Forty Thieves Read Online Free

the bodyguards were, they were just standing up to leave. She took a couple of glasses, and then reached for the one Rinosa had used.
    A hand shot out and snatched her wrist. It was Rinosa.
    The bartender said, “You’re going to want to let go of me.”
    “Sorry,” he said. “But I’m taking my glass with me.”
    “What?” She looked at him as though he were insane, and she had no sympathy for the insane.
    “My glass. I want it. For twenty-eight hundred, I deserve a souvenir, don’t I?”
    “No. I get charged for those. And by the way, thanks for the tip.”
    “It was an oversight.” He smiled.
    As he spoke, the quiet man from the end of the bar seemed to be passing the table on his way to the men’s room. Unexpectedly, he bumped one of the two bodyguards, his foot somehow getting between the bodyguard and Rinosa.
    The man fell against Rinosa just as the bartender swung her arm in a circle to free her wrist. When it broke free, it completed the arc to deliver a chop to Rinosa’s throat.
    The two bodyguards didn’t notice because they were preoccupied with the man who had bumped into them. They launched themselves at him from both sides. The man clutched the head of the one in front of him and pushed it downward as he brought his knee up, then propelled him facedown onto the floor. Instantly he brought his elbow back into the face of the second attacker, rocking him backward, and then completed his turn and punched the man twice as he fell.
    He turned to Rinosa, who was holding his throat with both hands, shocked by the bartender’s blow. The man delivered a single left jab to Rinosa’s nose, and it began to stream with blood. He said, “Oh, sorry. I thought you were with those guys.” He produced a clean white handkerchief and roughly dabbed at the blood streaming from Rinosa’s nose while Rinosa tried to turn away, shouting hoarsely, “Get away from me! Get away!”
    The bartender shouted, “Security!” She pointed at the two men on the floor and Rinosa. “These three!”
    The security men in black jackets rumbled in across the floor like a storm front, and dragged the three battered men out the front door. The victims had revived enough to begin struggling and shouting, but made no headway at all against the broad, heavy shapes of the security men.
    Three minutes later, the bartender stepped out past the steel door at the rear of the building and got into a waiting car. The car pulled away from the building and accelerated.
    The bartender turned in her seat and looked down the street behind the rear window. “Looks all clear back there,” she said. “Are you okay?”
    The man at the wheel said, “Me? Nobody grabbed me by the wrist. I just figured if I had to distract them while you got the glass with Rinosa’s DNA, we might as well get a blood sample too.”
    “I hope you didn’t get it all over yourself, Sid,” she said. “I love that sport coat. It took me hours to pick that out.”
    “I didn’t get any on me. I put the handkerchief in the plastic bag right away, and cleaned my hands with antibacterial wipes.”
    She opened her purse and lifted her own plastic bag where she had put the champagne glass. “Here’s my trophy. Tomorrow morning the lab will be open and we can get the DNA tested. Before long Manny Escobar will be declared innocent and let out of jail. Maybe the end of next week.”
    “Maybe the end of next month,” he said. “Even with the rush on the lab work.”
    “Anyway, we did it,” she said. “And Rinosa’s DNA, legally obtained when he attacked two private detectives in a bar,will be a match for the DNA the police found on the body.” She edged closer and kissed his cheek. “You really are a tough old bastard, aren’t you?”
    “Why thank you, Veronica,” he said. “I didn’t think you noticed.”
    “Of course I did. If I hadn’t been so busy collecting evidence, I’d have shouted, ‘Don’t shoot him. He’s got some life in him yet.’”
    “I