Read The Lime Pit for Free Online Page B

Pete?" I
asked him.
    "Hell, yes. You got some items you want
shipped?"
    "Not exactly. I'm looking for some goods that
you handled."
    He looked at me warily. "You an insurance
adjustor, Mr. Stoner?"
    I shook my head. "I'm a P.I."
    "A cop?" Terry said gamely. The grin left
his face and was replaced by the sort of amusement that rings like a
coin slapped on a bar. It can go either way--heads its violence,
tails its back again to explosive laughter.
    O'Brien, who'd apparently seen his friend Terry get
worked up like that before, looked back over his shoulder and said,
"Find something to do, Terry. And I mean now."
    The boy got to his feet and took a pull of wine. "The
hell," he said quietly. He wiped his lip with a shirt sleeve.
"He's a cop, Pete."
    O'Brien looked back at me. "Just what is it you
want?"
    "I'm looking for a girl," I said. I handed
him one of the snapshots I'd picked up at Adult News. "That
girl."
    "Ho-lee!" O'Brien said, looking at the
picture.
    Terry ambled up and peered over his shoulder. When he
saw Cindy Ann, his skin got as red as his hair and his face filled
with a coarse lust.
    "Shit," he said softly. "Look at
that!"
    I snapped the picture out of O'Brien's hand. The kid
jerked his head up and leered at me. I had enough of leering and of
dirty minds for one morning.
    "Wipe that smile off your face," I said,
before I realized how silly I sounded.
    The old man laughed. "Better do like he says,
Terry."
    "The hell." Terry swaggered a bit--the
bottle clutched in his right hand. But I knew it was all for show. I
was a lot bigger than he was, and like most bullies, Terry had an
instinct for odds. "I don't like you," he said nastily.
    "Feel better now that I know?"
    The old man laughed again. "Take it over in the
corner, Terry. Or this fella's likely to call your bluff."
    Terry muttered something under his breath, then took
a ferocious pull of the wine. His mouth looked bloody with it when he
jerked the bottle away. He walked slowly back to the trolley and
plunked himself down and stared at me and drank and muttered to
himself.
    "Kids," Pete O'Brien said to me. "That
one there hasn't got the guts of a chicken. But he's sure enough
vicious when your back is turned."
    "I'll keep that in mind."
    "You do that," O'Brien said. "About
the picture. I don't know where on earth you got the idea that that
girl was around here, but I'll tell you plainly she ain't. I've never
seen her before in my life. Christ, she sure looks young for that
kind of thing."
    "She's sixteen," I said. "And I didn't
think you'd know her. It's the photograph I'm interested in. It was
shipped out of this warehouse."
    "Could be," O'Brien said. "We ship all
sorts of things. I take it you want to know where that photo came
from." I nodded.
    He walked over to a work table next to the door.
There was an old ledger on the counter. "I'll tell you the
truth, Mr. Stoner. I'm just the floor manager around here. The man
you ought to talk to is Morris Rich. He owns this place and he'd be
the one that could tell you who ships what from where. That is, if
he'd be willing to talk. Which I doubt. Why you looking for that
girl?"
    "She's a runaway," I said. "Her father
wants her back."
    O'Brien sighed. "I shouldn't do this, but I'm
going to let you look at the manifests. I don't know how much help
that'll be. But that's about all I can do for you."
    I thanked him and took a quick look at the dusty
ledger.
    There were monthly shipments to the bookstore on
Eighth Street, consigned out of Atlanta, where the big pornography
houses are based. But the snapshots in my pocket weren't professional
smut. They were strictly amateur stuff the kind of thing that might
run as a one-line ad in the back of a magazine. Ten photos for ten
dollars and, maybe, a steamy letter to go with them. According to the
ledger, there weren't any local shippers dealing with Adult News.
Which meant that either the Negro had been lying to me or that he
just didn't know where the photos came from. I