Fallen Sparrow Read Free Page A

mind.”
    Tobin got up out of the chair and sat on the edge of the desk. “Maybe he wasn’t in his right mind.” His eyes were half-shut. “Maybe you know he’d got mixed up in a pretty fast crowd—your kind of a crowd, Princes and Duchesses and what. Or maybe you don’t know if you’ve been playing cowboy for more, than a couple of months. What do you think of that, Mr. Wise Guy?”
    Kit held on tight to his pockets.
    “Maybe you think you know more than the whole New York homicide squad. Maybe you turned kind of psychic on that dude ranch. Or maybe you just got bored and are trying to drum up a good murder.” He scratched a match on his shoe and blew it out. “Arizona lets you rich kids play cowboy as long as you pay for it but I’ll be damned if New York is going to start letting you play detective even if your name is McKittrick. Run along now. Forget it. You’ll have more fun at the Stork than here.”
    Kit kept holding on tight until Tobin finished his piece. There was a white line around his lips. He said, “Louie Lepetino was murdered. I’m going to find out who did it. And I’m going to find out why you wouldn’t find out who did it.”
    Tobin scratched another match. His voice was sharper and his eyes hard. “Run along, oil can. You stink.”
    Kit took his hands out of his pockets. They clenched again and then he relaxed them. He took his time buttoning his top coat. He spoke softly. “All right, gramps. I’ll twenty-three skidoo. Your patter’s as corny as your ideas.” He cocked his hat. “If you ever get the lead out of your feet and the seat of your pants—and your alleged brains, maybe you’ll think of some of the answers without being psychic.”
    He walked loud on the battered wooden floor. He turned around at the doorway. He was even grinning a little. “Louie got me a permit from the Commissioner to carry a gun. His being in an accident doesn’t rescind that, does it?”
    Tobin said, “Good for a year,” and he asked as an afterthought, “Why do you want to carry a gun?”
    Kit grinned wider but it wasn’t funny. “To shoot people, dope. To shoot people.” He was laughing as he banged out, through the empty second room, into the stuffy lighted front. The cop was still reading the paper. Kit swung up his bag, said, “Thanks for nothing, Sarge,” and went out into the dark of evening.
    He gulped the air thirstily as he walked to Lexington. It seemed hours he’d waited for Tobin but it wasn’t. His wrist said eight-twenty. He hailed a cab, gave the Park Avenue address, and settled against the leather. He might as well go home and make some plans before proceeding. It was even possible that his mother might help out. She’d remembered Louie enough to notice his death. One thing certain she couldn’t be less help than Tobin. And she ought to know that he’d returned so she could double the grocery order. All at once he felt good. He wasn’t at all nervous or depressed. He knew he was going to avenge Louie. Maybe he was psychic after all.
2.
    The foyer looked just the same, something conceived by Dali. Lemon puffed satin and darker lemon wood. Old Chris would have fled. The maid who admitted him wasn’t the same. It didn’t surprise him any. Second maids came and went with monotonous regularity in the Wilhite apartment. Geoffrey was an old woman about dusting and not dusting and the way a napkin should be folded. Kit put down the bag, handed her his hat and coat, asked, “Anyone at home?”
    She said, “No, sir.”
    He showed the girl he was no salesman by walking into the living-room without her suggestion. It hadn’t changed either; he felt about it as he always had, that he had wandered into a beautiful and priceless wing of the Metropolitan Museum. The Wilhites had a wing there but it had nothing on this room. Kit removed the cover from a bit of Chaucerian china, selected a violent pink from Geoffrey’s French gum drops, and ate it happily.
    “Where is Mrs.