The Remake by Stephen Humphrey Bogart Read Free Book Online Page A

see you in Hell before I answer a question from either you or this low-grade moron you keep for a pet. So get polite, or read me my rights, or I’m done for the night, Freddy.”
    “First, you’ll answer me one question,” Kates said. “And I’ll like your answer or I stick you in a cell with a fag bodybuilder until I remember to call your lawyer. Which might not be for a couple of days.”
    R.J. knew he’d do it, too—and maybe even get away with it. So he let out a big breath and nodded his head. “One question, Freddy. Then I start playing hardball, too.”
    Kates nodded. R.J. had never noticed before how small and beady his eyes were. They were gleaming now. Kates looked like he was about to drool. “Where were you last night?”
    “It’s still last night now, Freddy,” R.J. told him. “Can you pin it down a little better?”
    “Yeah, I can pin it down, Fontaine. Let’s say where were you between the hours of ten and one?”
    R.J. frowned. This wasn’t going to be very good. “I was home, Freddy. Mostly in bed.”
    The beady little eyes got brighter. “In bed alone?”
    “That’s right, Freddy. Sorry to disappoint you.”
    “Can you prove it?”
    “That’s three questions, Lieutenant. But just to show I’m cooperating—No, I can’t prove it. No phone calls, no deliveries, no chance acquaintances dropping by for badminton. Just me. Stop drooling for Christ’s sake.”
    “This just gets better,” stuck in Boggs. He was leaning in the doorway trying to make his face a copy of Kates’s, and more than halfway succeeding. “Shall I book him?”
    “Not yet,” said Kates. “I think we should just hold him for a while.”
    “Now look, I’ve done my duty,” R.J. said. “I haven’t even threatened to sue you two-bit sleazy bastards. I’m a good citizen, okay? Now it’s your turn. Arrest me or let me go. So what’s gonna be, Freddy? Miranda or The Flesh Man?”
    “What the hell is The Flesh Man?” Boggs wanted to know.
    R.J. grinned at him. “My dog-bite lawyer. He always gets his pound of flesh. He doesn’t win cases—he just makes such a pain-in-the-ass of himself that the cases never go to trial. And I’m going to end up owning that ugly damn suit and everything else you’ve got.”
    Kates snarled and shook out a cigarette. “I got enough to hold you,” he said through a cloud of smoke. “I can get a judge who agrees with me.”
    “Then read me my rights and shove me in a cell,” R.J. said. “I’m sick of you, I’m sick of King Kong over there, and I’m through cooperating.”
    Kates bit a piece off the filter of his cigarette and spat it on the floor beside R.J.’s foot. He glanced up at Boggs. Boggs shrugged. Kates dropped his cigarette on the floor. “You can go. But we’re not done with you. Keep yourself available for questioning—”
    “Sure, Freddy,” R.J. said tiredly.
    “—or by Christ I will toss you in the can and lose the key. You hear me, Fontaine?”
    “I hear you. And next time you come for me, you better have some paper, Freddy.” R.J. stood up and leaned into Kates’s face. “Or you’re going to find yourself in the same cell, sport. Do you hear me ?”
    But Kates just glared at him. “Get him out of here, Boggs,” he said, and Boggs obligingly grabbed R.J.’s arm and led him out the door.
    Boggs didn’t offer him a ride home, not that R.J. expected him to. Still, he was plenty ticked off at being dragged down here in the middle of the night and then just dumped on the cold sidewalk.
    Worse, he still had no idea what the whole thing was about. He knew that given half a chance of getting away with it, Kates would frame him for anything handy. He was that kind of cop. He wanted his cases to be on the books as solved, and he didn’t care if he got the wrong guy as long as a jury might buy it.
    And on top of that, he didn’t like R.J. Never had. There weren’t that many rules Kates bothered with, but he would bend any that he had to to get