Read Online Death Is My Comrade by Stephen Marlowe - Free Book Online Page A

I’d heard it before.
    He would come for the letter, I thought. He’d then make contact with his partner. Probably a phone call. If he left on foot I’d follow him and nab him after he made the call. My hand tightened on the pen. I’d scare him, hurt him. And he’d see the threat in my eyes. He’d take me where they were. If he left by car, I had the taxi waiting. The important thing was to put fear into him, and fast. It would be easy, I figured, thinking of Marianne, back in Georgetown, waiting.
    Twenty to eight. A kid entered the Post Office. I relaxed and doodled on some more envelopes. The kid was about twelve years old, with a towhead and freckles. He went right over to the General Delivery window and said importantly:
    â€œAnything in General Delivery for Mr. Allen?”
    My fist clenched. I broke the pen.
    The important thing was to scare him, hurt him, make him know in the first few seconds of contact that I meant business.
    A twelve-year-old kid?

Chapter Nine
    T hat’s timing for you,” the balding clerk said with a smile as he got Ilya Alluliev’s letter down from the “A” pigeonhole on the wall. He was still in good humor from the joke he had told. “Came in less than an hour ago.”
    â€œOh,” the towheaded kid said.
    He had the ransom letter in his hand then. Looking at it without a great deal of interest, he turned and walked outside.
    I hit the street five seconds after he did. He was walking west on Pennsylvania Avenue, toward where the sun was going down red and swollen in the hot June sky. Across the street in front of the Raleigh I saw my cab roll back into the taxi line.
    The towhead crossed Pennsylvania Avenue at 14th Street, jaywalking across the broad intersection where Pennsylvania, E and 14th converge. He sauntered along past the Willard Hotel. He was in no special hurry. I stayed a half block back. He crossed F Street one block from the Treasury Department and my office.
    Reaching the plate-glass windows of a big Rexall drugstore, he stopped. He seemed to be window shopping. Then he hitched up the belt of his faded bluejeans and went inside.
    I went in right after him, saw him head for the soda fountain. Most of the stools were taken. He sat down next to the broad back of a large man wearing a T-shirt and khaki trousers. I stood ten feet from them at the paper-bound-book rack.
    â€œWhat’ll it be?” the big man in the T-shirt said.
    â€œBanana split royal,” the towhead answered promptly. “Chocolate, strawberry and peach-vanilla ice cream. Here’s the letter, Mr. Allen.”
    Mr. Allen ordered the banana split royal and placed a dollar on the counter. “Be seeing you around, kid.”
    â€œThanks a lot, Mr. Allen.”
    Mr. Allen turned, shoving the letter into a pocket of his khaki trousers. He looked like a muscle-stiff with the hard ropes of muscle bunched on his bare arms and under the tight T-shirt, but his movements were light-footed and lithe, like a big cat’s. He was a couple of inches taller than I am, and I’m six-one. His sandy hair had been crew-cut. His eyes were blue and as innocent as a baby’s. There was a tattoo on the back of his right hand in the inevitable heart shape. He walked right past me, one big arm brushing and turning the paperbound-book rack. It squeaked; they always do.
    He hit the street at a slow, carefree amble, and then he started stepping out. I stretched my legs after him, north toward New York Avenue. A block and a half like that, then we reached a parking lot where he turned in, his shoes crunching on gravel. I wasn’t wild about the gravel; he’d hear me coming a mile off. But the parking lot meant he had a car and I didn’t. I had to make my play in there.
    On the sidewalk I lit a cigarette, fumbled for the ring of keys in my pocket and followed Allen across the gravel. He could hear me, of course. I made myself even more obvious by