Collection 1983 - The Hills Of Homicide (v5.0) Read Online Free PDF

it was a silly thing to do. If a man wants a girl to stop laughing or talking, it is always better to kiss her. Which, I thought, was not a bad idea under any circumstances.
    “Now, listen.” Caronna stopped in front of her with his finger pointed at her. “You go back downtown an’ stay there until I send for you. Keep your ears open. That café is the best listening post in town. You tell me what you hear an’ all you hear, just like you have been. Keep an eye on Loftus, and on that dick. Also, you listen for any rumble from Johnny Holben.”
    “That old guy? You really are getting scary, Blacky.”
    “Scary nothing!” he snapped. “You listen to me, babe, an’ you won’t stub any toes. That old blister is smart. He’s been nosin’ around some, an’ he worries me more than the sheriff. If he should get an idea we had anything to do with that, he might start shootin’. It’s all right to be big and rough, but Holben is no bargain for anybody. He’ll shoot first and talk after!”
    She turned to the door, and he walked with her, a hand on her elbow. At the door they stopped, and from the nearness of their shadows I deduced the business session was over. This looked purely social. It was time for us to leave.
    Surprisingly, we got out without any excitement. It all looked pretty and sweet. We had heard something, enough to prove that my first guess was probably right, and it didn’t seem there was any chance of Caronna ever knowing we had visited him.
    That was a wrong guess, a very wrong guess, but we didn’t know at the time.
    We didn’t know that Karen’s shoe left a distinct print in the grease spilled on the tool bench inside that garage window. We didn’t know that she left two tracks on the garden walk, or that some of the grease rubbed off on a stone under Blacky Caronna’s window.

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    I N THE MORNING I sat over my coffee for a long time. No matter how I sized up the case, it all came back to the same thing. Caronna hadn’t killed Old Man Bitner, but he knew who had. And despite the fact that he wasn’t the killer, he was in this up to his ears and definitely to be reckoned with.
    That copy of
Billboard
was the tipoff. And it meant that I had to get out of here and locate the Greater American Shows, so I could have a look at Dick Castro. Richard Henry Castro, showman and importer of animals.
    Caronna came into the café and he walked right over and sat down at the table. I looked up at him. “I can clear you,” I said. “I know who the killer was, and you’re definitely in the clear. All I need to know now is how he did it.”
    He dismissed my information with a wave of the hand. His eyes were flat and black. “Here.” He peeled off five century notes. “Go on home. You’re through.”
    “What?”
    His eyes were like a rattlesnake’s. “Get out of town,” he snarled. “You been workin’ for that babe more than for me. You’ve been paid—now beat it.”
    That got me. “Supposing I decide to stay and work on my own?”
    “You’ve got no right unless you’re retained,” he said. “Anyway, your company won’t let you stay without dough. Who’s going to pay off in this town? And,” he said coldly, “I wouldn’t like it.”
    “That would be tough,” I said. “I’m staying.”
    The smile left his lips. It had never been in his eyes. “I’m giving you until midnight to get out of town,” he snarled. Then he shoved back his chair and got up. There was a big miner sitting at the counter, a guy I’d noticed around. When I stopped to think about it, I’d never seen him working.
    Caronna stopped alongside of him. “Look,” he said, “If you see that dick around here after midnight, beat his ears off. If you need help, get it!”
    The miner turned. He had flat cheekbones and ears back against his skull. He looked at me coldly. “I won’t need help,” he said.
    It was warm in the sunlight, and I stood there a minute. Somehow, the sudden change didn’t fit. What had