One Lonely Night Read Online Free Page B

doing.”
    He rocked his chair forward and took my hand. “Have fun, Mike.”
    “I will.” I gave it a pause, then: “Oh, by the way. I wanted to show you something before I left.” I reached in my shirt pocket and took out the two green cards and tossed them on the desk. “Funny, aren’t they?”
    Pat dropped my hand like it had been hot. Sometimes he gets the damnedest expression on his face you ever saw. He held those cards in his fingers and walked around the desk to close and lock the door. What he said when he sat down makes dirty reading.
    “Where’d you get these?” His voice had an edge to it that meant we were close to not being buddies any more.
    “I found ’em.”
    “Nuts. Sit down, damn it.” I sat down easy again and lit a smoke. It was hard to keep a grin off my mouth. “Once more, Mike, where’d they come from?”
    “I told you I found them.”
    “Okay, I’ll get very simple in my questioning. Where did you find them?”
    I was getting tired of wearing the grin. I let it do what it wanted to do and I felt the air dry my teeth. “Look, Pat, remember me? I’m your friend. I’m a citizen and I’m a stubborn jerk who doesn’t like to answer questions when he doesn’t know why. Quit the cop act and ask right. So tell me I handed you a line about a vacation when all I wanted to get was some information. So tell me something you haven’t told me before.”
    “All right, Mike, all right. All I want to know is where you got them.”
    “I killed a guy and took it off his body.”
    “Stop being sarcastic.”
    I must have grinned the dirtiest kind of grin there was. Pat watched me strangely, shook his head impatiently and tossed the cards back on the desk. “Are they so important I can’t hear about it, Pat?”
    He ran his tongue across his lips. “No, they’re not so important in one way. I guess they could be lost easily enough. They’re plenty of them in circulation.”
    “Yeah?”
    He nodded briefly and fingered the edge of one. “They’re Communist identification cards. One of the new fronts. The Nazi bund that used to operate in this country had cards just like ’em. They were red though. Every so often they change the cuts of the edges to try to trip up any spies. When you get in the meeting hall your card has to match up with a master card.”
    “Oh, just like a lodge.” I picked one up and tucked it in my coat pocket.
    He said, “Yeah,” sourly.
    “Then why all the to-do with the door. We’re not in a meeting hall.”
    Pat smacked the desk with the flat of his hand. “I don’t know, Mike. Damn it, if anybody but you came in with a couple of those cards I would have said what they were and that’s all. But when it’s you I go cold all over and wait for something to happen. I know it won’t happen, then it does. Come on, spill it. What’s behind them?” He looked tired as hell.
    “Nothing, I told you that. They’re curious and I found two of them. I’d never seen anything like it before and thought maybe you’d know what they were.”
    “And I did.”
    “That’s right. Thanks.”
    I put my hat back on and stood up. He let me get as far as the door. “Mike ...” He was looking at his hand.
    “I’m on vacation now, pal.”
    He picked up a card and looked at the blank sides of it. “Three days ago a man was murdered. He had one of these things clutched in his hand.”
    I turned the knob. “I’m still on vacation.”
    “I just thought I’d tell you. Give you something to think about.”
    “Swell. I’ll turn it over in my mind when I’m stretched out on a beach in Florida.”
    “We know who killed him.”
    I let the knob slip through my fingers and tried to sound casual. “Anybody I know?”
    “Yes, you and eight million others. His name is Lee Deamer. He’s running for State Senator next term.”
    My breath whistled through my teeth. Lee Deamer, the people’s choice. The guy who was scheduled to sweep the state clean. The guy who was kicking the