Front Sight: Three Swagger Novellas by Stephen Hunter

Author:Stephen Hunter [Hunter, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 9781668030363
Google: QUPrEAAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1668030365
Barnesnoble: 1668030365
Goodreads: 176443344
Publisher: Atria/Emily Bestler Books
Published: 2024-01-23T00:00:00+00:00

JOHNNY MINGLED WITH THE WIGWAM crowd. It was no snazzy place with swells in dinner jackets and broads showing off their frontage—instead, a lot of workingmen, truckers, all drinking cheap booze and throwing their bucks away on roulette and other casino games. Smoke floated in the air, and cheesy jukebox bebop and big band rattled the rafters. Dolls, painted up like the chorines they’d never be, circulated, cadging drinks or other forget-it-alls out of them.

Johnny wandered around the joint, cigarette dangling, hat pushed back, figuring it out. At the craps table he put a few bucks down, lost, and put a few more down. But he was checking out the clientele, and he saw two guys across the table really hard about the bones. They stood out because they were in suits, not overalls, and had that “I, Gangster” look. One leaned forward to toss the dice, a little too intensely.

“Go, Mama, go, Mama, go, Mama, go! Damn, crapped out again!”

As he leaned forward, his jacket fell forward, and Johnny noticed the grip of a .357 in a shoulder rig. Johnny looked to his partner and noted a bulge under his arm too.

He slid up to the bar, where Pete was talking with another mob Greek, maybe a boss, from his deep sense of cool, to use the new word imported from the darks.

He overheard the chatter.

“That boy of yours ain’t going flip on us? He shows all the signs.”

“Harry’s okay. Gets excited when he’s loaded and has the dice in his hands. He’s a good man on a job, though.”

Johnny found an angle to peer inside the man’s coat, checked, and saw the grip of a .357. More big artillery, a pro’s piece of work.

He sat back, revolving on his stool, and gesturing the barkeep over.

“Say, pal, I’m all gambled out and I’ve still got money left. Any other action here? What about these dames, are they just decoration or can a fella relax with one of ’em in private?”

“It’s a kind of a club, bud. If someone we know don’t vouch for you, you don’t get in.”

Pete, overhearing this, licked his chops at the prospect of a new mark. He leaned in, giving Johnny a once-over.

“He looks okay to me, Chuck. Where you from, pal?

“Down south in Dixie. Been to Biloxi, been to Phenix City, been to N’Awlins. Good places, all. Fella can have some fun.”

“What’s your business?”

“Ce-ment. I was a Seabee in the war, learned all about it. My firm runs ce-ment trucks to construction sites. Hear the Maryland coast is going to get all developed once they build that bridge.”

“You think ahead, chum. I like that. Okay, Chuck, let him go up.”

In a room upstairs, Johnny sat with a tired-looking woman in her thirties, going on her sixties.

“Okay, mister, what’ll it be. Straight lay is twenty, French is forty, and I’ll take you around the world for seventy-five. Well, seventy, because you’re cute.”

“How much for information?”

“Hey, what is this?”

“I don’t expect you to give nothing up because I’m so handsome.

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