Green Ice Read Online Free Page A

Polacks or somebody.”
    The very next day Wiley found a manufacturer in Brooklyn who specialized in molding the sort of cheap little plastic toys that came in bubble-gum machines. The manufacturer would deliver the disks complete with dirt sealed inside for two cents a unit in million-unit lots. It took considerable time and effort to arrange for dirt to be shipped from the various countries, but finally Wiley had it lined up.
    He took his gimmick to the largest cereal company. Positive reaction. A fantastic premium, they thought. An actual pinch of the homeland for a boxtop and only fifty cents. The cereal people gave Wiley an initial order for twenty million units. If the premiums were moderately successful they’d reorder, and projected they should be able to sell at least another twenty to thirty million.
    Wiley stood to make a nickel a unit—a million dollars right off.
    The cereal people had one condition. They didn’t want any part of a fraud. The soil had to be absolutely certified as to its foreign origin.
    Absolutely, Wiley agreed.
    And today was the day.
    There were 17 fifty-gallon drums of foreign soil sitting in the customs depot on the dock in Hoboken. Wiley couldn’t think of much else. He wasn’t even aware of Miss Kerby, the secretary standing in the doorway.
    “I was wondering if it was all right with you if I didn’t get back from lunch on time,” she said. “I want to go Christmas shopping at Bloomies.”
    Wiley glanced at her quizzically. All he’d heard was Bloomies.
    “Mr. Farley and Mr. Carlino said it was all right with them,” Miss Kerby said.
    Wiley shared Miss Kerby with Farley and Carlino. She had a huge behind, a tiny voice, and a habit of blaming others for her mistakes. “Said what was all right?”
    Miss Kerby repeated her request.
    Wiley didn’t care if she went to Macy’s in Nairobi—as a matter of fact, he’d prefer she did.
    “Don’t forget your lunch with Mr. Codd,” Miss Kerby said.
    “I thought Farley was taking him.”
    “It’s your turn.” She smiled for punishment.
    Wiley decided not to let it spoil his day. Nothing could spoil this day.
    He lighted another cigarette from the still-burning stub of his last, transferred a thick sheaf of papers from incoming to outgoing. He’d take care of those next time around—but doubted he’d still be there.
    The phone rang.
    Miss Kerby didn’t get it, just for spite.
    It was the divorce lawyer: “I have news for you. I met with her lawyer this morning. She was there.”
    Wiley and Jennifer had been married for three years come January, separated for the last six months. His first marriage, her second.
    “She’s asking for too much, but that’s normal,” the divorce lawyer said.
    “What more does she want?” It seemed every week the ante had gone up.
    “I didn’t realize she was so unstable.”
    “She cried.”
    “No.”
    “She turned her back to you.”
    “What a ball-breaker!”
    Wiley resented anyone else saying that.
    “Tell you one thing, I’d like to get this woman on the stand. I’d tear her to pieces.”
    “I don’t really want to give her a hard time,” Wiley said.
    “You haven’t been seeing her, have you?”
    “No.”
    “I mean it now, it’s important. Have you been going to bed with her?”
    Wiley was sure someone else had been doing that.
    “From what I made of her this morning, if she ever got in court under heavy fire she’d fold,” the divorce lawyer said.
    “Drop her case?”
    “No, pull a collapse.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “What I said. Literally. She’d collapse.”
    “She’s not that fragile.”
    “Soon as she started getting the worst of it she’d have a mental breakdown, blame you, put herself into one of those rest-home mansions up in Scarsdale or someplace. No divorce. You couldn’t divorce her for seven years, and you’d be stuck for a hundred a day plus psychiatric expenses.”
    “That ever happen?”
    “Some guys have been paying for years. Poor