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

Maybe you were wise, by now, to the kid who was passing them; I don't know. But I know I was.

So when you went into that same restaurant the following night, I stayed outside. I have
sort of an obsession for playing hunches, and this time I thought it was tagged right.


The kid came along less than five minutes after you went in. He was a young punk. Cheap. Cheap
and gaudy. And he tried to get tough, till I pulled the rod from my pocket and forced him to
back to the alley; then he got on his knees and blubbered all over the place.

He played mighty dumb, at first; he said he didn't know anything. I jacked a cartridge into
the chamber of the automatic and let the sleeve slam back. It sounded like a gunshot in the
quiet of the alley.

"Now, what's the play, kid?" I asked him. "Or are you still going to give me that lip about
not knowing anything?"

"I...I don't know," he told me. All the toughness was gone, now, and he was shaking like a
baby. "Honest, mister...I don't know what you mean--"

"You can start in by telling me where you got that dough," I said. "And you can make it
fast, because I haven't got much time!"

"A woman gave it to me," he said.

"Who is she?"

"I don't know," he said.

"Where does she live?"

"I don't know that, either."

"Listen, kid--" I snarled, and slapped the back of my fist across his mouth.

He stumbled across the alley and came up against the wall of a building, shaking his head.

"Honest!" he cried. "I don't know who she is! She just meets me on the corner every night
--up near Jane Street--and gives me some money. Says to go to a certain restaurant in a hell of
a hurry and get something to eat--or to some bar she picks out for a beer--then bring her back
the- change. Honest, mister--"

And all at once, this whole plan dawned on me. I thought I knew who this mysterious woman
was. And she'd be the only logical person to know where Nickie Morielli had cached that loot.

"Thanks," I told the kid, and crossed another short jab to his mouth.

He went down in a crumbling heap on the dirty cobblestones of the alley. I wanted him to be
out of circulation for a while, I didn't want you, Johnnie Dale, to put the arm on him.