Homicide Is My Game by Stephen Marlowe

Author:Stephen Marlowe [Marlowe, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-9021-7
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2012-11-05T14:17:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

“DRUM?” THE MAN SAID. I was seated in my office in the Farrell Building on F Street with my back to the window and the view of the Treasury Department across the street. It was four-thirty the same afternoon. I’d been staring at the phone and at the deep bottom drawer of the desk. The phone would get me a sandwich and a container of iced coffee; the deep bottom drawer of the desk would deliver up, on request, a bottle of Jack Daniels sour mash. Neither would produce Anita Sparrow. It was a hot windless day, a day when the traffic sounds on F Street six floors down seemed right outside the window—the rumble of traffic, the growl of a bus, the blatting of horns—a day when ideas came sluggishly if at all. I sat there.

“That’s me,” I said.

The man was thin and middle-aged: He wore khaki pants and a khaki shirt open at the collar. He had a visored cap far back on his bald head. “Drum, the Private Detective?”

“That’s what it says on the door.”

“We had some time finding you, man.” He held out a yellow envelope. “It don’t have a street address, see? Just Chester Drum, Private Detective, Washington, D. C.”

“You should have tried the Yellow Pages.”

He looked surprised. “You know something? That’s just what we did.” He dropped the envelope on the desk. “Got a night-letter cable for you. Sign here. It’s from Brazil.”

I scrawled my name on his pad, flipped him a quarter and tore open the envelope while he was still on his way out of the office.

The night-letter cable was from Anita Sparrow.

DEAR CHET

I HARDLY KNOW WHAT TO SAY BECAUSE I KNOW WHATEVER I SAY YOU WON’T UNDERSTAND BUT I’M DOWN HERE IN RIO EN ROUTE TO BRAZILIA WITH LIZABETH PIPER. DONNY WAS KILLED I GUESS YOU KNOW THAT NOW. WE HAVE NO FAMILY SO I’M ASKING YOU TO SEE HE GETS A GOOD FUNERAL. HE WAS A UNITARIAN. WHATEVER IT COSTS I WILL REIMBURSE YOU WHEN I HAVE SOME MONEY. PLEASE DON’T THINK TOO BAD OF ME. MAYBE SOMEDAY I WILL BE ABLE TO EXPLAIN. THANKS FOR EVERYTHING.

ANITA SPARROW.

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