The Instant Enemy Read Online Free

policeman.”
    “Probation officer then. You’re all the same to me. Davy Spanner’s a good boy.”
    “And he’s got at least one good friend,” I said, hoping to change the tone of the interview.
    “If you mean me, you’re not wrong. What do you want with Davy?”
    “Just to ask him a few questions.”
    “Ask me instead.”
    “All right. Do you know Sandy Sebastian?”
    “I’ve met her. She’s a pretty little thing.”
    “Is she here?”
    “She doesn’t live here. She lives with her parents, someplace in the Valley.”
    “She’s been missing from home since yesterday morning. Has she been here?”
    “I doubt it.”
    “What about Davy?”
    “I haven’t seen him this morning. I just got up myself.” She peered up at the sky like a woman who loved the light but hadn’t always lived in it. “So you are a cop.”
    “A private detective. Sandy’s father hired me. I think you’d be wise to let me talk to Davy.”
    “I’ll do the talking. You don’t want to set him off.”
    She led me to a small apartment at the rear beside the entrance to the garages. The name “David Spanner” had been inscribed on a white card on the door, in the same precise hand as the verse that had fallen out of Sandy’s book.
    Mrs. Smith knocked lightly and when she got no answer called out: “Davy.”
    There were voices somewhere behind the door, a young man’s voice and then a girl’s which set my heart pounding for no good reason. I heard the soft pad of footsteps. The door opened.
    Davy was no taller than I was, but he seemed to fill the doorway from side to side. Muscles crawled under his black sweatshirt. His blond head and face had a slightly unfinished look. He peered out at the sunlight as if it had rejected him.
    “You want me?”
    “Is your girl friend with you?” Mrs. Smith had a note in her voice which I couldn’t quite place. I wondered if she was jealous of the girl.
    Apparently Davy caught the note. “Is there something the matter?”
    “This man seems to think so. He says your girl friend is missing.”
    “How can she be missing? She’s right here.” His voice was flat, as though he was guarding his feelings. “Her father sent you, no doubt,” he said to me.
    “That’s right.”
    “Go back and tell him this is the twentieth century, second half. Maybe there was a time when a chick’s old man could get away with locking her up in her room. The day’s long past. Tell old man Sebastian that.”
    “He isn’t an old man. But he’s aged in the last twenty-four hours.”
    “Good. I hope he dies. And so does Sandy.”
    “May I talk to her?”
    “I’ll give you exactly one minute.” To Mrs. Smith he said: “Please go away for a minute.”
    He spoke to both of us with a certain authority, but it was a slightly manic authority. The woman seemed to feel this. She moved away across the court without an argument or a backward glance, as if she was deliberately humoring him. Asshe sat down by the pool I wondered again in exactly what capacity she employed him.
    Blocking the doorway with his body, he turned and called to the girl: “Sandy? Come here a minute.”
    She came to the doorway wearing dark glasses which robbed her face of meaning. Like Davy, she had on a black sweatshirt. Her body thrust itself forward and leaned on Davy’s with the kind of heartbroken lewdness that only very young girls are capable of. Her face was set and pale, and her mouth hardly moved when she spoke.
    “I don’t know you, do I?”
    “Your mother sent me.”
    “To drag me back home again?”
    “Your parents are naturally interested in your plans. If any.”
    “Tell them they’ll find out soon enough.” She didn’t sound angry in the usual sense. Her voice was dull and even. Behind the dark glasses she seemed to be looking at Davy instead of me.
    There was some kind of passion between them. It gave off a faint wrong smoky odor, like something burning where it shouldn’t be, arson committed by children