The Anonymous Client by Parnell Hall Read Free Book Online Page B

know he stole the money.”
    “So who sent the letter?”
    Steve sighed. “How the hell should I know? All right, Tracy, take this letter down to Mark Taylor and tell him pass it on to his expert to see if it was typed on the same machine.”
    Steve snatched up the phone and called Mark Taylor.
    “Got your men pulled off the job yet, Mark?”
    “Uh huh. You need them again?”
    “I don’t know, but I may. Be ready to go into action. In the meantime I’m sending Tracy down with another note for your expert.”
    “Bradshaw again?”
    “That’s what I want to find out. But it sure looks like the same typewriter.”
    “Well, I’ll be damned. Don’t tell me there’s another retainer with it?”
    “Uh huh.”
    “You’re kidding. Don’t tell me it’s another ten grand.”
    “Not this time, Mark.”
    “No? What’d you get this time?”
    “Half a dollar.”

10.
    S TEVE W INSLOW TOOK A CAB home. For Steve, cabs were a luxury. After years of driving them himself, he loved riding in cabs instead of always taking the crowded subway. Even though, he had to admit, the trip from his midtown office to his Greenwich Village apartment was actually almost quicker by subway than it was by cab.
    Particularly at rush hour. And it was rush hour now. Steve had stayed in his office the whole day waiting for something to happen. And nothing had. Except for Mark Taylor calling back to confirm that the two letters had been typed on the same machine, the place had been dead. And yet he’d stayed. And he realized, the reason he’d stayed was that, despite everything he’d said, his feelings about everything that had happened were just the same as those of Tracy Garvin: he found the whole thing fascinating and he couldn’t wait to see what happened next.
    And nothing had. And now he was stuck in a traffic jam on Seventh Avenue with a taxi driver who smoked like a chimney and who kept the radio blaring.
    “Fire swept through a two-story building in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, early this afternoon—”
    Steve Winslow was sure one had. Fire swept through a building somewhere in New York City every day of the year. And it was tragic, of course, but Steve didn’t want to hear about it. Not at that volume. And yet he didn’t feel like telling the cabbie to turn it down. Because he sympathized with cab drivers, even obnoxious ones. He leaned his head out the window, away from the cigarette smoke and into the exhaust fumes of a bus.
    The radio was still blaring. “In a surprise move, the Nassau County District Attorney’s office secured an order for the exhumation of the body of Phillip T. Harding, the wealthy oil magnate, who died last month at the age of sixty-three. A preliminary report from the autopsy surgeon indicates that the cause of death, originally attributed to coronary thrombosis, was in fact due to arsenic poisoning. The D.A.’s office would issue no statement on the matter, but indicated that the police were making a thorough investigation and that the true facts would be forthcoming shortly.”
    “Cabbie!” Steve yelled over the radio. “Cabbie!”
    “Yeah?” the cabbie yelled back.
    “Turn the radio down. We’re going to a new address.”
    It took nearly twenty minutes for them to get out of traffic and reach Bradshaw’s apartment building.
    Winslow got out of the cab a block away. As he hurried to the building, he kept a sharp eye out to see that the place wasn’t being watched. He saw no one.
    It was a four-story brownstone in the middle of the block. A narrow alley cut through the block to the right of the building, making the apartments on that side more desirable in terms of light and ventilation. Beside the front door of the building were a row of buttons and a call box, which Steve interpreted correctly as indicating that the front door was locked. Having no desire to talk to Bradshaw on the call box, Steve took a plastic credit card from his wallet and inserted it in the crack in the door. He