Schrödinger's Gun Read Free Page A

Detective,” he said. “Are my tax dollars paying for you to come play pool nowadays, or are you here on business?”
    I took the cue and dusted the little cube of chalk around the tip. “Johnny Rivers is dead.”
    He nodded gravely. “So I heard. God rest his soul.”
    I watched him cross himself and tried to gauge his reaction. I had expected him to feign ignorance. “You’ve certainly got your ear to the ground,” I said. “He’s not been cold forty-eight hours.”
    â€œNews travels fast in Chicago. You break.” He placed the cue ball behind the line and stepped aside with a gentlemanly bow. One of his cronies lifted up the rack. “Besides,” he said, as I chose a possibility that gave me a good break without potting any balls, “he was a friend of mine.”
    I tucked my hair behind my ear. “Don’t take me for a fool, Vince. Everyone and her mother knows he was the biggest rival you lot had in this part of town.”
    â€œWell, Detective, you know what they say. Keep your friends close, and your enemies”—he pocketed the one—“closer.” He shot again and bounced the two into a cluster of high balls, leaving the cue ball penned in near the corner pocket. “But that’s it, isn’t it? You want to pin Johnny’s murder on me. Jeez. You know what—I ain’t even surprised, what with the way your boys have been on my back lately. Need a suspect for a lineup? Get Vincent Quine. Someone done a robbery? Must be Vincent Quine. Seems like a cat can’t have kittens in this town without me getting blamed for it.”
    â€œOh yeah,” I said, sliding the cue into the groove between my thumb and forefinger. “Poor, innocent you.”
    By my count, Quine had dodged three murder charges already that year, all of them dropped due to lack of evidence. The prostitute who had agreed to testify against him for the Dickson murder had been lured to her death by Montagnio goons pretending to be federal agents. Her body turned up in Lake Michigan a month after she disappeared. No way to prove anything, of course, but the story spread fast enough to make any other potential witnesses think twice about doing society a favor. I opened up a universe in which I made the cue ball hop over the eight and roll into the two, just to put me back in the game. Suddenly I didn’t want to lose.
    â€œWhat you got on me this time, then?” Quine took a gulp of his drink while he considered his next shot. “Prints? Witnesses? A little handwritten note saying ‘Detectives, you ain’t picked on Vinnie Quine enough—he did it!’?”
    I jumped universes as his cue came forwards, grabbing hold of a possibility thread in which he slipped and struck the cueball on one side. It spun off slowly at an angle and collided with the seven.
    â€œWhoops.” I knew that I was pushing it, using the heisen to manipulate the game to this extent, but I wanted that smirk wiped off his face. It was only when two balls smacked together with a gunshot crack that I remembered the trap that I had come to set.
    â€œYou know I wouldn’t be wasting time chewing fat if we had solid dirt on you,” I said. I watched him as I sipped my cocktail. Did he look relieved? Was he thinking of a stubby pistol, dropped in a scramble up the stairs? I made a show of estimating the angle needed to bounce the cue ball off the cushion in order to connect with the two. “But you had means, motive, and opportunity, so—”
    â€œI also have an alibi.” He ran the back of a finger over his lips as he surveyed the table. “I was eating at Giordano’s, over on the other side of town. All night. Ask anybody.”
    â€œGiordano’s?” I said, as he took his shot. “Come on, you’ve got to do better than that. The Montagnios as good as own that place.”
    The two knocked the six into a