Dead Easy (A Flap Tucker Mystery Book 5) by Phillip DePoy

Author:Phillip DePoy [DePoy, Phillip]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2016-01-14T05:00:00+00:00

27. I Sleep While The City Burns

“What gives you that idea?” I tried to sound steady.

“She told me? When I called her this morning to come in?” He was asking me questions like that because he seemed to think that I was the densest person in the Southeast at that moment.

“Okay.” I was calm. “So you know about that.” Bluff: “Did she tell you the other thing?” Sometimes an outrageously vague lie like that can actually work.

“Yes, we know all about the other letters.” He sounded like he was tired of playing with me.

“So.” I know for a fact that my voice didn’t sound right, then, because Huyne looked up at me with actual concern.

“Flap?” He was searching my face. “You okay?”

“Tired.”

He looked back down. “It’s the hours you keep.” He got a piece of paper. “This is my warrant for you. All I have to do is sign and send, and you’ll be here with me permanent. I tell you this to explain how close you are to the edge, and to make sure you know not to mess with me on this thing, right?”

“The last thing I need from you,” I managed, smiling, “is information about how close to the edge I am at the moment.”

“Good.” He mistook my meaning. “So you go ahead and do your little investigation or whatever it is that you do, and you tell me everything I want to know, and by and by we’ll get the evil bad person that’s scaring our girl.”

Our girl.

He leaned forward. “Deal or not?”

“Yeah.” I rubbed my eyes. “Fine. Look, let me just think a second, here.” I looked hard at my hands and tried to focus my thinking. “Try checking out the inside elbow bend on Jersey’s body for some kind of skin or fiber evidence.”

“What?” He tilted his head.

“Like he’d had his arms around someone’s neck, for example. Would that show up, something like that?”

“Could.” Huyne looked away. “Your so-called client …”

“… stop. Okay?”

He was about to say something else when he decided on: “For now.”

I nodded.

“Anything else you might want your personal service to look for?”

“Is there any way of telling where the wrapping paper, the stiff’s packaging, is from?”

“Looking into just that.”

“Being who the dead guy is, and all — Dally thinks it might be down south. Invisible, or maybe Macon, Georgia.” Once again, I didn’t see any point in letting Huyne know that the guy had actually been in Atlanta for a while. Or that I had been to Invisible.

“Could have been wrapped there. But the paper wouldn’t have been made there.”

“No” — I smiled — “I guess it wouldn’t.”

“Are you just stalling, now?” He squinted. “Because this is all pretty much par for me …”

“… sorry.” I nodded quickly. “You’re right. I’m …”

“… you need sleep.”

“Yeah. Maybe I’ll go take a nap.”

“Just the thing. You sleep while the city burns.”

“That’d be a good thing for my business cards.” I stood. “‘I sleep while the city burns.’”

“Keep in touch.” He didn’t stand.

*

Back out on Ponce, the air seemed closer, and the traffic was like bugs swarming.

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