Nice Fillies Finish Last by Brett Halliday Read Free Book Online Page A

groin with one bare foot. He jabbed her almost playfully in the jaw. It was more of a push than a blow, but it dropped her to the floor without a sound.
    Rourke, having finally forced the couch to let him go, was on his way to the door. He was fumbling at the knob when Thorne swung around and cuffed him lightly. Rourke stopped trying to open the door.
    “I hate like hell to slug a woman,” Thorne said ruefully, “but you don’t know Win. You may think she was fooling with that carving knife.” He shook his head. “She would have stuck it in me if I’d given her the chance. It’s happened before. She punctured one of my lungs. She probably soaked up quite a few martinis, didn’t she?”
    Rourke straightened his tie. “We only had a couple. She was telling me about that accident you had. What was the name of the horse? Don J.”
    Thorne tossed his head in a way that made Rourke think of a spirited horse. “Don’t remind me. Things were just beginning to break right for me when that happened.”
    Rourke motioned at Thorne’s unconscious wife. “We’d better do something about her.”
    “Aah,” Thorne said. “It’s a policy of mine—bat them around now and then, it’s the one way to keep them in line. She’ll be OK.”
    Reaching out suddenly, he pulled Rourke off balance and sent him spinning into the interior of the trailer. Rourke crouched, watching warily to see what came next.
    “I don’t pretend to be any great brain,” Thorne said. “I’m trying to figure something out, and it may take a minute. You’re a reporter, she said. From the News.”
    “I’ve got a press card if you want to see it.” Rourke knew he was sweating, but he didn’t want to show Thorne how nervous he was by wiping his face. “We want to run a piece about what actually happens in the course of a race, how you get the most out of a horse, the things you have to look out for, and so on.”
    “What was that about the twin?”
    Rourke smiled weakly. “Just talk. It happened to come up.”
    The flesh around Thorne’s little eyes contracted and he yelled, “Goddamn it, what do you mean, drinking my gin and necking around with my wife?”
    Rourke tried to look surprised and amused. “Was that what you thought when you came in? No, no. You’re barking up the wrong tree. She had a bit too much to drink and she tripped. That’s all in the world that happened.”
    Thorne sneered. “I happen to know that kid. Am I supposed to be blind, that I don’t notice the top button on your pants is open? The only thing that surprises me, she didn’t have the radio on.”
    He moved toward Rourke, completely filling the space between the furniture. The contest, Rourke could see, was going to be strictly one-sided. Thorne outweighed him by forty pounds, and it had been years since Rourke had had any exercise except pecking at a typewriter.
    “If you try to get back at me by putting something lousy in the paper,” Thorne said, “I’ll come after you, and I’ll find you, don’t worry. I can’t let you get away with feeling my wife just because you work on a paper. Win wouldn’t like it and she wouldn’t understand it. We’ll make up, but there’s got to be blood and a couple of teeth on the floor when she conies out of it, or she’ll think I don’t give a goddamn.”
    His eyes narrowed, and all at once Rourke realized that he was only using his wife as the pretext. Rourke had made the mistake of asking about the twin double, and Thorne was going to see to it that he didn’t ask any more questions until after the payoffs. That look didn’t mean the kind of friendly punch in the head he had given his wife. It meant a beating.
    Rourke took a deep breath and rushed him, butting as hard as he could at the point where his rib cage came together. It was like running into a wall. Rourke reeled back as Thorne’s left fist came around. It connected with, his ear and his head rang like a bell. He snatched up the butcher knife and threw