The Long Wait by Mickey Spillane Read Free Book Online

business. It later developed that the properties he picked up were strategically located for gambling purposes and he was having a rapid turnover in buildings and lots.
    Robert Minnow had him in court twice without finding out where his money had come from and for a couple of months nothing more was said. Then the D. A. pulled out the stops and at an annual Town Hall dinner affair, gave out the news that Lyncastle was in the hands of a criminal element whose hands were in the city’s pockets and around the necks of every citizen in town. He was after certain conclusive evidence that would lay several murders at the feet of the right people and promised to expose one of the biggest scandals of all time.
    He never got around to doing it because a week later he was dead.
    That’s where John McBride came into it.
    Me.
    Upon complaint of the State Auditor, the District Attorney’s office was conducting an investigation of the National Bank of Lyncastle’s books. A check revealed that the bank was short two hundred thousand smackeroos and one John McBride, a teller on vacation, had juggled the books in a neat, but not neat enough manner. The D. A. had a warrant out for his arrest.
    During that time somebody knocked off Minnow. He was found dead in his office at ten o’clock at night by a cleaning woman. The gun was on the floor, the corpse behind the desk and whoever had let him have it had stepped inside, pulled the trigger and blown without anybody being the wiser. The coroner stated that he had been killed about an hour before his body was found and a later police report said nobody had seen the killer enter or leave. For a week the police made vague hints, then Captain Lindsey came out with the statement that the killer was John McBride, the motive revenge, and before the month was out the guy would be standing trial.
    It must have been a long month for Lindsey.
    Well, there it was in a nice little package. Robert Minnow’s rising star had been nipped just short of its peak by a dirty bank absconder. I even made some of the out-of-state papers.
    I folded them up carefully and slid them back into the racks. Then I stood there looking at them. Inside, I had a vaguely unpleasant feeling, a gnawing doubt that told me I could be wrong and if I was I would hang for the mistake. The basement got cold and damp suddenly.
    But it wasn’t the basement. It was me. It was that damn doubt telling me it could have happened that way after all and my lovely crusade was nothing but a fool’s errand.
    I could feel the sweat start over my eyes and run down my cheeks. I got so goddamn mad at myself for thinking that I could be wrong that I balled up my fist and slammed it against the side of the metal bin until the place echoed with a dull booming and my knuckles were a mess of torn skin.
    I sat down until the mad passed and only the doubt was left. Then I cursed that and everything about Lyncastle I could think of. When I got done swearing to myself I yanked out a couple of the sheets again and opened them to a feature section that sported a two-column spread by a writer named Alan Logan. I jotted his name down in my memory and tucked the papers back.
    Of all the people who had anything to say about Robert Minnow or me, he was the only one who didn’t convict me before the trial. The rest had me drawn and quartered in absentium. I went back upstairs and outside where I could smoke. standing on the steps trying to think. I was so damn deep in thought that the chunk I heard didn’t make an impression until I noticed the two kids looking at the wall behind me. I turned around to see what they were looking at, saw it and went flat on my face on the concrete just as there was another chunk.
    On the wall right behind my back was a quarter-sized dimple plated with the remains of a soft-nosed lead bullet and if I had been standing up the last one would have gone right through my intestines.
    If I had rolled the kids