Free The Paperback Show Murders by Robert Reginald Page B

to you?” I asked.
    â€œNah,” Ferdinand said, “he just told me that he’d forgotten where he’d put it, but Gully had found it for him, and it was quite rare, ‘worth a lot of dough,’ as he so quaintly put it. He was rushing off to meet the buyer.”
    â€œJust a minute,” I said. “He indicated to you that he was leaving the Drinkery to make the sale?”
    â€œYeah,” both Ferd and Kitty said.
    â€œWell, that just isn’t the way it happened,” Freddie the Cur said. “We did our deal earlier in the evening, and I paid him several thousand cash money too. It was a good clean copy.”
    â€œA good clean copy of what ?” I asked.
    â€œI’ll have it on display at my table when we open,” he said. “You’re welcome to come by and make a bid.”
    â€œMaybe I will.” I turned back to the two writers: “So, who was this other buyer, and what was Brody selling?”
    â€œHe didn’t say,” Kitty indicated.
    Bartholomew just shrugged his shoulders. He was engrossed in dipping his toast into the runny parts of his eggs, and slurping up the remains. Finally, he looked up and said: “I didn’t know about the other book, whatever it was. Brody was always surprisingly cagey about such things. But he had a knack for finding stuff, that’s for sure. Hey, Kitty, remember that boondoggled photo-illustrated edition of Forever Amber ? Man, now that was really something!”
    â€œWhat time did Brody leave?” I asked.
    â€œOh, God, I don’t know,” Bartholomew said. “I mean, we were drinking ourselves, you know?”
    â€œSometime after midnight,” Kitty said. “I remember, because we made a joke about the day, and that it was now Sunday.”
    â€œSo, not long before Dameen took his tumble,” I said.
    â€œI suppose not. I don’t know when he died,” she said.
    â€œWell, it was about one when the commotion woke me up,” I said. “So, it had to be before that.”
    â€œI guess it was, then,” Ferd said. “Well, it’s just too damned…you know. Brody went through spells when he was sober, and he told me a few weeks ago that his new girlfriend, Gilly or whatever her name is, she’d really helped clean up his act.”
    â€œThen why was he back on the sauce?” I asked.
    â€œWho the hell gives a fuck?” Freddie the Cur said. He was shoveling the end of an apple sausage down his gullet, and the act was so disgusting that I had to look away. I wondered if I’d ever be able to eat one again myself. He belched out loud. “He was just a poor drunk, OK, who couldn’t help himself. Yeah, he could be fun at times, and I’ve seen him mean as a skunk, too. He used to beat his wife back in the old days. I bet that Gully didn’t let him do that.”
    â€œWhy do you say that?” I asked.
    â€œI heard her telling him off yesterday,” he said, burping again, and shifting his ass to exhale a fragrant cloud. “He was begging her to forgive him—again. She really had the man pussy-whipped, if you know what I mean. He would have done anything for that dame.”
    â€œWhat did she say, specifically?” I pressed.
    â€œOh, just that if someone was still alive—I didn’t catch the name—she’d take care of him all right, just like she’d done to someone else. She was just reaming him out, man, right and left—and I could see that he was terrified that she’d leave him. I had the impression that they hadn’t been together more than a month or two. Finally, they made up, she kissed him lightly on the cheek, and told him to go do what she’d said—and I don’t know what that was. That was right after we’d finished our business in the Drinkery. She’d been hiding in a booth to one side.”
    â€œShe was waiting for you to finish the