Mourn The Living by Max Allan Collins Read Free Book Online Page B

shade of a large leafy tree, bench-bound, tobacco-mouthed, as motionless as the twin Civil War cannons in front of them.
    He checked Dillon’s Tap, found it empty except for a blowsy redhead talking to the bartender. No Davis, no other reporters to ask about Davis.
    He didn’t find Davis or colleagues in the Eastgate Tavern, where two on-duty policemen were drinking beer. He didn’t want to talk to them.
    Nolan went back to his rented Lincoln and headed toward the Chelsey University campus, which lay beyond the downtown district. The downtown continued on three streets north of the square, made up primarily of collegiate shops and bookstores; then the campus lay just after that, on a bluff overlooking the Chelsey River.
    The river was little more than a wide stream, with several footbridges and four traffic bridges crossing it. The rest of Chelsey and the C.U. campus, football stadium included, were on the other side of the river. Nolan drove over the Front Street bridge and saw a large unlit neon saying Big 7. He pulled into the parking lot and went in.
    The place was dark and smoke hung over it like a gray cloud. Nolan couldn’t tell whether or not, as the motel manager had said, it was a fairly nice restaurant, simply because he couldn’t see it very well. All he could see clearly were football action shots trying in vain to break the monotony of the room’s pine-paneled walls. Then he spotted two men in wrinkled suits, one blue and one grey, standing at the bar arguing over a long dead play out of a long dead Rose Bowl game.
    “Excuse me,” Nolan said.
    The two guys stopped mid-play and gave Nolan twin what-the-hell-do-you-want sneers.
    Nolan said, “Where can I find Hal Davis?”
    The two guys looked at each other in acknowledgment of Nolan being a stranger to both of them. Then one of the guys, a chunky ex-high school tackle perhaps, said, “Maybe Hal Davis likes privacy. Maybe he don’t care to be found.”
    “If you know where he is, I’d appreciate it you tell me.”
    The guy looked at Nolan, looked at Nolan’s eyes.
    “He’s over at the corner table. Facin’ the wall.”
    Nolan nodded.
    The two men returned to the play and Nolan headed for the corner table, where a sandy-haired man of around fifty sat nursing a glass of bourbon.
    “Mr. Davis?”
    He glanced up. His eyes were blood-shot and heavily bagged and the hands around the glass were shaky. He wasn’t drunk, but he wished he was. His lips barely moved as he said, “I don’t know you, mister.”
    “My name’s Webb. Care if I sit?”
    “I don’t care period.”
    Nolan sat. He looked at Davis, caught the man’s eyes and held them. “You look like a man who got pushed and didn’t like it.”
    Davis shook Nolan’s gaze and stared into his glass of bourbon. “I said I don’t know you, Webb. I think maybe I don’t want to know you.”
    Nolan shrugged. “I’m telling people I’m a magazine writer, Mr. Davis. But that’s not who I am or why I came to Chelsey.”
    “Why, then? You come to drop out and turn on?”
    “I’m a private investigator,” Nolan told him. “From Philadelphia. I been hired by a client . . . who’ll remain nameless of course . . . to contact a Mr. George Franco.”
    Davis said, “You know something, Webb? You don’t look like a private investigator to me. You look like a hood. You got something under your left armpit besides hair, your fancy suit isn’t cut so well that I can’t tell that. What’s it you’re after in Chelsey? You got a contract on Franco?”
    “No. What if I did?”
    “I wouldn’t give a damn.”
    “You getting shoved around by the Boys, Mr. Davis?”
    “The boys? What boys are those?”
    So, Nolan thought, maybe Davis doesn’t know about the Chelsey hook-up with the Chicago outfit; maybe he’s just a small-town newsman getting pressured by “local hoods.”
    Nolan said, “Let me put it this way . . . are George Franco and his associates telling you what to say in the Globe