Read Online The Corpse Without a Country by Louis Trimble - Free Book Online Page B

found the same spot on his jaw with the tip of my shoe. He rolled over on his back and lay there, his mouth open and his eyes closed.
    I went back into the hallway. Jodi was just coming through the curtains, worry furrowing her forehead. She took one look at me, grabbed my arm, and steered me out through the fire exit doorway.
    We were in an alley, rank with the smell of rotting garbage. With me in tow, Jodi picked her way out to the street and down to her car. I had never been so glad to sit down.
    Jodi drove fast, whipping a lot of cold wind into the car. That helped clear my head. So did the three fingers of rye whiskey she had for me after I stretched out on her divan.
    That divan was about eight feet long, and it faced a floor-to-ceiling window. Through the window I could see the dark waters of the canal. To my right, lights outlined the bridge just this side of the Inlet. To my left the canal opened out into the Sound. The water was so close I could almost touch it.
    Jodi brought me more rye. “Like my view?”
    “It almost makes me want to be rich,” I said. I took the rye glass she held out. There were only two fingers, but that was enough. I could feel again. I rubbed my ear, surprised to find that I still had all of it.
    “Do you try to solve all your cases by using yourself for a punching bag?” Jodi asked pleasantly.
    I let that one pass. I said, “Who came into the toilet and set me up for Ridley?”
    “That would be Willie,” Jodi said. “She’s pretty good with a sand-filled leather bungstarter.”
    “You have such interesting friends,” I said dryly.
    “They’re no friends of mine,” she protested. “I met them when I took my paintings down for exhibit. Willie wanted to know me better, but I’m fussy that way.”
    I said, “I feel sorry for Willie if she ever tries to tangle with you.” I was thinking of Emily flying through the air. “You helped me out of two jams tonight. I like the way you work, but remind me never to make a pass at you.”
    “When I want you to, you’ll know it,” she said.
    I said, “Let’s wait until my head settles down, shall we?” and reached for the rye.
    Jodi moved it quickly out of my way. “Enough is enough,” she said. “Those last two remarks didn’t sound like Peter Durham.”
    I said, “I constantly surprise myself. I seem to lose my inhibitions when I’m with you.”
    She mocked me with a grin. “When I did have a crush on you,” she said, “you couldn’t see me at all.”
    “You weren’t a very pleasant character as a kid,” I said. “Greedy, stubborn, spoiled …”
    “I still am,” she said. “I like to have a lot, and when I make up my mind, I’m hard to change.”
    Soft light touched her features and stroked down her figure. She looked deceptively small and helpless. I said, “Maybe you just wear your sins better now.”
    Jodi got up. “I’m going to make you some coffee,” she said in a positive voice, “and take the rye far away.”
    I leaned my head against the end of the divan and closed my eyes. I must have dozed off. The next thing I recalled was Jodi saying, “Here, drink this.”
    She had a cup of black coffee for me. I sat up and took it from her. She said, “I’ve been thinking—Do you really believe that Emily is involved?”
    “I do,” I said. “I think Ridley smiled at her and she rolled over and barked for him.”
    “Ridley?”
    “Why not? Can’t a poet get mixed up in a racket? Emily isn’t bright enough to have got into trouble on her own. I think he told her to keep him posted as to what went on in our office. And I think the blonde hooked Ridley the same way Ridley hooked Emily—by smiling.”
    “A regular chain,” Jodi said with a faint smile.
    “Sure,” I agreed. “And with Emily as the weak link….”
    I stopped, suddenly aware of the meaning of what I’d said. I thought, Durham, the smart character! I had tipped my hand there at the Pad. Now it was known that I had the finger on