Fallen Sparrow Read Free

answer.
    Tobin gave it when he yawned. Kit knew then that it wasn’t going to do any good his coming here with anger for the Inspector. Tobin talked through the second yawn just as if he were some gossipy old hen at a hen party. “I knew Chris myself. So he was your father—”
    Kit took the conversation away from Chris. He said, “That hasn’t anything to do with my being here. I want to know about Louie.”
    Tobin didn’t yawn now. He opened a penknife and began paring at his thumb nail. “What about Louie?”
    “I’m asking you.” Kit’s anger was solidifying; he was calmer outside but inside he was uglier. “I’m asking you what happened to him? And why you called it an accident?”
    “Suppose I ask you what you have—had—to do with Lieutenant Lepetino?” He pared his forefinger next.
    Kit’s voice was hard. “He was my best friend.” Louie was his only friend. The others didn’t count, not even Ab; college friends, society friends; bar friends, International Brigade friends. Louie was his real friend. And the god-damned New York police sat on their tails and said it was an accident. He’d never believed they were crooked before because he was Chris McKittrick’s son and Chris had pounded the pavements at one time himself. Someone had bought them off. They knew Louie hadn’t jumped out of a hotel window.
    “Where you been hiding out?” Tobin shot that one.
    Moore elucidated. “You weren’t at the church. Louie had a swell funeral.”
    Kit kept his hands clenched in his pockets. “I haven’t been hiding out. I’ve been—” He hesitated. Silly word he had to use, him looking like a well-tailored ox. “I’ve been recuperating at a ranch out West. I didn’t know Louie was dead. No one sent me the papers. I wouldn’t know it now only my mother happened to mention it in a letter.”
    Sandwiched it in between a new hat she was getting from Det and a meeting of London Helpers at the Astor. Somebody she hadn’t seen since the night Louie Lepetino was killed. And, more casually, “You know he fell from a window at The George.”
    Kit had known then it was a lie. And he’d driven eighty miles to Tucson the next day because the University there kept files of the Times. He’d read the whole story and made certain it was a lie. Then he’d driven eighty miles back to the ranch, packed his things, taken the next train east. He couldn’t fly because he hadn’t that much money on hand. He couldn’t cash that large a check so late in the month. And he didn’t wire the trustees for money because he didn’t want anyone to know he was returning to New York until he arrived and began making trouble. He didn’t want the murderer to be ready for him. He couldn’t ask Geoffrey Wilhite for help although Geoffrey had been a good stepfather for twelve years, two years less than old Chris had been dead. Too good to him; he couldn’t ask more. Moreover, he didn’t want his mother to tell him he’d promised to stay a year out West and get on his feet again.
    The train had delayed him enough and he didn’t like Tobin delaying him further, holding out on him. He made cold statement. “You know damn well Louie didn’t kill himself.”
    Tobin pared complacently. “I didn’t say that. I said it was an accident.”
    “You know damn well he didn’t fall out of any window.” Louie’d been raised on New York windows, tenement windows, not guarded like hotel windows.
    The Inspector shrugged.
    Kit took a step forward. “You know damn well he was pushed.”
    Moore asked then, “Do you have any proof of that?”
    “Proof? Proof?” He swung on the copper and then he controlled again. “I knew Louie.”
    Tobin’s voice was flat. “How well’d you know him?”
    His mouth curled. “I knew him from the time we wore diapers.”
    Even Tobin lifted his eyes on that. “Yeah?”
    “Yeah.” He sucked his breath in. “And I know Louie wouldn’t jump out of a window or fall out of one. Not in his right