A Nasty Piece of Work Read Online Free PDF

Awlson, you described Gava’s eyes flicking here and there and taking in everything. Everything but you. I don’t want you to take this the wrong way but if I spotted you sitting at the bar I wouldn’t purchase cocaine no matter how dark the joint was.”
    His eyes, which up to then had been squinting, slowly opened and he looked at me as if he were seeing me for the first time. “You ask all-right questions, Gunn. You been in the indemnity racket long?”
    “Long enough to notice things that are as plain as the nose on your face.”
    “My view is that I could pass for anythin’ from a travelin’ salesman to a travel agent. Officer DiPego chews gum and nods his head in time to the music for which he wasn’t reimbursed, so he looks like somethin’ that washed up on the tide. But Officer Rodriguez is fresh out of the police academy. He looks like an undercover detective tryin’ not to look like an undercover detective. To answer your question, maybe Gava isn’t as street-smart as you. To answer your question, maybe his eyes wasn’t accustomed to the dark in the Blue Grass. To answer your question, I don’t know the answer to your question.”
    “I have another question. What were you doing hanging out at the Blue Grass?”
    “We had an anonymous tip that a buy had been set up for eleven that night.”
    “A letter?”
    “A phone call.”
    “Phone calls are usually recorded.”
    He nodded carefully. “That’s correct.”
    “Do you have any idea who supplied the tip?”
    “It’s not anybody I’d want to break bread with. Listen up, Gunn, you know and I know and the wall over there knows that the tipster wasn’t a law-abidin’ United States of America citizen who overheard a conversation somewhere and wanted to help keep New Mexico drug-free. It was someone with a grudge against one of the perpetrators. It was someone who had somethin’ to gain by the arrest of one or both of the perpetrators. Gava and the Chicano kid were handed to us on a silver platter. Me, I am blue-collar, which is to say I never trust the contents of silver platters. If you want my opinion, the whole thing stinks.”
    “It’d sure be interesting to know who phoned in with the tip.”
    Detective Awlson’s scornful smile made a curtain call. Fan lines spread out from the corners of his eyes. It was easy to see he’d give his right arm to know the identity of the tipster. I decided to push my luck and asked him if I could get to hear the original phone call. On the theory that if you go hog, you might as well go whole hog, I asked if I could have a copy of the phone call. I told him about drawing a blank at the Las Cruces Star and asked for a copy of Gava’s mug shot.
    Awlson let his glance drift over to the wall clock just as the minute hand thudded onto the hour. He pushed himself off the chair and shrugged his way into his shoulder holster and headed for the Records Department on the second floor. I fell in alongside him. “Nice digs you have here in Las Cruces,” I remarked. “It’s got lots of class.”
    “They’re tearin’ it down in the fall to make way for another of them shopping malls. As if we weren’t drownin’ in shopping malls. We’re movin’ into one of those air-conditioned glass-and-steel doohickeys downtown. Word is they’re swappin’ our electric typewriters for word processors. First I hear that words can be processed. Live, learn. What the hell, I’ll add my IBM to the pile of Remingtons on the floor in case the newfangled computers crash, which is somethin’ I’m told they do if you look cross-eyed at them.”
    “People in New Mexico kill for air-conditioning,” I said.
    Awlson shrugged. “I’m not lookin’ forward to the move. Someone told me you can’t pry open the windows if you wanted to.” He snickered. “I s’pose they got our best interests at heart. I s’pose they don’t want us jumpin’ out in frustration.”

 
    Six
     
    I deposited messages on Ornella Neppi’s assorted