Free The Bitch by Gil Brewer Page B

familiar and good and it felt like something that was irrevocably lost. The office was suddenly a haven of peace, even with Schroeder blowing his stack. I suddenly realized how much feeling I really had for this place.
    “You hired a son-of-a-bitch who let a robbery come off and didn’t even get in a decent alarm.”
    “He’s dead, isn’t he?” Sam said evenly.
    “Now, that’s a great damned help, isn’t it?” Schroeder said. He whirled away from Sam and looked at me with a hard light in those pale eyes. I went around and sat down behind my desk and just kind of soaked in the easiness of my chair. I had never known a chair to feel so good. I had never known anything to feel so comfortable and secure as this office. Why, it was the law! I was the law. And all of that thinking was so damnably wrong. I sat there, and it was all like a dream, because it was all twisted, and only a matter of time before it got straightened out—with the fingers pointing at me.
    “I want to help all I can, George,” Sam said.
    Schroeder was still looking at me.
    “What have you got to say about this insane mess?” Schroeder said to me.
    I shrugged and looked toward Sam.
    Sam moved over by his desk and leaned back against it. The strain didn’t seem to show in his face. He was a bit paler than usual, but otherwise he looked all right. He avoided my eyes very well, though. I knew he was hurt plenty, all the way to his socks.
    And what was worse, was he had lied for me. He could easily have thrown me to the dogs. He hadn’t—yet.
    “We’ve had the Halquist account for a long time,” Sam said. “Hornell’s been on before and he—”
    “Hornell’s dead,” Schroeder said.
    Sam looked at him questioningly.
    “Quit talking about him as if he’s alive. I don’t like it.” Schroeder paced up and down the office. He stopped and ripped the plastic raincoat off and tossed it across my desk. I wanted to shove it off on the floor.
    “Damn it,” he said. “You guys are going to lose your license. You know that, don’t you?”
    Sam’s voice sounded calm, but I could detect the strain now. “The robbery was unavoidable,” he said. “Hornell
did
put in the alarm.”
    “And what a garbled mess
that
was,” Schroeder said.
    “My God, the man’s dead!” Sam said.
    ‘Two hundred thousand dollars worth of ‘my God, the man’s dead',” Schroeder said, pacing again. “How in hell can you do such a thing? One man on a payroll like that.”
    “You know it happens all the time. There are other payrolls as big as that in this city right now. It’s all a gamble.”
    “A gamble,” Schroeder said. He was mad. You could see it running through him like a red-hot current. He was mad and determined, and likely out to smash the Morgan agency, just because it was a fly in his soup at the moment.
    “How many other similar accounts do you have?” Schroeder asked Sam.
    “A number.”
    “Well, you don’t have them anymore. Get that through your head.”
    “Lieutenant, relax,” Sam said.
    Schroeder stood in front of him and rocked up and down on his heels. He acted as if he wanted to hop up and down. It seemed as if he actually radiated nervous energy; you could feel it in the room.
    “Have
you
got a line on anything?”
    “No. Then again, maybe.”
    “Now what is that supposed to mean?”
    “I mean, I’m not even sure the money’s stolen,” Sam said. “We don’t know. It’s too early yet.”
    Schroeder slammed the heel of his palm against his forehead three times. He flashed around and looked at me, standing in a kind of crouch. Then he straightened and looked at Sam again. He spoke softly, almost in a whisper.
    “One,” he said. “The money’s gone.” He counted them off on his fingers, bending the fingers far down, then letting them snap up. He spoke very softly. “Two, your operative is dead, dead, dead. Three, the safe was blown. Four, a well-known safe-cracker dead, dead, dead. Five, they didn’t trip the