Free The By-Pass Control by Mickey Spillane

important in this work.”
    “You have the notes?”
    “At home. They may not be very helpful because sometimes I use names or numerical identification rather than names.”
    “It’s worth a try.”
    “Who is he, Tiger?”
    “Louis Agrounsky.”
    “The name isn’t at all familiar and names I recall well. Why is he so very important?”
    “Because he’s holding a death threat over the heads of everyone in this country.” I got up and nodded my head toward her. “Let’s go, sugar. We need every minute we can get.”
    Camille Hunt didn’t answer. She simply looked at my face and without a word reached for her coat and handbag and followed me out the door. I turned in my badge at the gate, was cleared into the parking lot, got in her car beside her and we drove out to the highway.
    Her apartment was on the east side of Central Park in the Seventies, an upper-middle-class section newly renovated to accommodate those who still liked the sprawling octopus of the city enough to live in it. The doorman took care of the car while a black-suited assistant in the lobby ushered us to the elevator with a smile of subservience and made sure we pushed the right button.
    Camille lived on the sixth floor, her apartment facing the street with a grandiose spread of glass. She threw her coat carelessly across the back of a chair, pushed a panel open to expose a built-in wall bar and said, “Make a drink while you’re waiting.”
    I built a pair of them, whiskey and ginger ale heavy with ice, and set them on a coffee table. Camille didn’t take long. She came back in a few minutes, changed into a black skirt and sweater, with a fistful of papers in her hand and laid them out on the table in front of me. “There they are. I’ve noted physical characteristics and reactions to the interview along with my personal reflections, and if it can help ... I’m glad.” She picked up her drink and sat down opposite me.
    The notes were impersonally objective, recording what her eyes saw and her ears heard. They described the interviewees well right down to the shape of their heads and the tone of their voices. In places that seemed like simple doodles she explained the meaning of the characters there, what might denote intelligence or lack of it, or what might mean to her a personality trait not suitable for a Belt-Aire employee.
    Each one I went over in detail, trying to make a description fit Louis Agrounsky, but none came up. If he had ever been face to face with Camille Hunt it wasn’t acknowledged there.
    It took an hour. She said nothing, merely refilling my glass when it was emptied, occasionally handing me a page when I took one out of sequence, letting me digest every word she had written until I threw the last page down in absolute disgust and leaned back in the couch with my eyes half closed.
    “Hell,” I said, “it’s another blank.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Not your fault, kid.”
    “Is it something you can talk about?”
    “No.”
    “Does it involve Belt-Aire?”
    “I don’t know. It involves Doug Hamilton’s death but I don’t know how.” I looked up at her. “How well did you know him?”
    “Very impersonally. He was employed by the head office. We ... worked together as part of personnel requirements, but I knew little about the man. When we got the contract and he was assigned to investigate our employees, I had lunch with him twice, helped him with the files and accepted his recommendations. Personally, I found him rather ordinary. He was very efficient in his work though.”
    “He made one mistake. The big one.”
    Camille got up from her chair, picked up our glasses, and filled them again. Then she sat on the arm of the sofa and held one out to me. “The papers said he was involved in an accident. Two detectives came to ask me questions and a pair of nice young men who were polite but determined in finding out all I knew about Mr. Hamilton.”
    “And?”
    “I answered their questions as directly as