Till the Butchers Cut Him Down Read Online Free Page B

Madman.

Three
    Suits waited expectantly for my reaction. He seemed disappointed when I asked, “What makes you think somebody’s trying to
     kill you?”
    “There have been incidents.” He glanced over his shoulder.
    “Such as?”
    “Incidents,” he repeated darkly. “Here—I’ll have Carmen tell you about the latest.”
    “Carmen?” I looked around, saw no one except the big bald man behind the counter.
    Suits beckoned to him. He came around and crossed to our booth, rubbing his palms on his apron and grinning at my puzzled
     expression. “They got to calling me that back in the sixties when I was offloading Costa Rican banana boats,” he said. “Carmen
     Miranda, you know? Some guy’s idea of a joke. It stuck.” He shrugged philosophically. “What d’you need, T.J.?”
    “Tell the lady about last Thursday night, will you?”
    Carmen hesitated, frowning.
    “It’s okay. She’s working for me.”
    Suits’s words didn’t seem to reassure him. He hesitated some more, chewing on his lower lip. “Well, what happened, I’m locking
     up. Maybe eleven-thirty. And there’s this big splash pierside. I turn on my floods, go out, take a look. And there’s T.J.
     in the water, flopping around like a half-dead sea lion. I toss him a line, but he can’t grab it, and I realize he’s practically
     unconscious. So I’ve got to go in after him, and when I haul him up on the pier, I see he’s got the start of a big knot on
     the back of his head.” Carmen patted the back of his own skull. “And before I’m done with him he’s puked up about a gallon
     of water.”
    I looked at Suits. “How’d you end up in the Bay?”
    “Somebody hit me and dumped me in. I’d stopped for a beer with Carmen, left around eleven twenty-five, and started back toward
     my place. I remember footsteps coming up fast behind me, and nothing much after that until my friend here was pumping the
     water out of me.”
    I glanced back at Carmen; his expression was remote. More to this than he’s letting on, I thought.
    “You see anybody?” I asked him.
    He shook his head.
    “Hear anything between the time Suits … T.J. left and when he hit the water?”
    “Nope.”
    “Was there anybody here in the diner who might have followed him?”
    “Hadn’t had a customer for nearly an hour.”
    I turned to Suits. “Was anything taken? Your wallet, for instance?”
    “No, and I had a few hundred dollars on me, plus my Rolex.”
    “So you think this has to do with the other—” I didn’t finish, because he moved his eyes from side to side, signaling that
     he didn’t want to discuss the other incidents in front of Carmen.
    “Thanks, Carmen,” I said. “If you remember anything else, let T.J. know, would you?”
    He nodded brusquely and went back to the counter, but not before I glimpsed a trace of indecision clouding his eyes. Carmen
     wanted to mention something else, but he wasn’t sure how it would go over with Suits.
    “All right,” I said to Suits, “give me the whole story, starting with this current turnaround.”
    “You know Golden Gate Lines?”
    “The shipping company? Sure. They’re based in Oakland, aren’t they?”
    “For now, yes. They called me in a little less than a year ago, after they filed for Chapter Eleven. I’ve already got them
     stabilized, and I’m moving into the visionary stage. It’s a sweeping vision; like I said before, it’ll change the course of
     this city’s history. And somebody doesn’t want me to live to make it happen.”
    “Why not?”
    “… Wait a minute.” He got up, went to the pay phone on the wall by the door, and made a quick call. When he finished, he motioned
     to me. “Come on, I can show you better than I can tell you.” Before I could object, he waved to Carmen and hurried outside.
    There are times in every investigator’s career when it’s wise to walk away from a prospective client. I knew instinctively
     that this was one of those. But did I do it? No.