Free Coward's Kiss by Lawrence Block Page B

guarantee, Ed. It’s a shot in the dark.”
    “That’s the only kind there is.”
    “So I’ll fire away. It may take an hour and it may take six hours and it may take three weeks. Anything interesting happen last night?”
    “Nothing much,” I lied. “I spent a little time with a girl.”
    “Who?”
    “You,” I said. “Remember?”
    “Ed——”
    “I’ll have more to tell you,” I said. “When you get over here.”
    “Where?”
    “Here,” I said.
    “Your apartment? No, don’t tell me you’re afraid again and I’m right again. You don’t want me to call with the precious information. You want me to trot it over. Right?”
    “Right.”
    She sighed. “I’ll take cabs all over the city,” she told me. “And I have a hunch you’re going to wind up shelling out for another dinner tonight, Mr. London, sir.”
    “It’s all deductible,” I said. “See what you can find out.”
    I was lighting my pipe when the doorbell rang.
    An hour had passed since I talked to Maddy. Maybe a little more than an hour—it was hard to say. I finished lighting the pipe and started for the door, then stopped when I was halfway there.
    It was too soon for it to be Maddy. It could have been anybody else in the world, ranging from the Con Ed man coming to read my meter to a girl scout selling cookies. But I was feeling nervous. I went back for Armin’s Beretta and hoped to God it wasn’t a girl scout selling cookies.
    I felt only halfway ridiculous holding the gun in one hand while I opened the door.
    I felt completely ridiculous when the big one knocked it out of my hand.
    There were two of them—a big one and a small one. The big one was very big, a little taller than I am and a hell of a lot wider. He had a boxer’s flattened nose and a cretin idiot’s fixed stare. His jacket was stretched tight across huge shoulders. His eyes were small and beady and his forehead was wide and dull.
    The small one wasn’t really that small—he looked small because he was standing next to a human mountain. He wore a hat and a suit and a tie. He had his hands in his pants pockets and he was smiling.
    “Inside,” he said. “Move.”
    I didn’t move. The big one gave me a shove, his arm hardly moving, and I moved. I backed up fast and damn near fell over. The big one reached out a paw and scooped up the Beretta. He pitched it at a chair. He seemed contemptuous of it, as if it was some kind of silly toy.
    The small one turned, closed the door, slid the bolt across. He turned again, his eyes showing the same contempt for me that the big one had shown for the gun.
    “Now,” he said, “we talk. That briefcase.”

SEVEN

    THE big one held his hands in front of his chest and flexed his fingers. The small one had a bulge under his jacket that was either a gun or a lonely left breast. I remembered Peter Armin and thought about reasonable men. These two didn’t look reasonable at all.
    They didn’t talk now. They were waiting me out, waiting for me to say something or do something. I wondered if I was supposed to offer them a drink.
    “You’re out in left field,” I said finally. “I don’t have the briefcase.”
    “The boss said you’d say that.”
    “It’s the truth.”
    Their faces told me nothing. “The boss said to ask you nice,” the smaller one said. “He said ask you nice, and if you didn’t come up with the briefcase, then work you over.”
    “He had to send two of you?”
    They didn’t get angry. “Two of us,” the talker said. “One to ask nice, the other to work you over. I’m asking nice. Billy takes care of the rest.”
    “I don’t have the briefcase.”
    The little one considered that. He pursed his lips, narrowed his eyes, then made a small clucking sound with his tongue. “Billy,” he said softly, “hit him.”
    Billy hit me in the stomach.
    He wound up like a bush-league pitcher and telegraphed the punch all over the place. He had all the subtlety of a pneumatic hammer and I was too dumb to