City Walls by Loren D. Estleman

Author:Loren D. Estleman
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group

SIXTEEN

My cell rang. I looked at the screen. It was Emmett Yale. I didn’t answer. Seconds later, the landline went off. This time I didn’t bother to look. It rang four times and stopped.

“Do you smoke?” I got one out and tapped it against the pack.

“You’re the detective,” Palm said. “Find a pilot who doesn’t.”

I reached the pack across the desk. She took one and leaned forward from her chair to let me light it. She blew a plume toward the window without inhaling. “Was that your client?”

I nodded. “Calling to end the association, I’m pretty sure. I saw the job through to the end according to the original terms. Actually, someone saw it through for me.”

“Strickling?”

I didn’t bother to answer that. I did bother to inhale.

“Stock manipulation’s a white-collar crime,” she said, “punishable by a couple of years in Club Fed. People don’t commit murder at that level, or am I naïve?”

“People kill people over a Happy Meal.”

“Different level.”

I steered my thoughts away from the twenty thousand dollars burning a hole in my safe; the price of a one-way plane trip without pesky paperwork, or maybe just the down payment. Whatever Strickling had cleared on the investment was as far outside my personal experience as a colony on Jupiter.

“I’ll give you what I gave the cops.” I told her about Yale, about suspecting his stepson Lloyd Lipton sold inside information to Strickling, about Lipton’s killing soon after by Melvin Weatherall. “You’ve got the rest.”

She’d laid her cigarette in the tray with one puff gone. “I read about that shooting. Do you think Weatherall—?”

“Not unless he knows how to slip an electronic tether. From what I saw, he couldn’t change the batteries in a smoke detector. Rig an airplane up as a murder weapon?” I staggered out smoke. “Anyway, I’m convinced he didn’t target Lipton. His kind drowns kittens and shoots at pretty cars just for the rush. Inspector Alderdyce doesn’t buy the connection, and he’s all cop. They make a habit of believing in coincidence; and I’m the Great Pumpkin.”

“So why not answer the phone and punch out?”

“When someone dies unexpectedly, he leaves a lot of untidy things lying around. Somebody has to clean up.”

“Why should that somebody be you?”

“It just is.” Her cigarette was still smoldering in the tray. I put it out with the end of mine. “That’s everything you asked for, footnotes and all. Satisfied?”

“Sure. And you’re the Great Pumpkin.” She got up and smoothed her skirt, awkwardly; she wasn’t used to wearing one. “Drop in when you’re ready to give me the rest.”

“At work or at home?”

“Better make it at home. ‘Private office’? There’s no moron like an oxymoron.”

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.