The Last Cop Out Read Online Free PDF Page A

bad.”
    “What does Papa Menes say about it?”
    Verdun’s voice was quietly deadly. “You like it where you are, Mark?”
    Shelby took the push, but not all the way. “I’m fine,” he said.
    “Good. Then stay fine. I’m speaking for Papa Menes. Remember it.” He paused and looked the room over again.
    “We’re up against an organization. That’s one. They’re damn smart and damn good. That’s two. There’s one hell of a showdown coming up. That’s three.”
    When he stopped, Arthur Kevin said, “Who do we look for, Frank?”
    “The hit men. They won’t be contract boys, you can bet on that. They’re right inside the organization itself. That’s their weakness. All we need to do is get on top of one of them and he’ll scream his head off. We can backtrack him to the day he was born and no matter who’s pulling this crap, we’ll find them and it’ll be the last time it ever gets tried again.”
    Nobody spoke at all.
    Frank’s eyes had a reptilian glitter and he smiled. “Everybody scared to ask how?”
    There was a general scuffling in the seats and a subdued murmur of disavowal.
    “Maybe you don’t get the picture all the way,” the Frenchman said. “They’re picking us off from the top down until they can get to where they can handle us. Believe me, it’ll never happen. So like Papa Menes wants, you stay on the streets and in the open and take your chances on getting hit. You don’t have to make it easy, but you don’t run either. We got the soldiers out covering everybody and even if we lose a few more, we’re going to get somebody sooner or later. That’s it. Meeting’s over.”
    That night they lost two more. They weren’t gunned down. They simply took advantage of an option they had prepared for long ago, an unobtrusive exit with a suitcase full of money to a strange little country where the food was lousy, the water worse, but where there was safety in a new identity and total disassociation from a world that meant sudden death if they dared return. In view of the circumstances, it was assumed that they had fallen to the enemy who had added another dimension to its method of operation.
     
    The other meeting three miles farther downtown was reminiscent of kids who were kept after school waiting to be lectured by the principal. There was a sense of uneasiness you could almost feel and the seven persons waiting for Gillian Burke and Bill Long to arrive were still trying to develop statements that wouldn’t make them look like complete fools.
    When they finally walked in everybody nodded politely, took their seats at the table with Gill at the far end opposite the district attorney. Gill gave Bill Long a wry smile and took them off the hook. “Let’s start off without any bullshit,” he said.
    That got their attention right away. Lederer stifled a cough and the man from the mayor’s office dropped his pen.
    “You got yourselves a hot chestnut and nobody knows how to handle it. The computers all came out zero and now you need all that beautiful inside stuff that used to be available for the asking. You guys’ll sure do anything when it gets warm, but I don’t blame you a bit. I’d do the same thing myself.”
    “Mr. Burke ...” the district attorney started to say.
    “Can it, I’m talking,” Gill told him.
    The D.A. said nothing.
    “Don’t tell me you give a damn about the people who got bumped off. Each one down is one more you can close the files on, but when a bite come out of their organization and they close ranks enough to lean on the right people, you start sweating. So now you want me back in again. Okay, that’s what you want and I’ll come back.”
    All the eyes were on him now.
    “Conditionally, that is,” Gill continued. “I haven’t told you what I want yet.”
    “There weren’t any conditions stipulated, Mr. Burke,” Lederer said.
    “Naturally. You’re trying to get everything for nothing. Just don’t forget ... you’re the ones doing the