McNally's Risk by Lawrence Sanders Read Free Book Online Page A

house for dinner, but everyone says that wasn’t unusual. When his work was going good he hated to stop. Finally, around nine o’clock, the maid called him to ask if he was coming over to eat or if he wanted her to bring him a plate. No answer. But she could see the lights on up here. So she came over and found him. Let’s go take a look.”
    He was lying supine, naked on that tattered sleigh bed. His eyes were still open. The knife was still in his throat. An assistant from the ME’s office was fussing over him. I knew the man. Thomas Bunion. One of the few people I’ve ever met who are simultaneously cantankerous and timid.
    I stared down at the remains of Silas Hawkin. There was an ocean of blood. An ocean. I am not a total stranger to violent death and thought I had learned to view a corpse with some dispassion, without needing to scurry away and upchuck in private. But I admit I was spooked by the sight of the murdered artist. So pale. For some reason his beard looked fake, as if it had been spirit-gummed to his face.
    A wooden handle protruded from his neck.
    “It looks like a palette knife,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady.
    “Uh-huh,” Rogoff said. “We already figured that.”
    “But a palette knife doesn’t have a cutting edge,” I said. “And the blade is usually thin and pliable, something like a spatula. It’s difficult to believe it was driven in so deeply and killed him.”
    “Well, it did,” Bunion said crossly. “Looks like an artery was severed, but we won’t know for sure until we get him on a slab. Thin blade or not, it was a lucky hit.”
    “Not for Silas,” Al said.
    “Poor devil,” I muttered, turned away, and took a deep breath.
    The sergeant inspected me. “Want to go outside, Archy?” he asked quietly.
    “No, I’m fine,” I told him. “But thanks.” I looked around the studio. A plainclothesman was seated behind the decrepit desk, slowly turning pages of the ledger Si had slammed shut when I visited him that morning.
    “What is he doing?” I asked.
    Rogoff answered: “Hawkin may have been a nutsy artist, but he was a helluva businessman. He kept a record of every painting he did: date started, date finished, and disposition. If it was sold, he wrote down the size of the painting, name and address of the buyer, and the price paid. What we’ll do is check his ledger against those finished works stacked against the wall and see if anything is missing.”
    “That makes sense,” I said, but then I thought about it. “Al, are you figuring Hawkin was sleeping naked on that ugly bed and a burglar broke in to grab something he could fence? Then the artist wakes up and the crook grabs the nearest deadly weapon, a palette knife, and shoves it into the victim’s throat to keep him quiet?”
    He shrugged. “The wife and daughter were away. The maid was in the kitchen at the far side of the maid house with her radio going full blast. She couldn’t have heard or seen an intruder. The door to the studio building was unlocked. It could have been a grab-and-run scumbag. Maybe a junkie.”
    “Do you really believe that?” I asked him.
    “No,” he said.
    We went downstairs together. “Excuse me a moment,” I said to the sergeant. I went over to the couch where wife and daughter were still sitting, isolated from each other. “May I express my sympathy and my deepest sorrow at this horrible tragedy,” I said. It came out more floridly than I had intended.
    Only Mrs. Louise Hawkin looked up. “Thank you,” she said faintly.
    Al and I moved outside. He used a wooden kitchen match to light his cold cigar and I borrowed the flame for my third cigarette of the day, resolving it would be the last.
    Rogoff jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the ground floor of the studio building. “Not much love lost there,” he said.
    “No,” I agreed, “not much. It was a sex scene, wasn’t it, Al?”
    He nodded. “That’s the way I see it. The guy’s in bed with someone,