The Far Side of the Dollar Read Online Free Page A

respect. “But I don’t quite understand why you came out here.”
    “I don’t trust these people,” he said in a lowered voice. Apparently he had forgotten, or hadn’t heard, that I was working for Sponti. “I believe that Tom was lured away from here, perhaps with inside help, and they’re covering up.”
    “I doubt that very much. I’ve talked to the staff member involved. He and Tom had a fight Saturday night, and later Tom cut a screen and went over the fence. One of the students confirmed this, more or less.”
    “A student would be afraid to deny the official story.”
    “Not this student, Mr. Hillman. If your son’s been kidnapped, it happened after he left here. Tell me this, did he have any criminal connections?”
    “Tom? You must be out of your mind.”
    “I heard he stole a car.”
    “Did Sponti tell you that? He had no right to.”
    “I got it from other sources. Boys don’t usually steal carsunless they’ve had some experience outside the law, perhaps with a juvenile gang—”
    “He didn’t steal it.” Hillman’s eyes were evasive. “He borrowed it from a neighbor. The fact that he wrecked it was pure accident. He was emotionally upset—”
    Hillman was, too. He ran out of breath and words. He opened and closed his mouth like a big handsome fish hooked by circumstance and yanked into alien air. I said:
    “What are you supposed to do with the twenty-five thousand? Hold it for further instructions?”
    Hillman nodded, and sat down despondently in a chair. Dr. Sponti’s door had opened, and he had been listening, I didn’t know for how long. He came out into the anteroom now, flanked by his secretary and followed by a man with a long cadaverous face.
    “What’s this about kidnapping?” Sponti said in a high voice. He forced his voice down into a more soothing register: “I’m sorry, Mr. Hillman.”
    Hillman’s sitting position changed to a kind of crouch. “You’re going to be sorrier. I want to know who took my son out of here, and under what circumstances, and with whose connivance.”
    “Your son left here of his own free will, Mr. Hillman.”
    “And you wash your hands of him, do you?”
    “We never do that with any of our charges, however short their stay. I’ve hired Mr. Archer here to help you out. And I’ve just been talking to Mr. Squerry here, our comptroller.”
    The cadaverous man bowed solemnly. Black stripes of hair were pasted flat across the crown of his almost naked head. He said in a precise voice:
    “Dr. Sponti and I have decided to refund in full the money you paid us last week. We’ve just written out a check, and here it is.”
    He handed over a slip of yellow paper. Hillman crumpled it into a ball and threw it back at Mr. Squerry. It bounced off his thin chest and fell to the floor. I picked it up. It was for two thousand dollars.
    Hillman ran out of the room. I walked out after him, before Sponti could terminate my services, and caught Hillman as he was getting into the cab.
    “Where are you going?”
    “Home. My wife’s in poor shape.”
    “Let me drive you.”
    “Not if you’re Sponti’s man.”
    “I’m nobody’s man but my own. Sponti hired me to find your son. I’m going to do that if it’s humanly possible. But I’ll need some cooperation from you and Mrs. Hillman.”
    “What can we do?” He spread his large helpless hands.
    “Tell me what kind of a boy he is, who his friends are, where he hangs out—”
    “What’s the point of all that? He’s in the hands of gangsters. They want money. I’m willing to pay them.”
    The cab driver, who had got out of his seat to open the door for Hillman, stood listening with widening mouth and eyes.
    “It may not be as simple as that,” I said. “But we won’t talk about it here.”
    “You can trust me,” the driver said huskily. “I got a brother-in-law on the Highway Patrol. Besides, I never blab about my fares.”
    “You better not,” Hillman said.
    He paid the man, and came