Free The Goldfish Bowl by Laurence Gough Page A

double fist. “You check the sporting goods store across the street from where the Palinkas woman was shot?” he said to Franklin.
    Franklin nodded. He made a move for his notebook and then decided he didn’t need it. “The owner’s name is Morris Culver. He and his wife live in a little apartment at the back of the store. Dave and I went over there first thing this morning, caught them going out the door.”
    “On their way to church,” said Atkinson. “All dressed up in their Sunday best.”
    “To confess?”
    “Not to murder.”
    “Culver’s been in business a long time,” said Franklin, “close to thirty years. He’s stayed in the black by keeping his stock levels low, pushing whatever happens to be in season. Baseball, hockey, all that stuff. But most of his income the past ten years has been generated by the sale of firearms and reloading equipment.”
    Bradley’s head came up. “Tell me more, George.”
    “Culver’s wife keeps the company books. According to her records, they sold a special order of two hundred rounds of .460 Magnum bullets and brass three months ago, on January 4th, to a woman named Lilly Watts.”
    “They have an address?”
    “Apartment five-seventeen, the Manhattan. That’s a co-op on the corner of Robson and Thurlow. There’s some shops on the ground floor, a travel agency, bookstore, a restaurant.”
    “Binky’s,” said Atkinson. “Best clam chowder in town.”
    “Let’s wait until we solve the case,” said Bradley. “Then we can have lunch.”
    “We went down there and had a look around,” Franklin said. “No such apartment. No such tenant.”
    “Lilly also left a phone number at Culver’s. We gave her a ring and got a time-of-day message.” Atkinson grinned. “More than most crooks will give you.”
    “Was Culver able to come up with a description?” said Parker.
    “Afraid not,” said Franklin. “He’s half-blind without his glasses, and he hardly ever wears them because one of the little plastic nosepads fell off, and they pinch. But he does remember that Lilly Watts was a blonde, and that she was unusually tall.”
    “How tall is that?” said Willows.
    “Taller than Culver,” said Franklin. And then added, “Who was, I’d say, about five foot seven.”
    “The same height as Dave,” said Willows.
    “I’m five-ten,” said Atkinson, flushing angrily.
    “Shoes by Otis,” said Willows.
    Bradley pulled on his cigar but got no smoke. He struck a match against his thumbnail, fired up, and waved the match at Willows. “Jack, I want you and Parker to concentrate on Alice Palm. Dig into her background, and dig deep. We still don’t know where she was going when she was killed, and she’s been dead eight days now.”
    The match was still burning. Bradley remembered a scene in Lawrence of Arabia , Peter O’Toole extinguishing a match with his fingers and saying something about it being an easy trick to learn, all you had to do was not show the pain. He dropped the spent match in the wastebasket, and turned his attention to Atkinson.
    “Dave, you and George find out everything there is to know about Phasia Palinkas. If there’s any kind of connection between the two victims, I want to know about it.” Bradley blew a fat doughnut of smoke across the surface of his desk. He pointed at the doughnut with the stub of his cigar. “That’s exactly what we’ve got so far. Zilch. A big fat zero. It ain’t good enough.”
    Willows started to move towards the door, Bradley held up a restraining hand.
    “One more thing. I got a phone call from Chief Scott this morning. Early this morning. He’d been talking to Mayor Cooley, who strongly resents the fact that two of this fair city’s voters have been so spectacularly whacked. The headlines, as you may have noticed, have not been kind. His Honour wants the perp disenfranchised with all due haste, before he decides to try for three in a row. So let’s find the son of a bitch and put him down,