Getting Away With Murder Read Online Free Page A

number printed out for me. What kind of investigator did he think I was I couldn’t find a Dave Rogers in a town the size of Grantham?
    “I’ve got another number for you,” he told me, getting up, indicating that it was time to end the conversation. “This is the number for me when you need it. I don’t want it to leave this room. I value my privacy.” He held out another, smaller, piece of paper. I took it from him, glanced at it and put it in my mouth and began to chew. When your head’s on the block, you might as well crack wise.
    “Okay, now I can get in touch with you,” I said. “But I’m going to want to talk to people who’ve known you more recently. Rogers knows the older stuff. Who should I see about recent history?”
    “I’ll think about that. You’ll probably have to talk to Paulette and Lily. I can’t see how you can avoid it. Yes,” he said, rubbing his large nose, “Paulette and Lily, if they’ll see you, of course. Give me a few hours to talk to them.”
    “You want to tell me who they are?”
    “My wives, Mr. Cooperman. My two wives. In tandem, of course. My matrimonial life has been a model of propriety, if you overlook the fact that they both ended in divorce. Paulette and Lily will help you to see Hart and Julie, my children. They wouldn’t give you the time of day if I asked them. May I wish you a safe trip home, Mr. Cooperman? Mickey will see that you get back safely. And remember, Mickey Armstrong or another of my associates will be near you at all times. I don’t want you to forget that. Good-morning.”

THREE
    I’d awakened for the second time that Monday morning holding to the notion that I’d just escaped from a particularly realistic nightmare. God knows I’ve had enough of them. Usually they have all sorts of personal dangers in them. This one spread the dangers to Anna and my family with me not being able to do much about it. I tested my dream theory by pulling myself out of bed and looking down to the street through my rain-streaked window. No wonder my bare feet felt cold as I recognized the car from the nightmare. It was parked across the street and although I couldn’t see the driver, I was willing to guess that he had old acne scars on the back of his neck.
    This time, when I got dressed, I shaved. When the hoods of the early morning thought to discourage my delaying tactics, I thought that they were just being practical: a well-turned-out corpse in a ditch or left in the trunk of an abandoned car doesn’t need a fresh shave. As I stood there looking at my chin in the mirror, I was suddenly aware of the luxury of time that had been given to me.
    * * *
    Installed in my favourite booth at the Diana Sweets and with breakfast and yesterday’s paper in front of me, I could again believe in the rationality of the world. The coffee was what I needed and the familiar golden surroundings of antique wood bandaged me from the evil that lay in wait for me outside.
    Other people had problems too, the paper told me on every page. Good! I needed their troubles to buy back my own. I read an account of a hit-and-run case that had been on the front page for three days. The old man who had been tossed by a car through a plate-glass window had finally died and the police were no closer to finding the bastard who did it. A group of former patients of a psychiatrist named Clough were trying to get his licence since he had, they said, taken regular advantage of them in the sanctity of his consulting room over a period of seven years. The patients had all suppressed the memories of these assignations and had tumbled, if that is the word for it, to the fact that this was sex only when they saw similar cases described on television. I tried to imagine the dialogue as they consulted their diaries: “Twelveforty-five is out, I’m afraid, but eleven-fifteen is possible if you can fit me in.”
    I was in a bad mood! On the bottom of the first page was an account of the accidental death