The Emerald Cat Killer by Richard A. Lupoff Read Free Book Online

as a middle-aged homicide detective. Massive, immobile, self-mocking, ironic, polite. And patient. Prodding, prodding, prodding. Ultimately invincible.
    Somebody had been reading Rex Stout. Why Greenstreet’s character was Captain Danbury instead of Nero Wolfe was a greater mystery than who killed Gordon Dunning. Probably a copyright problem.

FOUR
    Gordian House wasn’t a house at all. Not that Lindsey expected it to be one, but he’d looked forward to something more impressive than a dingy office suite on the sixth floor of an aging commercial building on Shattuck Avenue. The furnishings looked as if they hadn’t been changed since Ike was president. There was actually a Remington Standard on the receptionist’s desk and a half-height wooden room divider with a swinging door in it. The only thing missing was a PBX switchboard. They probably kept that in the storage closet, waiting for time to flow backward.
    The receptionist looked as if she couldn’t decide whether she was an unreconstructed hippie chick or a frowsy housewife, but when Lindsey presented his card she buzzed him through to an inner office. That was no more modern and no less dingy than the outer chamber. There was only one desk in the room, with a small sign reading JACK BURNSIDE.
    The shirtsleeved man behind the desk looked to be in his sixties with unkempt, graying hair and a bushy mustache to match. He stood up and removed a half-smoked cigar from his mouth. He snarled, “I hope you’re not from the goddamned tobacco police.”
    Lindsey said, “No, no. Nothing like that.”
    Was Burnside joking or was there really such a thing as the tobacco police in this town? Never mind. Lindsey presented his card. “I’m from International Surety. We carry your liability policy.”
    â€œI know that, I know that.” Burnside transferred the cigar to his other hand and extended a callused paw to Lindsey. He gestured Lindsey to a battered wooden chair that must have come from a liquidation sale at a thrift shop. “Look, I don’t know what these high-tone bluebloods at Marston and Morse have against an honest businessman. Christ, Linsley—”
    â€œLindsey.”
    â€œThat’s what I said. Linsley.”
    â€œLindsey.”
    â€œJesus Christ on a crutch, did you come in here to interrupt me every five words? Look, I’ve been in this racket all my life. You know I worked with Aaron Wyn in New York? I sold pictures for Irving Klaw. You wouldn’t believe it, I once put a move on Bettie Page. So innocent she didn’t even know what was going on. But there was some hot, hot stuff. I mean, hot. I worked for Hamling in Chicago. I gave Milton Luros his start. I was publishing pulps that would make a Donnenfeld blush and Miltie painted covers for me.”
    He had placed his cigar on the edge of a huge cut-glass ashtray. The cigar had fallen off and added a blackened spot to the many already on the wooden desktop before burning out. He picked it up, clicked a butane lighter into life, and reignited the cigar. After a couple of puffs he leaned back in his chair and started up again, looking and sounding to Lindsey like the great Lee J. Cobb.
    â€œThese snooty SOBs want to put me out of business. I’ll fight the bastards. I’ll fight ’em all the way. I’ll whip their asses in court.”
    Lindsey raised his hand, feeling like a schoolboy asking permission to leave the room.
    Burnside grunted acknowledgement but he kept on rolling. “There’s no way they can beat me but if they do it’s on your backside, not mine. International Sure-As-Hell, that’s what I call you guys. International Sure-As-Hell. If I lose—no way I lose, I’m going to clank their clock, those arrogant SOBs—but if they do win, International Sure-As-Hell has to pay, not Gordian House.”
    He paused again to draw on his cigar. Before he could resume, Lindsey said, “Mr.