Read Down for the Count: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Ten) for Free Online Page A

say?”
    “Nothin’,” Louis said, squinting at me. “Why you asking this?”
    “That’s the man who got his face redecorated yesterday, the guy on the beach, the dead guy,” I explained.
    “I tole you,” Louis said, leaning toward me. “I didn’t hit him. It was those two guys.”
    “So, what we have here is a coincidence,” I said. “You happen to be running on the beach in Santa Monica and you bump into two guys apparently killing a guy who you met a week ago.”
    “Something like that,” Louis said with a touch of suspicion and maybe even anger on his smooth brown face. “I meet a lot of people,” he went on. “Hundreds, maybe thousands. I spend as much time shaking hands as trainin’. You know?”
    “I know,” I said. “I’m just letting you in on what the cops are going to check if you have to talk to them.”
    “They’ll get me good and for sure,” he said, slumping back in the chair and shaking his head. “Ain’t too many people I can turn to. Marva, my wife, she ain’t talking to me much and she won’t be for sure if she finds out I’ve been fooling around again. My manager Roxie …”
    “John Roxborough,” I supplied. “Doing time now for a numbers racket conviction. And your trainer …”
    “Chappie,” Louis said, looking down at his hands.
    “Jack Blackburn died a few months back,” I went on. “Can I call you Joe?”
    He shrugged.
    “A lot of people know a lot about you,” I said. “You know that. There are people who even know Blackburn once did time for murder. And I know the cops can tie it all together. Your choice of friends has been a little unfortunate. fell, you even campaigned for Willkie.”
    “He’s a good man,” Louis said, looking up as if I might argue with him.
    “I was the other guy who voted for him,” I said, “but let’s not forget why we’re here. You want to tell me the name of the woman you were with last night?”
    “No,” he said firmly.
    “I can find out,” I said, folding my hands on the desk the way Edward G. Robinson did in Bullets or Ballots .
    “Don’t find out,” Louis said, standing up. “Jus’ you find out who killed that man, find out fast, and keep me out of it. I get mixed up with this, a lot of people are gonna get hurt bad. My mother, Marva, my brothers, sisters, people, mostly Negro people who think I’m somethin’. This ain’t the way I wanted it. It just happened. I don’t have the education and I don’t have people to help me through it now, but I mean something to people. I wish I didn’t. Lord I wish I didn’t sometimes, but you got to learn to live with what you got. You gonna help me?”
    “I’m going to help you,” I said.
    “Thursday, that’s four days, I got to go back to Fort Hamilton in New York. Got an exhibition for the Army. You get this all put away by then. You find who did it.”
    “I’ll try,” I sighed.
    “That’s all anyone can ask you,” he said and stuck his hand into his back pocket. He pulled out a wallet, reached into it, and grabbed six or seven bills. “Here,” he said, holding them out to me. “You need more, let me know. You can leave a message for me at the Braxton Hotel. You know where that is?”
    “I know,” I said, taking the money and counting it.
    “My leave is over Thursday,” he added, putting the wallet away.
    “Hold it,” I said as he turned to the door. “This is seven hundred bucks.”
    He stopped and reached for his wallet again. “How much more you need?” he asked,
    “It’s too much. Three hundred will be more than enough for a few days of work.”
    “Keep it all,” Louis said, putting his wallet away. “You already earned most all of it last night.”
    He left, and I sat there looking at the seven hundred-dollar bills, the photograph of Ralph, and the black notebook.
    Twenty minutes earlier I had been facing Grumman and a crap-brown uniform. Now I had more money than I’d had in years. Hell, I had more money than I’d ever had. It