Smart Moves by Stuart M. Kaminsky Read Free Book Online

dropped when she saw my face.
    “You sobered up,” she said. “I understand. Happens.”
    “I was never drunk,” I said, holding the door open for her to come in. “I just didn’t realize it was midnight.”
    She pushed the door closed behind her with her rear. “Counting the hours and minutes,” she said. “I came for the registration books. Did you get what you want?”
    “Not everything,” I said, taking a step toward her.
    “You’ve got a way with words,” she said, showing big white teeth. They were great teeth, and with Alex Albanese almost in my pocket a little delay wouldn’t cost me anything.
    “There’s a war on. Paul is maybe waiting at home and I’ve got to get these books back,” she said, throwing the big black purse she had been wearing over her shoulder onto the bed. “Let’s get in bed and talk later. What do you say?”
    I took off the shirt I had just finished buttoning and made a mental note to see an optometrist when I got back to Los Angeles.
    An hour later someone knocked on the door. It was a little after one in the morning. I asked who it was and three bullets came through the polished walnut door and cracked the window.

4
     
    “Abraham Lincoln,” Pauline screamed, looking at the broken window. I figured shock had conjured up the image of Honest Abe hovering over Seventh Avenue. I tried to move her off of me, expecting the guy with the gun to come through the door and improve his aim. Pauline was not easy to roll but I managed, and dived over the foot of the bed, glancing at the door. The lights were out in the room and thin rods of brightness jabbed through the bullet holes. There didn’t seem to be anyone on the other side of the door, but I still fumbled for the .38 in my suitcase and came up with it and some underwear. Throwing the underwear and caution to the wind, I went across the room, unlocked the door, and stepped back against the wall. No one shot at me. I stepped into the hall, looked right and saw nothing, and then looked left and saw a bulky male figure with short white hair about to go through the exit door near the elevator.
    “Hold it,” I yelled, leveling my pistol, not sure if he was the shooter or an innocent resident running from the madness that had broken out. He settled my dilemma by wheeling and taking a shot in my general direction that thudded into the already punctured door about a foot over my head. That was better shooting than I could do. I didn’t bother to fire.
    The white-haired guy went through the exit door and down or up the stairs. I thought about going after him but two things changed my mind: the broom-thin woman in a nightgown and hair curlers, who stepped out of the room across from mine and screamed, and the realization that she was probably not screaming at the destruction and gunshots but at the fact that she was facing a somewhat scared naked man, carrying a gun. I ducked back in my room, closed the door, and flipped on the light.
    Pauline was staring at the broken window. The bullets from Whitey had created what looked like a jagged silhouette of Abraham Lincoln. It was worth calling in to Ripley’s “Believe It Or Not.” I could even imagine a little cartoon drawing of me and Pauline in bed, with the outline of Lincoln over our heads and the words below us reading: “This amazing outline of Abraham Lincoln was formed in the window by bullets fired into the hotel room of Private Detective Toby Peters, as he lay in bed with a hotel switchboard operator.” Since we were in the Taft, it would have been more amazing if the outline had been of William Howard Taft, but who the hell would recognize Taft’s profile? While I pondered these questions, I put on the underpants I had thrown on the floor.
    “What does Paul look like?” I asked.
    “Paul?” she said blankly, finally turning from the window.
    “Your husband. Is he big, white hair?”
    “No, he’s … There isn’t any Paul. I just made that up,” she