Rainy City Read Free Page B

the hell out of Burton Nadisky. I had seen Holder at work before. He loved violence. He was the sort of guy who ate popcorn raw. There were, few people he couldn’t slam across the room using the back of his hand, probably me included.
    “Stay down,” ordered Holder.
    Burton was splayed across a tangle of bloodstained sheets, his face looking like a piss-poor club fighter’s last performance. Holder was a mulatto, six-foot-three, about two-twenty, an impeccable dresser. He had been a boxer once. He was a good eight inches taller than the disheveled Burton.
    Scrabbling off the bed, Burton lurched to the open doorway. His face was crimson. As if swatting a fly, Holder slammed him onto the floor. The impact made a sickening crunch.
    “Now stay down, boy. Don’t you know da score?”
    Moving like a sack of rocks, Burton sniffled and began to roll over, presumably so he could crawl, the last vestiges of strength sapped from his trembling legs.
    “Leave him alone!” shouted Kathy. She was gutsy—but stupid. Holder would knock her into next Tuesday.
    She prepared to pounce on Holder. She might have made a little headway. She might have reached almost to his armpit before he broke her jaw. Already, I could see him doubling up his enormous fist.
    I grasped Kathy around her slender waist and flung her to the right of the doorway. Nothing less would have dissuaded her. I had forgotten how little she weighed.
    “Stay out of this,” I commanded. Kathy shook her head, cleared the cobwebs and looked at me the way a cat who had been kicked off the dinner table might.
    A lump was noticeable in the center of Holder’s back under the tight-fitting turquoise sportscoat, a lump which corresponded to the spot in which some people carry their hip holsters. Holder was too dangerous to mess with. He had been only partially aware of us in the doorway, his mind dwelling on other things, but now we were fodder for the machine.
    Burton Nadisky managed to worm his way to my feet. Holder moved to drag him back.
    “Uh uh uh,” I said, putting more menace into my voice than either I or Holder had expected. “Enough is enough. Burton, you don’t want to go out there. Your daughter is long gone.” He sank his head to the floor, giving out a low groan.
    “Holder? If you want to stop this man from catching his in-laws, why not go out and move that car in front? That’s the only thing he could possibly use. Burton here doesn’t own a car. You think he’s going to catch them on foot?”
    Holder glowered at me darkly, straining to recall my name. We had clashed on a case about a year earlier. He was awful with names. He snapped his fingers repeatedly as I picked up a wire clothes hanger from the rubble. I said, “Black. Thomas Black.”
    “You’re da private eye who messed wid dat divorce case a mine.”
    “Good memory.”
    “I owe you on dat one.” He was trying hard to recall precisely how much he owed me. If I was lucky, he wouldn’t resuscitate the entire story.
    I fiddled with the wire coat hanger and twisted it into a long shepherd’s crook.
    “I’m sure your employer would love for you to stay here and stir up all sorts of trouble. We’ve got friends coming right behind us. It might work out better if you left now. What do you think?”
    The mention of additional friends goaded Holder. More people meant more witnesses. He was already cutting it too close. He stepped gingerly over Nadisky and strode past me like a man carrying a mess in his britches. He stopped and stared quizzically at Kathy, who was still on the floor, her red bulb nose askew. Holder conjured up a queer, disjointed face and used it on her. You’d think the man had never seen a clown before.
    When he turned to walk out of the house, I fish-poled the wire coat hanger out and dropped the sharp crook of it into his coat pocket. As he kept walking, the hanger ripped the pocket off his coat. I let go of the wire. It swung from the remnants of his pocket for a moment