"Hugh Lessig - Death On Page Three" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lessig Hugh)

CHAPTER 1

She was still in the car when I arrived. Her face registered with me right away, even considering what had been done to it.

The killer had carved her a smile, extending the edges of her mouth upward with a stiletto blade. I knew the type of blade because it was buried in her chest. For good measure, the killer had torn her Page Three picture from the newspaper and stuck it on the hilt.

A dark blue cocktail dress clung to her body. She had lost one black high-heeled shoe. The upholstery of the car was white, with splotches of pink from her blood. The mix of colors gave the whole thing a kind of Mexican look that I liked for no particular reason.

The hotel dick stood guard, and I flashed him my press pass. He grunted and said "Frisco Foil, eh? It figures. That's your Page Three stuck on the corpse. Did she used to be one of those?"

Hotel dicks have minds like steel traps. Nothing gets by them. I said. "How about giving me a look-see?"

He stepped aside. The killer had posed the body in the back seat the same way as our photo showed her. I looked at the copy beneath the photo. It listed the usual dope: her measurements, her hobbies and where she liked to "do it."

She listed her hobby as "building ships in a bottle." I made a note of it.

Under favorite place to do it, it said "the back of a new Ford roadster." I stepped out and checked the car. This being November, the new 1938s were just starting to come out. Sure enough, it was a 1938 Ford that, except for the blood and gore in the back seat, looked like it had just been driven off the lot.

"Well," I muttered to myself, "there's that."

A sultry voice popped up behind me. "My mother used to say that a guy who talks to himself must have a lot of money in the bank."

I turned around to see a woman in a black trench coat and heels only slightly lower than the corpse's, but still high enough. She walked up to me in a scented swish of Lucky Strikes and expensive perfume. She had two cigarettes in her mouth. She lit both and gave one to me.

"This has lipstick on it, Henrico," I said.

"So I won't charge you extra, Smith."

I took a long drag on the cigarette and locked gazes with Blanche Henrico. She wore her private investigator's license in her hat. Always on the up and up.

"How'd you get this case so fast?" I asked her.

She cracked a sideways smile. "I was hanging around the police station when the call came in. I remained hanging around while they notified the family. A nice Christian set of parents in Topeka, Kansas. I had a cup of coffee, counted to 100, called information for Topeka and got their number. When the mother answered, I asked if she wanted a private dick, because after all, the San Francisco police have a lot of cases, and they might not get around to solving the mystery of a Page Three girl. Then the mother asked me what a Page Three girl was. I told her. It didn't go over well."

"Did you sell her a subscription?"

"Please. The cops didn't tell her anything about her daughter's newspaper career. I said she could trust me to give her the straight dope, and for $20 a day plus expenses, she could trust me even more."

"The cops won't like you working their side of the street."

She rolled her doe brown eyes. "Think again, Foiler. This case has low priority. The corpse had no money and she wasn't important, and besides, the cops want to avoid these press cases. They hate getting their name in the headlines -- especially yours."

My hand went to my heart. "Why Henrico, I'm deeply hurt by that remark. It may take me all day to recover."

"Fine. In the meantime, you want to compare notes? There's a coffee shop in this hotel. They serve a pretty good crueller this time of morning."

I took out the cigarette and studied it for a moment. Henrico's lip prints made a fine, inlaid patter on the filter tip.

"Who's to say I want you working my side of the street?," I drawled. "You might get in my way."