me three hundred dollars for a week’s worth of lookin’,” I said. “That’s my fee. That’s what everybody else pays. Uncle Sam ain’t no exception.”
“You already been paid for this.”
“Three hunnert dollars or you an’ General King could go jump in a lake.”
I was absolutely sure that Clarence Miles had murdered men with that mirthless grin on his face. He reached into his back pocket and came out with a large secretary-type wallet. He counted out three crisp new one-hundred-dollar bills and handed them to me. It was then I knew that whatever he was into, it was illegal.
Honest government men on official business wouldn’t hand out hundred-dollar bills. Since the day it was founded, the army hadn’t given out that high a denomination without a raft of accompanying paperwork.
I took the money, though, and put it in the pocket with the picture of the woman I had christened Ginny Tooms.
“How do I get in touch?” I asked my bent employer.
“What’s your phone number?”
I told him. He wrote it down on a slip of paper in his big wallet.
“We’ll call you tomorrow morning at nine hundred hours,” he said. Then he did an about-face and walked between his sentries. They executed somewhat less precise turns and followed him out.
It took them less than ten seconds to vacate the premises completely.
They might have been criminals, but they had been soldiers at some point along the way.
• 7 •
I had been distracted from my inspection of the neat little household but not derailed. Those soldiers hadn’t come for the kind of search I was mounting. They had come to either find Black or not. There was no subtlety to their intrusion.
It would have taken a dead body or a spilled bucket of blood to satisfy their curiosity. Also, they obviously didn’t know Christmas all that well; otherwise they would have come at him from three different directions, with their guns drawn and cocked. Christmas Black was a government-trained killer, one of the best of his kind in the world.
I went back to my seat on the little tan couch and looked around. After a while I spied that bumblebee again. It hadn’t moved in quite some time.
There was a wall that meant to be a kitchen toward the back of the studio apartment. The stovetop was empty and the sink too. There was nothing in the little refrigerator, and all the two-person dining table had to offer was a pair of sturdy maple chairs.
I carried one of these to the corner where the decorated soldier had stood. I climbed up and looked into the depths of a smallish black hole that had masqueraded as a bee. Only a bullet could have created that perfect little cavity.
Along with the PI’s license, I carried a yellow number two pencil in my shirt pocket. This I poked into the hole. The pink eraser pointed me back to the the little sofa.
I got down on my hands and knees next to the foam rubber settee. I was about to inspect the wall and the floor when a wave of fear went through me.
What if Clarence Miles was smarter than I gave him credit for? Maybe he had gone out to wait for me to look around a bit more. His plan might have been to come back in on me, take whatever I’d found, and then have one of his soldiers execute me for good measure.
Grunting, I got to my feet, walked to the door, and locked it. Then I returned to the sofa, placing my pistol on the floor nearby for easy access.
Moving the sofa away from the white wall, I spied a faint red smudge. Not a droplet or a spatter but something that had been washed away as well as possible in the time allowed.
If Christmas had had ninety minutes, he would have gone to the hardware store and then painted over the blood he’d spilled.
The couch was now facing the front door. I sat on it again and tried to imagine what had happened.
Whoever it was that got shot was in the middle of the room when he was surprised by his assailant. The victim was armed and probably had his gun out. He turned