Killing Is My Business by Adam Christopher

Author:Adam Christopher
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

21

Somewhere I heard the clink of a spoon against a ceramic mug, but when I looked up from the table all I could see were Ada’s computer banks, a thousand lights flashing in arcane sequence, a thousand miles of tape racing from one reel to the next. Above the door that led out to the main office, the clock’s smooth second hand cruised ever onward. In one minute it would be midnight.

Four hours until I was due to meet Alfie. Four hours until we were due to put the frighteners on Coke Patterson.

I’d struck lucky in Falzarano’s office. Once Carmina was out of the way I’d waited a few minutes. I killed time by reading the titles off the spines of all the books that lined the walls of the room. There were eight hundred and thirty books on display and a quarter of them were duplicate copies of Falzarano’s own blockbuster.

His hulk of a desk had nothing on the top of it but a blotter and the crystal ashtray and the telephone and the small pad Falzarano had used earlier. I’d checked the pad but it was clean, not even an impression left on the top sheet.

The underneath of the desk had been more interesting. The thing was fitted with more pullout storage space than the average family home. There was one big long drawer that ran just about the full width of the desk. It had a big lock with a tarnished brass escutcheon that wouldn’t have looked out of place pinned to the chest of a war hero.

I’d stopped and listened a moment but heard nothing from beyond the doors. Carmina was in another part of the house so I’d gone for broke and pulled on the big long drawer. It had slid open without a sound.

What I had found in that drawer I’d laid out on the desk and taken pictures of with the twin cameras behind my optics and now those pictures had been printed at the office and were laid out across the table.

I looked up into the corner of the room the way I always did when I wanted to make sure Ada was watching.

“Interesting,” I said.

Ada laughed. “So cool and modest too. I knew I liked you, Raymondo.”

I looked back down at the pictures. “I’m guessing this is what we were after?”

“I’m guessing you’re right, chief.”

The photographs were black and white, but the original papers had been blue. They were big, rectangular papers, covered in fine white lines and tiny white text that popped against the deep dark background. The papers had been so big I’d had to stand tiptoe just to get a good shot of them.

They were blueprints. They’d just been sitting in Falzarano’s unlocked top drawer. I pointed this out to Ada and she tsked. “What happened to hiding a safe behind a picture on the wall? Don’t the bad guys keep stuff in safes anymore?”

I shrugged. “What does he need with a safe or a locked drawer when the whole house is under armed guard?”

At this Ada laughed.

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