Free Dead-Bang by Richard S. Prather Page A

neighbor’s back yard, walking very quietly with the .38 Special in my hand. The house wasn’t empty; at least light glowed softly from two windows back here. The drapes inside were drawn, but those over the window to my right, nearer the wall, sagged half an inch apart just above the sill. By bending and peering through, and moving my head back and forth, I could examine a small slice of the room’s interior.
    And in that small slice I saw a man sitting in a wooden chair, his arms pulled behind him, obviously bound; but I couldn’t see his wrists or whatever held them. He sat erect, unmoving, his profile toward me, looking to my left, and I could see the band of white tape over his mouth. The one eye visible to me was open but puffed, becoming discolored. Somebody had landed a pretty good one on him.
    I had never met Emmanuel Bruno, but his face was familiar to me from newspaper and magazine photos and television. He was six-five, three inches taller than I am, lean, rangy, with a massive head and features that would not have been out of place on a Roman coin, the lips a bit full—some might have described them as sensual or even Satanic—and usually twisted in a smile.
    I couldn’t see much, maybe, but it was enough to know this guy was not Emmanuel Bruno.
    I squeezed my eyes shut briefly, shook my head. For a crazy moment I wondered if I had really been talking to Drusilla Bruno earlier. She’d said that was her name, and I’d taken her word for it. Why not? What reason would she—I cut off that train of thought. It didn’t make sense. She hadn’t told me where to go, but I was sure this was the right house. Besides, you do not just happen to stumble upon homes in which guys who have been socked in the eye are bound to chairs.
    By moving a little to my right I managed a glimpse of one of the room’s corners—and a bit of the floor, reddish or pink, and shiny, as if covered with bright new linoleum. But I didn’t spot anybody else. I heard someone, though. The scrape of a chair, a couple of muttered, unintelligible words. Then there was the thud of footsteps and the figure of a man appeared between the guy in the chair and me.
    I couldn’t see his face, but he was stocky, thick in the middle, wearing dark trousers—with the checked butt of an automatic pistol showing above the belt—and a pale blue dress shirt with French cuffs, visible because he had both hands on his hips, elbows akimbo. After half a minute the man stepped—oddly, I thought—to my left and out of sight. I heard him open a door, his footsteps getting softer, but in seconds they were louder again. The door slammed and the man came briefly into view peeling cellophane from a pack of cigarettes, still moving with that peculiar, almost mincing, gait. There was a scraping sound once more, then silence.
    I waited another minute or two but heard no further sounds. The guy in the chair continued to sit erect, motionless except for the blinking of his puffy eye. And as I looked at him I knew I’d seen that face, that profile, somewhere. It had struck me as familiar with my first glimpse of him, but the fact that it wasn’t Bruno’s face pushed recognition from my mind for a while.
    It was a familiar face, yes, familiar from newspaper pix and a couple of television newscasts; but not by any means as instantly recognizable as Bruno’s, and almost surely, if I had not been thinking of Bruno, I would have been unable to remember who the man was. But my thoughts sort of bounced around—Bruno … Lemming … Erovite … Cassiday and Quince … C and Q Pharmaceuticals—Cassiday.
    Dave Cassiday. I recalled Dru also mentioning something about, “Before he left, Dad tried to phone Dave, but wasn’t able to reach him.” Maybe there was one angle that made sense of this. But I knew two things for sure: I wasn’t going to see much more through my