Collar Robber Read Online Free Page B

bridge. Two drivers sat on their horns, and I couldn’t blame them a bit.
    The Corolla slowed down, as if daring me to confirm that I was following by slowing down myself. No thanks. Headed northeast in heavy traffic, with Szulz moving at a decent clip in the opposite direction, there were only two places the Corolla could go. One was the William Penn Omni, and the other one wasn’t. I only cared about the first. I swept past the Corolla like it was standing still and set course for the hotel.
    I made a lot better time than the Corolla did, maybe because the driver was trying to hang back out of my sight. I’d already jumped out of the rental and traded the fob and two singles to the valet for a claim check when I spotted the Corolla waiting to make a left from Fifth onto William Penn Place.
    And because I was looking intently in that direction, I also spotted something else: the guy who’d panhandled Jakubek and me not quite two hours before. Instead of a ragged hoodie, he now wore a North Face three-in-one jacket—but he still had those shiny Air Jordan Six-Rings on his feet. More important, he was carrying a maroon leather attaché case that looked a lot like Proxy’s. He was hustling toward the corner, which is what I’d be doing if I wanted a pick-up from the Corolla.
    I went tearing after him just as the Corolla turned the corner. When he glanced over his shoulder I could tell he wasn’t happy to see me. I had closed to within about ten feet by the time the Corolla completed the turn. Three more seconds and I’d have him. No way the Corolla could get there by then, and the ex-hoodie wasn’t going to outrun me unless those Air Jordans had jetpacks
    He did the only thing he could have done to keep me from tackling him. He stopped, turned, and faced me with angry indignation scrawled across his face. I pulled up just in time to avoid a collision.
    â€œWhat you doing?” I picked up a faint Middle Eastern accent that I hadn’t noticed when he was begging. “Why you trying to mug me? Leave me alone!”
    I probably should have just carried my charge through and knocked him over without any conversation. That really would have looked like a mugging, though, and if there were any cops in the neighborhood I could have wound up in handcuffs while Junior here took Proxy’s case for a ride. So I stopped nimbly (for me), maybe three feet from him.
    â€œI’m looking for my colleague’s attaché case, which suddenly went missing not long ago. If you’re taking it to lost-and-found, you’re going in the wrong direction.”
    By now the Corolla had screeched to a stop beside us. Its front passenger door swung open.
    â€œYou’re crazy! This is mine!”
    I’d already pulled out my mobile phone. Now I punched the speed-dial for Proxy’s number. Two seconds later the first three bars of A Little Night Music sounded from inside the attaché case. Proxy’s ringtone.
    The guy only looked non-plussed for half a second or so, because that’s all the time I needed to park a decent left jab in the neighborhood of his right temple. Without letting go of the case in his right hand, he grunted as he planted a solid left on my sternum. An inch lower and it might have done some real damage, but it landed where it landed and all it did was hurt.
    Out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed the Corolla’s driver clambering across the front seats and levering himself out of the passenger side. I put my right elbow right between his eyes with some authority behind it. This discouraged him, at least for the moment. Unfortunately, the distraction gave the other guy a chance to start scampering around the back of the car. I slid across the trunk lid in a head-first horizontal dive, with designs on grabbing his pricey jacket somewhere. He managed to elude me by swiveling away from the car, but the evasion cost him a precious second or two. Landing hard