Read Online Fit to Die by Joan Boswell - Free Book Online Page A

flirted with a man’s wife, never took a drink from his own bar and was suspected of killing the previous owner. Tonight, with the Dempsey fight to come on the radio, they came because they thought the boss had once fixed a big-time heavyweight scrap.
    The boss, as always, looked like the rumours had never laid a glove on him. There was a fresh nosegay in the narrow lapel of his fitted double-breasted jacket, his pants were creased and cuffed in the smartish way he had worn even before the Prince of Wales made it the rage, and his shirt was a brilliant, crisp white. He seemed almost merry as he walked up to Stevie Pounder, the serious-looking lad donning the radio’s ear pieces and twiddling the dials on the fat wooden box as if his life depended on bringing in the fight. The boss put Stevie at ease with one of the Cuban cigars special-ordered four to a box labelled “Reginald Ashe”. Gunboat noticed the boss had lit his third stogie tonight, and that he was in no hurry to talk to Ketcheson.
    Ketcheson had been cooling his heels for half an hour, although a nice half-hour inching his stool closer to Miss Doyle, pretending to look at her newspaper for the poop on the Dempsey fight. Not that they did much reading. She was a born talker, going on about a new pair of boots she had ordered, about learning to shoot at her papa’s knee, about Dempsey’s right hand, and about the night Harry Pilgrim bought the farm. She had made what she called “a tableau of the crime scene” with now-empty martini glasses standing for the folks Gunboat had seen that night when he went down to the boathouse to fetch a twelve-bottle case of real French champagne.
    â€œThe night air must have been especially invigorating,” Miss Doyle was saying, as she gave her funny tableau the once over. “Everyone and his brother was out for a stroll. The band was taking a break by this bottle of vermouth. Darling Reggie had slipped behind the soda siphon. Stevie Pounder’s father was out by the ashtray helping the boatman tie up the launch. Harry Junior and that girl he was so mad about were stealing a minute somewhere around the Beefeater, although I guessthey don’t have to steal any more. I heard they got married on the proceeds when Reggie bought this joint.”
    Ketcheson sniggered. “They had to, I suppose, after everyone got a look at the grass stains on the back of that pretty red dress of hers. They weren’t playing croquet that night.”
    â€œTsk, tsk,” said Miss Doyle, but Gunboat figured she was more ticked off at Ketcheson than the pretty housemaid. Miss Doyle felt certain allowances ought to be made for pretty girls, likely because she was very pretty herself. Tonight she looked like a flower, more like a rose than a girl. Her pink, freckled cheeks made her look younger than the twenty-three he knew she was, and her gold eyes had an agreeable way of sizing up a fellow. Gunboat liked, too, that she showed off her first-rate gams with a paper-thin, slinky number that quit just below the knee. Though he didn’t like Ketcheson’s hand, rock-hard from the hoosegow quarry, resting just above the hemline on her first-rate knee.
    The boss wouldn’t like it either. But he was busy making with the friendly, chatting up the Wall Street big shot and the son of the man who owned the Waldorf-Astoria, and keeping a fatherly eye on Stevie Pounder, who suddenly stood up halfway, before the wire on the radio ear pieces jerked him back.
    â€œHot dog! There’s the Polo Grounds!” Stevie cried. “The fighters are going to their corners.”
    â€œHoly Mike, is it fight time already?” Miss Doyle said. “I’ve just got time to plunk down a few smackeroos on the champ.”
    She clicked open the glittery crystal clasp on the cloth purse no bigger than Gunboat’s fist. When the pencil and notepad came out it reminded him of clowns coming out of a paper car at