Read Once a Spy for Free Online

characters in that racket don’t take it so well when they don’t get their money—or so I’ve heard.”
    “Pardon the intrusion?” came a man’s voice.
    Charlie looked up to find a lanky twentysomething in a conservative, dark-blue suit and gray overcoat. He had fine features; precisely combed, wavy hair; and the earnest demeanor of a student body president. Charlie had noticed him before, among the spectators.
    “My name’s Kermit Smith,” the young man continued in a smooth blend of country and urban refinement. “I’m an attorney—”
    “He was thrown out of the bar,” shouted a second man, walking the curb like a tightrope and failing, probably a function of the brown paper bag he clutched and the bottle of booze it surely contained. He was about the same age as Smith but shorter and stouter. He too wore a blue business suit and gray overcoat. His shirt collar was open and the knot of his tie was halfway down his chest.
    “That’s my friend, for lack of a better word, MacKenzie,” Smith apologized to Charlie. “The bar he referenced is the Blarney Stone on Flatbush. Probably by now you’ve developed a theory as to which of us in fact was the problem.”
    Clever guy, this Kermit Smith, thought Charlie. But ambulance chaser all the way. In this part of Brooklyn, at this hour, the Samaritans were only bad.
    Seeming to have read Charlie’s edginess, Smith said, “Cutting to the chase, I overheard some of your chat with the fire chief. I’m with Connelly, Dumbarton and Rhodes, notable for winning twenty-four of twenty-four negligence suits against boiler manufacturers by convincing juries that the victims would have needed to be rocket mechanics to adequately maintain the dozen or so indeterminate valves on the older electric ignition units. If you’re at all interested …”
    The fire had made selling the house hugely problematic. Who knew how long it would take and how much work would be required to collect the insurance—assuming Drummond had remembered to make the payments? “I guess it couldn’t hurt to know about, on my father’s behalf,” Charlie said, faking a yawn so as not to appear overeager. This was an arena in which a clever ambulance chaser could yield a big score.
    MacKenzie griped, “Come on, we’re gonna miss last call at Flanagan’s.”
    Turning his back on his friend, Smith said to Charlie, “Why don’t we step into my office for a moment?” He took a few steps down the sidewalk.
    “Just give him your card already,” MacKenzie said, prompting Smith to stray farther.
    “Dad, please don’t go anywhere for half a second?” Charlie said.
    Drummond nodded. Charlie’s concern was eased only a little.
    Catching up to Smith, he noticed a sparkling new black BMW Z4 roadster four parking spots down. “I’ve always wanted to win a boiler manufacturer negligence suit and buy one of those,” Charlie said.
    Smith advanced to take the car in. “Well, this could still be your lucky night.” He halted in a pool of shadows between streetlamps and reached into his coat, presumably for a business card or BlackBerry.
    Smith’s larynx was crunched by a fist, thrown by Drummond on a dead run.
    So strange was this turn of events that Charlie closed his eyes, expecting that when he opened them, the hallucination would be over and Smith would be standing there, by himself, BlackBerry at the ready.
    When Charlie opened his eyes, he found Smith teetering, his attempt to breathe resulting in a feeble croak. Charlie saw Smith had drawn from his coat not a BlackBerry but a pistol with a barrel capped by a silencer.
    Drummond’s right fist blurred into an uppercut, snapping Smith’s wrist and costing him his hold on the grip. The gun hit the sidewalk with a metallic bass note and bounced away.
    Drummond drilled a left into Smith’s abdomen. The tall man reeled.
    Eyes aglow with more than the reflection of the streetlamps, Drummond kept after him, heaving a roundhouse into his jaw and