Free Too Sweet to Die by Ron Goulart, Llc Ebook Architects Page A

rid of her.”
    “Got rid of her how?”
    “Just tossed her out, man. I took her down in the street and told her to take a jump for herself.”
    Easy leaned harder against the pinned Poncho. “When was that?”
    “I don’t know. Sunday morning sometime, five o’clock in the morning or so.”
    “Nobody’s seen her since, Poncho.”
    “I tell you, man, I booted her out. That’s all. She was okay and on her feet then.”
    “You don’t know where she went?”
    “I didn’t care. She didn’t say.”
    “You’re a nice guy, Poncho,” said Easy. “I wish you well.” He let go of him, then gave him three chops at the side of his neck.
    Poncho went a foot up the wall before he began to slide down. His wrists flapped a few times as he went down, as though he were gently swimming.
    When Poncho telescoped onto the floor Easy was at the door.
    Onesy raised one eyebrow when he saw Easy. “All is well?”
    Easy stepped in front of the desk. “It turns out Poncho was at home after all.”
    “Oh, good.”
    Reaching out Easy got a grip on the top of the clerk’s narrow head. He pushed him back from the desk and took the two five-dollar bills out of the breast pocket of Onesy’s dim flowered shirt.
    “Son of a gun,” said the old man in the brown suit.

CHAPTER 14
    A DRUNK MAN IN a Midwestern business suit was trying to tell Mitzi Levin a dirty joke. He was bent far over, talking into the little money hole in the glass front of the ticket booth. “Did you catch that last part?” he was asking. “After the duchess farts …”
    Easy lifted the pink-faced drunk out of the way by catching hold of his suit coat in two places. “I want to talk to you,” he told the chubby girl.
    “I haven’t even come to the punch line yet,” complained the drunk.
    “I can’t leave the booth for another half hour, Mr. Easy,” said Mitzi. “Besides I’ve talked myself out on the subject of Jill Jeffers.”
    “You left out Poncho,” said Easy.
    Mitzi glanced away, caught the eye of a thin blond boy standing next to the naked man cutout in the lobby. “Teddy, take over for me.”
    “Nobody has any sense of humor any more,” said the Midwest drunk as he drifted away.
    “Come around inside to my office,” Mitzi said.
    The office was behind the ticket booth, a small room walled with publicity photos of forgotten actors and actresses. The pictures had all been inscribed to someone named Charlie with affection.
    Easy waited until Mitzi was seated on the edge of her desk. Standing with his back to the door, he said, “This time tell me everything.”
    Mitzi rolled a Flair pen across the desk top with her middle finger, saying nothing.
    “When Poncho and his buddies finished with Jill and tossed her out,” said Easy, “she was only a few blocks from here. She must have come to you.”
    “I’ve had a very troubled life,” said the chubby young girl, still rolling the blue pen slowly back and forth. “I try to minimize the amount of new trouble I take on.”
    “Jill did come here Sunday morning.”
    Mitzi gave a small nod. “Yes.”
    “You’ve been telling me everything but the truth. That’s got to stop now, Mitzi.”
    “Okay, I know,” said the girl. “She got here sometime around 5 A.M. on Sunday. My luck being what it is, I was alone. I made up the clean-cut Jewish lawyer. Jill and I went over to Dean’s party in my car and Jill left her Porsche out on the street here.” Mitzi pushed the pen too hard and it rolled over the edge of the old desk. “Right at first she didn’t talk about Poncho or what they’d tried on her. I didn’t know about it right away, but I could tell something lousy had happened. From her clothes and her face. I’m not as casual about sex as this trap might lead you to believe. Things like Poncho shake me up.”
    “Is that why you didn’t talk about it?”
    “Only partly,” said the girl. “See, when Jill came back that morning she was very strange.” Mitzi laughed a thin