Walk a Black Wind Read Online Free PDF Page B

face was neutral. The shock was gone, the stunned look, as if my shooting had steadied him. Or maybe it was only the way he reacted to action and real danger he could come to grips with.
    â€œHow are you?” he asked.
    â€œNot bad. You weren’t hit?”
    â€œNo. I didn’t see who shot, I was down on the sidewalk.”
    â€œWhat about the green Cadillac?”
    He shook his head. “I didn’t notice a Cadillac. There wasn’t one when I got up, when the police came.”
    I said, “Someone is scared of me. It means that Francesca wasn’t killed by chance, or in some robbery. She was killed for a reason someone wants to stay hidden.”
    â€œBut you don’t know who,” Andera said, “or what he wants to hide, so it’s no use to me. What else did you find?”
    I told him about Mayor Crawford and his political fights, what Celia Bazer had said about Francesca and men, and about the blond, Frank Keefer. “Keefer threw Celia Bazer over for Francesca in Dresden, then she threw him over. I don’t think he’d have liked that. Did Francesca ever mention him?”
    â€œNo,” Andera said. “She mentioned no one.”
    â€œShe seems to have been pretty isolated down here,” I said. “What did she talk about on your dates?”
    â€œUs.”
    â€œWhere did you meet her for your dates?”
    â€œAt restaurants. She didn’t want me to come to her place, I never knew where she lived.”
    â€œNo mention of a Harmon Dunstan or Carl Gans?”
    â€œDo your women talk about other men on early dates?” Andera said. “Will you need more money, Fortune?”
    â€œI’m covered for the hospital, mostly. I’ll give you a bill. I’ll probably go to Dresden. That means expenses.”
    â€œWhen you need them, tell me. I’ll come back.”
    He left. I lay in the hospital bed feeling all my bruises, and the deep groove in my head hidden under a mound of gauze. Francesca Crawford hadn’t died in a random killing, no.
    I rested and slept all day Sunday. My concussion was gone, and my appetite was fine, and they would let me out on Monday. I was in no hurry. In the hospital I was safe. But I wouldn’t fight to stay in after Monday. I was getting mad, and three days is a long time for a trail to grow cold.
    Captain Gazzo came again after lunch on Monday. I was up in a chair, ready to dress when they told me. Gazzo took another chair, straddled it. I told him about what Celia Bazer had said, but not about Frank Keefer. I didn’t want Keefer chased or picked up yet.
    â€œWe talked to Dunstan, Gans and the Emerald Room,” Gazzo said. “No help I can see. What about who shot you?”
    â€œNothing I can tell. I’d just tried to ambush a tail on me, got clobbered. I went down to the street, and wham,” I said. “All I saw of the man tailing me was a camel coat, brown hat, green Cadillac, and fast fists. He may have been an ex-pro fighter the way he handled himself.”
    Gazzo shook his head. “Not enough to help. We’ve combed her neighborhood for anyone who might have seen anything, or for signs of anyone hanging around her place. Nothing we don’t already know, no one saw the killer enter or leave.”
    â€œCelia Bazer says Francesca was in New York before she moved into the Eighty-fourth Street place.”
    â€œSure,” Gazzo said. “She came to town two months ago, took an apartment on Carmine Street. None of the tenants there seem connected to her. She went to that Harmon Dunstan for a job, but got Dunstan himself for a while instead. For two weeks she didn’t work, just dated Dunstan. Then she took the job at the Emerald Room, began to see Carl Gans, and moved to the Bazer girl’s place.”
    The Captain rubbed his tender jaw. “Her job was below what she could have gotten, I can’t see why she took it. She wasn’t running in