The Private Eye by Cleve F. Adams

Author:Cleve F. Adams [Adams, Cleve F.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: crime, detective, hardboiled, murder, mystery, private eye, suspense
Publisher: Signet
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

IN AN APARTMENT over a hardware store on Second Street Shannon found Maxie Mueller, business agent for the Amalgamated Mine Workers. The ferret-like little man stared at his caller with sleep-drugged eyes. It was four o’clock in the morning. “What’s the big idea?” He was in the noisiest pajamas Shannon had ever seen. Behind him the cluttered room had the look of a poker flat after an all-night session.

“I just thought we ought to have a little talk,” Shannon said. He put a flattened hand in the middle of the small man’s chest and pushed. He went in and closed the door and twisted the key. Sombre eyes watched Mueller pick himself out of the wreckage of a taboret loaded with bottles, glasses and overflowing ash trays. Some of the cigarette butts had lipstick on them. “Where were you between midnight and one o’clock?”

“Here,” Mueller said promptly. He licked his thin lips. “I can prove it.” After a while he got around to asking the inevitable “Why?”

Shannon leaned his back comfortably against the door. There was a little color in his high cheekbones and his mouth was not pleasant. “Somebody took a shot at a friend of mine,” he said. “I thought it might be you.” He did not believe that the bullet had been aimed at Frances, but he thought it a good idea to go on pretending that he did. At least for a while. Mueller was indignant. “Why the hell should I?”

“For the same reason you threw that dynamite,” Shannon said. He took out his gun.

Mueller’s shifty eyes darted around the room. His skin was the color of old parchment. “You—you must be crazy!”

“I am,” Shannon nodded. “In about two minutes I’m going to start shooting, and I’m going to watch the slugs bounce you around on the floor till there aren’t any more.” His smile was that of an epicure savoring his favorite dish. “I’m going to like that, Maxie.”

Desperately Mueller seized on the promised stay of execution. You can say an awful lot in two minutes. “Now look, copper, you got me all wrong. Why should I have thrown that 60 percent?”

“So it was 60 percent,” Shannon said. “The guy didn’t tell me that.”

“What guy?”

“The guy you got it from.” Shannon said this with as much confidence as though he and the guy were buddies. He figured he was on pretty firm ground now. So did Mueller. With a bleat of terror the small man bent far over and scuttled for the bedroom door. Shannon ran after him. Mueller actually had his hand on the knob when Shannon caught him by the scruff of the neck and hauled him kicking back into the room and hurled him into a chair. “You son of a bitch.”

Mueller watched the gun with the intent gaze of a hypnotized bird. “You—you didn’t shoot!” He appeared to extract some small degree of hope from this fact. “I’ve got dough, copper. How—how’s about just forgetting the whole thing?”

Shannon’s smile was a trifle wolfish now.

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