Strike Three You're Dead Read Online Free PDF Page A

gets more playing time. Do you like all the guys on the force?”
    “Did he carry a lot of money? Cash?”
    “He wasn’t broke.”
    “I mean, a lot of money. Like try a thousand dollar bill.”
    “A thousand?”
    “We found one in there with him.”
    “Where?”
    “In the whirlpool.”
    “I didn’t see it.”
    “No reason why you should’ve. They don’t float. There was a crumpled thousand dollar bill at the bottom of the whirlpool.”
    “That’s interesting.”
    “Sure it’s interesting. If it belonged to Rudy, then robbery probably wasn’t the motive. And if it didn’t belong to him, I’d like to know who.” Linderman tapped some ash into his palm, bounced it once, and let it fall to the floor. “Harvey, do you have your own key to the clubhouse?”
    “Yeah, as a matter of fact, but that doesn’t—”
    “Doesn’t mean anything. I’m just asking. My keen deductive mind tells me that whoever killed your roommate didn’t have to have a key to get to him. See, Furth could’ve let his killer in, or he could’ve been in there all along and no one knew it. I might even entertain the thought that Furth could’ve been killed somewhere else and then put in the whirlpool.”
    Linderman spotted Felix’s ashtray, a ceramic piece in the shape of a hollowed-out half-baseball, and poked out his cigarette. Harvey did likewise. “See,” Linderman said, “the field’s wide open. I just thought you might want to narrow it for me.”
    Harvey shook his head.
    “All right,” Linderman said, pushing himself off the desk and walking to the door. “Why don’t we take this up again some other time?”
    Harvey got out of his chair. “You’ll find the bastard who did this,” he said.
    “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Linderman took the rolled-up roster out of his inside jacket pocket and moved his finger until he found the name after Blissberg.
    “Les Byers,” he said thoughtfully. “Isn’t that the black kid who homered in extra innings a couple of nights ago?”

W HEN HARVEY LEFT LINDERMAN, he still had the eggy taste of vomit in his mouth. He went over to the ice chest and pulled out a root beer.
    Happy Smith detached himself from a clutch of teammates standing nervously by the coffee machine and approached him.
    “You’re the smart one, Professor,” he said with the air of one old-timer consulting another. “You tell me since when they murder guys in the clubhouse.” Happy was thirty-four and had spent the last twelve years of his life as a second-string catcher for five different teams, like a seldom needed spare part kept in the trunk of the car.
    “I don’t know, Happy,” Harvey said between pulls on the soda. “I don’t know when they started doing it.” The door to the equipment room opened and Cleavon Battle, the Jewels’ first baseman, came out ahead of Bragalone, the other detective. “I need some air,” Harvey told Happy.
    “You’re lucky your name’s Blissberg,” Happy said.
    “How’s that?”
    “They’re going alphabetically, aren’t they? I’ll be here all day before the cops get around to me.”
    “I feel for you,” Harvey said and made for the clubhouse door.
    Frances Shalhoub was at the wall phone attached to one of the peeling pillars, her slender hand pressed to her forehead. “No, no, no, of course,” she was saying into the receiver. “I understand. You are his only family, though…. No…. Yes, as I said, we’ll be happy to take care of all that at this end….”
    In the players’ parking lot, a couple of newspaper reporters were talking to Campy Strulowitz. A van from one of the local stations had pulled up, and a television reporter in a Dacron blend suit stood next to it, grooming his hair in the sideview mirror.
    On the sidewalk, a nut vendor in a canvas porkpie hat glanced up from his cart. “What’s up, Harvey?” he called.
    “Knock off, Sam. No game today.”
    The old man ate one of his own pistachios. “No game? On account of what?”
    Harvey