Deal Me Out Read Online Free PDF Page B

attention to the others.
    ‘Take your time.’
    She lit a cigarette and I lifted the window a discreetinch. She held up the picture of Henry Majors.
    ‘I said to take your time.’
    Her puff of smoke drifted across the surface of the photograph. ‘I don’t need to take my time. I know this guy and Bill knows him too. He didn’t always have the moustache but I couldn’t mistake those eyes.’
    Majors’ eyes were small and close-set, giving him a slightly lizardy look. His moustache was unconvincing to a sceptical eye, but probably no more than real moustaches. Erica had selected a photo in which Majors was caught looking up from the registration form on which he had been writing. A pair of tinted spectacles was sitting on the desk beside his writing hand. In the other photograph he had the glasses firmly in place and the lizardy look was gone.
    ‘What’s his name?’
    ‘I’m trying to think.’ For that she seemed to need a new cigarette, and since her Dad owned an import business she could afford to butt out one scarcely smoked and light a new one. She blew smoke at my water-stained wall.
    ‘You don’t know any of the others? They’re …’
    ‘Shh!’
    When half of the cigarette was gone she snapped her fingers. ‘Got it. Mal!’
    ‘Mal? Mal who?’
    ‘I don’t know; but Bill brought him home from the pub one night. I didn’t like him, but he and Bill seemed to hit it off. I don’t know what time Bill came to bed, but it was late and he was very drunk.’
    ‘That’s the only time you saw him?’
    ‘Yes. But I know that Bill saw him again at least once—for a drink, of course.’
    ‘When was this?’
    ‘’bout a month ago, bit less maybe.’
    ‘Well, that makes him look like the contact, but, God, it’s not much to go on. Mal—that all?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Okay—big question, what pub?’
    She stubbed out the cigarette and looked seriously at me. Her creamy skin was unlined except for a small frown mark between her eyes which was visible through a gap in the fringe. That mark deepened now.
    ‘I can’t remember the name, but I can take you there.’
    I shook my head. ‘Come on, Erica, this is my line of work. You know the name of the place.’
    The frown line deepened further. ‘I clean forget,’ she said.
    I laughed. ‘Lucky you’re not a client; who’d employ a detective that easily caught?’
    ‘I might.’
    I shook my head. ‘Conflict of interest. You’ve got me, Erica. You can come along but you’ll have to stay in the car.’
    ‘Why’s that?’
    ‘If Mal sees you and he’s been up to some tricks with Mountain he could get nasty or he could run.’ I sat down behind the desk again. Like all the best-looking women, she was impressively stylish in the simple clothes: ‘You sort of stand out in a crowd.’
    ‘I’ll wear shades and a hat, five inch heels. I’m going too. I’m afraid I hold the whip, Mr Hardy. I’m inviting you along, not asking permission to go.’
    I groaned. ‘How old are you?’
    ‘Twenty-eight. Why?’
    ‘How’d you get to be so tough?’
    She smiled. ‘A four foot eleven Chinese girl with four big brothers is tough or she’s a door mat. I’m just like everyone else—I like getting my own way. But I’m used to pushing for it.’
    ‘Okay, I’m pushed. Get ready to be bored.’
    ‘How d’you mean?’
    ‘You expect to roll up to the pub about nine tonight and spot him drinking scotch on his own in the saloon bar, don’t you? Then we take him aside for a little chat and hetells us all he knows about Bill. That it?’
    She didn’t say anything but I guessed I’d described her fantasy about right.
    ‘It won’t be like that, I can tell you. He won’t be there tonight and probably not for several nights, if he shows up at all. He won’t want to talk to us and even if he does he won’t know much. He’ll lie to us. That’s the way these things work.’
    She pursed her lips and looked determined. ‘I was bored for years and years before I