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

SATAN DANCED AT MIDNI6HT
by GARY BARTON

If June Eiden was the killer, why did someone murder her?


LARRY LIEGH MURDERED

Penny Haines tossed the newspaper on my desk and the headlines lay there, screaming
in the biggest type the editor of the Clarion could find.

"They got him, Jerry." she said. Penny's the Clarion's sob sister here at headquar-
ters. Her pretty face was pale and wan, and she caught her glistening red lower lip
hard between her teeth to stop its trembling. She said: "What do you think, Jerry?"

I tried to say something. I couldn't: the words wouldn't come, and there was some-
thing deep in my throat that coughing wouldn't clear. I thought: "They got Larry.
Larry was the best friend I ever had. And somebody's filled him all up with lead!"
I said: "Who did it, Penny?"

"I don't know, Jerry." She shook her brown head sadly. "Larry had more enemies than
one man can handle. A cheap gunman on the Bowery, a big-shot racketeer on Broadway,
a showgirl in the village--anyone might have done it."

I knew that, but it didn't help much. Larry Liegh was a crime columnist. The best.
He's the one who tipped me off about the mob that pulled that Standard Trust Co.
job last fall. He knew every racketeer and small-time crook in New York, and their
histories were in his typewriter. More often he wrote their obituaries, then sent
us after them. Larry Liegh made lots of enemies.

I was trying to get my mind to click--even a homicide detective can let his heart
swirl his thought sometimes--when the phone rang. I picked it up and the voice
that came over was anything but friendly. It was cold and brittle.

"Kane?" it said. "I know the guy that got Larry Liegh!"

"Who?" The phone froze in my fist and my breath was scorching my throat.

"I can't tell you now. Come out to the Spinning Wheel tonight. We can talk--"

"Who are you?" I cut in.

"My name's Jaegar. But don't tell no one I called. I'll be waiting for you."

He hung up.

I didn't bother to trace the call. I took the guy's word that his office was
straight. I was grabbing at straws.

"Come on!" I snapped at Penny. I hustled her through the office to the door as