Hunter and the Trap Read Online Free

else, I’ll tell you.”

7
    I slipped into Jose’s room a little later to see whether I could make a telephone call to the manager and maybe find an adjoining suite to open up, or even a room, or maybe let the overflow into the grand ballroom or something like that; and there was Diva, sprawled on the bed and staring at me.
    â€œCan I use the phone?” I wanted to know.
    She nodded silently, and I discovered that the manager was gone for the day and the assistant manager was somewhere in the hotel—probably at the party.
    â€œHell with them,” Diva said. I couldn’t remember when I had heard her say anything else. “Let them crawl all over each other. What do you care?”
    I was sitting on the edge of the bed, a few inches from where she lay sprawled out. She reached out an arm and drew me down to her, and I let myself be drawn; and then I kissed her, a wide, hot kiss, with her tongue darting in and out of my mouth like a little snake.
    After that, I pulled up and away from her and said, “Whatever you want, Diva, I probably want double, but it’s like trying to do it in Grand Central Station. Also, my wife is out there, and she sort of hates me and she’d love an excuse to cut my heart out.”
    â€œYou afraid of her?”
    I nodded. “Also, I always figured you were Andy’s girl.”
    â€œLike hell you did. You are like a stinking little open book, Monte, and I read you good. You always figured me for a dyke, and you figured Jose and me, we diddled each other. Balls. I work for Andy; I’m not his girl, and I don’t screw Jose backwards either. As for you, just go to hell.”
    â€œI’ll see you later,” I said, and then I went back to the party, leaving the door to the bedroom open, hoping that it might take some pressure off the living room. The living room was packed almost solid, but if you moved slowly and had some patience, you could penetrate. I got caught in a cluster of black men with fezzes and sweeping gowns, and then I saw Andy, who was trying to talk to them in Senegalese or Somali or Bantu or something like that; and he saw me and grinned and boomed:
    â€œWhat a party, Monte! What a goddamn true, beautiful party!”
    I grinned foolishly, and pushed on to Jane Pierce, who was out on the terrace, talking to a thin, worried-looking man in dinner clothes.
    â€œI tried,” I said. “The manager went home. The assistant manager is lost or something.”
    â€œThis is the assistant manager, Monte,” she replied. “This is Mr. Bell’s friend, Monte Case.”
    â€œWell, are you responsible, Mr. Case?”
    â€œAndrew Bell is a very responsible man.”
    â€œI know that. How does one find him?”
    â€œHe’s right there in that group of Africans,” I said.
    â€œThere are a great many people here,” Jane said, smiling her best smile at him, “but I think it’s a very genteel lot, don’t you? We have two of the highest dignitaries in the local diocese—I can’t remember their names but they are very estimable churchmen. That tall African—you can see his fez over the crowd—is the Prime Minister of Nigeria or Ghana or the Congo. Well, it’s that sort of party—”
    â€œOf course, of course. It’s just a question of suffocation, simple suffocation. But if you keep the doors to the terrace open—”
    â€œI wouldn’t dream of closing them,” Jane said, and she led the manager away, or rather furrowed a path for him, and I went for a drink. That was not easy. The table that had been set up as a bar was practically inaccessible, but I finally got to it. My wife, Liz, was there already and drunk, good and drunk.
    â€œSo here’s Monte,” she said. “The man’s friend. Did all of you know that Monte is the man’s friend? I’m Monte’s friend too. I got news for you—when you got a friend like