No One Rides For Free - Larry Beinhart Read Online Free

may, just may, require
that."
    He looked up and down the hall, pulled me close and
said, "In the first place, be very careful. In the second place
. . ." he scribbled a name and number ". . . here, a good
well-connected D.C. criminal attorney. Remember, I was not an
accessory before the fact."
    Gerald was right. It was only money and not worth my
license, which is my living, and certainly not worth prison, which I
truly dislike. I doubted very much that there was any completely
legal way to get what Choate Haven wanted, and it was not so much
that I was willing to do anything for money but that the risk itself
intrigued me. Dumb. While I packed a kit that included a variety of
microphones, cameras and picklocks, I filled in my partner, Joey D',
on what I was doing.
    "Yeah, tine," he said, "just don't do
anything stupid while you're down there. You know you have a good
thing going with Glenda. That one, she's a real lady. And you got a
good thing going with the kid. Don't go fucking it up." All that
and he hadn't even heard me call Sandy to say I would soon be in D.C.
    "What is with you?" I said.
    "Ahh, you just gotta restless look about you
lately, and most guys, when they go outa town . . . Just don' go
looking for trouble."
    I really wished I had a trench coat to hunch up on my
shoulders when I walked out the door, turned and said, "Trouble
is my business."
    I caught the last shuttle
down to the nation's capital.
    * * *
    Sandra Klein met me at National Airport.
    We looked at each other. Past and present fused, and
history swirled around us like curlicues of confetti. She was just
lovely, serious, bright, one of the few moments of good sense I
showed back in the bum-it-up and break-it-down years. We were magic
makers in a long-distance romance with nothing but love and laughter
every time one or the other of us got off a jet. Sandy was a writer
and therapist. Unlike most members of either breed she was sensible
and shrewd. She knew there was no future in the condition I was in,
and possibly in who I am. She did the eminently sensible thing. She
left me.
    Catalog time. Taking accounts. Reading minds. From
our very first glance, we never had to speak to know. She looked
relieved. I had worried her once. I seem to do that to a lot of
people. But I looked healthier, happier, younger than I had, than she
expected. And calmer. But the same years had hurt her, and the aging
was sharp, as if five years ago had been the peak of the bloom. And
she had trouble. I didn't want that. I wanted her to be the happiest
woman in the world.
    She smiled at me for thinking that last thought and
reached over and touched my cheek. Then we both turned away to make
the mind reading stop. She started the car and neither of us spoke
until we were over the dirty gray Potomac. She asked if I would have
dimer with her and I said sure.
    I really did have a legitimate reason for seeing her.
Choate Haven had made up a list of Wood's habits and tastes, and
said, "If I know Edgar, he will never, this side of
incarceration, give up his automobile or his compulsion for nouvelle
cuisine ." When Sandy's first book came
out she had been on the talk show, cocktail party and reception
circuit. I figured she knew the "in" eateries. I explained
all that to her, and she said she would help.
    When we were together she had talked about the search
for a "life partner" with the clarity and sense with which
others approach career choices. She was intuitive, loving, lusty when
appropriate, a genuine adult. I had been sure, then, that she would
choose well. She was not only on my personal best all-time top-ten
list, I had her slated as most likely to succeed at marriage. I was
sure, now, that when she opened the door of her apartment we would be
alone.
    We were.
    I didn't ask where her husband was. I guessed out of
town. I didn't ask when he would be back. I guessed not that night.
    " Do you want something to drink?" she
asked. "Or would you rather not."
    "Oh, I take a glass