Free Angel Eyes by Loren D. Estleman Page A

NIGHT WAS still holding its breath as I approached the unmarked entrance to The Crescent. Shadows, emboldened by the evening’s youth, clung to the inside of the niche as if tensed to spring. The joint wasn’t scheduled to open until eight, but a thin blade of light showed beneath the door. I descended the concrete steps and tried the handle. It gave.
    Fluorescent tubes I hadn’t noticed on my last visit caught the place naked. Beams that looked like heavy old oak by phony candlelight were painted plywood. Walls that seemed thirty feet apart during business hours were closer than twenty, painted blue at the bottom to match the floor and to add depth. There were ratholes in the corners. Under a baby spot, bombarded by the shifting glare of an electric light show, it all came together, but at this stage the establishment looked like a hooker the morning after.
    The storeroom was in back, behind the bar. I threaded my way between tables the size of smoking stands with chairs overturned on top of them to the door marked authorized personnel and pushed it open. My hand was inside my coat, gripping the unregistered Luger the cops had failed to find in the secret pocket of the trunk when they impounded my car. I wasn’t going to make the mistake of walking into that storeroom unarmed a second time. It was empty except for the stacks of wooden crates, cobwebs, and the smells of liquor and rotting wood. All the broken glass had been swept away.
    I closed the door and turned and froze. From behind the bar I could see a shelf containing a corroded metal cigar box, the kind saloonkeepers use to store the nightly receipts before locking them away in a safe. The lid was open and it was empty.
    Which added up to zero. Whoever was responsible for banking the cash could have removed it for that purpose and forgotten to close the lid. That’s what I told myself as I crept the length of the bar, looking for something to go with the discovery.
    I nearly tripped over him. A gate designed to prevent undesirables from sneaking up on the bartender from the other end cast a shadow that concealed everything but his shoe. I stood there for a long moment, breathing air that had suddenly gone foul, though of course there wouldn’t be any noticeable stench. Not yet. Then I reached over and swung open the gate. Light poured into the section.
    There was blood, a lot of it. It formed a dark brown oval on the scuffed linoleum all around the body, where it had dried hours before. His head was twisted so that its smashed profile, and particularly the bold nose, stood out sharply against the stain. It was spoiled by a clotted dent in the temple, from which black blood and gray matter ran in spidery lines over his cheeks and down his neck into his collar, all but filling the socket from which his one visible eye stared at everything and yet nothing. He didn’t look much like Valentino anymore, and it was a shame about his expensive suit. Gingerly I nudged his outthrust leg with my toe. Steel girders should be that stiff.
    I glanced around, searching for the weapon, but nothing looked suitable. If one of the bottles on the shelves behind the bar had been used, the floor would be littered with broken glass. The wound wasn’t shaped right to have been made by the edge of the cigar box, and anyway the box was neither stained nor damaged. The hell with it. Finding the instrument of destruction is rarely as important as it’s made to be in fiction.
    If thoughts were actions I was out of there already and not going through his pockets, I wouldn’t know that he carried the usual stuff: loose change, a ring containing what looked like a key to a Mercedes among others, a ticket to Saturday’s performance at the Fischer, a flat wallet stuffed with fifties and a driver’s license made out to Rahman Hassim Ibn Krim. I would be back home typing up résumés to send to personnel managers in shoe stores. If thoughts were actions, there was no way I would still be in