Don't Look Behind You Read Online Free PDF Page B

me.”
    “That’ll be swell for your appetites.” He pointed a stubby finger at me. “You just keep that chick out of the line of fire, Mike. Hear me?”
    I stuck my paper under my arm and winked. “I try, kid, I try. But she’s damn near as trigger-happy as I am.”
    That got a smile out of the crinkly face, and he waved as I walked off.
    * * *
    When I finished getting dressed, I popped open a cold can of beer and pulled the duplicate hot file out of the closet’s top shelf, stuck behind hats and gloves and scarves.
    It was something an old cop had started me doing a long time ago, keeping track of anyone and anything that might want to come back on me, and to do so in duplicate—a set for the office, another at home. The little metal file held my history in the P.I. racket, and a blood-drenched history it was.
    Sending me to the boneyard had been tried before and never worked, because each time had been a personal effort and I had been a little smarter and a lot faster and death cures any further trying.
    But this time a third party had been involved. A professional killer. That made it a different kind of game, a big all-star game and the other side had the advantage of invisibility, and nobody would be calling foul.
    Twice, I went through the card file, going back a full five years; but the only ones who could have had a grudge big enough to kill me over had been dead a long time, or were serving life sentences with no parole. Finally I yanked out two of the cards, copied the information down on my notepad, then slipped the cards back in place. There was always the possibility of a late blooming vendetta, and if one had blossomed, it might well have come from the family or friends of the pair I had selected. It wouldn’t take long to check out.
    Before I left I reloaded the .45 with high velocity hollow points and slid it into the shoulder harness. It made one hell of a mean weapon, but if anybody was going to come up against me, I wanted all the odds I could get going my way. Just being tipped by one of those slugs could spin a damn horse around, and a full center shot would make a pretty disgusting picture.
    Like the one friend Woodcock left behind him on my office wall.
    I caught myself in the mirror just before I left. Other than my morning shave, looking at my reflection was something I didn’t do much any more, because I didn’t like what was there. I’d always been ugly but now I was getting older, and it didn’t help. You start counting all the times you’ve been to the well and know that it had to stop sometime. Time has a way of slowing you down, and making you careless, and when you look at your own face, knowing what it has seen, you wonder how you even have the ability to smile at all any more.
    Then I remembered Woodcock in my office and the mechanics of every calculated, seemingly casual move I had made to finally put him down, and let a cold grin split my lips, because expertise and a high survival factor still had the edge on time.
    I jammed on my hat, climbed inside my trench-style raincoat and let myself out the door, my hand tucked inside my coat and suit jacket like I was doing a Napoleon routine. The hallway was empty.
    The elevator took me down to the basement and I went out the back door and picked up a cab on the street behind the building. It had been a long time since I had to pull any of this garbage, but it had been a long time since anybody had tried to rub me out, too.
    The archaic sound of that made me remember just how long I had been around and that such things had been going on around me.
    Somehow, I didn’t get the charge out of it that I used to. But I would need to get my head in the game or have it get blown the hell off.
    * * *
    At the venerable Blue Ribbon Restaurant on West Forty-fourth, Velda and I sat in the bar at our usual corner table in a niche overseen by celebrity photos, a good number of whom seemed to be eavesdropping. I’d had the knockwurst plate, Velda