Loren D. Estleman_Amos Walker 03 by The Midnight Man

Author:The Midnight Man [Man, The Midnight]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General, Mystery & Detective
ISBN: 9780333466216
Publisher: I Books
Published: 1982-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

16

A SHARD OF GLASS four inches long brushed my left cheekbone a half-inch behind the eye, accompanied by a rapid snapping, like typewriter keys striking a stiff sheet of paper. I hit the floor rolling and drew the .38 as I came up on the other side of the reliable studio couch. Tires cried down in the street, an engine wound up and then was swallowed by distance. I waited, but there were no more shots.

Something trickled down my left cheek. The hand I put up to wipe it away came back with blood on the fingers. The piece of glass had opened a two-inch cut in my temple. I pressed my folded handkerchief to it until the bleeding stopped. My own razor had done worse damage. I was getting up when Bassett hurtled through the door behind his big magnum.

“Who’s dead?” he demanded. “I heard busting glass on my way up.”

“Not now. I’m having palpitations.”

Leathering the Smith & Wesson, I examined the wall facing the window. They weren’t hard to locate. Three separate dish-shaped depressions grouped in a pyramid, exposing fist-size circles of broken lath beneath the plaster. I’d seen slug holes like those before. I wondered where.

I watched a fly take off from the mound of paper in the IN basket on Alderdyce’s battleship-gray desk, execute a series of stalls and barrel rolls in the stale air near the ceiling, then light beside another fly on the wall next to the pebbled-glass door. Having failed to strike up a relationship, the newcomer buzzed away when the door opened. Sergeant Hornet paused a beat on the threshold, then came the rest of the way inside, closing the door behind him. The fly escaped into the squad room a quarter of an inch short of being squashed. Oh, to have wings.

“You still here?” Hornet eased his bulk into the chair behind the desk. The springs creaked.

“John said to wait. He let you sit there often, or do you hold off until he’s out of the room?”

His eyes were water-colored in folds of fat, but they were cop’s eyes just the same. They hand them out in the twelfth week of the training course. He’d smeared something white on his heat rash, making him look like an obese Indian in warpaint. “He’s mad as hell at you,” he said. “I don’t think I ever seen him madder.”

“You haven’t known him as long as I have.”

“That wasn’t smart, not telling us the girl on McDougall was Deak Ridder’s sister. We’d known that, we could of picked him up for questioning and been on Smith’s case right now. Why’d you do it?”

“What is this, relays? I made a statement.”

He shook his head. “You never said why. John told me to ask. He don’t trust himself to be in the same room with you just now.”

I started to tap out a Winston, then decided against it. My throat was raw already. “Ridder was the only lead I had that you didn’t. He was my chance to bring Smith in alive, which is what my client ordered.

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