Читать книгу Klick's Shorts - Milam Smith - Страница 12

“I really don’t do revenge,” I said.

“That’s not what I heard.”

I looked from him, to the wad of cash, to the book.

“Well, you heard wrong.”

He shook his head and smiled. His two upper front teeth were missing. Wife must of got ‘em in the divorce.

He said, “Look, I ain’t asking you to do nothing physical. What I got in mind is a whole lot different.”

I needed the money, so I listened. There was a drought in my private investigation business lately, probably due to El Nino’. Recent jobs had entailed a lot of divorce and picture-taking, not on my wish-list of assignments, and so I had turned down some that I shouldn’t have.

What Clarence wanted me to do really wasn’t all that bad. Nasty, maybe, but not bad. I didn’t understand why some couples couldn’t just get along, to quote Rodney King. Sure, his old lady had screwed around on him, ruined his reputation, almost wiped him out of business….

But what about the kids?

I listened to his pain. There was a lot of it. His Ex did sound like a real bitch. Limited his visitation to the Texas Standard, which I knew amounted to very little. Banned him from the children’s athletic activities. Constantly taking him to Court over piddly squat. He had the Court Orders to prove it.

“See, I really didn’t have all this proof at the time. I’d hired a crummy lawyer — he’s the moron that lost that Joshua cop-shooting case — and he failed to do proper discovery.

“But I want her next victim to have a fighting chance,” he said with a smile.

“Let me get this straight, you want me to do all this and then give it to her new beau? What you’re talking about, that’s going to be a good-sized nut,” I told him.

Still smiling, he held up a orange and white Texas Lottery ticket, a Pick-5 . “That cash there, that’s just the down payment. You get everything I want, you get this. It’s from the 25th’s drawing. Four winners, fourty-seven grand and change each.”

He stood and handed the ticket to me,then dug something out of his pocket. A torn piece of the Fort Worth Star Telegram newspaper with the lottery draw from the night before| 4, 6, 10, 11, 12.

“Finally got some good luck, huh,” I said. “And now you want to waste it on her?”

“Listen, it won’t be a waste. I know the guy cheated with my wife — idiot even walked out on his own wife at the time — but I want to make sure he’s the last one. He gets the evidence from your investigating, then you call the newspapers. See, in Texas you can’t publicize your case…but another party…?”

“Over fifty-grand, just to get even?” I asked.

He nodded his head at me, unable to speak as his face crumpled into a ball of pain, tears runnelling over his cheeks.