Free Everybody Had A Gun by Richard Prather Page B

end at Sixth Street. I hauled Iris around to the left and we kept going. It was a little hard to believe that couple of minutes before we'd been creeping though the darkness of the Pit, and now we were breathing the cool air of Sixth Street, a part of the pedestrian traffic.
    At Olive Street I looped Iris' arm through mine, turned left, and started walking rapidly back toward Seventh. She gave me a startled glance, but I said, "Keep talking. Give me the rest of it—all of it."
    She kept up a stream of words as we reached Seventh and crossed the street. To the left, second door from the corner, was a pawnshop. And that's where I was headed.
    We hit the pawnshop. And went inside, and every time Iris started to question me I shut her up and kept her spilling the dope I was interested in. I wanted to know everything she did before this deal went any further.
    While she talked I looked around the pawnshop for what I wanted. The little white-haired owner bustled up to me trying to crack his knuckles. I dug a five-dollar bill out of my wallet and handed it to him, then picked a pair of high-powered binoculars from underneath a sliding glass counter.
    I want to use these for a minute," I told him. "You'll get them back."
    He sputtered a little, but I turned away from him, slipped the leather strap over my shoulder, and walked to the window in front of the store. By edging to the left of the window I could look back to my right and see the alley and Clark's Cafeteria and the black Cadillac parked in front of it.
    The little white-haired guy came up behind me and Iris, trying to sell us the store. Possibly I shouldn't have been so free with that five-dollar bill. I waved him away. "Look," I said. "We want a little privacy, O.K.? Just got engaged."
    He gave me a wide-eyed look, but faded away from us. Iris had finished telling me most of what had happened the night before and was looking at me like a pup expecting a whipping. I thought about what she'd told me while I turned the binoculars on Breed's car and focused them.
    Boiled down, it appeared she'd been a little late getting out of the club Sunday night—or rather, this Monday morning—after the club closed. Mia had left about ten minutes before, and Iris had just finished removing her make-up and was ready to leave, herself. Then she'd heard loud voices from inside Sader's office, like the beginnings of one hell of an argument, and though she couldn't make out many of the words, she'd heard the name Lobo repeated a few times. That meant nothing to her because she'd never heard of any Lobo. She'd stood listening for a little while with woman's natural curiosity, but she'd begun to feel uneasy about eavesdropping, even unintentionally, she said. Then, when the argument was waxing pretty furious, all of a sudden everything stopped. No more yelling, no more noise, no nothing. Just quiet. It had frightened her and she beat it out of the club. Once outside, she realized that in her nervousness and haste she'd left her bag down in her dressing room, and her pay check was in her bag. She'd stood at the juncture of the alley and Seventh Street for a minute or two, trying to make up her mind whether or not she should go back down into the Pit and get the purse.
    Then things had got a little more complicated. A car, with its lights out, turned into the alley from Sixth Street and stopped in front of the elevator door. Right after that two men came out of the elevator half carrying another man. That was as far as she'd taken it.
    I made sure the pawnshop owner wasn't near enough to listen, and said, "This guy, Iris. He was dead?"
    "I don't know. That is, I didn't then. I thought maybe it was just a drunk, but I knew there hadn't been any customers when I left. Anyway, it scared me. It was dark in the alley and the men were so quiet. I was frightened, even if I wasn't sure what was going on. I left right then and caught a cab home—I had a little money in the house for the