The Last Hand by Eric Wight Read Free Book Online Page B

together and hunched over the desk, thinking. “Something, maybe, about Lucas that all the guys in Gregson’s club know, but are keeping quiet about to protect his reputation. Maybe hers, too. Funny. As a lawyer, getting a client off, he’s worth a million a year, but offstage, like, he’s a lousy liar. I must tell Marinelli.”
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    I could leave a letter on Mackenzie’s desk tonight, Salter thought, telling him that “compelling personal circumstances” had made it necessary for him to leave a few months early. They would go for that.

    He could drive down to the Island and surprise Annie.
    It was ten years since he had taken that drive. Get up at five and get the hairy part, the 401 through Montreal, out of the way by lunchtime. Then south through Quebec for a couple of hours, enjoying the Frenchness of the villages, the first surge of pleasure because you were on a trip to foreign parts. Then over the border into Maine–or was it Vermont?–the tiny thrill of being abroad confirmed by the American practice of decorating their houses with flags. This, the flags said, is the U.S. of A., the land where peameal bacon is called “Canadian;” where you can get Michelob on tap, and where the diners in the villages open at six in the morning, unlike Canadian diners, whose owners consider eight o’clock an enterprising hour to begin selling coffee.
    Once he had gotten as far as Bangor in one day, six hundred-odd miles, but now four hundred was his maximum, so the trip took three days, which, on reflection, was a bit long.
    Maybe a fishing trip, then? But Seth was too busy, and he knew of no one else free to go fishing on a day’s notice.
    So perhaps he would stick around.
    From the first overheard mention of the hooker he had had a hunch, an insight into her significance, an insight without which neither Marinelli nor anyone else would get very far. And so, very soon-he had seen it all before–Marinelli’s squad would focus too early on an obvious suspect as they put together a case that would collapse in court (or worse, convict an innocent woman). Then, the whole case in shambles, the witnesses scattered, the crime scene polluted, someone would have to start from scratch to find the real culprit–a task made infinitely harder by having the job already botched. Salter felt as if he were at the races, certain of the winner of the next race, but without the money to play his hunch. An idea formed. First he would have to get up to speed on the investigation Marinelli’s detectives had started. At one time he might have had to mount a small, classic espionage operation on the files and desk drawers of the Homicide Division, probably after the detectives had gone home, but nowadays all the information he needed was on the computer. All he would have to do would be to bring it up and print it. And instead of following the investigation into the victim’s background, he could
just spend an hour with Who’s Who and get all he wanted.
    Next he had to talk to some of the people the homicide detectives had interviewed, for which he would need an excuse-a different excuse for each one would be best. And as he began to try to think of ways of doing this without it coming to the ears of Marinelli and Mackenzie, Salter realized that there would come a point at which someone, Mackenzie probably, would hear about what he was doing and ask him what the hell he thought he was playing at, and that would be that.
    He saw that he had been creating a little fantasy, that the idea of conducting his own investigation was out of the question, and so sank back into frustrated glumness and returned to thinking about driving to the Island.
    But unknown to Salter, without any help from him, the world was already rearranging itself to his benefit.

5
    F ormer Staff Superintendent Orliff, Salter’s old boss, was a small, neat man who had laid aside the blue suit of his