Operation Stranglehold Read Online Free Page B

for us both while Hazel poured herself a second cup of coffee.
    She leaned back upon a plumped-up pillow, unconscious of the all-star display, her cigarette cocked upward as she drew upon it. “I speak Spanish very well,” she announced.
    If some of Hazel’s remarks sound disjointed, it’s because she has a habit of ignoring preliminaries and cutting right to the bone. I knew she was declaring herself ready for a rescue expedition in Spain, but I wasn’t having any. “Spanish or Swahili,” I countered, “forget it.”
    “Can your doctor friend hold Senator Winters’ men forever?” she demanded. “Is it going to be any easier to get the senator to lay off six months from now than it is now?”
    She was right about that, anyway; nothing was going to change. Time wasn’t going to be on my side in approaching Edwin Winters to call off his dogs. All I could offer at any time was to send back his men in return for a promise to forget me. If I approached Winters at all, it might as well be right now. But still I hesitated. I hadn’t retained my mobility for so many years by ramming my head into lions’ mouths.
    “If you telephone him, you’ll at least find out what he wanted,” Hazel remarked with her customary practicality.
    I had a feeling I knew what he wanted, and that it wasn’t so very much different from what Hazel wanted. No other reason that I could see made sense of the senator’s effort to contact me. But I still wasn’t having any; I’d been down that road too many times before with Karl Erikson. I might be a chipped pitcher, but I was still unbroken, and I’d just as soon keep it that way. The minute I called Winters I was dealing myself into a hand with well-hidden hole cards.
    Hazel has an unnerving knack of reading my mind. “You could call him, and if you didn’t like what he has to say, we could disappear,” she prodded me.
    “Disappear from the highpowered posse a man like that could turn loose?”
    “He’ll turn it loose anyway if his men don’t show up soon,” she predicted. “He’ll start at the ranch, trace the route of the plane, show pictures around, the whole bit.” She stubbed out her cigarette. “Until he lands in our laps.”
    “But we’re not staying here, baby.”
    “You just said it yourself, Earl; moving will only slow down a man like Winters.”
    “Don’t try to confuse me,” I growled.
    But she had a point. Hazel, certainly, was highly noticeable. I had no wish to subject her to a life-style of hiding out, either. I’d been that route too many times myself.
    I counted to ten, backed up, and counted to twenty, then reached for the push-button telephone. I punched the number I’d picked up counting dial clicks when the blubbery Smitty called it from the ranch. “Senator Ed Winters,” I said to the feminine voice that responded.
    “Your name and business, please?”
    “Put me through to the senator, young lady.”
    “The senator insists upon knowing to whom he’s speaking, sir,” the receptionist informed me.
    “It’s very important that I speak to Senator Winters,” I tried to bull my way past the line of scrimmage.
    A man came on the line. We went through the same routine. Another man was summoned, and the performance was repeated. I maintained that my business was personal. The man maintained that the senator spoke to no unknowns.
    “Tell him it’s about Bruno and Smitty,” I said finally when it began to appear like a total stalemate.
    That brought action.
    A moment later a resonant voice, obviously the product of years of wagon-bed oratorical projection, reverberated in my ear. “What’s this about Bruno and Smitty?” the voice demanded. “And who are you?”
    If a voice could be said to sound like a tidal wave, Senator Winters qualified. Bristling energy radiated from every syllable. “I’m Earl Drake,” I said.
    “Drake?” There was a loud snort. “Hell, man, I’ve got people looking for you and Bruno and Smitty right now. Where