Free The Midnight Man by Loren D. Estleman Page A

enough of my own to know a cracked rib,” Bassett explained. “I was you, I’d have that X-rayed. Move around all you care to meanwhile, but don’t blame me when you put a sharp end through a lung.”
    I leaned back against the wall, breathing carefully and waiting for the pain to diminish. When it did: “Where’s this thing parked?”
    “Damn!” He cuffed a treelike thigh with his hand.
    “What’s the matter?”
    “I bet myself you’d ask how long you was out first.”
    “Okay, how long was I out?”
    “Too late. We’re in a K-Mart lot in Warren. I know, it’s one hell of a hike from where I found you. But them newspaper bloodsuckers will never think of looking for me here. It’s getting so I can’t take a crap without finding one of them in the tank. Also, it’s the only place I could find where I didn’t have to trade two mules to pay for a spot. And I thought inflation was bad in Tulsa.”
    “Where did you find me?”
    He blinked. “Don’t you know?”
    “Give me time. I only just found out where I am now.”
    “I reckon you was kind of out of it at that.” He scratched his head. He didn’t make near as much noise doing it as a Rotomill tearing up pavement. “I was coming away from that communist place on McDougall where the niggers and freaks hang out when I see you in the alley next to the building. I was that close to smoking you. Last time someone came at me out of the dark that way, I blew the son-of-a-bitch redskin in half.”
    He’d maligned about four different racial and social groups in that snatch of conversation, but I didn’t belong to any of them so I let it dangle. “How long ago was that?”
    “I knew you’d get around to that for real sooner or later. Eleven, twelve hours. It’s coming on noon now.” He paused. “You wouldn’t want to let me in on what you was doing there.”
    “Same as you, I suppose. That true what they said in the paper about you promising to bring Smith in dead or alive?”
    He winked, a gesture that involved a simultaneous sideways jerk of his head, like Buffalo Bob being conspiratorial with the peanut gallery. “You got to put on a show for them reporter fellows. In this business it’s important no one takes you seriously. Hell, you should know that. You’re a P.I.”
    “You’ve been through my wallet. Where is it, by the way? Not that I don’t trust you, but I don’t know you from the King of Ruritania. And my clothes? And my car, as long as I’m asking. Just for future reference. I don’t feel like dressing or driving or spending money again this year.”
    “I don’t know nothing about a car. Wasn’t no keys in your pockets, so I figured you didn’t have one. Your clothes are in that closet, your wallet too. You’re wearing your pants and socks. I didn’t want you getting the wrong idea about me.”
    He gestured at a knob on a section of wall next to the bed. No seam showed to indicate a door. I took his word for it that it opened and that there was a closet behind it containing my shoes, shirt, and jacket.
    “Got a smoke?”
    “Figured you’d ask.” He dug a sorry pack of Winstons from a flap shirt pocket and handed it to me. It looked familiar “They’re yours. I gave it up years back. You should, too.”
    I took one out and let him light it with one of my matches. “You saved my life and I’m grateful,” I said, blowing smoke. “That doesn’t make it yours. How come my friends at the commune didn’t greet you the way they did me?” I knew it was a stupid question even as I was asking it. He looked about as easy to knock down and kick apart as Rushmore.
    He nodded. “So that’s what happened. I thought so. No one greeted me any way. I knocked, but nobody answered. I didn’t go in.”
    “Sticky wicket,” I said.
    “Huh? Oh, yeah.” His teeth flashed insincerely in his beard.
    “If it’s not too personal, why’d you pull me out of that alley?”
    His forehead broke into a mass of inverted V’s, one on top