Free Walking Dead Man by Hugh Pentecost Page A

familiar, the husky speech with the slightly British sound to it was familiar.
    “Miss Adams and I have been drinking with Richard since a little before midnight,” he said. “So I think you should bear in mind, Mr. House-dick, that we are all a little potted and therefore not entirely reliable.”
    The gorgeous Miss Adams was leaning back, her arms spread out on either side of the back of the couch. This tended to reveal a rather stimulating amount of bare bosom. Her eyes were narrowed, watching me, as if she was daring me to let my mouth drop open. There was a zipper in the front of the scarlet housecoat she was wearing that would have opened it right down to the floor.
    “If you three have been together since before midnight, I don’t have any questions to ask you,” Jerry said.
    Cleaves was sweetening a Scotch on the rocks. “You can’t get away with that, Dodd,” he said. His straight, hard mouth moved in a tiny smile. “You’ve whetted my curiosity. What has happened to Chambrun?”
    “If you’ve all been here since before twelve, you can’t help me to provide an answer to that,” Jerry said. He turned toward the door.
    “How about a drink?” Cleaves said, turning on charm.
    “No thanks,” Jerry said.
    “Maybe you feel more communicative than your friend, Haskell,” Cleaves said. He gestured toward the drink table.
    “Sorry,” I said.
    “I gather you know that I’ve made a life study of Mr. Battle and Mr. Chambrun. You seem worried. Let me reassure you. They are indestructible, those two. They live charmed lives. Has someone taken a shot at Mr. Chambrun and missed? That would fit the pattern?”
    “What pattem7” Jerry asked.
    “Things are not what they seem when you deal with Battle and Chambrun,” Cleaves said. “Someone is said to have shot at Battle and missed. My life study tells me that missing is exactly what was intended. What is supposed to have happened to Chambrun? Because whatever is supposed to have happened is probably not what happened at all. That’s the way the game is played.”
    Jerry was intrigued in spite of himself. “Mr. Chambrun gets a phone call from the assistant D.A. in the penthouse asking him to come up. He went, and has disappeared into thin air.”
    “How exciting,” Miss Adams said in a slow, drawling voice. She moved slightly, almost exposing an entire breast.
    “And the phone call turned out not to be from the D.A . at all?” Cleaves asked. He certainly knew how part of the game was played. “Any signs of violence?”
    “Not yet,” Jerry said.
    Cleaves took a sip of his drink. “I have every reason to regret that,” he said. “I take it you know why.”
    “Your father,” I said.
    His mouth became a straight, hard slit. “Chambrun told you?”
    “Yes.”
    “I’ve spent thirty years trying to convince myself that Battle and Chambrun are Siamese twins,” Cleaves said. “It doesn’t quite work. Chambrun was a genuine patriot. I could cut his heart out for what he did, if that kind of thing was possible for me. But I understand it. Perhaps in his shoes I’d have done the same thing. His cause, he thought, was just. He faced me with it a long time ago, when I was still in my teens. He laid it on the line without any ifs, ands, or buts. He took the entire responsibility. He left himself wide open to me. I—I spent a lot of time preparing myself for the perfect crime. You see, I don’t want to die for a justified crime, gentlemen. I made myself into an expert marksman with any kind of gun.” He smiled. “Rest assured, if you can break my alibi for the time Battle was shot at, I still have another alibi. I couldn’t have missed at that distance. He paused a moment to light a cigarette. “In the last ten years I’ve had a dozen chances to settle with Chambrun. Would you believe I’ve looked at him five times through the sights of a gun and could never pull the trigger? Something about him, god damn him! I could have gotten away with it