Don't Look Behind You Read Free

like hearing. That’s not your role here. You’re the potential victim.” His sigh started at his toes. “Could you just for once let me do my damn job, Mike?”
    “Who’s stopping you?”
    “Well, having you to trip over around every corner is not my idea of a good time.”
    “It isn’t much fun for me either,” I told him, sitting forward, my hands clasped and draped between my legs.
    His eyes narrowed. “Don’t tell me it’s getting to you. That this made one kill too many.”
    My laugh was as grating as a cough. “Are you kidding? Wiping out a punk like Woodcock doesn’t strain my conscience any, Pat… but it sure can mess up an office. Cleaning blood and guts off the wall—you know the stain it’ll leave? So there’s a new paint job, and who pays for that? And a bullet hole in plaster, that’s gonna need some work.”
    “Cut the comedy,” Pat said.
    I straightened up in the chair, tugged my hat down, and reached across the desk for my P.I. ticket and the .45 automatic that Pat shoved at me. The gun was going to need a good cleaning to get the fingerprint powder off it and one edge of my license was torn.
    I said, “I guess you know the score here. The pattern.”
    “Let’s hear your version,” Pat said.
    “Contract killers come in from the outside,” I said. “The farther away the arrangements are made, the better. But L.A. and Frisco have their own internal problems right now, and anyway their business dealings are too closely allied with New York’s to call somebody in from those locales. If your boys picked up a hitman from either city, you’d just assume the local mob was bringing in out-of-town talent, which negates the effort.”
    “With you so far, Mike.”
    “And then there’s Chicago, Woodcock’s former recent domicile. That’s a kind of middle ground—the windy town isn’t in the pocket of the New York crime families, and plenty of talent’s available there, plus the transportation options are so many you can get lost in them.”
    He was staring at me. “Which adds up to…?”
    “The contract originating in New York.”
    “That’s what I think,” Pat said, nodding his admission.
    I grinned at him. “Which means somebody around here doesn’t like me.” I shoved the .45 into the shoulder holster and slipped the P.I. ticket back in its plastic slot in my wallet. “And here I thought I was a beloved local institution.”
    “Whoever hired this thing is going to love you even less now, Mike. Taking Woodcock out means the price will go up.”
    “How about that?” I said.
    His eyebrows climbed. “The man in the big chair at Gracie Mansion has surely been advised by now that you’re potential trouble for the Big Apple.”
    “Am I?”
    “Sure—a famous, dangerous target walking around the streets of Manhattan, just waiting to turn it into a Wild West show. Add to that, publicity about you reaches out all over the country. Right now our governor’s pretty damn sensitive about his position, and his state’s image.”
    “Screw him. I didn’t vote his ticket.”
    “You don’t vote at all, Mike.” He shook his head, smiling, but there was no amusement in it. “They’ll be watching for developments. The gov’s got his own personal bird dogs, you know.”
    “Screw them too. I’m a tax-paying citizen.”
    “So you seem to remind me every time we get together.” Pat’s face turned a little grim. “Whether you’re a local institution or not—or just deserve to be put in one—you are not exactly a desirable character. Our elected leaders will be waiting for just one wrong move if you go barreling out on your own.”
    “Is this where I bust out crying?”
    Pat’s face got very hard and yet something soft lingered in his eyes. “Stay out of my way on this one, okay, Mike? Just for this once?”
    I got up and leaned two hands on his desk. “Buddy, if there’s a contract out on me,
me
is who they’ll come looking for. Not you.”
    “Granted,