Gilded Canary by Brad Latham Read Free Book Online

Toomey and
     forget about the jewels!” the voice came again, and The Hook managed one last, desperate right before he went down. He saw
     an eye, a big brown and white eye, striking the ground near him, rattling around, vibrating noiselessly as a great black curtain
     suddenly descended over his conscious mind.

CHAPTER
3
    And then, instead of the black, there was white. A huge blur of white that slowly separated itself, breaking into patterns
     that in turn became white walls, white sheets, the white uniform of a nurse standing near him. “He’s coming to,” he heard
     a voice say.
    There was brown now, too; the rumpled wool suit of Jimbo Brannigan. “I told ya ya weren’t ready for Joe Louis,” Brannigan
     joked through the concern that showed in his broad Irish face. “What happened, kid?”
    “I don’t know, Jimbo.” Every part of him was aching. “I had a meet all set up with Toomey, but before I got there a bunch
     of lugs in a big black Packard forced me over and beat the living daylights out of me. How am I, anyway?”
    “You’ll live. Were they Toomey’s boys?”
    “No, I’m sure they weren’t. They were mugs I’ve never seen before, not that I got much of a look at them. They were all over
     me from the word go, and I never got a really good fix.”
    “You couldn’t identify them?”
    “Not really. Wait a minute. I could at that.” Suddenly Lockwood noticed a woman off to one side. It was Stephanie.
    “What’s she doing here?” he asked Brannigan.
    “I was questioning Muffy Dearborn at her hotel when they called me about you. This one here heard you were hurt and insisted
     on coming along. I told her no, but two minutes after I arrived, here she was.”
    Lockwood fell silent, regarding Stephanie, who simply looked back at him, saying nothing, impassive. Simply—there.
    “Now what’s this about your saying you could identify one of ’em?” Jimbo asked, and the warmth was mostly out of his voice.
     He was a cop now, doing his job.
    “I knocked the eye out of one of them.”
    “What?”
    “It was a false eye. Glass. There can’t be too many boyos on the work-’em-over circuit with a brown glass eye.”
    Jimbo scratched his head. “Jesus. I’ll say there can’t. That’s a new one on me.” Jimbo turned to a policeman whom Lockwood
     now noticed for the first time. “You ever hear of a sassyboy with a glass eye?” The patrolman shook his head.
    Jimbo lifted his heavy bulk off the chair by the side of the bed. “Well, I’ll see if I can find out anything. They tell me
     you’re gonna survive. Should be a doctor along here any minute to check you out. If you need anything, let me know, hear?”
    The Hook nodded, and Jimbo left, along with the cop. The nurse had already gone, and now there was just the two of them in
     the room, he and Stephanie.
    “Why are you here?” he asked.
    “Don’t talk now, you’re hurt,” she answered.
    “No, I’m all right,” he responded, pulling himself up slightly in the bed, feeling the dull pain in various areas of his body
     as he did so. His hands gingerly explored a few of the aches. He did seem to be all right. “Please tell me. Why are you here?”
    “I am here to protect you.”
    “Protect me?”
    “You must understand,” she said, with a slight French accent. “I once knew a man like you.”
    Lockwood looked for his cigarettes, located them, and nodded in their direction. “Could you—” he began.
    She pushed a Camel halfway out of its package and offered it to him, then flicked the black and silver Dunhill lighter, and
     he drew in on the cigarette. It tasted good. “Go on,” he said.
    “He was in trouble. Serious trouble. He didn’t know it, but I did. I told him this, but it didn’t seem to matter. He thought
     that anything that came along, he could, how you say, handle it himself. I knew better, but he… dissuaded me.”
    She drew near him now and sank onto the chair by his bed. Her gaze was unwavering, and as