Man On The Run by Charles Williams Read Free Book Online

a booth and he could talk without being heard all over the bar. Where could I get to a phone without being seen?”
    “My apartment,” she said. “But it’ll be hours before we can get you in there without running into somebody.”
    “Maybe a service station—”
    “Wait,” she interrupted. “I know. That Playland on the beach at the end of Tarleton Boulevard. It’s closed this time of year, but there are some booths on the sidewalk.”
    “Do you mind?” I asked.
    “Let’s go,” she replied. “Put on the topcoat and hat. And turn the collar up.”
    It was less than ten miles straight up the beach, a sort of miniature Coney Island about five miles from downtown Sanport. We met few cars. The two amusement piers, closed down for the winter, were dark and foreboding in the rain. She slowed. On the left all the concessions were shuttered and the only illumination came from the street lights. I could see the shadowy arc of the Ferris wheel and the uneven dark tracery of the roller coaster.
    “There’s one,” she said.
    The white booth was on the left, near the entrance to a boarded-up chile parlor. She stopped and dug a slip of paper from her purse. “Here’s the number. And a dime, if you don’t, have change.”
    I slid out of the car and crossed the street with my coat collar turned up and the hat brim slanted across my face. A car went past, but I was across ahead of its lights. When I closed the door of the booth its light came on. I hunched over the instrument, with my back to the sidewalk, feeling naked. I dialed.
    “Sidelines Bar,” a man’s voice answered. I hoped it wasn’t one of Red’s friends on the Force.
    “Red Lanigan there?” I asked.
    “Just a minute.”I heard him call out “Hey, Red!” The jukebox was playing a Cuban number. I waited, listening to the rain on the overhead of the booth.
    “Hello. Lanigan speaking.”
    “Red, I hear you wanted me to call.”
    “Who’s this? Oh—Bill, where the hell are you? I thought you were coming over.” I heard him push the door shut, and then he went on, talking quietly and rapidly. “Jesus, Irish, that was a man from Homicide that answered the phone. They were, just talking about you. Listen—don’t tell me where you are; I don’t want to know. Your girl friend got the message to you okay?”
    “Yeah,” I said. “What do you know?”
    “I don’t know anything; I’m just trying to add up some wild guesses. I don’t think you did it or you wouldn’t have called back here the other night. I’ve tried to sell that to the police, but they won’t buy. You’re their boy all the way.”
    “There was something about a girl?”
    “I’m coming to that. If you didn’t do it, it had to be somebody who was already up there. Right? So maybe an ex-con, somebody he’d sent up. Or a stool-pigeon he was riding a little too hard or something. But the chances are since it was in his apartment, it was a woman. You know what his reputation was with babes. You still with me?”
    “Keep firing,” I said.
    “All right. This will bring you up to date, but it’s not very promising to start with. Stedman was killed with a bone-handled hunting knife. His. He usually kept it in the desk of his living room to open letters with. No fingerprints, of course. It was one of those carved handles. No sign anybody else had been in the apartment that night. Except you. God knows you left plenty of signs. The Homicide boys say the living room looked like the two of you had been playing polo on bulldozers. But no babes. I mean, no cigarette butts with lipstick, no highball glasses, nothing. No prints except his. He came in around eight-thirty p.m. alone, and didn’t go out again, as far as anybody knows. Nobody seen going into his place afterward, except you. That was around ten, or a few minutes past Nobody came out after you did. That’s definite.
    “But of course there’s a rear entrance. You know that;your apartment has the same layout. And here’s