"deadonarrival" - читать интересную книгу автора (Barton Gary)

Arnold put the license in his wallet and looked down at the body again. He shook
his head slowly. "There's more to it than that, Mac. The kid doesn't look the type."

"Well, the guys that rubbed him out weren't exactly friends," the cop said. "What
about the girl, Ken?"

"That's where my job starts. Any pictures in the billfold?"

The plain-clothes man took the billfold from his pocket again. "Yeah." He fingered
three snapshots and handed them to Arnold. "The kid was quite a boy, Ken."

Arnold went back to where the cab driver was standing, asked him, "Are any of these
like the girl?" and motioned over the hotel doorman.

The driver studied the snapshots in the light that sifted from the entranceway. You
could tell he waS a cab driver by the way he whistled. Then he said slowly. "No. No, I
don't think so. She was tall, kinda--and pretty. She had black hair--"

"Black hair down to her shoulders," the doorman said. "I saw that much. She didn't
have a hat on."

"Yeah. She didn't have a hat on. And she had on a gray fur jacket. Squirrel, it was,
I guess. I know because--"

"Thanks," Arnold said crisply. and turned back to the plain-clothes man. "These D.O.A.'s
are worse than a sealed-room mystery," he growled. "Why the hell can't a guy leave a few
clues when he gets himself murdered ?"

"How about the pix?" the cop asked him.

Arnold shook his head as he flamed a match to a cigarette. "All we know is that she's
tall and pretty. She has long black hair and was wearing a gray squirrel jacket. It would
be just as easy to look up the pedigrees of the squirrels that went into the jacket."

"Maybe you've got something there," Mac said sardonically. "The squirrels are dead, too."

"No, I don't think they'll kill the girl, though everything points to the fact that
they should. She was probably kidnaped because she got a good look at the guys that gunned
down her boy friend. Maybe she knew who was after him. Anyway, she was grabbed to keep her
from identifying the killers."

"That's screwy!" Mac snapped.

"What's screwy about it?"

"Well, hell, why should they go to all that trouble to grab her? They wasted time and
risked getting caught. If she could identify them, why didn't they just knock her off,
too?"