Nothing In Her Way Read Online Free

the door. She ordered a Martini, and Bolton and I settled for Scotch.
    The drinks came. The uniforms drifted out and the place was empty except for us. The flood of tears from the jukebox shut off and it shifted over to something by Vaughn Monroe. “Salud y pesetas,” I said to Cathy.
    She started to raise the Martini and then stopped, as if she had run into an invisible glass wall. The door had opened and closed behind me, and now I heard footsteps coming along the row of booths, unhurried footsteps sounding like a sequence out of a B movie. Bolton looked up over my shoulder and I could see his face get dirty with fear. I turned my head to try to see what it was in the mirror behind the bar. It was the man from the hotel lobby.
    He still looked like a corrupt and undernourished child, even in the baggy overcoat and with a gray snap-brim hat pushed back on his head. The dangling cigarette was gone now, but he carried the thin face tipped to one side as if the smoke still trailed up past the expressionless black eyes. As I watched him I was conscious of the odd impression that he looked like a gangster would who spent most of his time at crime movies studying the dress and mannerisms of hoodlums. He stopped and stood looking at us. Or rather, he was looking at Cathy. He gave me one negligent glance and forgot me, and appeared to have no interest in Bolton.
    “I guess you forgot me,” he said. “In such a hurry to leave, you forgot all about me.”
    “No,” she said. She put down the drink at last. “I didn’t forget.”
    “Then maybe you just didn’t care.”
    She was watching him the way a tiger eyes the man with the chair and whip. It wasn’t fear in her eyes, just watchfulness. “I think I told you once. I haven’t got that much money.”
    “You can forget that dodge,” he said. “I know all about the insurance he left.”
    Before she could say anything, Bolton spoke up. You could almost smell the fear in him. “I’m sure Mrs. Lane will pay you, Donnelly. It’s just that it takes time to get that much money.”
    She gave him a quick, sidewise glance of contempt. “How about it?” Donnelly asked, ignoring him.
    “I told you—” she began.
    He moved a leisurely step nearer the table, leaned over it past Bolton, and his arm swung. The whole thing was so unhurried and deliberate it caught me by surprise and I sat there like a fool. His opened hand cracked against the side of her face with a sharp column of sound above the honeyed crooning of the juke. The arm came back and I caught it and turned.
    It was like twisting a pipe cleaner. There was no strength or resistance in it at all. He half turned, with his elbow on the table, and looked at me utterly without interest as if I were a roach that had just crawled out of the woodwork.
    “Who’s the strong boy?” he asked Cathy.
    The barman was running up. I let the arm go and Donnelly straightened up. The side of Cathy’s face was stinging red, but she made no move to put a hand to it.
    “What’s going on here?” the barman asked with a truculent glance at all of us.
    Donnelly jerked a negligent thumb. “Beat it. We want anything, we’ll call you.”
    “You want me to call the cops?”
    “No,” Cathy said. “We’re all right.”
    He went back to the bar, but kept watching us. Donnelly leaned on the table. “You better think it over, sweetie,” he said. “Don’t make me look you up again. You wouldn’t like it.”
    He turned and started to go out, and then looked back. He nodded at me without even looking at me. “And if Strong Boy here is a friend of yours, you ought to tell him about putting his fat hands on people. I don’t like that rassling stuff.”
    I started to get up to follow him to the door, but she gave me an urgent glance and shook her head.
    He was gone. She picked up her drink and took a sip of it, then turned and looked at Bolton.
    “You can finish your little drink now, dear,” she said. “I don’t think he’ll be