Murder Takes a Break Read Online Free PDF

to the drugstore.   It was only a couple of blocks, but the sidewalks were jammed.   I must have passed a thousand people on their way to The Strand.   Only a few of them were dressed in costume.   I spotted a chimney sweep, a Tiny Tim wearing headphones and carrying a disc player, and a couple of guys who might have been trying to pass as David Copperfield.   I suspected that they were awfully warm in their Victorian attire.   The fog was long gone, and the sun was bearing down.   It must have been nearly eighty degrees, and the humidity was so high that I could feel moisture accumulating under my sweatshirt.   It was more like spring than the middle of the winter, but I wasn't complaining.
    I walked past a used-book store where two men sat over a chessboard.   A very large black dog was asleep in the window.   The drugstore was next door, and I went inside.   It was a relief to get away from the crowd.   Lattner was already there, sitting on a red vinyl-topped stool at the counter that formed a square in the middle of the floor.  
    The drugstore consisted of one large, high-ceilinged room.   The counter took up most of it, but there were display cases that held souvenirs and collectibles like old magazines and movie star photos.   The walls were covered with advertising signs, most of them as old as the magazines.   A woman with brown hair and wise eyes was behind the counter, and a man with eyes just a little less wise was sweeping the floor with a push broom.
    "Crowded out there?" the woman asked me.
    "Just a little," I said.
    "I wouldn't go out there for a hundred bucks.   I just stay in here till it's time to go home, and then I leave.   I don't want anything to do with a crowd like that."
    I knew what she meant.   The crowd would be so thick on The Strand that you couldn't walk where you wanted to.   You'd just have to go wherever the ebb and flow of the herd took you.
    "I don't blame you," I said.   "How's the barbecue plate today?"
    "It's good," she said.   "But then it's good every day."
    I sat down by Lattner.   He was snake-skinny and his belt size must have been about 28.   He had a hatchet face, black hair that he combed straight back, and black eyes that looked right at you.   His sport coat must have been ten years old, and it was about one size too big for him.   Maybe he'd lost weight some time during the last decade.
    "Barbecue all right with you?" I asked him.
    "That's what I came for," he said in that hard voice of his.   "That and the potato salad."
    "Make it two," I said, and the woman turned away to fix the plates.   The sweeper disappeared somewhere into the back.   Maybe there was another room after all.
    Lattner didn't seem inclined to talk, but I figured that since I was buying the lunch he might as well earn it.
    "About the Kirbo case," I said.
    "Nothing to it," Lattner said.   "The kid came down here, and he never went home.   No evidence of foul play.   He was probably tired of college and didn't want to face the folks at home.   Case closed."
    The woman set two glasses of water in front of us.   "Get you anything else to drink?"
    "Water's just fine with me," I said, but Lattner wanted iced tea.   Probably because I was paying.
    "The case isn't really closed," I said.   "Kirbo's still missing."
    Lattner tilted back his head and took a drink of water.   His Adam's apple was the size of a golf ball.
    "Just a manner of speaking," he said, setting his glass on the counter.   "It's an open case, sure, technically open.   But it might as well be closed.   No one's going to find that kid.   I've talked to his friends; they don't know where he went or what happened to him.   I've talked to his parents; they don't know either.   He hasn't used his credit cards, he hasn't phoned home, and he hasn't turned up on America's Most Wanted .   He doesn't want to be found, and no