Step to the Graveyard Easy Read Online Free

losing her job amonth ago, couldn’t find another, might not be able to pay her rent. Odds-on it was either a half-truth or an outright lie, but she made it sound convincing.
    He said, “Why didn’t you ask for money before we went to bed? I might’ve paid you.”
    “I don’t mind giving my body, but I won’t sell it. No way.”
    “You’d rather steal?”
    “I’d rather steal.”
    “Well, you could ask me for a loan. Now, I mean.”
    “Loan? That’s another word for charity.”
    “And you don’t take charity?”
    “I don’t beg, either.”
    “Funny set of ethics you have.”
    “Maybe,” she said, “but they’re mine.”
    There was a little better than a hundred dollars in the wallet. Cape took out all but two twenties and a ten, put the wallet back into his pants pocket. “I’m going to the bathroom,” he said. “We’ll talk some more after I’m done in there.”
    When he came out five minutes later, the wallet was empty and Kristin was gone.
    Brownsville.
    Across the Rio Grande to Matamoros.
    Jai alai at a local
fronton.
Team and individual matches, the competitors all with single names. Fast, fast, fast game. Players leaping up and off walls, catching the little goatskin-covered hard-rubber pelota in handmade wooden baskets and hurling it off granite blocks at speeds up to 188 miles an hour. Betting on the same principle as horse racing: win, place, show; Daily Double, Trifecta, Superfecta. Plus another double called Quiniela, where you selected two players or teams to finish first and second in any order. Cape took a flyer, made a few minimum bets. Lost them all, but came close to winning a Big Q that would have paid him the equivalent of a hundred and fifty dollars.
    After the jai alai, a little time in the tenderloin section along the river. Wide open. Roaming hookers, many in their teens; shills for live-sex clubs and cockfights. An old lady in a black shawl, with eyes as dead as an embalmed corpse’s, offered him his choice of drugs atcut-rate prices. All this before nightfall. He went back across to U.S. soil, and what came crawling out of the hot, neon-spattered Tex-Mex night in the tenderloin over there wasn’t any better.
    Not for him. Tasting sin was one thing. Wallowing in it was something else entirely.
    North again. Lubbock, Amarillo.
    West then into New Mexico, following what was left of the old Route 66. Tucumcari, Santa Rosa, Albuquerque.
    Another backroom poker game. Bad run of cards that aggressive play couldn’t overcome. Down and out three hundred in less than four hours. Easy come, easy go.
    Santa Fe.
    Over into Arizona, through the Painted Desert, down to Flagstaff.
    Phoenix.
    Air show out on the desert, biplanes and other vintage aircraft, barnstorming wing walkers and a variety of aerobatics. In line at one of the booths selling beer he got into a conversation with a sinewy, leather-brown woman who turned out to be a skydiver. Yvonne. Before the show ended, she invited him to go up and jump with her and some friends the next day.
    All his life Cape had been acrophobic. On a plane just twice, commercial flights, both unavoidable business trips and both requiring alcohol anaesthesia. He grinned lopsidedly at Yvonne and said without hesitation, “Sure, why not?”
    They went up at noon, five divers and a pilot in a big Beechcraft. Yvonne fed Cape the do’s and don’ts, an hour’s worth of indoctrination that centered on his parachute. He froze up a little when they opened the door. Other than that, he managed it all right. Kept his eyes open when he jumped, counted slowly to ten before he pulled the rip cord, worked the lines the way he’d been told. The whole thing was a fear-and-adrenaline high, all except the landing. He came down awkwardly and a little too hard, bounced and rolled, and ended up with half a dozen bruises. Even so, the others were full of congratulations. Yvonne had something else for him, all that night and the next morning. Diving made her horny