Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 08 Read Online Free PDF

it, flinching.
    “I don’t need no goddamn bullet-proof BVDs, Seymour! Jesus H. Kee-rist! I’d look, and feel , like a damn fool in the fucker. Send it back!”
    Seymour’s homely face was tight with concern. “Huey…please…with these death threats…you have to have protection.”
    “The kind of protection I need ain’t the kind you wear. ”
    “I simply thought…”
    “That’s your problem, lately. Simple thinkin’.” He shook his head and the spit curl flounced. “Well, ya did one thing right, anyway—you invited my ol’ pal Heller here to come to my birthday shindig.”
    Seymour managed a smile that was a sickly half-moon.
    Huey waved dismissively in the air, as if shooing a fly. “Seymour, check on them train reservations.”
    “I already have….”
    “Double-check. Don’t you understand? I want some privacy here. I want a private consultation with my Chicaga security adviser.”
    Seymour nodded numbly, rose, and carrying the tan bullet-proof vest in his hands like something he needed to bury, went out, shutting the door behind him.
    The Kingfish slapped me on the shoulder; his grin was tight and somewhat glazed; he was, after all, at least a little crazy. “So…you’re in private practice now, are ya, son? Ya know, I’m serious about that job offer still bein’ good.”
    “That’s flattering, Senator.”
    “Huey. Call me ‘Huey,’ or ‘Kingfish.’ Senator is what you call them numbskulls back in Washington.”
    “All right…Huey. But I got a nice little business goin’ back home.”
    He jerked, as if I’d slapped him. “In this goddamn depression? Under Prince Franklin? Are you joshin’?”
    Actually, I kind of felt the depression was letting up a little, and I’d voted for FDR; but I didn’t share that with the Kingfish.
    “Well, I have clients to consider. Retail credit, insurance investigation…can’t just walk away from them.”
    And I had no desire to move to bayou country, even temporarily, though I didn’t share that thought with him, either. Swamps and gators weren’t my style.
    “Can you give me jest a little ol’ month of your time, son?” His voice had turned surprisingly gentle; the soapbox nowhere to be seen. “Even jest a measly li’l ol’ two weeks?”
    “Well, I might be—”
    He leaned forward; his dark brown eyes fixed on me in a manner that was both seductive and discomfiting. “I need a man …a man I can trust.”
    “What about Seymour Weiss?”
    “I trust him like a brother,” he said flatly. Then he leaned back, and draped his arms along on the top of the sofa. “’Course, on t’other hand, I don’t in particular trust my brothers.”
    “You said yourself, Murphy Roden’s a good man.”
    “So he is, and so, in his inimitable way, is Joe Messina—he’d die for me.”
    “He also needs help tying his shoes.”
    “That’s a God-granted fact,” Huey said, and grinned. “So…what I need is a man I can trust, who’s also a man with brains….” He winked at me. “An outside man to be my inside man. What’s your goin’ rate, Detective Heller?”
    “Twenty-five a day.” For those clients I figured could afford it, anyway.
    He raised his eyebrows and looked down the double barrels of his shotgun nose at me. “Son, I’ll pay you ten times that with a minimum retainer coverin’ a week’s work—cash on the barrelhead.”
    I perked up. Despite that cornpone drawl, he was talking my language now.
    “And,” he said, with a flourish of a hand gesture, “I’ll toss in a ten-thousand-dollar bonus…iffen you come through for me.”
    “Come through how?”
    He used the Zippo to light up the cigar again; from the aroma, I’d bet a C-note it was a Havana. Oddly, considering how hard-drinking he’d been back in Chicago in ’32, there was no sign in the suite of a bar or liquor cart or even a bottle.
    Then, as casually as if he were asking somebody to pass the salt, he said, “Sometime in the next week or so…give or