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

DEAD ON ARRIVAL
by Gary Barton

Ken Arnold wonted to know why the killers had kidnapped the girl, after
they had gunned down her boy friend! Why hadn't they kIlled her, too?



She was right there when it happened, so close that it was hard to see why she, too, hadn't
been hit. She had screamed, someone had said Лthough she would have screamed anyway when the
guns opened up from the sedan--so perhaps a wild slug or a ricocheting bullet had caught her.
But if it had, it hadn't killed her--they were certain of that --else the men in the sedan
wouldn't have stopped to grab her and take her with them.

Ken Arnold learned these things from passers-by who were crowding close beneath the
hotel's canopy.

A little newsboy said, "Yeah, I saw it. I was sellin' papers down there on the corner,
down near the street light, when I heard the babe scream. Some guys were shooting from the
sedan--a lot of them. But it was over so fast, I don't know how it happened."

The hotel doorman said, "They were just walking past, this fellow and the girl. I
noticed them as I went to the curb to open a cab door. I heard the lady scream and heard
the guns. Then I turned and saw some men shoving her into the sedan. The fellow with her"
--he looked over at the man lying dead on the sidewalk--"was like that."

A cab driver told Ken Arnold, "I was pulling up in front of the hotel and had to jam
on my brake when the sedan cut in front of me. Then there were two or three guns firing, I
think, and one guy jumped out and grabbed the girl and hauled her into the car. They drove
away fast."

But it all had been over so quickly that no one was quite sure what really happened.
There were no descriptions of the gunmen. No one had taken the license number of the big
sedan. There wasn't much to work on.

Ken Arnold moved back to the body.

The fellow was very young; he couldn't have been more than twenty-five. His hair was
blond and curly, and you could imagine that his eyes, though they were closed now, were
blue. The light-tan coat he wore didn't quite cover the welter of crimson that was-already
growing dark on the sidewalk.

A plain-clothes man was bending over the body.

"Any identification, Mac?" Ken Arnold asked him.

"Billfold. Driver's license," the cop answered. "Roger Higgins. Address: 3145 Buena
Vista Drive. That's ail." He handed the license to Arnold. "Looks like a gang job ' he
said.