Have Gat—Will Travel Read Online Free

In seconds they were all looking at me, chanting their laughter in unison. It was strange, frightening, to look at the now unsmiling faces, hear the perversion of laughter from twenty throats. It was a savage sound, like the grunting of animals; a twisted, stupid exhibition that sent a shiver up my spine.
    The blonde was still getting a large charge out of me. I was good for lots of laughs. But only her laughter seemed to have honest merriment in it. I suppose I did look a bit quaint standing there slobbering at them. She bent over and laughed so hard that the bag slipped from her shoulder and hit the floor, making as loud a noise when it landed as I had. She either carried a chunk of lead in there or a gun. Chuck had sweet playmates.
    Chuck tapped me on the shoulder. I looked at him, and he wasn't smiling. "Eight," he said.
    I started to crack wise, but when he got to nine I walked toward the door. The punks were massed in front of me, and if they hadn't moved I was mad enough to throw a few of them through the ceiling, even if it wouldn't have been wise. But they stepped slowly aside, still going ha-ha, and I walked past them trying to look everywhere at once. I thought I was going to make it to the door without any trouble, but suddenly somebody planted a foot on my behind and shoved hard.
    It sent me stumbling up against the door and I spun around as I reached it. It had been Shorty, naturally, getting even. He didn't know it, but we were a long way from being even. I stared at the kids as the laughter slowed and stopped, and it took all my self-control and what little sense I had left to keep from jumping them and making pulp out of a few of them. I had already taken more from these little hoodlums than I'd have taken from an equal number of big thugs, and the longer I stared at them the bigger they looked. Just before they looked big enough for me to pull out my gun and shoot five of them, I made myself open the door and go outside.
    A crescent moon was hidden behind scudding clouds and it looked like rain, but the chill air did little to cool me off. I tried to calm myself, thinking, as I walked back to the Cad. I hadn't actually learned a hell of a lot — except that the kids weren't just punks, but dangerous punks. Chuck's face had jumped around when I showed him Pam's picture, but he could hardly be blamed for looking a bit sick. I'd wanted to push him off balance, so I'd played a dirty trick on him; I'd handed him the morgue shot.
    And right then I remembered where I'd seen him before. Maybe it was because I was thinking about him and Pam at the same time, but I remembered seeing him in a picture in the album Mr. Franklin had shown me. It had been on one of the last pages of the book; a group snapshot taken when Pam had gone to a picnic — in Elysian Park. Half a block up the street past my car was a small cocktail lounge. I went inside, found a phone booth in back and dialed Mr. Franklin's number. He answered.
    "Mr. Franklin, this is Shell Scott.Do you know the names of the fellows your daughter went out with?"
    "Why . . . yes, most all of them. Have you learned anything?"
    "Not for sure. Did Pam ever mention a Chuck Dorr?"
    "No. I've never heard the name."
    "Look in the back of the photograph album for a snap taken at Elysian Park on a picnic. What's the date under it?"
    He was gone for half a minute, then he said, "That was on the sixteenth of last month. She —" His voice broke.
    I said quickly. "She know all these people?"
    "She went there with her boy friend and another couple; they were to meet some others. She didn't know them all."
    I told him I was just guessing, stabbing around, but I'd let him know if anything came up. Then I called Samson.
    "Sam, the Franklin girl's diary still on your desk?"
    "Yeah. What you want? And how's it going?"
    I gave him a rundown on the party. "They're a mean bunch all right. That diary — what does it say for the night of the sixteenth, last month?"
    In a