Pardon My Body Read Free Page A

racketeers, gangsters, bit time gambling caesars and small time sneak thieves—he hated them all. He lived in a trim suburban house with a buxom young Polish wife and five small sons who arrived as unfailingly as Christmas in the first five years of their marriage. He carried the collection Sundays at Mass. I liked O’Cassidy.
    He quit rocking and drove both hands into his sagging raincoat pockets.
    â€œThere’s a helluva lot of bridges in Manhattan,” he said.
    â€œTwenty, according to the latest reports.” If he didn’t want to come directly to the point I wasn’t going to help him along.
    O’Cassidy said, “A guy oughta watch th’ bridges he crosses. Seems like he should know where they’re heading for.”
    I went on smoking. He decided to quit stalling. “First night you’re off the beat you have to go shoving your nose into trouble, huh?”
    I told him I was out having a dignified celebration dinner. Too bad a guy can’t give himself a quiet evening without knife men moving in on the joint. I put down my pipe, went into the bathroom andstarted lathering my face. “Come on in—you can sit on the toilet and tell me everything. Wonderful place for inspiring confidences. You ought to try that sometime down at headquarters instead of slugging suspects with a nightstick.”
    O’Cassidy’s eyes darkened. “You can quit that,” he said shortly.
    I sent a small globule of shaving suds in his direction. He ducked it.
    â€œOkay,” he said, “a Misther Arnold Grierson, who has a forty-nine percent interest in United Textile Distributors and is a big man in this very city, walks into a smart roadside inn for a dinner he could have got without charge at his buddy’s home two or three miles away. All right, so we’ll pass that. But he moves in with a young guy who looks like he might be a hood or maybe, for all I should know, a hired killer. In fact, he must be a killer on account of he suddenly slams a long-bladed dagger into th’ poor old gentleman’s heart right there in full view of the populace.
    â€œAnd who is sittin’ there with a front seat in the stalls but Misther Dale Bogard, th’ guy who used to be a smart newspaperman? But does he see what goes? He does not. For Misther Bogard is gazing like a sick calf into the beeootiful eyes of the dame or doll or lady he has just saved from sumpin’ or other.”
    O’Cassidy spat disgustedly into the bath.
    â€œAll right, Cass,” I said, “so I don’t see what happens. Okay—where do we go from there?”
    O’Cassidy poured himself a drink of water. “Seems like Mr. Grierson don’t have a face that’s known around the Golden Peacock because he don’t mean a thing to MacIlleney. But Miss Casson, she knows him—but, goddammit, she don’t see him on account of she’s too damn busy looking at the great he-man who’s saved her from whatever it was. And while everybody’s so busy they don’t have no time to bother with murders, the job is done and the killer walks out without turning a hair.”
    O’Cassidy crumpled up the paper cup and gave me a long unwinking stare. “I don’t know where you fit into this set-up, Dale—but I’m telling you to watch your step. You ain’t got no police card now—there isn’t a patrolman on the beat who has to do a thing to help you out of a jam. From now on you’re out on your own. I wouldn’t tangle too deep if I was you…and keep outa th’ police hair, will ya?”
    He slouched through the door. I called, softly, “Who inherits Grierson’s pile?”
    O’Cassidy stopped in his tracks and turned slowly round. He said, “His widow. They don’t have no children.”
    â€œAnd the forty-nine percent share in the business?”
    â€œAccording to the firm’s setup it passes to the