Murder Takes a Break Read Online Free PDF Page B

one's going to find him."
    "I am," I said, and immediately regretted giving Lattner an opening.
    He didn't hesitate to take it.   "Bullshit.   You couldn't find your fanny with a flashlight.   I've heard about you, Smith."
    I didn't ask what he'd heard or where he'd heard it.   Galveston is a small town.   Word gets around.   What interested me was why he wanted to make me angry.
    "That's pretty funny, that flashlight bit," I said.   "I remember laughing a lot when I heard it the first time.   About thirty years ago."
    "I know you're a smart-ass, too, so you don't have to waste your time proving it.   And I know one other thing.   I know you have a habit of messing around in things that aren't any of your business.   I don't really care about that, not unless you start messing around in something I'm involved with, like the Kirbo case.   If you do that, you're really going to piss me off."
    Our barbecue arrived about that time, and Lattner had worked himself up to such a state of self-righteous dudgeon that I figured he'd just get off the stool and leave.   I was wrong, though.   He turned his attention to the food and started to eat with a dedication to the job that even Nameless would have admired.
    I didn't watch him for long.   I ate my own barbecue.   The sauce was just tangy enough, and the potato salad wasn't too sweet.   I took my time.   Lattner was finished long before I was, but for some reason he didn't leave.   He got up and walked around the drugstore, looking in all the display cases as if he might actually be interested in buying a black and white glossy of James Dean.
    When I'd finished sopping up the last of the barbecue sauce with a piece of bread, Lattner came back over to the counter and sat beside me again.
    "If that kid could have been found, I'd have found him," he said.   "And I'm twice the investigator that you are.   So why don't you just go back and sit in your little house and listen to your records and keep your nose where it belongs."
    "Compact discs," I said.
    That bothered him.   "Huh?"
    "Compact discs, not records.   I don't play records; I play compact discs."
    "I don't care if you play goddamn tiddlywinks.   I don't want you messing in my cases."
    "You don't like me much, do you Lattner?"
    "I don't like you at all."   He slid off the stool and started for the door.   Just before he got there, he turned back and said, "Thanks for the lunch."
    I had to laugh at that.   The counter woman was picking up our plates, and she said, "Swell guy.   He a good friend of yours?"
    "Not yet," I said.   "But he will be.   I have a way of winning people over."
    She stacked my plate on top of Lattner's.   "I'll just bet you do," she said.

7
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    I was pretty sure who Lattner had been talking to about me, a cop named Gerald Barnes.   He'd probably checked with Barnes after I'd called, knowing that I'd had dealings with Barnes on a couple of other cases, something that wasn't any big secret around the cop shop.   I'd thought Barnes had begun to develop a sort of grudging respect for me because of some of the work I'd done.   Obviously I'd been wrong, however, and I didn't think it would do me any good to try to get anything more out of Lattner.   He appeared to be the kind of cop who had no regard for people he considered amateurs, meaning anyone who didn't carry a badge.   I wasn't going to be able to impress him with a list of my successes.   All he was interested in were my failures, and there were more than enough of those.
    I stood outside the drug store and thought for about a tenth of a second about walking down to The Strand and looking things over.   I could hear a band, and I knew that there was a parade every day about this time.   With an elephant or two, even.   Then I thought again about the crowds and started toward my car.  
    I passed a boy about ten gnawing on a giant