Murder Is My Dish Read Online Free PDF

holding an inquest, isn’t it? With some facts? Such as why you sent Dineen to New York?”
    â€œWho says I sent him?”
    â€œQuit stalling, damn you. Miss McGuire over at Receiving says so. I got a good mind to lock you up as a material witness and swallow the key.”
    â€œMaterial witness to what?” I asked.
    â€œWhen I want some of your lip, I’ll let you know,” he snarled.
    Of all the cops in New York, I thought, they had to send this one. But it helped me make a decision which had been bothering me. Tell a cop like him about Rafael Caballero and the kidnapers would be halfway to Tasmania before you could tie a string around the ransom money.
    â€œAll right. I sent him.”
    â€œYou sent him to do what?”
    â€œI’m not sure it would be in the best interests of my client if I told you that.”
    â€œMister, you’re looking for it. Don’t you know police departments were made to smash snotty shamuses like you?”
    â€œHave it your way,” I said. “Go ahead and smash me.”
    The morgue attendant was staring, goggle-eyed. The cop’s face came close and he snarled, “We could snap up your license before you had time to read your signature.”
    â€œYou could, if I was licensed in New York.”
    â€œOne of those wise detectives, huh?”
    â€œNo. But I wouldn’t be a detective at all if I didn’t realize that my first responsibility—”
    â€œAh, shut your yap!” he roared. “Wait here.”
    I waited. The swinging doors swung shut behind him. “You’re in for it, chief,” the morgue attendant predicted happily. “And I mean in for it.”
    I waited. I didn’t think I was in for it, but I wasn’t the Manhattan Homicide Squad. I smoked a couple of cigarettes, and went on waiting. They had nothing to go on. Just a murder on their hands, like all the unsolved murders in cities like New York and Washington that you never got to read about. And a private detective who, possibly, knew something. They weren’t going to lock me up. They weren’t going to tar and feather me and run me out of town. They were going to let me sit here and stew for a while, during which time their man would get on the phone and arrange for a tail to pick me up outside the Bellevue morgue.
    It was the better part of an hour before the Homicide cop came back through the swinging doors and deposited his sullen scowl about six inches from my face. “You ask me,” he said, “the captain’s got rocks in his head.”
    â€œMaybe he’s thinking of going into business for himself,” I suggested.
    â€œThat supposed to be a crack?”
    â€œIt missed the mark. Forget it.”
    â€œCaptain says to let you go. For now. But you stay right here in town, Drum. We’ll want you for the inquest. That clear? That God-damn clear?”
    â€œYes. And you tell the captain something for me. Tell him I like a man with rocks in his head.”
    â€œGo on. Get out a here.”
    â€œTsk, tsk. You’re not even telling me to keep my big nose out of the case.”
    â€œYou’ll push me too far, Drum.”
    Maybe he had something there. I lit a cigarette and offered him one. He surprised me by taking it. He got out of there before I did. I went over to the desk and tapped the magazine and told the attendant, “Don’t believe a word of it.”
    The tail was pretty good, as tails go. He was as unobtrusive as a freckle on a redheaded Irishman’s face, unless you were looking for him. I was looking for him. He was a smallish, hatless, nondescript man in a gray overcoat. He picked me up outside Bellevue and tagged along about a block behind me on First Avenue. He was a gray man, the kind whose face you never remember, the kind that helps fill up a crowd on any city street. I got into a cab. When I looked out the rear window, he was gone. But another cab was following