Monkey on a Chain Read Online Free

eleven. Eat now. You can dress later.”
    She appeared in a few minutes, barefoot, wearing a pair of new jeans and a cream-colored blouse. I gave her our schedule while she worked on the omelet, then took a tour of the property while she cleaned up and dressed. I wanted to be outside, far from her bedroom door. It had been too long since I’d had a woman. And at least to part of me, she qualified. Despite her age and looks. Or maybe because of them.
    The first stop in Albuquerque was at my bank. I picked up five thousand in cash. Then I made some arrangements with the woman who manages certain of my properties and left her with a check for a thousand in case I was gone longer than expected. We barely made it to the airport in time to pick up our tickets and take the long walk to our gate.

Chapter 2
    LOS ANGELES
    The flight from Albuquerque to Las Vegas took about an hour. When April asked why we weren’t flying direct, I told her I didn’t want to leave a trail back to New Mexico. She nodded, then dozed through the flight. As soon as we got off the plane, she started for the nearest restroom. I told her I’d meet her in the bar, then headed for the ticket counter.
    I paid cash for two seats on the four o’clock flight to LAX, using Harold and Ann Stephenson for names, and arranged for a car at the Hertz counter, again using the Stephenson name. Then I met April, led her to a different ticket counter, and bought two first-class seats on a flight the next morning to Orange County.
    I gave our names as James and April Bow and paid for those tickets with fives and ones. I fumbled around with the bills as much as possible, lost track, counted the payment all over again, and argued about the number of pennies in my change. By the time I was satisfied, the clerk and the people lined up behind us were steaming and April was pretending she wasn’t with me.
    I grabbed a cab and headed for the first hotel I could think of, the Palace. April was getting nervous. I leaned into her ear and whispered, “Play along with me. You can always start screaming later.”
    She relaxed a bit, and even gave me a tiny smile. The driver was watching us in the mirror. I made a kissing noise at her, then overtipped the driver by ten dollars.
    Getting a room was easy. I laid two hundreds on the counter and asked for a single for the night. The clerk looked from me to April and made the bills disappear.
    I signed the register as James Bow. A bellboy came over and asked about our luggage. I told him I’d carry it and could find the room myself, but he could do me a tremendous favor by locating a cold bottle of good champagne and getting it to the room as quickly as possible. I winked and told him I’d be very grateful. He handed me the keys and disappeared.
    The room was like almost every other I’ve been in. Narrow. Bathroom by the entry. A double bed against the long wall, with a dresser and plenty of mirrors opposite. Windows behind floor-to-ceiling curtains at the end of the room, with a small table and two chairs.
    Once the door closed, April walked to the table and sat, looking as though she had put up with enough nonsense. Well, she had, and she deserved an explanation. When I sat opposite her, she relaxed a bit. Maybe she’d expected me to make a move toward the bed. “We’ve got to talk before we get to Los Angeles, April,” I said, “and we can’t do it on the plane. The room buys us privacy for a few hours. For talk, nothing else.”
    There was a discreet knock. The champagne arrived, open and in ice. The bellboy presented it with a bill for forty-five bucks. I gave him a fifty and a twenty, told him to keep the change, and slipped the DO NOT DISTURB sign over the doorknob.
    She looked at the bottle skeptically. “Why the champagne?”
    “You look thirsty.”
    “I’m not.”
    “Fine.” It was window dressing anyway. I upended the bottle in the bathroom sink, dirtied two glasses, and returned to the chair opposite her. It was