Read Online Twilight at Mac's Place by Ross Thomas - Free Book Online Page B

get in?”
    “I rang her apartment and somebody buzzed the front door, but didn’t ask who I was. So I didn’t go in.”
    “Made you suspicious, huh?”
    “I didn’t think Isabelle would buzz somebody in without knowing who it was. I rang again and the same thing happened. But this time I went in.”
    “And did what?”
    “Bought a New York Times. ”
    “Okay, Granny. Now you’re in the lobby and you’ve got yourself something to read on the way up in the elevator. You get to the fourth floor, go down the hall and knock on Gelinet’s door. Then what?”
    “There wasn’t any answer so I tried the door. It was unlocked and I went in.”
    “Can we get to the blood on the carpet now?”
    “Sure. Mr. Burns grabbed me from behind the moment I came through the door. I broke away, turned and whacked him on the nose before we recognized each other.”
    “Where’d you learn to roll a paper up all nice and tight like that?”
    Haynes shrugged. “High school maybe.”
    “They teach it in arts and crafts? Never mind. So when you went up there with the Times all rolled up nice and tight, who were you expecting to hit?”
    “Nobody. It was just in case.”
    “Just in case of what, Granny?”
    “In case I might have to defend myself.”
    “Because nobody asked who you were over the intercom?”
    “Right.”
    “So you and Burns had a little tussle and you gave him a bloody nose.”
    “Yes.”
    “Then what?”
    “When his nose stopped bleeding we went into the bathroom and he showed me Miss Gelinet’s body.”
    “Then?”
    “Then we called the police.”
    “What’s Burns do for a living?”
    “He sells weapons.”
    “Where?”
    “Paris.”
    “What’d he do before he did that?”
    “He was a professional soldier.”
    “In whose army?”
    “The American Army and after that the French Foreign Legion. There may have been other armies after the Legion, but you’ll have to ask him.”
    “He an American citizen?”
    “French.”
    “But he used to be American?”
    “Yes.”
    “And you’re an actor, that right, Granny?”
    “Yes.”
    “And what’d you do before you got to be an actor?”
    “I was a homicide detective.”
    The detachment left Detective-Sergeant Pouncy’s face, shoved aside by sudden anger. “No call for smartass stuff. No call for that at all.”
    “I was with the LAPD for almost ten years, seven of them in homicide.”
    “You gotta know I’m gonna check it out.”
    “Go ahead.”
    “So how come you didn’t lemme know right away from the start?”
    “Because if I’d found some guy in a dead woman’s apartment who right away wants me to know he’s an ex-D.C. homicide cop, I probably wouldn’t’ve let him loose till around midnight. If then.”
    “Figure he’s dirty, huh?”
    “It’d make me wonder.”
    “You really an actor?”
    Haynes nodded.
    “Been in anything I might’ve seen?”
    “You watch TV?”
    “Not unless she makes me.”
    “I was in a Wiseguy, a Jake and the Fatman, and I had two speaking roles in a couple of Simon and Simon s.”
    “That the one with the black cop called ‘Downtown Brown’?”
    “Yes.”
    “You ever know a real cop that’d tell a private one what year it was?”
    “Never.”
    “Then how come they’re always such asshole buddies on TV?”
    “Because the private cop has to have a legitimate connection to law and order.”
    “Who says?”
    “Hollywood ethics.”
    “What the fuck’s Hollywood ethics?”
    “Nobody knows,” said Granville Haynes.

Chapter 10
    It wasn’t until after he had used the dead Isabelle Gelinet’s telephone to call the Los Angeles Police Department and speak to the irrepressible Sergeant Virgil Stroud in robbery and homicide that Detective-Sergeant Darius Pouncy was nearly convinced that Haynes and even Tinker Burns were probably what they claimed to be.
    After an exchange of the usual amenities and the usual information about the weather (a high of seventy-two degrees and fair in Los Angeles;