Private Heat by Robert E. Bailey Read Free Book Online Page B

heels. He threw my ID on the counter and asked, “This registration match the numbers to the piece on your hip?”
    â€œYes, sir, it does.”
    He fingered the green gun registration out of the pile of cards and said, “Lay it on the counter.”
    â€œYou want me to clear it?”
    â€œNo, I don’t want to play with it, I want to look at it.”
    I eased the weapon off my hip and laid it on the counter with the barrel facing away from the sergeant and the CLIP.
    He held the card at arm’s length just over the pistol and tipped his head up to make the best use of his bifocals as he compared the numbers.
    â€œWhat the hell kind of piece is this, anyway?”
    â€œThink of it as a chop-and-channel Colt. Detonics built it to some famous Border Patrol pistolero’s specifications.”
    â€œSo the feds are carrying these now?”
    â€œI have no idea. I’d guess they’re carrying fat nines like everybody else.”
    A smoke smile washed over his face. “Right, put it away.”
    I holstered my sidearm and was picking up my ID cards when Sergeant Franklin reached across the counter and tucked the service into the hanky pocket of my sport jacket. “Just don’t be rude,” he said, “and you won’t have any trouble.”
    â€œSo?” I asked, “I take it no one is going to be available.”
    â€œDepends,” he said with a shrug.
    â€œThat’s a maybe?”
    â€œThat’s a product. If you stay in this line of work, you may need them.”
    I’m pretty sure that was the good sergeant’s idea of a joke. I smiled, gave him a nod, and departed.
    Happily, the parking lot was devoid of Officer Talon and his playmates. But as I pulled out of the lot and onto the apron to turn right onto Bridge Street, one of the Community Service crew’s ratty Ford Escorts with two men in the front seat charged out of the police garage. A short opening in traffic let me onto Bridge but blocked their exit.
    I went right on Monroe half a block and turned left into the city parking structure. I grabbed a ticket and watched my mirror. As the arm on the ticket dispenser came down behind me, the Escort crossed traffic to turn into the parking structure. Neither occupant was Randy Talon. The car held a salt-and-pepper crew that went shoulder to shoulder and door to door.

4
    I scooted to the down ramp and shot down one floor to exit on the other side of the structure. The attendant took my buck and I scorched up to the street, turned right, and honked on it for half a block to the Old Kent Parking Lot. By the time the beef trust in the red Escort had driven up the chute to street level, I had hustled out of sight among the crowd of cars in the street level bank lot. The twenty-something professionals flashed by the lot, and after a panicked, head-swiveling hesitation, burned the light at the corner of Ionia and Lyon.
    I hit the Kmart on Buchanan and Twenty-eighth Street, happily unescorted. Inside, I picked up a can of pepper spray. On the way to the register I recollected the size of the two characters in my rearview mirror and went back for a second can.
    â€œGot a lot of mean dogs in your neighborhood?” asked the honey blonde at the register. Svelte and in her mid-thirties, she wore one of those dorky green smocks over a pleated skirt.
    â€œYes ma’am, I do,” I said. “Suppose if I went to Sam’s Club Warehouse, I could get a really big can?”
    â€œI don’t know, I’m still trying to figure out what to do with a twenty pound can of Crisco.” She added a flash of eyelid flutter. “That’s thirty-two eighty-seven,” she said.
    I paid her and fled. Finally in the Union Street S.E. neighborhood I keyed the hand mike with my thumb and spoke, “Five-six, five-seven, radio check, over.”
    â€œThis is five-seven,” Ron answered, “I hear you Lima-Charlie, over.”
    â€œNatives