Operation Stranglehold Read Online Free Page A

checked they still hadn’t gotten around to issuing hunting licenses for callously rude individuals.
    “You should do something about Karl Erikson,” Hazel continued.
    I’d been expecting that approach. “Why should I do anything?”
    “Why because—because—” she floundered momentarily, then picked up speed “—he’d do it for you!”
    “Negative, baby. The hell he would.” I raised my voice above hers when she tried to interrupt me. “Unless there was something I could do for him that nobody else could do.”
    “But you’re
friends!
”
    “No,” I corrected her. “We worked together.”
    “That’s the most—the most inhuman statement I ever heard!” she fumed.
    “Not inhuman. Practical. If you want to know the truth, right now I’m unhappy with Karl Erikson. He must have blown my cover at the ranch, and that wasn’t in the game plan. Once he did that, he released me from any obligation.”
    “Oh, it’s—it’s hopeless to—to try to make you see reason,” Hazel sputtered.
    “Nobody ever called me a reasonable man,” I agreed.
    That concluded the conversation.
    We went to bed in a profound silence.
    Hazel kept a substantial distance between us in the kip.
    Her annoyed exasperation was like an extra blanket over us.
    I wasn’t feeling quite as sanguine as I’d tried to make myself sound.
    I drifted off to sleep still wondering how I was going to square myself for shooting the personal emissary of a United States senator, even if the little wart needed it.
    To say nothing of loosening his front teeth.
    • • •
    Dawn found me wide awake.
    I’d dozed during the night, but had never attained sound sleep. Beside me in the hotel bed Hazel snored lightly. The big girl lets nothing interfere with her sack time. I’m geared differently.
    I picked up the phone and dialed Room Service. The disembodied voice at the other end of the line took my order for two large orange juices, two orders of scrambled eggs with sausage, and two pots of coffee.
    The sound of my voice disturbed Hazel. She flung off the covers and rolled over in bed, shielding her eyes from the daylight. “Wha’ time is it?” she husked sleepily.
    “Time to be up and doing, Lady Godiva.”
    Hazel sleeps naked as a needle, and her appearance on the bed was spectacular. I went into the bathroom and brushed my teeth. In the mirror the scars on my manufactured face showed plainly. They always do early in the morning until I apply makeup. I always carry a complete makeup kit, and I have half a dozen hairpieces. I’ve always believed in making a virtue of a necessity. With a different wig and a change in makeup, I can be several different people when it pleases me. Practice has made me more adept with facial makeup than a lot of actors.
    I went back into the bedroom while Hazel took her turn in the bath. Her progress across the hotel room was a delightful symphony of jiggling, sleep-warmed amplitudes. It was distracting to my train of thought.
    It was even more distracting when she reappeared. Her silky-looking pelt was glistening damply, with her coral-colored nipples and flaming-bronze bush the only breaks in the symmetry of her pearly-white flesh. “What are you going to—” She was just starting to say when the buzzer sounded at the door. She leaped for the bed and flowed under its covers like a rabbit startled into its hole. I opened the door and admitted a young Room Service waiter who pushed a table-on-wheels into the room.
    Hazel’s bright red hair emerged from under the covers when the waiter departed after setting up. “You should’ve stayed out’ve bed and given the kid a treat,” I suggested, wheeling the cart over to the bed.
    “We are not amused,” Hazel declared, but she was smiling.
    She sat on the edge of the bed while I pulled a chair up to my side of the table. She ate with her usual healthy, longshoreman’s appetite. Neither of us said anything more until we’d finished and I’d lighted cigarettes