Read Goodey's Last Stand: A Hard Boiled Mystery (Joe Goodey) for Free Online

space I’d been occupying and disap peared into his office. I assumed we were supposed to follow. Lehman did, but I lingered to have a word with the blonde.
    “Remember,” I said, “snitchers never prosper. Besides, he might be a sergeant again someday.” But she’d forgotten I existed and was trying to find her place in her book.
    “What the hell kept you?” Bruno yelled at me when I came through the door into his big office. He had a cut-glass decanter in one hand and a tall glassful of ice cubes in the other. Lehman had settled into the most comfortable chair in the room and was staring patiently out the vast windows.
    “She wouldn’t let me go without a goodbye kiss,” I said. “You know how some broads are.”
    He didn’t like that, and his ears deepened three shades of red. One thing about The Brother: he not only had the title of Deputy Chief, he thought he was Deputy Chief. Some guys who’d been a sergeant for fifteen years until their brother was elected mayor and then suddenly found themselves number two man of the whole force would be sheepish about it. Not Bruno. The way he acted, you’d think he'd passed a civil service test for the job. The trouble was that he’d have made a swell lost-property clerk, and that’s probably what he’d be if and when his brother wasn’t mayor anymore. So long to the three stars on the shoulder and the cut-glass decanter.
    “Watch it, Goodey,” he said, pointing the decanter at me as if he wished it were a gun. He splashed a little Scotch on the Persian carpet. “I don’t like you, and you’re only out of the clink as long as you make yourself useful and watch your smart mouth.”
    “I don’t like you, either,” I said, reaching out and taking the decanter. There was no glass at hand, so I took a polite swig from the decanter. “And you’re only in this office as long as your brother is mayor. That won’t be long if it gets out that he killed Tina D’Oro.” Even The Brother wasn’t too dense to realize that what I said was true. So, instead of exploding, he took a long, ice-cube-tinkling gulp of his drink and came out of the experience a much calmer man.
    “But the mayor didn’t kill her,” he said. “We know that. Your job is to find out who did. And to do it fast. We’re sitting on a time bomb, and if it goes off before the killer is safely behind bars, we’re all going down with the ship.” His direct gaze took in Lehman as well as me. “And I mean all.”
    “What I want to know,” I said, “is why you think you need me. You’ve got a fistful of aces here. Why the hell do you want a busted detective cluttering things up? Let homicide earn its money.”
    “Don’t think they won’t,” he said. “Maher is handling that end of the operation. And he’s got the word that he can go down as fast as he came up. He’ll be doing his best. But the mayor thought it might be useful to have someone else on the job. Someone with maybe more flexibility than the homicide crew and a personal interest in finding the killer.”
    “Like his own survival?” I asked.
    His eyes nodded, if eyes can do that sort of thing.
    “And maybe somebody who’d be tempted to bend the law just a little bit in the interest of the same. Somebody ripe for a fall if things get too sticky,” I added.
    This time his eyes shrugged. “You do anything illegal,” he said, “you do it on your own hook. As far as the world knows, you’re just an ex-copper out to make a living behind a private buzzer. If you want to look into who spiked Tina D’Oro, nobody can tell you no.”
    “Speaking of that buzzer,” I said, “I assume you’ve got it for me.”
    Bruno walked over behind his big desk and picked up a thin file folder. “It’s in here,” he said, holding the folder out toward me, “along with the coroner’s report on Tina and a copy of Maher’s report from the scene of the crime. Take it.”
    I let him hold it for a while. He had strong arms.
    “And Tina’s