Read The Collected Short Stories of Louis L'Amour, Volume Six for Free Online Page B

tone was conversational, “you’ll walk out of here in a few minutes and Noonan can drive you home.
    “All we want to know is about a guy named Eberhardt, Kurt Eberhardt.”
    She turned on Frost and broke into a torrent of vindictive Spanish. Sorting it out, he learned she knew nothing about him, nor did she want to, he was a rat, a pig, a—she quieted down.
    A few more questions elicited the information that she had not seen him in three months. He had left her…a blonde, a girl named Phyllis Edsall.
    Lola talked and talked fast. Kurt Eberhardt thought he was a big shot, smart. That was because he had been in prison with Rubio Turchi. He had driven a car for Turchi a few times, but he bragged too much; Turchi dropped him. She had not seen him in three months.
    Now they had another name, Phyllis Edsall. No record. A check on Edsalls in the telephone book brought nothing. They did not know her. Reports began to come in from contacts in the underworld…. Eberhardt probably had stuck up a few filling stations, but usually he had his girl get drunks out where he could roll them. Sometimes it was the badger game, sometimes plain muscle.
    Nobody knew where he lived. Nobody knew where the girl lived.
    Nothing more from the Shadow Club. Nothing from the bank. Nobody in the morgue that fit the description. Rubio Turchi still missing.
    Mike Frost and Noonan went out for coffee together. They stopped by the liquor store where Sixte had been buying his Madeira. The fat little proprietor looked up and smiled. “Say, you were asking about Madeira. I sold a bottle yesterday afternoon. I started to call, but the line was busy, and…”
    Frost found his hands were shaking. Noonan looked white. “Who bought it? Who?” Frost’s voice was hoarse.
    “Oh,” the little man waved his hand, “just some girl. A little blonde. I told her—”
    “You told her what?”
    The little man looked from Frost to Noonan. His face was flabby. “Why…why I just said that was good wine, even the police were interested, and—”
    Mike Frost felt his fist knot and he restrained himself with an effort. “You damned fool!” he said hoarsely. “You simpleminded fool!”
    “Here!” The little man was indignant. “You can’t talk to me like—”
    “That girl. Did she wear a suede coat?” Noonan asked.
    The little man backed off. “Yes, yes, I think so. You can’t—”
    It had been there. They had had it right in their grasp and then it was gone. The little man had not called. She looked, he said, like a nice girl. She was no criminal. He could tell. She was—“Oh, shut up!” Frost was coldly furious.
    One fat, gabby little man had finished it. Now they knew. They knew the police were looking for Sixte, that they were watching the sales of Madeira, they knew….
    “S’pose he’s still alive?” Noonan was worried.
    Frost shrugged. “Not now. They know they are hot. They probably won’t go near a bank. That blew it up. Right in our faces.”
    “Yeah,” Noonan agreed, “if he’s alive, he’s lucky.”
             
    T OM S IXTE LAY on the floor of the cellar of the old-fashioned house with his face bloody and his hands tied as well as his feet. Right at that moment he would not have agreed that it was better to be alive. When Phyllis came in with the wine, she was white and scared. She had babbled the story and Kurt had turned vicious.
    “Smart guy, huh?” he had said, and then he hit Sixte. Sixte tried to rise, and Kurt, coldly brutal, had proceeded to knock him down and kick him in the kidneys, the belly, the head. Finally, he had bound his hands and rolled him down the cellar steps to where he lay. The door had been closed and locked.
    Sixte lay very still, breathing painfully. His face was stiff with drying blood, his head throbbed with a dull, heavy ache, his body was sore, and his hands were bound with cruel tightness.
    They dared not take him to the bank looking like this. They dared not put him on a plane now.