1979 - A Can of Worms Read Online Free Page A

Then she gave a double take. “Are you working for him?”
    “Never mind the questions. You come up with the answers and eat at my expense. Do you know more about him than that he writes books you love?”
    “Well yes. . . a little. He’s newly married. He lives on Paradise Largo. Now you tell me. Why the questions?”
    “Just feed your beautiful face.” The prawns were out of this world. “Do you know anything about his wife?”
    Bertha continued to stare thoughtfully at me and I knew this was a bad sign.
    “His wife? I’ve seen her around. She’s too young for a guy like Hamel. Not my type.” She gave me a cunning smile. “If you asked me about his first wife . . .’ She let it hang.
    “So okay. I ask you about his first wife.”
    “Gloria Cort.” Bertha sniffed. “When Hamel gave her the gate for sleeping around, she reverted to her maiden name. Did I say maiden? Remind me to laugh some time. That floosie hasn’t been a maiden since she was six years old.”
    “Never mind past history,” I said. “Give.”
    “She lives with a Mexican who calls himself Alphonso Diaz. He owns the Alameda bar on the waterfront: strictly for the non-carriage trade.”
    I knew of the Alameda bar. It was the hangout for the waterfront riff-raff. There were more fights on a Saturday night in that bar than any of the other bars on the waterfront.
    “Gloria does a topless guitar act there.” Bertha put on her snooty expression. “Can you imagine? When you think she was once the wife of Russ Hamel! That’s the way the cookie crumbles. You have it one day: you lose it the next. And let me tell you I’d rather bed with a goat than with Alphonso Diaz!”
    The chicken arrived with a lot of fuss. We ate. It was so good, I ceased to worry about what it was going to cost.
    After we had finished and had coffee, my mind turned to the night before us.
    Bertha was quick to respond.
    “Let’s go, stallion,” she said, patting my hand. “I’m in the mood too.”
    I called for the check, flinched when I saw the amount and parted with my two fifty bills. By the time I had paid, tipped the waiter, tipped the Maître d’, tipped the door-man who brought the Maser to the entrance, I had thirty dollars to see me through to the end of the week.
    As I was driving back to my apartment, Bertha said, “I’ve been thinking about you, Bart. It’s time you changed your job. If you and I are going to continue, you have to find something that pays better than being a shamus.”
    “That is not an original thought,” I said. “I’ve been thinking along those lines for the past year, but there is nothing I can do that would earn me more than being a shamus.”
    “Think some more. With your experience in crime, there must be something. I met a fella last week who was rolling in the green. He cons old ladies. They give him sacks of money just to smile at them.”
    “You should be more careful who you go around with, honey,” I said. “Gigolos are strictly not my scene.”
    “How about smuggling? I know a guy who is stuffed with loot, smuggling cigars from Cuba.”
    “Are you trying to talk me into a jail?”
    She shrugged.
    “Forget it. I know what I would do in your place.”
    I steered the car into the basement garage of my highrise.
    “So what would you do in my place?” I asked as I turned off the engine and the lights.
    “I’d look around among the rich creeps I worked for, and put a bite on them,” Bertha said as she got out of the car.
    “Meaning the creeps I work for?”
    “Meaning the rich creeps like Russ Hamel you are working for.”
    I joined her and we walked towards the elevator.
    “Did I tell you I was working for Hamel?”
    “Skip it, Bart. You didn’t tell me, but it’s obvious. Let’s forget it. You are not using your brains. Few get the chance to work for all these rich creeps as you do. Those few who have your chances wouldn’t waste them as you are wasting them. There’s big money to be made out of