Taco Noir Read Online Free PDF

arrangement long ago. I took his the absence of change on his part to mean that he had a tip, rather than assume he now served the most expensive sandwiches on the planet.
                  “All right,” I said as I fished around for another napkin to help eradicate the evidence of a deep fried lunch from my trench coat. “Spill!”
                  “The McDermotts are in the middle of a particularly ugly divorce,” Manny said, dicing an onion as he spoke. “They’re pointing fingers at each other, accusing the other of sleeping around.”
                  “That’s how they play the game, isn’t it?” I asked, still wiping my fingers. Manny was a master of oil, hot sauce, and tahini, and while his cart might not be much to look at, what he did there was so good it should have been illegal in most states. “Each side tells the judge that the other side done them wrong, they slide hizhonor a fat envelope, and the fattest envelope wins.”
                  From what I knew about Little Anthony McDermott, I felt it would have been a safe bet to assume that his envelope was the fattest. He owned all the radio stations in town and about half of the movie houses. He made his money the old-fashioned way, through dead relatives, and from what Manny told me, he would spend more cash betting on an afternoon game between the Yankees and the Red Sox than he would like to see doled out to the little woman. Apparently Little Anthony held big grudges.
                  “In this case, all bets are off,” smiled Manny. “Their case ended up in Judge Thurston’s courtroom.”
                  I stopped my post-sandwich wipe down long enough to digest this little tidbit along with my high calorie lunch.
                  Judge Lawrence Thurston was the last of the hard cases, and in a city where most of the judges wore parking meters around their necks, he was as solid as oak. He couldn’t be bought, influenced, or threatened, and he absolutely despised mouths with silver spoons in them.  It served McDermott right. The only reason he ended up in Thurston’s court was because he was apparently too naïve or cheap to bribe the docket clerk to put his case in the hands of a judge who could be bought.
                  “Thurston, huh?” I replied. “I guess that there IS a chance that Mrs. McDermott might get what’s coming to her.”
                  “Not if Little Anthony has any say in the matter.”
                  “What do you mean?” I asked. “There’s no way that Thurston would let this case get bounced to another courtroom.” Once the judge had a case, he was like a dog with a soup bone.
                  “I heard Little Anthony talking to his mouthpiece,” Manny said, glancing over his shoulder for any passers-by of the non-customer type. “He told his lawyer to get some shamus on the job to dig up some dirt on his wife. Something that he can beat her over the head with in court, so to speak.”
                  “And said mouthpiece hasn’t yet found said shamus to dig up said dirt?” I asked, figuring that Manny had earned his change from the sawbuck.
                  “One can only assume,” said Manny, turning his considerable talents to a bin full of chickpeas. “One can only assume.”
     
    I caught up with Little Anthony McDermott as he was exiting the courtroom. He was shooting daggers at the Mrs. and her meek little mouse of an attorney. Mrs. McDermott, a striking blonde in her late thirties, seemed immune to Little Anthony’s considerable charm, probably from years of waking up to that same enduring sneer. Her mouth-piece, though, looked as rattled as a can of salted peanuts.
                  “Do the world a favor, Anthony,” shouted the Mrs. across the bow of her lawyer. “Drop dead.”
                  “Oh, it won’t