagram was 17, and its name was Following.

Following? Max had never seen himself as following, as being a follower. Could it mean those who followed Max? And if so, was it for good or for ill? Could the follower be the New York detective, Klematsky? Could it be that hapless burglar? Could it be the damn bankruptcy judge, dogging his tracks?

Max bent over The Book, studying its words. Following, the Judgment: “Following has supreme success.

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