To Catch a Spy Read Online Free PDF

Wally’s. I opened the center drawer in my desk and pulled out the sheet of paper Violet had handed me two days earlier. Then I took the black-and-white composition book from the bottom right-hand drawer and placed it in front of me.
    The book contained my notes on jobs I still had open or on ones not completed either to the client’s satisfaction or my own. I opened the book. There wasn’t much in it. I wasn’t much for details. I flipped through, spotting names written in pencil.
    Wayne Bonidavente. Wayne owned a bar in Van Nuys. Someone had been dipping into the cash drawer. He had been losing about thirty dollars a day. Only Wayne, his wife, Ellie, and his brother, Warren, tended bar and used the cash drawer. I had sat there for a week, drinking beer very slowly and listening to unhappy wives and husbands tell me their tales.
    I was an easy target, sitting alone, nursing the hell out of a beer night after night. Every approach was the same. The man or woman came up to me, drink in hand, smiling and saying, “Mind if I join you?” Meaning, I’m lonely as hell and I want to tell someone my story and I’m willing to listen to yours and give you advice if you’ll listen to mine but I wouldn’t mind it much if I didn’t have to listen to yours.
    I’d spent a week in Wayne’s bar listening to stories and watching Ellie and Warren on their shifts. Never saw them pocketing a dime. I did hear a few good stories, though.
    Wayne reported each day that a different amount was missing. What was being rung up on the cash register simply didn’t match what was in the drawer when he counted the take.
    I liked Ellie, who had thin, stringy hair, and an understanding smile. And I liked brother Warren, who was pushing late middle age with thin white hair, a thin mustache, and a little pot belly. He liked his little Cuban cigars and thought he looked like Gilbert Roland.
    “Which one?” asked Wayne, about fifty, his hair too dark and definitely dyed.
    When he asked me the question, I knew, but I couldn’t tell him. He wouldn’t believe me. I had to say that it was a mystery I couldn’t solve, that I didn’t believe either his wife or brother was pocketing the money.
    What I didn’t tell him was that I had, after six nights, and just before Ellie was about to leave on her two-to-ten shift, asked Wayne’s wife and brother if I could talk to them.
    They weren’t busy yet although there were some regulars I recognized, a few of whom had nodded at me. We talked at the bar, the two of them next to each other, leaning forward.
    “I’m a private detective,” I said. “Wayne hired me. Someone’s dipping into the cash register every night. The profits are going. If it doesn’t stop, this place will fold. So it stops tonight. Now. We understand each other?”
    Ellie and Warren looked at each other, and Warren nodded to her.
    “Wayne is taking it,” she said. “He pockets cash. I’ve seen him.”
    “Then why did he hire me?”
    “He doesn’t know he’s doing it,” said Warren. “At least, I don’t think he does. He gets this kind of zombie look when he does it.”
    “I don’t get it,” I said.
    “There’s something wrong inside Wayne’s brain,” said Ellie.
    “Happened to our old man too,” Warren added. “When the old man died, they found a thing on his brain. We think maybe Wayne’s got it too. We’ve tried to get him to see a doctor about it. He says there’s nothing wrong with him.”
    “What does he do with the money?”
    Warren shrugged.
    “Beats me. Maybe he’s putting it in a box somewhere. Maybe he throws it away.”
    “He’s not buying anything with it,” Ellie said.
    “Got any suggestions? We’re listening,” Warren said.
    I had none, so I told Wayne I couldn’t figure it out and offered to return the money he had already paid me.
    Wayne’s case was in my composition book. I sometimes wondered what had happened to the three of them. My last meeting with Wayne had been about four