Bare Trap by Frank Kane Read Free Book Online Page B

that he would be getting up.
    There were two doors leading into the room. Both were closed. Softly Liddell walked to the nearest door, pushed it open. It was another large, bare room giving mute evidence of where Shad Reilly had spent the few days he hadbeen missing. The other room was smaller, had apparently once been used as a locker room. That, too, was empty.
    Outside, Richards gave signs of being nervous. The horn tooted twice. Liddell walked around the body on the floor, stood in the doorway, and motioned for the producer to join him. Then he walked back to where the dead man lay, knelt beside him, and half turned him over. He had been very young, very handsome. Now he was very dead.
    From the doorway came a muffled gasp. Richards waddled in, fell to his knee beside Liddell. He stared at the dead man.
    “That him?” Liddell wanted to know.
    Richards nodded, the flabby chins wabbling madly. He swabbed at his face with a damp handkerchief, struggled to his feet, staggered to the desk, and leaned against it. “Dead?” In the yellowish light, his skin was saffron; his full red lips had a greenish tinge.
    Liddell nodded. “Plenty.” He looked around. “No phone here, I suppose?”
    Richards shook his head ponderously. “There’s one in the tavern down the road. They may let you use theirs.”
    “You stay here. I’ll go notify Homicide,” Liddell told him.
    Richards’s face gleamed wetly. “You’re going to leave me here alone with him?” He kept his eyes averted from the body on the floor.
    Liddell nodded. “He won’t bother you. And don’t touch anything until the cops get here. They’re awfully narrow-minded about things like that.”

CHAPTER SIX
    S ERGEANT J ERRY M ACY of Homicide didn’t fit into the usual pattern of flat-footed, beetle-browed Central Office cop. Instead, he looked more like a refugee from a varsity football squad. After he had looked the body over, he led the way to the inner room where Shad had lived and closed the door so that his squad could work without interruption. He found a straight-backed chair near the wall and sat down.
    “When you reported this you said the kid’s guardian was with you,” he told Liddell. “When we get here, you say he’s disappeared. Suppose you break it down for us.”
    Liddell shrugged. “That’s the way it is, Sergeant. I left Richards here to watch the body while I called in the report. When I got back, he was gone.”
    Macy nodded, copied down a description of Richards, handed it to a plain-clothes man to call in. After the detective had left, the sergeant turned his attention back to Liddell.
    “Body just as you found it?”
    Liddell nodded. “Didn’t touch a thing.” He held up a pack of cigarettes, got a nod, lit one. “What’s it look like to you, Sergeant?”
    “Looks like a man’s dead. Let’s get back to you. You say you were working for this Richards?”
    “The kid” — he indicated the outer room with a toss of his head — ”had been missing. He hired me to find him. Tonight he got a call from the kid saying he was holed up out here. We came out to get him, found him like that.”
    “Private eye, eh? Local?”
    Liddell shook his head, dug into his jacket, came upwith his papers, passed them to the sergeant. “I run an agency in New York. Took this one on as a favor. They didn’t want any publicity and thought a local might spill.”
    The sergeant flipped through Liddell’s papers, made a few notes in a leather notebook, handed them back. “Anything else I ought to know, Liddell?” He looked the private detective squarely in the eye. “I know all about how private detectives outsmart the dumb, flat-footed cops. That goes fine in Hollywood — in the movies. It don’t go at all here.”
    ‘Okay, Sergeant. I play that way, too. I’ve done some work on the Coast before. Inspector Devlin will tell you I level with the Department.”
    “As long as we understand each other. Why was the kid hiding out in the first