Read Warshawski 01 - Indemnity Only for Free Online Page A

reverberated in the halls. It kept ringing and ringing and I tried seizing the gun from Devereux and throwing it away, but the sound continued and I jerked awake. The doorbell was shrilling furiously. I slid out of bed and pulled on jeans and a shirt as a loud knock sounded. The fuzziness in my mouth and eyes told me I’d had one or two Scotches too many too late in the evening before. I stumbled to the front room and looked through the peephole as heavy fists hammered the door again.
    Two men were outside, both beefy, with jacket sleeves too short and hair crew-cut. I didn’t know the younger one on the right, but the older one on the left was Bobby Mallory, Homicide lieutenant from the twenty-first district. I fumbled the lock open and tried to smile sunnily.
    “Morning, Bobby. What a nice surprise.”
    “Good morning, Vicki. Sorry to drag you out of bed,” Mallory said with heavy humor.
    “Not at all, Bobby—I’m always glad to see you.” Bobby Mallory had been my dad’s closest friend on the force. They’d started on the same beat together back in the thirties, and Bobby hadn’t forgotten Tony even after promotions had moved him out of my dad’s work life. I usually have Thanksgiving dinner with him and Eileen, his warmly maternal wife. And his six children and four grandchildren.
    Most of the time Bobby tries to pretend I’m not working, or at least not working as an investigator. Now he was looking past me, not at me. “This is Sergeant John McGonnigal,” he said heartily, waving his arm loosely in McGonnigal’s direction. “We’d like to come in and ask you a few questions.”
    “Certainly,” I said politely, wishing my hair weren’t sticking out in different directions all over my head. “Nice to meet you, Sergeant. I’m V. I. Warshawski.”
    McGonnigal and I shook hands and I stood back to let them into the small entryway. The hallway behind us leads straight back to the bathroom, with the bedroom and living rooms opening off to the right, and the dining room and kitchen to the left. This way in the mornings I can stumble straight from bedroom to bathroom to kitchen.
    I took Bobby and McGonnigal to the kitchen and put on some coffee. I casually whisked some crumbsoff the kitchen table and rummaged in the refrigerator for pumpernickel and cheddar cheese. Behind me, Bobby said, “You ever clean up this dump?”
    Eileen is a fanatical housekeeper. If she didn’t love to watch people eat, you’d never see a dirty dish in their house. “I’ve been working,” I said with what dignity I could muster, “and I can’t afford a housekeeper. ”
    Mallory looked around in disgust. “You know, if Tony had turned you over his knee more often instead of spoiling you rotten, you’d be a happy housewife now, instead of playing at detective and making it harder for us to get our job done.”
    “But I’m a happy detective, Bobby, and I made a lousy housewife.” That was true. My brief foray into marriage eight years ago had ended in an acrimonious divorce after fourteen months: some men can only admire independent women at a distance.
    “Being a detective is not a job for a girl like you, Vicki—it’s not fun and games. I’ve told you this a million times. Now you’ve got yourself messed up in a murder. They were going to send Althans out to talk to you, but I pulled my rank to get the assignment. That still means you’ve got to talk. I want to know what you were doing messing around with the Thayer boy.”
    “Thayer boy?” I echoed.
    “Grow up, Vicki,” Mallory advised. “We got a pretty good description of you from that doped-out specimen on the second floor you talked to on yourway into the building. Drucker, who took the squeal, thought it might be your voice when he heard the description…. And you left your thumbprint on the kitchen table.”
    “I always said crime didn’t pay, Bobby. You guys want some coffee or eggs or anything?”
    “We already ate, clown. Working people