All the Lucky Ones Are Dead Read Free

because you see a fat, easy pay-check in all this. Isn’t that right?”
    Gunner almost laughed, until he realized Johnson was deadly serious, her accusation heartfelt. “Look. Let’s try and leave our likes and dislikes at home, all right? If your life’s in danger, I can help you, whether I think you’re the spawn of Satan, or a girl just like the girl who married dear old Dad.”
    â€œBut my life isn’t in danger,” Johnson said.
    â€œNo?”
    â€œNo. Hate mail and ugly phone calls are part of my everyday life, Mr. Gunner. And Wally knows that. You do what I do, the way I do it, pissing some idiots off just comes with the territory.”
    â€œBut Browne doesn’t think this Mr. M of yours is just another idiot.”
    â€œThat’s true. But you know what? That’s Wally’s problem, not mine. Because this guy is just another idiot. A little more articulate and well-read than the rest, maybe, but an idiot just the same.”
    â€œAnd you know this because?”
    â€œBecause I do. I have a feel for people, like I said. If this person were really a threat to me, I’d be the first one to know about it. The first .”
    Gunner studied her in silence for a moment, said, “You seem pretty certain about that.”
    â€œI am certain.”
    â€œActually, I mean you seem to know it for a fact . Like it’s more than just conjecture on your part.”
    Johnson’s face shifted briefly, betraying something that looked to Gunner like unease, then quickly reverted to the iron mask it had been. “I never said it was conjecture, Mr. Gunner. I said it was a sense I have. One is just a function of the mind. The other is a function of the spirit.”
    And so it went. Gunner had never tried to sell ice to an Eskimo, but it seemed certain he would’ve had more luck at that than he did selling Johnson on the value of his assistance. The sister just wasn’t interested. She was convinced Wally Browne was throwing his money away, paying Gunner to investigate something she had no doubt was benign, so she politely declined to answer any more of his questions, until the frustration finally broke him down, precipitating his unconditional surrender.
    Now, almost forty-eight hours later, Gunner had made that surrender official, and he was left to wonder if he hadn’t given up too easily. He didn’t need Johnson’s help to do what Browne wanted done. He had worked around uncooperative co-clients before. Why had he allowed Johnson to bully him out of a job he had no immediate replacement for?
    In the end, he decided the answer was every bit as simple as Johnson had thought: He didn’t like the lady. She was a loud, self-obsessed peddler of the rose-colored glasses that conservatives liked to turn on the failings of their nation, so as to better ignore all the little brown bodies that kept getting caught up in its internal mechanics, and money alone was insufficient incentive for Gunner to work a case for such a person when all he could expect in return was aggravation.
    Had he been flat broke, rather than merely reluctant to live on his savings until his next gig, things might have been different. But he wasn’t. For a few weeks, at least, he was solid. So he put Wally Browne behind him, pushed his burbling red Cobra north to South-Central along the California sun-soaked 405, and kissed Browne’s retainer check good-bye, with only a modicum of lingering regret.
    Unaware that he would remain gainfully unemployed for all of the next twenty-seven minutes.

t w o
    â€œY OU GOT ANY PLANS TO COME IN TODAY ?” L ILLY T ENNELL asked.
    Gunner hadn’t been at his desk ten minutes when his favorite barkeep had called. “Who wants to know?”
    â€œPharaoh’s got somebody he wants you to meet. He asked me to call, see when you’d be comin’ by.”
    â€œIt’s not even noon yet. I wasn’t