Nightshades (Nameless Detective) by Bill Pronzini Read Free Book Online Page A

O’Daniel.”
    He managed to get his eyes focused on me. “You saved my life,” he said. “I could be dead now if you hadn’t come running in.”
    “Maybe he wouldn’t have gone that far.”
    “He damned near crushed my windpipe,” O’Daniel said. Then he frowned and said, “Who are you, anyway? I don’t know you.”
    I told him who I was. He said, “Oh. Sure. Well, I’m glad you showed up when you did. That Coleclaw—I tell you, he’s a lunatic.”
    “Then maybe you’d better call the police.”
    “The police? No, absolutely not.”
    “Why not? Coleclaw attacked you, didn’t he? If he is a lunatic he ought to be locked up.”
    “No police,” O’Daniel said. He had his composure back now. “My God, we’ve had enough bad publicity as it is. We can’t afford any more notoriety.”
    Miss Irwin said, “But what if he comes back?” She was sitting on her heels, gathering up the stuff that had been swept off the desk during the struggle.
    He shook his head at her. “I’m not going to worry about that right now. Shirley . . . get me a glass of water and a shot of brandy, will you? My throat feels raw.”
    She straightened, put the papers and things on the desk, hung up the telephone receiver, and then went to a set of cabinet doors in one wall and opened them to reveal a wet bar. While she was getting his drinks I righted O’Daniel’s desk chair and pushed it over to him. He sat down in it, wincing. He was the bantam type—five and a half feet tall, maybe a hundred and forty pounds. He had bushy brown hair going gray at the temples, bright feral eyes, and a mouth like an ax chip in a piece of light-grained wood. There was a fancy silver ring on the little finger of his left hand. He sat there plucking and fussing at his rumpled silk shirt and his white linen suit coat. He didn’t look like any accountant I had ever seen before.
    I said, “You mind telling me why Coleclaw attacked you?”
    “Why? I told you, he’s crazy.”
    “Well, something must have provoked him.”
    O’Daniel hesitated. Then he grimaced and sighed a little and said, “Oh, what the hell. It was that fucking letter.”
    “Letter?”
    “It came this morning. I’m just not going to stand for shit like that.”
    “A threatening letter?”
    “Yes.”
    “Anonymous?”
    “What else.”
    “And you accused Coleclaw of writing it?”
    “Him or one of those other buggers in Musket Creek. It was postmarked in Weaverville, the nearest town with a post office.”
    “Coleclaw denied it, I suppose.”
    “Sure he denied it. He blew up, and I blew up, and the next thing I knew the son of a bitch was strangling me.”
    I sat down in one of the visitors’ chairs, a twin of the chrome jobs out in the anteroom. “Why did Coleclaw come here in the first place?” I asked.
    “He wanted to talk about our development plans for the Musket Creek area. Try to work out a compromise of some kind, he said. He showed up out of the blue—no appointment or anything. I should’ve known better than to see him.”
    “What sort of compromise did he have in mind?”
    “Something he and his crazy friends drew up. A list of restrictions as to what we could and couldn’t develop, things they want to preserve in their goddamn natural state. If we agreed to it, they’d quit fighting us.”
    “What did you say to that?”
    “I told him to go to hell,” O’Daniel said. “That list of his was as long as your arm. It’d cost thousands to revamp our plans, and for what? Just to satisfy the whims of a bunch of backwoods cretins.”
    Miss Irwin brought him his water and his brandy. He drank the water first, gargling it a little and rubbing his throat while it went down. Then he tossed off the brandy. “Better,” he said. “My head still hurts, though. You got any aspirin, Shirley?”
    “I’ll see.”
    He watched her walk out of the office. In a smarmy undertone he said to me, “Some ass, huh?”
    So are you, I thought.
    The telephone rang. Miss