Coward's Kiss Read Online Free Page B

clock. It was a few minutes after ten. I’d be seeing him in four and a half hours.
    “Fine,” I said. “I’ll see you then. Take it easy, Jack.”
    He told me he would, mumbled something pleasant, and rang off. I stood there for a second or two with the phone in my hand, looking at the receiver and waiting for it to start talking all by itself.
    Then I cradled it and went back to my coffee.
    The Times had what story there was but you had to look hard to find it. In New York they don’t stick an unidentified corpse on the front page. There are too many bodies floating around for them to do that. The tabloids might have found room for Shelia on page three or four, but the Times was too high-minded. They printed the full texts of speeches by Khrushchev and Castro and Adenauer and my blonde didn’t even make the first section. I found her on the second page from the end under two decks of sedate eighteen-point type.
    GIRL FOUND DEAD
IN CENTRAL PARK

    It went on from there, straight and cold and to the point. The body of a young woman in her late teens or early twenties had been found partially nude and shot to death on the eastern edge of Central Park near 91st Street. A preliminary medical examination disclosed that the girl had not been sexually attacked and that the fatal shot had been fired at relatively close range. The slug had not been recovered, but police guessed it had come from a .32 or .38-calibre handgun. Police theorized the victim had been killed elsewhere and then transported to the park, where she was found by a night laborer on his way home from work.
    There were a few more lines but they didn’t have anything vital to say. I killed time thumbing through the rest of the paper, reading the world news and the national news and the local news, filling myself with vital information. Asian cholera was at epidemic strength in northern India. Reform Democrats were pushing for the overthrow of Tammany Hall. A military junta had ousted the government of El Salvador; Jersey Standard was off an eighth of a point; Telephone was up three-eighths, Polaroid down five and a half. An obscure play by Strindberg had been exhumed for presentation off-Broadway and the critics had cremated it.
    At ten-thirty I folded the paper and stuck it in a wastebasket. I took a shower and got dressed. This made me officially awake, so I filled a pipe with tobacco and fit it.
    And the phone rang.
    I picked up the receiver and said hello to the mouthpiece. That was all I had a chance to say. The voice that bounced back at me was low and raspy. It was thick heavy New York with echoes of Brownsville or Mulberry Street beneath it.
    “This London? Listen good. You got the stuff and we want it. We’re not playing games.”
    I asked him what the hell he was talking about.
    His laugh was short and unpleasant. “Play it anyway you want, London. I know where you been and what you picked up. If you got a price, fine. It’s reasonable and we pay it.”
    “Who is this, anyway?”
    No laughter this time. “Don’t play hard to get, London. You got a reputation as a smart boy so be smart. You’re just a private eye, smart or stupid. You’re on your own. We got an organization. We can find things out and we can get things done. We know you were at the broad’s apartment. We know you picked her up and dumped her. Jesus, you think you’re playing tag with amateurs? We can go hard or soft, baby. You don’t want to be too cute. You can get paid nice or you can get hit in the head. Anyway you want it, it’s up to you.”
    “What do I get if I sell?”
    “More than you get anywhere else.” He chuckled. “We can hand you a better deal. We got——”
    “An organization,” I said, tired of the game. “I know all about it. You told me.”
    He toughened up. “We hit the broad,” he said, his voice grating. “We can hit you the same way. It gets messy. You might as well be smart about it.”
    “Go to hell.”
    “We’ll be in touch,