King Maybe by Timothy Hallinan Read Free Book Online Page A

angels, temporarily trapped inside evil bodies designed in hell, sort of like good champagne in a paper cup?”
    She squinted at me. “ What kind of spirits of angels?”
    â€œGenderless.”
    â€œIf only.”
    â€œSo, at the risk of abandoning this endlessly interesting digression, if I were to have someone probe the criminal files of Newark and Poughkeepsie—”
    â€œTrenton and Albany.” A pause. “I might have said Newark.”
    â€œFor arrests and charges involving Veronica LeBlanc, of all the silly names, there’d be no record of—”
    â€œFor heaven’s sake. If I don’t even remember which town it was, if I can’t say for sure whether I have a record, surely you can understand that it’s because I’ve blotted it all from my memory, that something happened back there—”
    â€œWherever it was—”
    â€œâ€”so terrible that I’ve drawn a dark veil over it, even for myself, even blocked it from my dreams. There are areas of experience for a woman that a man can’t even begin—Why are you grinning?”
    â€œBecause you’re so fast, which is what gives you away, and because you know instinctively which buttons to go for. Problem is, I don’t have many buttons.”
    â€œYeah, well . . .” She reached over and punched me in the vicinity of my heart. “You’ve got a big red one in the middle of your chest that says off ,and I just prevented someone from pushing it. Don’t I even get a coupon?”
    â€œI’m just dazzled by your chops. Makes me think about broadening the act. I could use a partner.”
    â€œI thought we were partners.”
    â€œOh, well,” I said. “In the sense you mean, I suppose we are. In the sense I mean, we’ve barely even compared our credentials.” A car came around the bend, hugging the right curve, and gave us a couple seconds’ worth of irate-sounding horn. “Could we move to someplace where the odds of being killed are a little lower?”
    â€œSure.” She started the car. “I suppose I’m flattered by the partnership offer, but I think it’s probably a ploy, a conversational can opener to get at my past.”
    â€œCould be.” I craned back to check the street. “You can go now.”
    â€œI can go,” she said, “any damn time I like.”
    â€œI don’t know who else it could have been.”
    We were maintaining a polite truce as Ronnie took us on a prolonged up-and-down zigzag over the streets south of Ventura, plush by my modest standards but a trailer park compared to Brentwood, just on the other side of the hill. She was keeping an eye on the mirror to humor me while I tried to describe the events of the evening in a way that qualified as a life crisis.
    â€œI hear what you’re saying, which is more than you do,” she said. “So let me say it out loud to you while you listen. You think it’s possible that your longtime fence, Stinky Tetweiler—”
    â€œWho did in fact take out a contract on me about seven months ago.”
    â€œI’m going to get to that. Stinky, who got grumpy with you six or seven months ago and wanted you dead but accidentally hired someone who’s sort of sweet on you—”
    â€œWas. Was sweet on me.”
    â€œYou’d know more about that than I would. So Stinky decides again to kill you, and this is the plan he comes up with: he goes to the trouble of finding the person who owns that stamp, he digs up all the information about how you could get into the house, which had to be expensive info, and then he tips off the owner of the stamp so he, the owner, can beat you to death. This means that, first, Stinky doesn’t get the stamp and, second, he has to explain to this Slugger person, who doesn’t sound like a very forgiving guy, how he knew you were going to be in his house.”
    I said,