Hard Case Crime: Money Shot by Christa Faust Read Free Book Online

came close. The idea that Sam was dead was bad enough but the fact that the cops thought I’d done it was even more unreal.
    “Why me?” I asked, forcing the words through numb lips. “Why would they...”
    “You own a Sig P 232?”
    I felt a sick, spiraling feeling of hopelessness and despair gathering under my solar plexus. Now I knew why a big butch bastard like that fucking rhino would use such a girly gun. Because it was a girl’s gun. Mine.
    “Fuck,” I said softly.
    I remembered that bland-faced motherfucker telling me he had my house and office searched, looking for his goddamn money. Whoever did the search—maybe that weasely Eastern Bloc guy—must have stolen my gun from my nightstand drawer and brought it to the house in Bel Air. I was starting to grasp just how meticulously and thoroughly I had been fucked.
    “They found your Sig in a dumpster around the corner from the abandoned vehicle,” Malloy said. “A coupla young hard-ons from the Valley division questioned me just before you called. Thought maybe I might be the male accomplice.” He shook his head. “I’m ironclad. I was out propping up an old buddy in the department, a detective sergeant going through a nasty divorce.”
    “I...” I tried to swallow, but my throat felt squeezed down to nothing. “I didn’t kill Sam, I swear. You don’t believe this bullshit, do you? If I was going to kill Sam, you think I’d be stupid enough to shoot him with my own legally registered gun and then just leave his body sitting in my fucking car?”
    Malloy looked at me with his narrow alligator eyes, wordlessly sizing me up. An endless minute passed. He pulled another cigarette from a crumpled pack, then offered the pack to me. I shook my head. He shrugged and put the pack away, then stuck the cigarette between his lips.
    “No,” he finally said, shaking his head as he lit up with a battered Zippo. “I don’t buy it. Smells like setup city, but it’s not just that.” He snapped the lighter shut. “I could maybe buy you getting all pissed off and blowing some guy away in the heat of the moment. But the truth is, you just don’t strike me as the type who’d torture a good friend and then finish him with a cold-blooded, professional execution. No offense, but I just don’t think you’ve got it in you for that kind of action. You want to tell me what really happened?”
    Malloy was completely still and silent as I filled him in. His cigarette burned unsmoked between two thick fingers. It was disconcerting. You don’t realize how much you depend on a listener to spur your story on with little nods and noises and various cues to continue like “Really?” or “No shit.” However, I did get the feeling that I was being listened to more intently than ever before. Like I was feeding information into a machine for processing. I told him everything, starting from the blonde with the briefcase and ending with him showing up to scrape my ass off the sidewalk.
    When I was done, I sipped more coffee, just to have something to do with my shaking hands. He took a deep drag off the cigarette and then flicked the long ash into the stone ashtray.
    “You want my help,” he said. Again a statement, not a question.
    “Yeah,” I replied. “I want you to help me find the fuckers who did this to me. I can pay you.”
    He shook his head.
    “Your bank accounts’ll be frozen by now.”
    “I have money,” I said. “Cash. In my line of business, it never hurts to have a safety net.”
    He arched a silver brow and then killed the cigarette.
    “Keep it,” he replied. “You’re gonna need it.”
    “Does that mean you won’t help me?” I asked.
    He shrugged. There was a long moment of awkward silence. I’d done all the begging I was going to do the night before, so I just kept my mouth shut and waited for his answer.
    “I’ll do what I can,” he said eventually.
    I wanted to hug him, but my ribs hurt and he didn’t seem like the hugging