Free Have Gat—Will Travel by Richard S. Prather

hoped I was right, that the car had come to the house. Because interruption or no interruption, I was going to dig for that .32 soon. I could imagine Barney Goodman in the Senate itself, that propaganda machine Jim had talked about booming and boosting him. Maybe more. In ten, fifteen years he might even wind up like a Lauchlin Currie, say, as a Presidential advisor.
    The front door slammed. Goodman's brows twitched, but he didn't move the gun, and he kept his eyes on me. I lowered my right hand an inch, then farther. The door to the den burst open and somebody came inside. "Barney, I've just come from —"
    Her voice stopped suddenly. Goodman turned his head to look at her. And if I hadn't been concentrating so hard on this chance I might have looked myself, because I knew that voice, that breath of brogue. But as soon as Goodman's eyes shifted I jammed my hand into my coat pocket, grabbed the gun and jumped sideways as I pulled it free.
    Goodman shouted, swung toward me and fired before I could get the .32 pointed at him, the slug ripping along my arm. Then I squeezed the trigger twice. He staggered, shot at me again and missed. Blood stained the white shirt under his coat and slowly he bent forward. The gun barrel drooped, but he managed to pull the trigger again, the slug digging into the carpet. He fell to his knees.
    I had time to aim, and my next shot caught him squarely in the forehead.
    Donna was running toward the door when I said, "Go ahead, Donna."
    She took one more step and froze, arms held out from her sides, hands opening and closing. She arched her shoulders as if expecting a bullet in the back. "Turn around," I said. "I'm not going to shoot you. You've got too much to tell us, baby."
    I sat by the phone, waiting for the police, keeping my gun pointed at Donna. There would be a lot of yelling about this, I knew, but I'd be clear. What Donna was going to tell would help. But even without her I figured I'd have no trouble. This would be listed, in the parlance of the book, as a Code 197. Goodman had been pointing a gun at me, trying to kill me.
    But even if he'd been unarmed, I thought, just standing there when I'd killed him, it would still have come under Code 197. At least in my book. That's the Penal Code, Section 197 — self-defense.

THE BUILD-UP

    M Y head throbbed, a sharp point of pain at the base of my skull. When I brought my hand away from the pain, it was sticky. I forced my eyes open, saw the dark red stain on my fingers. Still barely conscious, I moved my right hand and something dropped from it to the floor. It was a gun — mine, a little .32 revolver. I'm a private eye — that's why I always carry the gun.
    Close on my left was the open window. It was screwy. I shouldn't have been sitting in an overstuffed chair next to the window. I struggled to my feet, got my hands on the sill. Six stories below was Main Street. Main Street in Altamira, California. I remembered part of it. There'd been the game here in the Raleigh Hotel. We'd been playing poker — five of us. Vic Foster, Danny Hastings, Jason, Stone, and me, Shell Scott.
    I turned around. The felt-topped table was on its side in the middle of the room, green money on the carpet, alongside it. But it didn't look like more than a thousand or so. A couple of highball glasses lay on the floor. It looked as if there'd been a fight.
    Then I saw him.
    He was flat on his back beyond the table, eyes open and staring, blood all over the front of him, his white shirt streaked. It was Danny Hastings, two bullet holes in his chest. His face was marked up, blood under his nose and on his lips. No pulse, no breath — he was dead, all right.
    The last I remembered of the game, there'd been only Vic Foster, Danny and me playing: the two others had left minutes before. Then Foster had quit, grabbed some fresh air at the window and walked behind me. Right after that, boom. The lights had gone out.
    I heard a siren, went to the window,