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

brought about the difference in his feelings between the time he had talked with Toni and now? Shrugging that one off, I turned down the street toward the jail.
    Loftus had his heels on the rolltop desk. He smiled at me. “Got anything?” he asked.
    “Yeah,” I said. “Trouble.”
    “I don’t mind admittin’,” Loftus said, “this case has got me stopped. Johnny Holben knows somethin’, but he won’t talk. That Caronna knows somethin’, too. He’s been buyin’ highgrade, most of it from the Bitner Mine. That was probably what their fuss was about, but that ain’t the end of it.”
    “You’re right, it isn’t.” Briefly, I explained about being fired, and then added, “I don’t want to leave this case, Loftus. I think I can break it within forty-eight hours. I think I have all the answers figured out. Whether I do it or not is up to you.”
    “To me?”
    “Yes. I want you to make me a deputy sheriff for the duration of this job.”
    “Workin’ right for me?”
    “That’s right.”
    He took his feet off the desk. “Hold up your right hand,” he said.

----
    W HEN I WAS leaving, I turned suddenly to Loftus. “Oh, yes. I’m going out of town for a while. Over to Ogden on the trail of the Greater American Shows.”
    “There’s a car here you can use,” he said. “When are you leavin’?”
    “About ten minutes after midnight,” I said.
    Then I explained, and he nodded. “That’s Nick Ries, and he’s a bad number. You watch your step.”
    At eleven-thirty I walked to the jail and picked up the keys to the car. Then I drove it out of the garage and parked it in front of the café. It was Saturday night, and the café was open until twelve.
    Karen’s eyes brightened up when I walked into the café. Toni came over to wait on us. Giving her plenty of time to get close enough to hear, I said to Karen, “Got my walking papers today. Caronna fired me.”
    “He did?” She looked surprised and puzzled. “Why?”
    “He thinks I’ve been spending too much time with you. He also gave me until midnight to get out of town or that”—I pointed at Nick Ries at the counter—“gives me a going-over.”
    She glanced at her watch, then at Ries. “Are—are you going?”
    “No,” I said loud enough for Ries to hear. “Right now I’m waiting for one minute after twelve. I want to see what the bear-that-walks-like-a-man can do besides look tough.”
    Ries glanced over at me and turned another page of his newspaper.
    We talked softly then, and somehow the things we found to talk about had nothing to do with murder or crime or Caronna; they were the things we might have talked about had we met in Los Angeles or Peoria or Louisville.
    She was getting under my skin, and somehow I did not mind in the least.
    Suddenly, a shadow loomed over our table. Instinctively, my eyes dropped to my wristwatch. It was one minute past twelve.
    Nick Ries was there beside the table, and all I had to do was make a move to get up and he would swing.
    It was a four-chair table, and Karen sat across from me. Nick was standing by the chair on my right. I turned a little in my chair and looked up at Nick.
    “Here’s where you get it,” he said.
    My left foot had swung over when I turned a little toward him and I put it against the rung of the chair in front of Nick and shoved, hard.
    It was just enough to throw him off balance. He staggered back a step, and then I was on my feet. He got set and lunged at me, but that was something I liked. My left forearm went up to catch his right, and then I lifted a right uppercut from my belt that clipped him on the chin. His head jerked back and both feet flew up and he hit the floor in a lump.
    Shaking his head, he gave a grunt, then came up and toward me in a diving run. I slapped his head with an open left palm to set him off balance and to measure him, and then broke his nose with another right uppercut.
    The punch straightened him up, and I walked in, throwing them with both