Vein of Violence by William Campbell Gault

Author:William Campbell Gault [Gault, William Campbell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4405-3984-8
Publisher: Prologue Books
Published: 1961-03-15T05:00:00+00:00

TEN

NOW, IF YOU don’t mind, I have to get back to work ….

A cliché, used for dismissal. Back to work where? Enrico still looked like the hub of this wheel, but he was undoubtedly a man who had kept his tracks well covered. And murder needs a motive.

He had called Milgrim evil, but evil means different things to different people. To some, I had been evil last night. Others draw the line at murder but not at robbing widows. Murder stories pass the censor easily, but sex runs into trouble spasmodically. Is murder less evil than adultery? Only in America, this country of moral bewilderment.

I left my car on the parking lot and, full of confused musings, walked over to Headquarters. I found Sergeant Gnup and a uniformed man talking in a small room near Remington’s office.

Gnup looked at me hopefully, but I shook my head.

“We’ve got a lead on the coniine — maybe,” he said. “I’m checking it out after lunch.”

“A lead to whom?”

“Nobody, yet,” he said. “A source, with possible Mafia tie-up.”

I thought of Rivali, but said nothing.

“The standard American hoodlum doesn’t go in much for poison,” Gnup went on, “but who in hell is standard in this mess?”

“And who’s a hoodlum?” I added. “Did Lieutenant Remington tell you about Everett Milgrim being in town?”

“Yup.” Gnup grinned. “We’ll keep ‘im off balance. We put Reuter on it.”

Reuter, too, had once played professional football. With the Bears. I said, “Nothing you can hold him on, though?”

Gnup shook his head. “He was too slippery for that. A real operator.” He gave the uniformed man some papers and the man went out. He looked at me and sighed. “Do you think we’re on this side of the law only because we’re dumb?”

“It could be. We’re nowhere, aren’t we?”

“Not if this lead to the poison pans out. We’re always nowhere just before the light.”

It was time for lunch. And though I had had a full breakfast, I was ready to eat.

At the drugstore, my fan was not in sight. He probably had a day off. A dark, stocky girl took my order stoically; I missed my fan.

There was a copy of yesterday’s paper on the counter; I picked it up and leafed through the story I’d already read, glanced again at the pictures.

For a fractional moment, a flash of awareness flared in me and then died. Something in the pictures had triggered my investigating prescience for that slice of a second — and then vanished without identifying itself. I thought, thought and thought while I stared at the pictures, but nothing came.

Three stools closer to the front door, my beloved was now seating herself. Next to her, my Aunt Sheila was also taking a stool.

“Hey, girls!” I called. “Down here.” I pointed to the empty stools to the right of me.

Both of them turned their heads my way but on neither face was there any sign of recognition. I was getting the freeze.

I looked back at the pictures in the paper and then folded the paper and put it into my jacket pocket.

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