Forty Thieves Read Free Page A

They’re a last chance—sometimes to find out what happened to a victim, and sometimes to set somebody free. They’re a couple of old cops like me.”
    “What’s this agency called?”
    “Abels. If you’re going to do this, that’s the kind of help you want.”
    Hemphill took a small black notebook out of his coat pocket, and a silver pen. He wrote “Abel’s.”
    Millikan saw it. “Without the apostrophe. The name means more than one Abel.”

2
    The prime moment of a night at the Galaxy Club was a sweet stretch that began after 1:00 a.m., but before the bartender started taking last-call orders. This bartender was an attractive woman about fifty years old, with sharp, alert blue eyes, and hair that looked as though it might be something lighter and wilder than platinum blond. It was actually natural gray. She was wearing a pullover top and jeans that made her look much younger from a distance. She had a strong, athletic body but graceful hands with manicured nails. Her gray hair hung behind her in a long, low ponytail, so it swung a little when she moved.
    At one o’clock people were still arriving from late suppers, shows, and other bars where they shouldn’t have wasted their time. As they arrived, the bartender glided along the bar listening to orders, taking money, bestowing garnished glasses, wiping the mirror-shiny wooden surface, and focusing her piercing blue eyes on the next customer. “What can I get for you?”
    The wise customer would reply quickly, knowing from the energy of the place that there would be a brief chance toorder, and a long wait before the next chance. The bartender would listen and then nod and begin to make the drink, or she would wait then say, “I’ll be back.” As she stepped away along the bar, the customer would have to resign himself to waiting for her next circuit.
    At the far end of the bar was a broad-shouldered man wearing a gray sport coat and a crisp white shirt. He seemed to be in his fifties, out alone, watching the stream of people coming and going at the Galaxy, but without a great deal of interest in any one of them. He drank steadily from a narrow chilled glass with a slice of lime and clear bubbly liquid.
    Now and then customers might speculate about him as they waited for a turn at the bar. He was only about six feet tall, but he gave the impression that there was much more to him than that—something solid and heavy. Some professional football players had that quality, but a person could stare at this man all evening without recognizing his face. He couldn’t be working at the Galaxy, because he was drinking continually, and that meant he couldn’t be a cop either. He was about the age and description of the sort of man who came to the Galaxy to look for much younger women who liked money. But there were plenty of those women here tonight, and he barely glanced at any of them. He wasn’t friendly or hostile or shy or drunk. He was just there, not a permanent fixture but in no hurry.
    At one thirty, his eyes flicked to the bartender and stayed there until she happened to see him in the mirror behind the bar when she turned to reach for a vodka bottle.
    She didn’t hesitate or change her expression, but as she pivoted toward the bar to get the glass and pour, she let her eyes pass across the man at the end of the bar. After a halfsecond she looked in the direction of the person he was looking at and then gave her customer his drink and took his money.
    The man who had just entered the bar was about thirty-five to forty years old. He wore a pair of yellow-brown glasses with lenses just dark enough to keep his eyes half-hidden from view, and a black sport coat and jeans. When he had come three steps inside, two younger men came in after him and remained behind his shoulders, scanning the crowd intently. He looked across a stretch of floor at a table where there were four young women. These four could be seen at the Galaxy most nights waiting to find somebody