Free Once a Mutt (Trace 5) by Warren Murphy Page A

poured water again into the bottom of the wastepaper basket, brought it outside, and set it next to the bed. He stubbed out both cigarettes burning in the ashtray, dumped their remains into the butt can, and lit another cigarette.
    Being an entrepreneur was a lousy way to try to make a living, he thought. All his good ideas—and there were a lot of them—always required a lot of start-up money and he never had enough. He had never had any money when he was an accountant, and now that he worked for Garrison Fidelity, he didn’t have any more.
    Only once had anything good ever happened in his life. He had come into some money on a real-estate deal and used the proceeds to buy his way out of his marriage. He left his wife and two children and had gone to Las Vegas to be a professional gambler.
    Just about the time he was tired of gambling for a living, he had met Bob Swenson, the president of Garrison Fidelity Insurance. Swenson had been clipped of a million dollars in negotiable securities by a hooker and Trace had arranged to get the securities back. In gratitude, Swenson had put Trace on retainer as an occasional investigator for Garrison Fidelity.
    About the same time, he met Chico. He had found her, naked, in an apartment-building hallway, after some man had gotten her liquored up, then thought it was cute to throw her out into the hall without clothes.
    Trace got her clothes back, punched the man’s lights out, and then helped her find a job as a blackjack dealer at the Araby Casino. The idea of supplementing her income by turning occasional tricks for out-of-town gamblers was hers alone. He had never been able to ask her why.
    He smoked some more and thought about Garrison Fidelity and realized he was tired of working, scratching around trying to make a living. The restaurant deal was supposed to end all that and free his time so he could devote it to other money-making ideas.
    He thought it was unfair. He was one of the world’s great natural resources, a money-making machine ready to be unleashed. But he was never going to get a chance unless he came up with another ten thousand dollars.
    How to get it?
    Of course. There was a way. A simple way.
    He would beg for it.
    He called Chico in their Las Vegas condominium.
    “Hello, light of my life,” he said when she answered the phone.
    “I’m still not lending you any money,” she said by way of greeting.
    “Did I even ask you for any?”
    “Not yet in this phone conversation. That out of the way, how goes it?”
    “It doesn’t go. So far, this is a dead end. Don’t change the subject so fast. Let’s talk about lending me money.”
    “Let’s not,” Chico said.
    “Why not?”
    “Because it’ll vanish, poof, up in smoke. I’ve been with you for how long?”
    “Four years. It only seems longer,” Trace said.
    “Four years. I’ve heard every one of your lunatic ideas. Make Tulsa into a parking lot. Backward printed signs for cars, combination combs and toothbrushes for muff divers—”
    “Just a minute. I never invented any such thing,” he said.
    “Then I must just have. It’s yours, free. Take it and run with it, Trace. Just don’t ask me to invest.”
    “I’m not asking you to invest in this restaurant, Chico.”
    “Good.”
    “I’m begging you. I’m here in this awful town, down on both knees, begging you. Save me. You’re all that stands between me and a life of destitution.”
    “No.”
    “Didn’t I quit smoking for you?” he asked.
    “For three hours once. You’re back up to four packs a day.”
    “If I knew it meant that much to you. I would have stayed stopped. I’ll quit again as soon as I get back,” Trace promised.
    “I don’t believe you.”
    “And didn’t I quit drinking?”
    “No. You quit drinking vodka. Some of the time. Instead of drinking a quart of vodka a day, now you drink a gallon of wine. Maybe a gallon and a half when you’re going good. All I got out of that big change is that the garbage is heavier