Silent Thunder Read Online Free PDF

didn’t move, anyway.
    “Uncle Sam buying private talent these days?” he asked when I’d put away my wallet.
    “Just asking directions.”
    “Figured you were new or you’d know the chief’s name is Proust.”
    “Deputy chief,” I corrected. “An ex one at that.”
    “He’s acting chief till the chief gets well, which he never will. And he ain’t no ex.”
    “Impossible. He’s under indictment.”
    “That don’t mean he done it. Innocent till proven guilty, mister; that’s how we do things in the U. S. of freaking A.”
    “Since when is Iroquois Heights in the U.S.A.?”
    He jerked a thumb over his shoulder the way they teach in cop school. “You said you were asking directions, mister. The way out’s that way.”
    He went back to his unit, wheeled it around, and lost some rubber going back the way he’d come. Livingood spat at the ground. “I heard they cleaned up this place,” he said.
    I said, “They used a dirty broom. You were telling me about Shooter.”
    “Was I?” He grinned. “Yeah, I guess I was. Last time I looked, he was doing business at the same old stand. You can try him. As far as the G’s concerned, he’s no bigger’n bait this season.”
    “What about Ma Chaney?”
    “You do get around.” He was interested again.
    This time I grinned. “That’s good, that tired civil servant number. How close are you to retirement really?”
    “I don’t expect to live to see it. You know Ma?”
    “I did some business with her once out at the barn.”
    “She moved it. Not the barn, just what was inside. We don’t know where yet. We can’t get an undercover man past her. If her boys had half her smarts they wouldn’t be in jails from here to Miami.”
    “That’s all you can do for me?”
    “If it’s Christmas, where’s the snow?”
    I left him listening to Pardo, waited for the two men in Windbreakers to pass carrying a Chinese mortar, and got into my car, hoping a spark from the distributor wouldn’t make a park out of that section of town.
    It didn’t, and I drove back to the office under a sky as blue as a nuclear warhead. I elbowed my way through the invisible customers lined up six deep in the reception room, got my little green book of dynamite out of the top drawer of the file cabinet, and dialed a number I had listed under a nifty code I had borrowed from a Marvel comic book. Waiting for an answer I watched Custer. It looked to me like he was holding his own.
    On the twelfth ring a Mississippi accent answered. “So talk.”
    “Amos Walker,” I said. “We’ve done business.”
    “Where?”’
    “Parking lot on West Lafayette, about a year ago.”
    “I didn’t axe when. What’s my name?”
    “Sonny boy.”
    He didn’t laugh.
    “Shooter,” I said.
    “Know why they call me that?”
    “It sure isn’t because you’re always shooting your mouth off.”
    “They call me that ’cause I shoot square. You shoot square?”
    “If all your customers shot square I’d be doing business with you over a glass counter in a store with bright lights and a window display.”
    “You a customer?”
    “I could be, if you’ve got what I want.”
    “If you want it, I got it. If I ain’t got it I can get it. If I can’t get it, you don’t want it. What do you want?”
    “An interpreter.”
    Silence.
    “Protection,” I said.
    “Buy a dog.”
    “I need more protection than that.”
    “Buy two dogs. You saying you want a gun, man?”
    “I got guns. I want a case of C-4 plastic rocket launchers and a fifty-caliber machine gun.”
    “Going up after deer?”
    I took another look at Custer. He seemed to be losing ground now. “You got what I want, or is what you said before just a stall? Because if it is I can report you to David Horowitz.”
    “Tell him take a number. I get back to you.” I had a dead line.
    Bright patter. The white noise of the grifter’s world. I hung up on the dial tone and checked the square of sunlight on the wall opposite the window. It