The Far Side of the Dollar Read Online Free Page B

along with me to my car.
    “Speaking of money,” I said when we were together in the front seat, “you didn’t really want to throw away two thousand dollars, did you?” I smoothed out the yellow check and handed it to him.
    There’s no way to tell what will make a man break down. A long silence, or a telephone ringing, or the wrong note in a woman’s voice. In Hillman’s case, it was a check for two thousand dollars. He put it away in his alligator wallet, and then he groaned loudly. He covered his eyes with his hands and leaned his forehead on the dash. Cawing sounds came out of his mouth as if an angry crow was tearing at his vitals.
    After a while he said: “I should never have put him in this place.” His voice was more human than it had been, as if he had broken through into a deeper level of self-knowledge.
    “Don’t cry over spilt milk.”
    He straightened up. “I wasn’t crying.” It was true his eyes were dry.
    “We won’t argue, Mr. Hillman. Where do you live?”
    “In El Rancho. It’s between here and the city. I’ll tell you how to get there by the shortest route.”
    The guard limped out of his kiosk, and we exchanged half-salutes. He activated the gates. Following Hillman’s instructions, I drove out along a road which passed through a reedy wasteland where blackbirds were chittering, then through a suburban wasteland jammed with new apartments, and around the perimeter of a college campus. We passed an airport, where a plane was taking off. Hillman looked as if he wished he were on it.
    “Why did you put your son in Laguna Perdida School?”
    His answer came slowly, in bits and snatches. “I was afraid. He seemed to be headed for trouble. I felt I had to prevent it somehow. I was hoping they could straighten him out so that he could go back to regular school next month. He’s supposed to be starting his senior year in high school.”
    “Would you mind being specific about the trouble he was in? Do you mean car theft?”
    “That was one of the things. But it wasn’t a true case of theft, as I explained.”
    “You didn’t explain, though.”
    “It was Rhea Carlson’s automobile he took. Rhea and Jay Carlson are our next-door neighbors. When you leave a new Dart in an open carport all night with the key in the ignition, it’s practically an invitation to a joyride. I told them that. Jay would’ve admitted it, too, if he hadn’t had a bit of a down on Tom. Or if Tom hadn’t wrecked the car. It was fully covered, by my insurance as well as theirs, but they had to take the emotional approach.”
    “The car was wrecked?”
    “It’s a total loss. I don’t know how he managed to turn it over, but he did. Fortunately he came out of it without a scratch.”
    “Where was he going?”
    “He was on his way home. The accident happened practically at our door. I’ll show you the place.”
    “Then where had he been?”
    “He wouldn’t say. He’d been gone all night, but he wouldn’t tell me anything about it.”
    “What night was that?”
    “Saturday night. A week ago Saturday night. The police brought him home about six o’clock in the morning, and told me I better have our doctor go over him, which I did. He wasn’t hurt physically, but his mind seemed to be affected. He went into a rage when I tried to ask him where he had spent the night I’d never seen him like that before. He’d always been a quiet-spoken boy. He said I had no right to know about him, that I wasn’t really his father, and so on and so forth. I’m afraid I lost my temper and slapped him when he said that Then he turned his back on me and wouldn’t talk at all, about anything.”
    “Had he been drinking?”
    “I don’t think so. No. I would have smelled it on him.”
    “What about drugs?”
    I could see his face turn toward me, large and vague in my side vision. “That’s out of the question.”
    “I hope so. Dr. Sponti told me your son had a peculiar reaction to tranquillizers. That sometimes