Go-Go For Broke by Larry Kent

Author:Larry Kent
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: relics, detective fiction, piccadilly publishing, hard boiled crime novel, golden age crime fiction, larry kent private eye
Publisher: Piccadilly

Chapter 7 ... the golden web ...

There was a police car parked in front of my apartment building. I went around it, drove the Corvette into the garage. Two men were standing on the sidewalk near the police car when I emerged from the garage. One was Lieutenant Bart Atkins. The second plainclothes man was a stranger to me.

“Like to have a talk with you,” Atkins said.

“Sure,” I said. “Come on up and have a cup of coffee.”

They followed me up the stairs. I invited them to sit down while I went into the kitchen to put the coffee on. They didn’t want coffee. But I did. Atkins was seated deep in my favorite chair when I returned to the living room. This guy could relax backstage in a burlesque theater. But the second cop didn’t have Atkins’ cool. He stood with his arms folded, feet fidgeting, eyes blinking, a scowl playing on his swarthy face.

“This is Sergeant of Detectives Jim Phalen,” Atkins said.

“Glad to know you,” I said.

Phalen gave me a curt nod.

“Jim,” Atkins went on, “is with homicide in the Thirty-Eighth Precinct.”

“Uptown,” I said.

“There was a death up there earlier today,” Atkins said. “Or yesterday, to be exact. A very strange kind of death.”

“You must mean the electrocution,” I said. They looked at me. “I read about it in the papers. It seems a guy was using his electric shaver in the bathtub. He dropped it and wham!”

“Just another accidental death,” Atkins said. “People are always doing stupid things like that. Last year a man dropped his radio in the bathtub.”

I lit a cigarette, sat down. They continued to eye me.

“I’m disappointed,” I said to Atkins.

“Why is that, Kent?”

“This isn’t like you at all.”

“What isn’t?”

“This cat and mouse business. You’re both homicide. If you thought that guy’s death was an accident, you wouldn’t come here to tell me about it. Now let’s get down to cases.”

“Show him, Jim,” Atkins said.

Phalen took his right hand out of his side pocket, reached into his breast pocket, brought out a card, showed it to me. It was my business card.

“Well?” I said.

Phalen spoke for the first time. “Accidents do happen, Kent. Even stupid accidents like that. But we check them out. We were going through the guy’s things at precinct headquarters a few hours ago. This card of yours was found in a compartment in the dead man’s wallet. It was missed during an earlier search. It wasn’t negligence. The card was in a secret compartment. Why, Kent? Why did he have your card?”

“Offhand, Sergeant Phalen, I’d say he intended to see me.”

“Did he?”

“No. I never met James Purdom.” Silence followed my mention of the dead man’s name. I laughed. “That was no slip of the tongue, gentlemen. I have a very good memory for names.”

“There was a passport among Purdom’s belongings,” Atkins said. “It showed that he’d been in England recently.”

“So?” I said.

Atkins shrugged. “It may mean nothing at all.”

Another cop trick: throw out a fact and look for a reaction.

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