You Can Die Trying Read Online Free PDF

possible I could regret it later. This is a person, after all, whom some might accuse ‘of having stood idly by while a twenty-two-year veteran of the Los Angeles Police Department took the rap for something he didn’t do.”
    “You say that as if that’s not a perfectly accurate description of what your client himself claims to have done.”
    “Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t. I, for one, think that’s a pretty harsh way of looking at it. In any case—and you’ll notice that, unlike yourself, Poole, I make no reference to gender here—it’s my professional opinion that it’s in my client’s best interests to remain anonymous for as long as possible. Even to you.”
    Poole shrugged with seemingly genuine indifference and reached for the salt. “Suit yourself.”
    Gunner watched him eat for a full minute before pushing on. “So are you going to tell me where to start, or what?”
    Poole looked up as a stumpy black waitress in an overinflated blue uniform made use of the full pot on their table to top off their coffees, having noticed they had shown no inclination to do it themselves. Gunner couldn’t tell whether Poole wanted to laugh or cry, but that was the way the cop’s face always worked; it was a jowly caricature of a young Walter Matthau that never betrayed a thing. It moved—here, there, sometimes in a thousand places at once—but that was all it did. Even the man’s smiles were hard to make out in certain light.
    “What is it with you?” the detective asked as soon as the waitress was gone again. “You don’t understand the Queen’s English? Give the man—or the lady —their retainer back and find something else to do with your time. Because number one, you’re brain dead if you believe that anybody familiar with McGovern’s unique brand of police protection would pay you or anybody else a hundred-plus bills a day to clear him of the Washington kid’s killing; I don’t care what they say their reasons are. And number two, if you think what I’m doing now is turning a deaf ear to you, wait ’til you start talking to McGovern’s pals down at Southwest. You’re not gonna hear a damn thing over there but the sound of your own voice.”
    “I already took the case, Poole,” Gunner said.
    “Un-take it. You’re your own boss, right?”
    “And what about McGovern?”
    “Do I have to actually say it? Fuck McGovern. He was a bad egg, and everybody knew it. Not having to split my pension with an asshole like that will be one of the highlights of my life.”
    “You two were that close, huh?”
    “I never had the pleasure, actually, but I’d heard enough about the guy over the years to know I didn’t miss anything. We’re no brotherhood of saints, Gunner, but even we cops know a uniformed sociopath when we see one.”
    “Then you think his dismissal was warranted.”
    “Warranted? I don’t know about warranted. All I know is, the department’s case against him was ironclad, and I don’t see how it automatically becomes null and void just because one asshole—of undetermined gender—steps forward damn near a year later to say that they saw something in a pitch-black alley three other people on the scene didn’t. Give me a break.
    “I mean, if the Washington kid had fired two rounds at McGovern the way your client says he did, they would’ve found a couple of slugs out in the street, where McGovern said he was standing at the time of all the shooting. Right? And the prints they found on the gun he turned in would’ve come from the Washington kid’s left hand, because he was strictly left-handed. You with me so far?”
    “So far.”
    “All right. Good. So guess where the two slugs they found that had been fired from the gun McGovern turned in were dug up?”
    “In the alley.”
    “In the ground. That’s right. And guess which of Washington’s two hands made the prints on the gun?”
    “His right.”
    “Right again. Two rounds fired into the ground, and fired with the