Right as Rain Read Online Free

start to buck, even in this weather.”
    “I don’t suspect he’ll be going anywhere, but you never know. Speaking of which …”
    Lattimer saw Strange pull the Leatherman tool from his pocket and flick open its knife as they neared Leon’s yellow Astra. Still walking, Strange drew change from his pocket and dropped it on the street beside the door of the car. He got down on one knee to pick it up, and while he was down there, punctured the driver’s—side tire with the knife. He retrieved his change, closing the tool and replacing it in his pocket as he rose.
    “See you in a few,” said Strange.
    He took the steps up to the porch of the row house as Lattimer cut into the alley. He waited half a minute for Lattimer to get behind the house, and then he knocked on the door.
    Strange saw a miniature face peer around a lace curtain and heard a couple of locks being turned. The door opened, and a very small woman with prunish skin and a cotton—top of gray hair stood in the frame. The woman gave Strange a thorough examination with her eyes.
    She looked back over her shoulder toward a nicely appointed living room that spread out off the foyer. Then she raised her voice: “Leon! There’s a police officer here to see you.”
    “Thank you, ma’am,” said Strange. “And tell him not to run, will you? My partner’s out back in the alley, and he’ll be awful mad if he gets to perspiring. The sweat, it stains his pretty clothes.”
    S TRANGE took Leon Jeffries out the kitchen door to a small screened—in porch. The porch gave to a view of a gnarled patch of backyard and the alley. After Strange got Leon out to the porch, he waved Lattimer in from there. Leon confessed to bilking the old woman from Petworth with a pyramid investment scheme shortly thereafter.
    “What y’all gonna do to me now?” asked Leon. He was a small, feral, middle—aged man with pale yellow eyeballs. He wore a pinstriped suit jacket with unmatching black slacks and a lavender, open—collar shirt.
    “You need to give our client back her money, Leon,” said Strange. “Then everything’ll be chilly.”
    “I
planned
on gettin’ her money back to her, with interest. Takes a little time, though. See, the way I worked it, I used the next person’s investment to pay the, uh, previous person’s investment, in installments. Sort of how some folks stay ahead of the game with multiple credit cards.”
    “That’s a
legal
kind of scam, Leon. What we’re talking about here is, you were taking off old ladies that trusted you. How you think that’s gonna look to a jury?”
    “A jury trial for a small—claims thing?”
    “You got a sheet, Leon?” asked Lattimer.
    “I ain’t never been incarcerated.”
    “So you got a sheet,” said Lattimer. “And this goes before a judge, forget about a jury, you get a judge on a bad day he ate the wrong brand of half—smokes for breakfast, some shit like that, they gonna put your thin ass
away.
”
    “We need the money for our client now,” said Strange. “That’s all she wants. She’s a good woman, which you probably saw as a weakness, but we’re gonna forget about that, too, if you come up with the two thousand you took from her straightaway.”
    “I’d have to get me a job,” said Leon. “’Cause currently, see, I don’t have those kind of resources.”
    “You gonna wear that outfit to the job interview?” said Lattimer.
    Leon, wounded, looked up at Lattimer and touched the lapel of his lavender shirt. “This right here is a designer shirt. An Yves Saint Laur
ent.
”
    “From the Singapore factory, maybe. Man your age ought to be wearin’ some cotton by now, too, instead of that sixty—forty blend you got on right there.”
    Strange said, “How we going to work this out with the money, Leon?”
    “I ain’t got no got—damn money, man; I told you!”
    Some spittle flew from Leon’s mouth and a bit of it landed on the chest area of Lattimer’s overcoat. Lattimer grabbed Leon by the