When Elephants Forget (Trace 3) Read Online Free PDF Page A

water would work just as well?”
    “If we play our cards right,” Sarge told her, “maybe we can get him liquored up, and you and I can go off cavorting.”
    “I’m ready anytime,” Chico said “Let’s play kneesies.”
    “Good idea,” Sarge said. “You know I’m a big private detective now. I carry a gun and everything. You can be my moll.”
    “I didn’t know private detectives had molls,” she said.
    “I’m breaking new ground,” Sarge said.
    “Whenever you two are finished,” Trace said. He took the newspaper clipping from his inside pocket and handed it across to Sarge.
    As he took it, Sarge asked Chico, “Don’t you think he ought to join up with me?”
    “Why would you want him?” she asked.
    “Just father and son, it’d be nice.”
    “Well, if it’s true that private eyes are all deep thinkers, I don’t know,” she said. “Trace is about as deep as a rain slick.”
    “I’ll teach him, though,” Sarge said. He looked toward the far side of the bar for a moment, wistfully, and said almost to himself, “Your mother said I was just throwing away good money. If I had to work, I should get a job in a bank somewhere as a guard.”
    “That’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard,” Trace said. “Even from my mother.” He glanced at Chico and she shook her head slightly as they shared the same thought. His mother was a thoughtless, hardhearted, unloving emasculating kvetch.
    “Read that clipping,” Trace told his father. “Come on, I don’t have all year.”
    Sarge read the clipping quickly, then handed it back. “I saw this story,” he said. “I know the family. Armitage’s got a bad reputation. A bad guy with a bad temper.”
    “Well, that’s what I’m working on. And I need your agency.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “There’s going to be a lot of legwork in this,” Trace said. “And I don’t have any contacts in New York. I need you on this.”
    “This one of your insurance cases?” Sarge asked.
    “Yeah, we had the kid’s policy. How do you know the family?”
    Sarge looked across the bar as he answered. “I know the kid’s mother, Martha, from a long time ago, when I was a cop in Brooklyn.” He turned back and looked down at his beer.
    “Think she’d remember you?” Trace asked.
    “I imagine so,” Sarge said. “I guess so.”
    “Then I double need you. You’re an in to the family. You ever meet this guy?” He looked at the clipping. “Nick Armitage?”
    “No. But I’ve heard of him.”
    “The paper kind of hints that he might be a mob guy. Do you know anything about that?”
    “I think he moves dope. He used to move a lot of it,” Sarge said. “But maybe he’s gone straight. I could find out.”
    “How straight would he be, owning a night-club?”
    “Not too,” Sarge said. “But I’d find out.”
    “All I’ll pay you is a hundred a day plus reasonable expenses.”
    “My usual fee is two hundred a day,” Sarge said.
    “How the hell do you have a usual fee when you haven’t had a client yet?” Trace demanded.
    “If you set your price cheap, people don’t appreciate the work you do. I thought that was one of the things I taught you when you were little.”
    “Okay, okay. How about a family discount?”
    “For you, a buck and a quarter a day. Nothing less.” Sarge nodded at Chico. “Unless she works with me. Then I’ll do it for nothing.”
    “Nothing doing,” Trace said. “She’s on my team. I need her brains.”
    “I’m not working with anybody,” Chico said. “I’ve come to New York to shop. Bloomie’s gets my brain and body and soul.”
    “A hundred and a quarter a day,” Sarge said.
    “You’ve got it,” Trace said. He nodded for a moment, then grumbled, “Maybe I will go into business with you. You’re a goddamn thief, and it might be my only way to get rich.”

5
     
    Sarge turned down their invitation to join them for dinner.
    “I’ll pass. I want to be home when your mother calls from Las Vegas. She