Kolchak The Night Strangler Read Online Free PDF Page A

glow.
    “I’m starved,” she said brightly. “Let’s go get some food.” I stumbled off my stool and began searching my pockets. I came up with something less than two dollars. I looked at her and shrugged. “Whatever it is, it won’t be fancy. I forgot to cash my paycheck.” Hell I’d forgotten to even pick it up.
    She looked at me with a curious mixture of sympathy and amusement. “Not to worry. The price will be right. I’m buying.”
    We made our way over to First Avenue and Pioneer Square Park. There, at a hot-dog stand across from the Blue Banjo, we shivered in the rain and drizzle and gobbled foot-long dogs with the works on them. It was silly. I was potted. I was wet. I was freezing. And I was enjoying every minute of it. There was just something about Louise Harper that was getting to me.
    As we drank steaming coffee from paper containers, I noticed something odd across the street. There was a line of people… about 100 in all, marching double file out of the Blue Banjo Club and moving deliberately into the doorway of a nearby building which looked very old and abandoned. Most of them were wearing raincoats and carrying flashlights. Incongruously enough one of the fellows up front was wearing a red coat and a white plastic imitation straw skimmer. (It had to be plastic. Everything is plastic nowadays. Well, not everything. I put my arm around Louise’s waist. She was definitely not plastic.)
    “What’s that? The angry townspeople getting ready to lynch some old wino for the murder of Gail Manning?”
    “That, Mr. Reporter, is the Underground Tour.” A baby’s voice.
    “Underground?”
    Charisma and her bulky “husband” had joined us.
    “Yeth. There’s ruins underneath the streets here—what they call Old Seattle. Ithn’t that right, Wilma?”
    Wilma grunted and thrust a hot dog at Gladys-Charisma, who accepted it with the docility of a well-trained dog. Louise smiled. Gladys-Charisma was almost too cute for words, bundled up in a fox-collared trench coat, batting foot-long eyelashes and, by God, lisping to boot!
    “Oh, thank you, Wilma honey. I just love hot dogs. You’re tho-o, good to your baby Gladyth.”
    It was enough to make me want to vomit.
“Oh, yeth. I wath talking about the Underground, wathn’t I?”
    I smiled benignly and nodded. All those Scotches helped put a buffer between me and all forms of inanity.
    “There wath a big fire here in eighteen-something-or-other and, for some strange reason I don’t know about, they built it all back… the town, that ith… but much higher than before. Ithn’t that right, Wil…?”
    The redoubtable Ms. Krankheimer (or Mr. Krankheimer, if you prefer) yanked her away in mid-sentence. “Come on , Gladys. It’s almost show time.”
    Gladys-Charisma batted her phony lashes, smiled apologetically, and moved off in Wilma’s charge. I turned to Louise who was still smiling that enigmatic little smile of hers.
    “Bright girl,” I ventured.
    “She’s a nice kid. I noticed you noticing her. She’s got nice boobs.”
    “Yes. Three of them. Two in front and one between her shoulders.”
    “Now, Kolchak…”
    “Carl…”
“Carl, then. Look at you. You’re soaked to the skin. Why don’t we take you home and build a nice little fire and get nice and warm and cozy?”
    I couldn’t believe my ears. ”Why don’t we?”
    Sometime much later, as we lay on a tiny fur rug in front of her tiny fireplace, the waters of Lake Washington causing her houseboat to roll in a most relaxing way, I wondered aloud why she had invited me over.
    “Oh, I don’t know. You looked like a wet cocker spaniel. I have been known to take in strays every now and then. With a shave and some decent clothes you might not look half bad.” Her finger traced a line down my cheek and came to rest on the slight scar on the right side of my mouth. Another reminder of one time too many when I’d stuck my neck out and opened that big mouth.
    “You and Humphrey