Nobody Dies For Free Read Online Free

initials. Monroe
walked around to the side of the building, slid down the narrow
alley that separated the diner from the pharmacy, and found the
back door beside a dumpster and a smaller receptacle that stunk of
discarded grease. He wished he was armed.
    He pushed on the door, found
it unlocked, and went in. The kitchen was empty, but the aroma of
food, not terrible, was coming from the other part of the place. He
walked through the kitchen and into the main dining area. The
overhead lights were out but a small lamp glowed in one corner. In
the single illuminated booth, a man sat munching on a hamburger.
Across from his was a second place setting with a sandwich and a
mug that still had steam floating up into the lamplight.
    “ Sit down already,” said the
burger eater.
    Monroe went over and slipped
into the booth. Ignoring the food, he stared straight into the face
of his companion. The suit was what he had expected. A man in
black, but not one he had seen before. The man was older, maybe
sixty or even sixty-five. The hair was short and gray, ex-military
style. Lines of experience, most of it harsh, crisscrossed the brow
and danced around the eyes. Only one of those eyes was real, Monroe
realized, the other of glass, certainly.
    “ It took three days’
receipts to get these people to close the diner for a few hours,”
the man said. “There’s really nothing wrong with the oven, of
course, but I’m sure you already knew that. Do you know the one
all-important rule of American diners?”
    Monroe shrugged.
    “ Then I’ll tell you,” the
burger man said. “Don’t order beyond the class of the place! Diner
food is diner food and you can’t raise that bar! This is a damn
fine burger and you’ll find that turkey club and coffee in front of
you to be quite adequate. Now if I’d had the owner fix me a filet
mignon before I kicked him out, I’d regret it later. When in Rome,
do as the Romans do…and when in a diner, keep it
simple!”
    Monroe took a sip of the
coffee, his instincts telling him that it was not drugged or
otherwise malignant. “I don’t know you, do I?”
    “ You do now,” the old
soldier said. “But I won’t tell you my real name and, after today,
chances are you’ll never see me in person again. Most people who
know I exist—and there aren’t too many of them—call me Mr. Nine,
because they say I have as many lives as a cat. Problem is, every
time I almost die but manage to crawl back to life, I seem to end
up with more scars to add to my collection.”
    With that, Mr. Nine lifted
his fork to his face and tapped the prongs against the surface of
the glass eye, creating a very sonar sort of pinging sound. He
laughed at his own little trick and then looked Monroe straight in
the eyes. “Now we get down to business.”
    “ Good,” Monroe said.
“Getting here was too much a chore for there to be no payoff. Who
are you with? Is it CIA, DHS, FBI, Interpol…or none of the
above?”
    “ None of the below,
actually,” Mr. Nine said. “I like to think I’m more important than
any of those clusterfuck agencies. Don’t worry, I’m not here to
pull you back into Central Intelligence. I’m here to offer you
something much more interesting.”
    “ Then enlighten me already,”
Monroe insisted.
    “ Let’s see if I’ve got all
my facts straight first,” Mr. Nine said, and he proceeded to rattle
off words like he was reading from a dossier, although there was
nothing in front of his but a half-eaten burger and a few stray
fries. “Richard Monroe, age forty, born in Massachusetts to a pair
of physicians, both now deceased. Educated at Harvard and spent a
year at Oxford before being granted a commission in the United
States Navy where you learned something about the intelligence
field. Went CIA after the Navy, worked the field on various
continents for nearly a decade, did your share of wet-work too but
were known mostly as a seducer and pawn-mover. You were finally
stationed in Paris just