Dead Man Read Free

Aztec-looking waitress brought Tecates instead of menus to their table; they ordered the special with
     the carelessness of long familiarity. The room smelled of hot oil and frying tortilla chips and red pepper and salsa spices.
    “But,” persisted Solomon, “if you could do it faster and cheaper with the computer than they could in the field, why—”
    “I got my own P.I. license to cut out the middleman—it was just good business. But then I found out fieldwork is fun, too.
     The computer is still the core of my operation, but it can’t ask just the right question at just the right moment. Of course
     once I get an answer, I use my laptop to interface through the car phone with the data base in my big computer at home.”
    The waitress returned with huge platters of enchiladas, tacos, burritos,
refritos y arroz,
salad to go with their second beers. Randy jabbed a forkful of beans in Eddie’s direction.
    “So, Sherlock, what’s your move now on Grimes? More ‘fun’? Ring some doorbells? Go sit in your car across the street from
     the yacht basin with a magnifying glass and a deerstalker hat?”
    “Right now, nothing—I’ve got other cases need work. Eventually, start massaging the data bases—
somebody
had him killed, there have to be tracks the computer can pick up.”
    “You slip in that assumption about somebody having Grimes offed just so damn neat. But it was a gas leak got him.”
    Eddie shook his head. “Professional hit.”
    “You think the arson investigators screwed up?” demandedRandy scornfully. “The explosion was in the engine compartment, right where you’d expect it to be. Forensics, fire department,
     insurance company—everybody says accident except Eddie Dain.”
    “Did they run a probabilities program on that particular make, model, and year of Chris-Craft to see how hull shape and engine-compartment
     size would affect a gas-leak explosion?”
    “Why in hell should they, when everything points to—”
    “I did—I developed the software program for it myself.” Eddie waved a bulging bean burrito around under Randy’s nose. “Flash
     point was seven-tenths of a meter from where it should have been for gas fumes, and a couple of intensity probability screenings
     I ran suggested C-4
plastique.
Which means—”
    Randy silenced him with an impatient paw.
    “Wait a minute, Sherlock. If it
was
a hit, why pro? Why not gifted amateur?”
    “Because all you professional law enforcement guys buy into it as an accident. I figure only a pro could fool everybody except
     the computer. After we get back from Point Reyes, Marie and I will work the data to find those footprints, then—”
    “You ever think that if you’re right it might be dangerous? If somebody
is
out there, and you start getting close to him—”
    “I’ll call a cop,” said Eddie.
    And he laughed and took a big bite of burrito, and, cool dude that he was, squirted brick-colored pinto beans and red sauce
     all down the front of his crisp white cotton shirt.

2
    When Eddie crossed the Golden Gate to their modest two-bedroom bungalow in Marin’s Tamalpais Valley, he found the household
     in an uproar. Or at least found three-year-old Albie (christened Albert, in honor of Einstein) in an uproar. Marie was her
     usual placid self.
    “A kitten,” she explained.
    Marie was Eddie’s age and tall; barefoot, only four inches shorter than his six-one and as limber as he, with the supple,
     beautiful body produced in certain women by intense devotion to yoga. Her taffy-colored hair was worn long and straight down
     her back in defiance of current fashions, her very clear hazel eyes were too large and wide-set under stern brows for absolute
     beauty—but she also had the soft rounded cheeks and rosebud mouth of a fairy-tale princess.
    “Kitten?” Eddie looked around the narrow kitchen as he stripped off his burrito-stained shirt. Albie was hanging on his pantleg
     telling him about it also. “I don’t see any