Read Online Gat Heat by Richard S. Prather - Free Book Online Page B

before—and lived in the house with some of his hoodlum associates, none of whom was any more neat and tidy than Jimmy himself.
    I walked to the front door, but it opened before I reached it. The guy looking out at me—and at the emptiness behind me—with an expression of vast suspicion was one I hadn’t seen before. He was tall and broad shouldered, with a sharp chin and ledges of bone over his eyes, but I didn’t know who he was.
    He knew who I was, though. At least he did after looking me over, checking the white hair and brows, giving me the head-to-toe perusal.
    â€œYou’re Scott, huh?” he said.
    â€œThat’s right.”
    He didn’t ask about my three recent companions. “O.K. Come on in.”
    I walked past him and turned.
    He said, “I suppose you got a gun on you.”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œI’ll take it.”
    â€œYou’ll play hell.”
    The chin slid forward slowly and his brows lowered.
    I said, “Jimmy wanted to see me , remember. I didn’t have to come out here.”
    â€œYou didn’t have to? What …” He let it trail off.
    â€œI suppose you’re wondering,” I said, “about Bingo and Stub and Little Phil. The sooner you escort me to mine host, the sooner I can tell him about them.”
    â€œWhat about them?”
    â€œI’ll tell Jimmy.”
    He chewed on the inside of his lip for a moment, then shrugged. “Come on,” he said.
    We walked down a carpeted hallway toward the back of the house and stopped before heavy double doors on our left. My escort knocked twice, then went on in, leaving me outside. After about a minute he opened the door and motioned me in. I suppose he had to explain to Jimmy that I’d arrived without company and presumably armed to the teeth.
    Jimmy Violet wasn’t alone in the big room, which was some kind of den with a polished mahogany bar against the right wall. Two other guys—beside my escort—were sitting in upholstered chairs drinking beer from bottles.
    Jimmy slouched on a gray couch across the room from me, legs crossed and one hand behind his head. He didn’t get up when I came in.
    â€œHello, Jimmy,” I said. “You wanted to see me?”
    â€œWhere the hell’s Stub and Bingo and Phil?”
    No Hello, no How are ya, no nothing. No graciousness at all. You could almost tell by looking at the creep. He was what you might find in a cemetery at Full Moon, near a newly-opened grave. Tall, rangy, cadaverous, he had the look of mortuaries, winding sheets, and shrouds. In his own way, he was just as cute as Fleck out at the gate.
    He was an inch or two taller than I am and weighed maybe two hundred pounds, but he looked wasted, as if he’d been a heavier man but was sickening of a disease. His eyes were dark, dull, with sparse brows above them; and his hair, black streaked with gray, was thin and limp and lay flat on his round skull. His lips were fat, cupidlike, but not rosy; they were a kind of pinkish-gray, not quite as ashen as his face. I guess his nose was the only reasonably nice thing about that face, a bit long maybe, but straight and possessed of only two nostrils.
    There was an empty overstuffed chair a few feet from the couch on which Jimmy Violet lounged, so I walked toward it.
    â€œMind if I sit down?” I said.
    â€œI asked you a question.”
    â€œI heard you. Mind if I sit down?”
    â€œAh, go ahead and sit. Sit on your head if you feel like it.”
    The guy who’d brought me in here had walked over to stand near the two men already in the room. I turned the chair a little so it not only faced Jimmy Violet but afforded me a view of the three other men, and sat.
    â€œWhere the hell’s the boys?” Jimmy asked.
    I grinned. “What’s the matter, you think I shot them?”
    â€œYou bastard, don’t give me no lip—”
    I interrupted him. “Don’t call me