The Way Some People Die Read Online Free PDF

L.A. You let me know if you find them, is it a deal?”
    “What do
you
want him for?”
    “I’ll tell Joe why I want him. When I tell him he won’t forget it.”
    “All right,” I said. “If I find him I pass you the word. Where does he live?”
    “Casa Loma. It’s a ritz joint off of Sunset in the Hills. You might be able to trace him from there.”
    “Where do you live?”
    “On my boat. It’s the
Aztec Queen
, moored down in the yacht basin.”
    “Who are the others that want him?”
    “Don’t ask me.” He lay back in the pillows again.
    A cool trained voice said behind me: “Visiting hours are over, sir. How are you feeling, Mr. Tarantine?”
    “Dandy,” he said. “How do I look?”
    “Why, you look cute in your bandage, Mr. Tarantine.” The nurse glanced at the other bed. “How’s our tonsillectomy?”
    “He feels dandy too, he thinks he’s dying.”
    “He’ll be up and around tomorrow.” She laughed professionally and turned away.
    I caught her up in the hall: “What happened to Mario’s face? He wouldn’t tell me.”
    She was a big-boned girl with a long earnest nose. “He wouldn’t tell us, either. A friend of mine was on emergency when he came in. He walked in all by himself, in the middle of the night. He was in terrible shape, his face streaming blood, and he’s got a slight concussion, you know. He said he fell down and hurt himself on his boat, but it was obvious that he’d taken a beating. She called the police, of course, but he wouldn’t talk to them, either. He’s very reticent, isn’t he?”
    “Very.”
    “Are you a friend of his?”
    “Just an acquaintance.”
    “Some of the girls said it was gang trouble, that he was in a gang and fell out with the other members. You think there’s anything in that?”
    I said that hospitals were full of rumors.

CHAPTER
6 :     
I ate dinner at Masso’s in Hollywood
. While I was waiting for my steak, I phoned Joseph Tarantine’s apartment and got my nickel back. The steak came the way I liked it, medium rare, garnished with mushrooms, with a pile of fried onion rings on the side. I had apint of Black Horse ale for dessert, and when I was finished I felt good. So far I was getting nowhere, but I felt good. I had the kind of excitement, more prophetic than tea-leaves, that lifts you when anything may happen and probably will.
    I switched on my headlights as I wheeled out of the parking lot. The gray dusk in the air was almost tangible. Under its film the city lay distinct but dimensionless, as transient as a cloud. The stores and theaters and office buildings had lost their daytime perspectives with the sun, and were waiting for night to give them bulk and meaning. The double stream of traffic into which I turned continued the theme of change. Half of the lemmings were rushing down to the sea and the other half had been there and decided not to get wet. The wild slopes of the mountains overshadowed the slanting streets to the northwest and reduced their neons and headlights to firefly sparks.
    The Casa Loma was on a side street a block from Sunset where the boulevard rose towards the hills. It was a four-story white frame building with cheerful lights shining from nearly half of the windows. Not quite the ritz, as Mario Tarantine thought, but it would do. The cars in the parking lot behind the building were nearly all new, and a Pontiac 8 was the cheapest one I saw. The people who lived there spent their money on front.
    No doorman, though, which suited me. No desk clerk or hall attendant. I crossed the small carpeted lobby to the brass mailboxes banked on the wall by the plate-glass inner door. Joseph Tarantine was the name on number 7. His card was handwritten in green ink, apparently by the girl who had left the harbor on the sea of life so wide. Most of the other cards were printed, and one or two were engraved. Number 8 was very beautifully engraved with the name of Keith Dalling, whoever he was. I pressed the