Free The Devil You Know by P.N. Elrod Page A

swamp-filled southern state where fried alligator was the blue plate special, but her accent, manner, and way of thinking were now pure New Yorker.
    “I buy you dinner. A nice one.”
      “That’s it?”
    “ We buy you dinner,” said Barrett, pushing around me. ="0"A very nice one.”
    “How can a girl refuse? Okay, what’s your big emergency? Let’s get the business part out of the way.”
    “I’m needing current news on Fleish Brogan and if he’s connected to Brogan Trucking,” I said.
    “Is that all?”
    “And if he was involved with the sudden disappearance of a well-heeled man seven years ago.”
    “You mean Judge Crater? He’s under the boardwalk on Coney Island. Everyone knows that.”
    “That was eight years ago. This would be August, 1931.”
    “It’s before I got here, but there might be something in the files. Lemme see what Clappie’s got.”
    She was either highly confident of Clapsaddle’s unconscious state or had earned a place in his inner circle. No one outside it called him that to his face without collecting a shiner.
    Izzy opened a file drawer with “1930-34” on the label and scrounged toward the back, pulling out a fat folder. “Here’s his stuff from August.”
    She dropped it on the desk and flipped through yellowed clippings of old stories and his weekly column. A column headline popped out as she got to the bottom of the stack, and she read it aloud.
     
    ‘Graft’ Endicott—Another Judge Crater?
     
    Naomi Endicott, wife of criminal attorney—you may draw your own sense of irony from that descriptive—Griffin “Graft” Endicott, has filed a missing persons report with the police. Her wayward husband has been gone for three weeks, and the lady is in need of butter and egg money.
    According to my sources, Endicott made a forty-thousand dollar withdrawal from their joint bank account in the first week of this month, leaving his better half high and dry with whatever pocket change she could find under the sofa cushions.
    The withdrawal and subsequent vanishing of Endicott follows close on the heels of his being subpoenaed by our fair city’s DA. One may conclude that this is not a case for trial but rather a case of cause-and-effect.
    The famously flamboyant Mr. Endicott, who cannot stand to read a paper unless his name was mentioned in it at least twice, has not sent so much as a postcard to his nearest and dearest in all this time. It is this reporter’s opinion that if he knows what’s good for him, the jolly fellow will continue to be missing indefinitely.
    Of course, I must mention that You-Know-Who, leading the pack of Endicott’s cantankerous clients, must also want an appointment with the bunked barrister; five minutes would be enough for Y-K-W to encourage him to take a long walk off a short pier.
    Unless that’s happened already in Brazil?
    Watch this space.
     
    The column was fitted around a photo of an aristocratically pretty woman and captioned “Naomi Endicott, Deserted Dame.” It must have been taken in happier times; she was smiling.
    “I remember that now,” I said. “It was the nine-day wonder. Who had it in for Endicott?”
    Izzy gave a short laugh. “You kidding? Everybody.”
    “How about the top ten names in order of the most violent?”
    “Fleming, what are you up to?”
    “Top ten. Bad tempered, most likely to use a machine gun? Ride with me on this and the byline is yours.” I was trusting Barrett would see to it she forgot this part of the conversation. Yes, I’m a manipulative stinker, but it was the quickest way to get things done. “Did they ever find Endicott?”
    “No they did not,” said a man in an irritated drawl. “Izzy, can you not entertain your male callers in some other part of the building and allow me to die in peace?”
    She made no reply, but opened a drawer, pulling out a bottle of vodka. She sloshed two fingers into a glass and took it to him. “Hair of the dog, Clappie. Hoist away.”
    He struggled to sit