Hunting Gold by Ann Aptaker

Author:Ann Aptaker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bywater Books
Published: 2022-05-16T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

Adair opens the door of his Plymouth, but doesn’t get in. “We need to know more about Dave Handy’s setup with the Perkins woman,” he says.

“What are you going to do, Adair? Sweat it out of him? He’s even less likely to chat up a cop than Adele was.”

“Which is why you’re going to handle him. While you’re getting the story from Handy, I’ll go into the police files, see what I can dig up that might be useful. Handy was connected to some pretty nasty articles.”

“Nasty enough to let him drown when he fell into hot water.”

“Maybe the Perkins woman was one of the people who let him drown.”

I don’t figure that’s Adele’s style, same way I can’t figure Adele as a killer, but as Vivienne pointed out, you never know. Women can kill just as well as men. Maybe better. “Okay, Adair,” I say, “if I get anything from Dave, I’ll hand it over. I trust you’ll return the favor?”

“I’m the one who’s being forced to do the trusting, Gold.” He gets into the Plymouth, drives away.

I’m tempted to go back into the gallery and press Adele for more. I suppose Adair has his cop reasons for cutting the interview short, but those reasons are mud to me.

I decide to let the guy make his play, at least for now. And besides, he’s right about being forced to trust me, and so far I haven’t given him a whole lot of reasons to snuggle up to the idea. But I don’t entirely trust him either. He may be a decent cop, but he’s still a cop, and my experience with cops has been less than warm and fuzzy. The still raw gash on my head from the raid on the Green Door Club is a reminder to keep my cards close with the Law. Not that I need reminding.

I open the door of my Buick, start to get in, but something catches the corner of my eye, a glint of something, maybe sun flashing off the chrome mouth-like grille of a passing light-green Packard coupe. The car’s moving slowly, maybe too slowly, but passes me by before I can get a look at the driver, see if it’s a man or a woman.

Maybe the driver’s just cruising for a parking spot.

Maybe the driver’s my stalker.

I reach into my pocket for my pack of smokes. My fingers touch the note I didn’t share with Adair, the note threatening to grind me down and take everything from me.

The Packard’s down the block, pulling into a parking space. A guy in a black lumber jacket and porkpie hat gets out of the car, goes into a coffee joint. He doesn’t even look my way.

I light up a smoke, force back a shiver.

• • •

The cigarette and the drive to Hell’s Kitchen finally get rid of the shivers by the time I park on Ninth Avenue.

I walk into the Happy Hour Saloon. The heavy smoke in the air is kind to the noontime crowd drinking their lunch, softening their hard-knocks faces a bit.

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