Mystery and detective stories; New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction
Then Getaway threw out one of his feints of mock surprise. "Didn't I
tell you, Fairylin? Well, whadda you know about that? I didn't tell her,
and me thinking I did."
"What, Getaway, what?"
"Why, I'm not working there any more. Why, Gawalmighty couldn't have
pleased that old screwdriver. He was so tight the dimes in his pocket
used to mildew from laying. He got sore as a pup at me one day just
because I--"
"Getaway, you never told me you lost that job that I got for you out of
the newspaper!"
"I didn't lose it, Marylin. I heard it when it fell. Jobs is like
vaccination, they take or they don't."
"They never take with you, Getaway."
"Don't you believe it. I'm on one now--"
"A job?"
"Aw, not the way you mean. Me and a guy got a business proposition on.
If it goes through, I'll buy you a marriage license engraved on solid
gold."
"What is it, then, the proposition?"
"Can't you trust me, Marylin, for a day or two, until it goes through?
Sometimes just talking about it is enough to put the jinx on a good
thing."
"You mean--"
"I mean I'm going to have money in my pockets."
"What kind of money?"
"Real money."
"_Honest_ money?"
"Honest-to-God money. And I'm going to dike you out. That's my idea.
Pink! That's the color for you. A pink sash and slippers, and one of
them hats that show your yellow hair right through it, and a lace
umbrella and--"
"And streamers on the hat! I've always been just crazy for streamers on
a hat."
"Red-white-and-blue ones!"
"No, just pink. Wide ones to dangle it like a basket."
"And slippers with real diamond buckles."
"What do you mean, Getaway? How can you give me real diamond shoe
buckles--"
"There you go again. Didn't you promise to trust me and my new business
proposition?"
"I do, only you've had so many--"
"You do--_only!_ Yah, you do, only you don't!"
"I--You see--Getaway--I know how desperate you can be--when you're
cornered. I'll never forget how you--you nearly killed a cop--once! Oh,
Getaway, when I think back, that time you got into such trouble with--"
"Leave it to a woman, by Jove! to spoil a fellow's good name, if she has
to rub her fingers in old soot to do it."
"I--I guess it is from seeing so much around me all the time that it's
in me so to suspect."
"Oh, it's in you all right. Gawalmighty knows that!"
"You see, it's because I've seen so much all my life. That's why it's
been so grand these last years since I'm alone and--and away from it.
Nothing to fear. My own little room and my own little job and me not
getting heart failure every time I recognize a plain-clothes man on the
beat or hear a night stick on the sidewalk jerk me out of my sleep.
Getaway, don't do anything bad. You had one narrow escape. You're
finger-printed. Headquarters wouldn't give you the benefit of a doubt if
there was one. Don't--Getaway!"
"Yah, stay straight and you'll stay lonesome."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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