Play It Again Read Online Free PDF

thought R.J. It was time to leave. He pushed himself up from the table—and bumped into hard steel.
    “Where you going, gumshoe?”
    In the dark room R.J. could see little more than the whites of the man’s eyes. He jumped back reflexively.
    “Don’t do that, Hookshot! Sneak up on me like that, you’ll get a goddamn bullet between the eyes one a these days.”
    White teeth flashed to match the eyes. “Buy me a beer.”
    “Buy your own goddamn beer. You got more money than I’ll see in a hundred years.”
    Wallace “Hookshot” Steigler signaled the Pirate for a beer, then leaned his gaunt frame into the booth across from R.J. He was dressed in black and looked like a bird of prey—a bird with one steel wing. He put the hook that had replaced his right hand on the table with a thunk.
    “Sorry about your mother,” he said.
    R.J. nodded, and Doreen brought their drinks, pausing to touch the gleaming steel hook like she couldn’t quite help herself. She caught herself and looked at Hookshot guiltily.
    “Help yourself, darlin’,” Hookshot told her. “No thrill like the feel of steel.” He smiled as Doreen shivered and backed away.
    “One of these days,” Hookshot said when she was gone. The way he said it implied things way beyond kinky that R.J. couldn’t even imagine. He laughed in spite of his mood.
    “You’re dreaming,” he told Hookshot and laughed again. He could always count on Hookshot for a laugh. That was one of the reasons he loved him.
    Wallace Steigler was a Jewish black man. His father had been assigned to the United Nations when Israel was called Palestine and wasn’t a nation yet. He’d been one of a small band of men lobbying for votes for the Jewish state. A tough man, hardened by half a life of fighting.
    At a cocktail party on the East Side he’d met Hookshot’s mother, a Harlem beauty who took away his breath and his common sense with their first kiss. He was killed by an Arab League assassin a month after their son was born.
    Growing up in Harlem, young Wallace had displayed a tremendous talent for basketball, until a run-in on the wrong turf had left him without his shooting hand.
    Lean to the point of cadaverousness, Hookshot was without apparent age. He might have been forty, fifty, even sixty. Nobody knew for sure. He had managed a news kiosk in Midtown Manhattan for thirty years. He knew every man, woman, and child who’d ever dealt with him, and quite a few who hadn’t. His kiosk was an unofficial base for intelligence drops on both sides of the law. Besides Uncle Hank, Hookshot was the only real friend R.J. had.
    “I don’t like to intrude at a time like this—”
    “But you will.”
    Hookshot looked away. “Hank’s worried. Says you didn’t take the news too good.”
    “I’ll try to do better next time.”
    Hookshot ignored the sarcasm. “Gloria said she didn’t know where you went.”
    R.J. shrugged. “A rainy day in Central Park.” Even to his own ears his voice was filled with whiskey-phlegm and the gut-wracking ache of self-reproach. He belted his watered-down drink and signaled for Doreen.
    As R.J. reached for the fresh drink, the steel hook trapped his wrist. “You don’t need any more, man, you had too much when you uncorked the bottle.”
    “I need your advice I’ll ask for it,” R.J. said. “You got a cigar?”
    “Don’t need any smokes, either. You’ve done enough wallowing to get ready for what you got to do.”
    “Got nothing special to do. Burkette case is about finished. I might take a vacation. Miami, Bermuda, Trinidad. Sun and sand and sea.”
    Hookshot frowned. “Hank says they don’t have a make on the dead man with her yet. Killer might not have been after Belle at all. Maybe the man’s wife went nuts or something. Or maybe he was running an overdue tab with a bookie. Those boys get grouchy when you come up short. Anyhow, I’m putting out feelers.”
    “Steel feelers?”
    “Okay, you the pro. What do you think