Read Heads You Lose for Free Online Page B

He dropped to his knees and peered through the keyhole at the door across the hall.
    It was tightly closed, and light showed around the transom. He stayed on his knees, watching through the keyhole for a long time. The door stayed shut and the light stayed on.
    He got to his feet and removed the .38 from under his belt, cocked the double-action weapon, and opened his door very softly.
    With the cocked gun in his hand he took one long step across the carpeted hall and knocked lightly on the door, standing back against the wall in order not to be seen unless the door was opened wide. His eyes were very bright and a muscle quivered in the hollows of his cheeks as he waited.
    He heard a chair being pushed back inside the room, then a gruff voice asked, “Who’s there… what do you want?”
    Shayne muttered something that could be heard through the closed door without forming any definite words. There was a moment’s hesitation before the door started to open.
    He hit it with his shoulder low and his legs driving him into the room. The man who had hold of the knob was flung violently backward, and another man in shirtsleeves sitting at a card-littered table looked up with a grunt of surprise.
    Shayne plowed to a stop in a low crouch with his gun covering both men. He straightened slowly and said, “Well, I’ll be damned,” when he recognized two members of the Miami detective force. “Playing games, huh? For chrissake, McNulty, is this all you and Peterson have got to do?”
    The man who had stumbled to the floor was long and gangling, with a bushy black mustache adorning his horse-shaped face. He got to his feet with a look of injured dignity, and Peterson growled, “Is that the way you always come into a room?”
    “It’s God’s mercy you haven’t got lead in your guts,” Shayne snorted, heeling the door shut. “What the devil…”
    “Can we help it if the chief has a crazy idea the world would be better off with you alive?” McNulty complained from the table. He scratched a four-finger area of his bald head. His square face was wholly expressionless. “We didn’t pick the job.”
    “’Tain’t my idea of a good time,” Peterson grumbled. He stalked to the table and sat down opposite his partner.
    Shayne uncocked his gun and dropped it in his pocket. He muttered, “You’d think, by God, I was still in rompers.”
    “What’s it all about, Mike?” McNulty rolled a frayed cheap cigar around in his mouth, squinting through the smoke. “You been playing around in the wrong bedroom?”
    “Nothing like that,” Shayne said ironically. “Hadn’t you heard? I just inherited a million dollars and the bad old kidnappers are after me.”
    “How’d you know we was here, anyhow?” Peterson demanded. “Gentry told us to keep out of sight or you might try to shake us.”
    “Will Gentry is a damned fool,” Shayne muttered. “With you two birds hanging around my neck I’ll never get a nibble. How’s for beating it and leaving me to hatch my own eggs?”
    “We can’t do it, Mike,” McNulty said, shaking his bald head sadly. “It’s back to the beat for us if we let you out of our sight. Gentry didn’t stutter when he handed us this job.”
    “C’mon, Mike, and make it three-handed,” Peterson urged. “You’re stuck with us whether you like it or not.”
    “No thanks. You two go ahead and cut each other’s throats. I’m going to get some sleep.”
    He went out and closed the door, re-entered his apartment and slammed the door loudly. Striding to a wall mirror, he swung it out, took a bottle of cognac and a glass from the built-in liquor cabinet on the reverse side. He poured a drink and set the bottle back, wandered into the bathroom and flushed the toilet. He came back and finished his drink, puffed on a cigarette for a few minutes, then turned out the lights and went into the kitchen.
    Unlatching a rear door leading out onto a fire escape, he went out and down one flight to the kitchen door of