Paradise Man Read Online Free

sleeping with half the buyers. Holden went crazy. He’d just turned twenty-seven. He was the boy wonder who’d been bumping people for nine years. He walked up and down the showroom with deep splits in his forehead. The buyers fled from Andrushka.
    “Mister,” she said, “who are you and what do you want?”
    “I’m Holden, vice president.”
    “Well, Holden, vice president, you’re scaring my best customers away.”
    She was a little taller than Holden liked, and built like a twig, but her hair was wild, and she wasn’t like the other mannequins, who traveled the circuit of showrooms with a bored, lascivious look. This Andrushka had a rough innocence. She probably loved every man who bought her a meal. Holden didn’t dare mention marriage. She’d start screaming.
    “So talk?” she said, painting her eyes.
    “I’m one of your bosses.”
    “I’ve got lots of bosses, Holden, vice president.”
    “I’d like to take you to lunch.”
    “Salami and cheese?” she asked.
    “No. Caravelle, if we can get in. Or Lutèce.”
    “I’ve been there,” she said. “All the men stare down my tits.”
    She had no tits. But Holden wouldn’t call her a liar.
    “Then what would you prefer?”
    “The kosher deli on Twenty-ninth.”
    “They won’t serve you salami and cheese.”
    “They will if I ask for separate sandwiches.”
    He took her to the kosher deli and she wondered why in the middle of the twelve o’clock rush, with furriers everywhere, Holden got a table.
    “I remember now... you’re the bumper.”
    “Who told you that?”
    “I listen,” she said.
    They were married in three weeks. Holden had to doctor her birth certificate, because Andrushka had no legal guardian, and she was a lousy minor. Her real name was Ann Rosshoven. The Russian princess had been born in Green Bay.
    They lasted two and a half years. Andrushka ran to Europe before she was twenty. She married the Swisser without divorcing Holden. He dreamt of murdering them both. But it was one hit that would never happen. He lay down and watched The Deer Hunter on his video machine. Then he started Destry Rides Again.
    The phone rang at five in the morning. He recognized the wind and static of a European call.
    “Holden, are you up?”
    “Wait,” he said. “I’ll turn off the cassette.”
    The machine froze on Marlene Dietrich’s face.
    “What can I do for you, Swiss?”
    “It’s a pity you’ll have to postpone Paris for a while. Somebody’s daughter is missing. And you’ve been elected to locate her.”
    “I elect my own projects, Swiss. There’s too much notoriety attached to this one. I might disappear after the package has been returned.”
    “Your safety’s been assured,” the Swisser said.
    “Too bad.”
    “Holden ...”
    “What?”
    “You’re an original, and I tolerate your bad manners and all your moods. But I’ve promised you, Holden. And I can’t go back on my word. You’re invaluable to this project.”
    His head throbbed. Where the hell is Andie, he thought, his Andrushka, wearing silks with an eighty-year-old man?
    “I’m freelance, Swiss. That was our bargain. I can say no.”
    “Not when it involves the lives of our friends.”
    Holden understood the Swisser’s Morse code. The Mafia didn’t like the idea of Italian mavericks stealing a district attorney’s daughter-in-law. It killed their bargaining power with all the U.S. attorneys who were after their skin. The Pinzolos were making the Mafia look like pigs.
    “Why can’t our friends use their own material? They have the best merchandise in town.”
    “Don’t play dumb with me, Holden. They can’t afford the publicity right now.”
    Was Andrushka undressed? What time was it in Paris? One in the afternoon? She wouldn’t rise before two.
    “I’ll think about it, Swiss. I had a hard afternoon.”
    “There’ll be a bonus. That bundle you were carrying. Half of it is yours.”
    The Swisser was nuts. A hundred and twenty-five thousand for some