Everybody Dies Read Online Free PDF

and irony began. I'm not sure it was clear to him, either.
    Andy let us out at Grogan's. Mick told him to drop the Cadillac at the garage. "I'll take a taxi to St. Bernard's," he said. "Or I might walk. I've time enough."
    Burke had closed the place hours ago. Mick opened the steel accordion gates and unlocked the door. Inside, the lights were off, the chairs perched on top of the tables, so they'd be out of the way when the floor was mopped.
    We went into the back room he uses for an office. He spun the dial of the huge old Mosler safe and drew out a sheaf of bills. "I want to hire you," he announced.
    "You want to hire me?"
    "As a detective. It's what you do, isn't it? Someone hires you and you undertake an investigation."
    "It's what I do," I agreed.
    "I want to know who did this."
    I'd been thinking about it. "It could have been spur of the moment," I said. "Somebody with an adjoining cubicle sees two guys standing around and all that booze there for the taking. What did you say it ran to?"
    "Fifty or sixty cases."
    "Well, what's that worth? Twelve bottles to a case, and how much a bottle? Say ten dollars? Is that about right?"
    Amusement showed in his eyes. "They've raised the price of the creature since the day you stopped drinking it."
    "I'm surprised they're still in business."
    "It's hard for them without your custom, but they manage. Say two hundred dollars a case."
    I did the math. "Ten thousand dollars," I said, "in round numbers. That's enough to make it worth stealing."
    "Indeed it is. Why do you think we stole it in the first place? Though we didn't feel the need to kill anyone."
    "If it wasn't somebody who just happened to be there," I went on, "then either somebody followed McCartney and Kenny or else they had the place staked out and waited for somebody to come and open up. But what sense does that make?"
    There was an opened bottle of whiskey on his desk. He uncapped it, looked around for a glass, then took a short drink straight from the bottle.
    "I need to know," he said.
    "And you want me to find out for you."
    "I do. It's your line of work, and I'd be entirely useless at it myself."
    "So it would be up to me to learn what happened, and who was responsible."
    "It would."
    "And then I would turn the information over to you."
    "What are you getting at, man?"
    "Well, I'd be delivering a death sentence, wouldn't I?"
    "Ah," he said.
    "Unless you're planning on bringing the police into it."
    "No," he said. "No, I wouldn't regard it as a police matter."
    "I didn't think so."
    He put a hand on the bottle but left it where it stood. He said, "You saw what they did to those two lads. Not just the bullets but a beating as well. It's no more than justice for them to pay for it."
    "Rough justice, when you mete it out yourself."
    "And isn't most justice rough justice?"
    I wondered if I believed that. I said, "My problem's not in the action you take. My problem's being a part of it."
    "Ah," he said. "I can understand that."
    "What you do is up to you," I said, "and I'd be hard put to recommend an alternative. You can't go to the cops, and it's late in life for you to start turning the other cheek."
    "It would go against the grain," he allowed.
    "And sometimes a person can't turn the other cheek," I said, "or walk away and leave it to the cops. I've been there myself."
    "I know you have."
    "And I'm not sure I chose the right course, but I seem to have been able to live with it. So I can't tell you not to pick up a gun, not when I might do the same thing myself in your position. But it's your position, not mine, and I don't want to be the one who points the gun for you."
    He thought that over, nodded slowly. "I can see the sense in that," he said.
    "Your friendship is important to me," I said, "and I'd bend what principles I have for the sake of it. But I don't think this situation calls for it."
    His hand found the bottle again, and this time he drank from it. He said, "Something you said, that it might have been men