Nothing In Her Way Read Online Free Page B

had been there a dozen times or more, but you can’t see everything, especially when you trust the man who’s doing the job. And when the dam folded up like water-soaked cardboard, they flew in in a chartered plane. Police were waiting for them at the airport.
    Lachlan hadn’t sold any of the reinforcing steel. That would have been too easy to spot. But with Goodwin in charge of the concrete work, government inspectors for sale, and native labor who didn’t know a mix specification from the second chorus of “The Peanut Vendor,” it was just stealing candy to divert around a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of the cement into his own channels. Most of the proceeds had gone into the campaign fund of another eager beaver on the make—an army colonel who had his eye on the presidency. The two of them pulled it off. About a week before the dam folded, the colonel had taken over the government in a palace revolution. How could Lachlan lose? He didn’t. Dunbar and Belen went to jail, while Lachlan and the colonel took over what was left of the firm and only God knows how much of the damages collected by the government. You’ll never go broke taking it out of one pocket and putting it in another.
    That was in 1936. I said I’d kill Lachlan when I grew up. Cathy said I’d have to get there first, because she was going to kill him. She was ten years old.
    We grew up that way, the two of us with that shared obsession for revenge. After a while, of course, we gave up the childish and impractical idea of killing him, since that wouldn’t prove anything at all and would probably land us in the electric chair besides. What we were going to do was more poetic. We were going to take him the way he had taken our fathers. It was a large project for a couple of kids.
    I ground out the cigarette and lay looking up at the dark. We knew where he was at last. But could we do it? How could we do it? Lachlan would be nearly fifty now; he’d been everywhere and done everything; and he was a swindler himself and knew all the angles. It was still a large project, and I didn’t know.
    And then it occurred to me that I didn’t even know yet what this plan was they had cooked up for Goodwin.
    I found out in the morning. Charlie told me. And it was sweet.
    * * *
    He was staying at the Roosevelt. When I go over to his room around eleven a.m. Cathy and Bolton were already there. Charlie was still in a silk dressing gown, the plump, angelic face pink from fresh barbering, and was just finishing a breakfast consisting of a Persian melon and a large pot of cafe Creole in the living room of his suite. He lighted one of his precious Havana cigars with slow, loving care and leaned back to smile benignly at me.
    “Ah, come in, Mike,” he said. “I see that Miss Holman’s powers of persuasion are somewhat better than my feeble efforts.”
    Did he really think she was Elaine Holman? I wondered. But we had to keep up the act. I looked across at her. She was very lovely and chic in a brown suit with a fur piece dangling in casual elegance from her shoulder.
    “If that puzzles you, Charlie,” I said, “take a look at yourself and then at Miss Holman.”
    She smiled at me and said, “Thank you, Mr. Belen.”
    I still wondered about it. Nobody had kidded Charlie about anything since he was five. But, actually, what difference did it make whether he thought she was Elaine Holman or Florence Nightingale? He could still run out with all the money either way.
    Bolton and I nodded curtly to each other to get it over with for the day. I thought about last night, and wondered if she still had the harpoon in him. She seemed to despise him—but why was she mixed up with him?
    Maybe it was an act for my benefit, I thought suddenly. Maybe there was more to their “business” relationship than met the eye. I stopped, silently cursing myself. What was I getting jealous for? We weren’t married any more, were we? What did she mean to me? Nothing at all, I told