Rough Cut Read Online Free Page B

gins, and coming dangerously close to dozing off in the hot water.
        Which is where I was three-and-a-half hours after somebody knocked me out at Denny Harris's house.
        The lump on the back of my head did not throb quite so painfully now, nor did my jaw (I'd landed on it). I credited the healing process to the miracle wrought by the combination of hot water and cold gin I mentioned. Only this time I wasn't trying to deprive my senses; I was trying to use most of them in an effort to formulate a plan.
        I suppose I could get smarmy here and tell you that seeing Denny lying there dead had made me have second thoughts about him, but it didn't. Like some others in advertising, he'd been a superficial, self-indulgent, lazy cipher who'd prospered on the talents of others and hadn't even had the honor or vision to understand his own parasitic role. He really believed he had something to offer other than hand-holding and racist jokes on the golf course for clients who appreciated such. His loss-sorry, John Donne-did not diminish the human race a whit. In fact, the species was probably the better off for his passing.
        What might well be diminished, however, were the coffers of Harris-Ketchum Advertising.
        The choice I faced was this-call the police like a good citizen and tell them where to find the body or simply do nothing, let the body be found in its own way, by the person the gods or whoever elected.
        The reason the second alternative was appealing was because I would then not have to discuss with the police the identity of the woman who drove the Mercedes that had been parked in Denny's driveway.
        Her name was Cindy Traynor. From what the private detective had told me, she and Denny had been having an affair for three months now. Cindy's husband was Clay Traynor, president of Traynor Chain Saws.
        It was unlikely he would keep his account with us once he learned that his wife had been having an affair with Denny, and that I was implicating her in a murder charge.
        Accounts tend to go elsewhere under circumstances like that.
        As I rolled into bed in pajamas fresh from the laundry, I took an Arthur C. Clarke novel from the nightstand. Science fiction is my escape. But for once the sentences held no magic for me.
        I turned off the light, smoked half-a-dozen cigarettes until the moist nicotine on my lips began to taste salty, and then made the mistake of trying to sleep. I'm sure you're familiar with the process. Getting entangled in the sheets. Dozing off for a few minutes at a time, then waking up pasty and disoriented, as if from a nightmare. Trying to keep your mind blank while keeping it filled with trying to keep your mind blank. Insomnia is one of the few reasons I can see as legitimate for suicide. Enough sleepless nights and anybody would put a gun in his or her mouth.
        My life pushed in on me like walls meant to crush. I had responsibilities-three kids to help raise, two of them soon to be college-bound, and a father in a nursing home who twitched at World War II memories. Between the kids and my father, I was always desperate for money, overdrawn too many times a month, sweaty on the phone with the nursing-home people when my payments were late. Given Denny's behavior lately, I was afraid I'd let down the people who depended on me and the thought of that made me crazy in a way I couldn't cope with. My old man had worked thirty-five years in a steel mill without letting his family down even once. I had no right to be any easier on myself… and at my age, starting over in the agency business was impossible.
        I don't know what time it was when the city sounds seemed to recede-the distant ambulances less strident, the buzz of traffic less steady-or when I finally fell down an endless well of blackness into sleep… but it was wonderful whenever it happened.
        Which was when, of course, the phone rang.
        It had to