All The Way Read Online Free Page B

from California and learned a little about you. When we came in a while ago, I called Miami. They’d heard from the West Coast at last, and they gave me the report over the phone. Parts of it were quite interesting, so I called you to come over.”
    ”What do you want?” I asked.
    “Primarily, to know quite a bit more about you. What are your plans?”
    “I don’t know,” I said. “If your information’s accurate, I suppose I can go back to my right name and start looking for a job. Probably in New York.”
    “How much money do you have?”
    “Little over four hundred.”
    “That’s not much. And good jobs aren’t easy to find at twenty-eight with your record of moving around. Let me make you an offer.”
    “Go ahead.
    “Put it off for a few days. I have a proposition in mind, but I can’t tell you what it is until I’m sure of several things. You don’t stand to lose anything; if nothing comes of it, you’ll still have your four hundred dollars. I’ll make up anything you’ve spent.”
    “What kind of proposition?” I asked.
    “I’d rather not say yet. But how would you like to go back to Miami Beach?”
    “When?” I asked.
    She stood up. “Right now. I’m expecting some very important mail, and I have to do some shopping in the morning, so I thought we’d drive up tonight.”
    I rose. “Sounds fine to me.” Then I took hold of her arms, and said, “In fact, I’ve just had a wonderful idea—”
    The blue eyes were coolly satirical. “That I don’t doubt in the slightest. No.”
    “But you haven’t even heard it—”
    “I don’t have to. But it just happens I still have my room at the Golden Horn, and that I’m expecting the mail there, under my own name. I’d suggest you re-register as George Hamilton; after all, they’ll probably remember you.”
    ”But—”
    “I’ll drop you in downtown Miami Beach, and you can take a cab. I’d rather no one knew of our relationship.”
    “Relationship,” I said. “Hah!” She smiled, but said nothing.
    * * *
    “We’d stopped for dinner in Marathon, so it was shortly after eleven when she let me off in Miami Beach. “I’ll see you in the morning,” she said. “Call me in room three-one-six.”
    “Sure,” I replied. I carried the bag into a bar and killed about ten minutes over a drink before I called a cab and went out to the Golden Horn. It’s still slow in the Miami area in November, so I wasn’t worried about getting a room. It turned out I could have one fronting the ocean if I wanted. “Third floor, if possible,” I said.
    I signed the registry card and followed the boy across the corner of the patio court, past the illuminated pool and palms bearing clusters of colored lights. We entered a corridor in the left wing and took an elevator to the third floor.
    312 was round the comer from her room. It was like the one I’d had before, with turquoise walls and beige carpet and an oversized bed. The bedspread was persimmon, as were the floor-to-ceiling curtains covering the bay window at the far end. The bath had a tub and stall shower and was finished in persimmon tile. The boy put the bag on the luggage stand beside the dresser over on the right, adjusted the air-conditioner thermostat, thanked me for the tip, and left. I waited three minutes before I stepped down the corridor and knocked on 316. The door opened slightly and she looked out round the edge of it.
    “I might have known,” she said.
    “I just thought of several more things I should tell you about myself,” I replied. “It was in Panama I first became interested in big-game fishing-”
    “I see. And you’re afraid you might forget them before morning?”
    “They might be lost for ever. But I don’t have to come in; I can tell you from out here in the corridor. Or through the door.”
    She sighed. I couldn’t tell whether she was really angry or not. “Just a moment.” She disappeared. I heard a rustling sound, and then she pulled the door open and I