Private Heat Read Online Free Page B

with a smile.
    â€œI was warming up to telling you I need a couple of checks.” I fished a squeeze can of gun oil out of the drawer.
    â€œYou can’t cash a check against anything you deposit today,” she said with a little meow in her voice.
    I peeled my pistol off my hip and punched the magazine out into my left hand. “I’m depositing certified funds,” I said.
    â€œYou’d better cash your check when you make the deposit.”
    â€œYes ma’am, that’s my plan.” I racked the slide to the rear and locked it.
    â€œSo who do you need the check for?” she asked.
    â€œRon Craig,” I said. “Five hundred dollars.” I oiled the slide rails and the outside of the now exposed bell-shaped barrel of the Detonics .45 caliber lead launcher that was my daily companion.
    Every morning that you get out of bed and strap on your sidearm, you’re halfway to jail. Just make the right mistake and your career as a snout—street detective—will be a short one.
    Cops occasionally have an accidental discharge. They might even inadvertently flash their heel—expose their holstered firearm—in public or mix alcohol with their gunpowder. As long as they don’t cap Grandma at the bus stop and cause the city to get sued, the prosecutor tends to forgive and forget. The same is not true for the private sector. Tick off any of the above errors, and you will meet the judge. The prosecutor will be hot to cancel your permit to carry, punch your private ticket, and provide you with long and tedious days of making colorful new friends in the house of many slamming doors.
    â€œThat’s very generous for two days’ work,” said Marg.
    â€œYou wouldn’t say that if I took the job at that price.” I picked up the magazine, snapped it home, and thumbed the slide stop. The slide slammed into the battery, chambering a fat, two-hundred-grain semijacketed hollow point. I thumbed the magazine release, and the magazine jumped out into my left hand. I set it on the desk. Pointing the weapon at the cement-slab floor that lurked under the carpeting and away from myself and Marg, I eased the hammer down. “Anyway, he bills us for five hundred more when the job is done.” When I turned back, Marg glared at me with laser heat.
    â€œHell,
I’d
do the job for that kind of money!” she said and folded her arms.
    I set the pistol aside and plumbed another round out of the box in the drawer. “He’s not doing it for the money,” I said and thumbed the round into the magazine.
    â€œWell, he
should
be,” she said. “You need to hire a couple of shoe leather snouts. If you’re going to do everything yourself, you’re wasting money renting space for an investigators’ room. All we do is store the file cabinets and hang our coats in there.”
    â€œI keep my weight bench in there. It’s cheaper than a health club.”
    â€œIt’s adolescent.”
    â€œYou’re the one who said it was cheaper to subcontract than pay the insurance and payroll-based taxes for employees.”
    â€œNot at these rates,” she said and started out the door.
    I slapped the magazine back into the Detonics, snugged the weapon back into the high-ride holster on my right hip, and snapped the thumb-break strap over the hammer. Marg was back.
    â€œYou said you needed two checks.”
    â€œI need working money,” I said.
    â€œFifty, sixty bucks should be enough for a couple of days.”
    â€œTwo hundred.”
    She gave me the owl eyes and asked, “Why so much?”
    I replaced my two spare Detonics magazines with two custom eight-shot Colt magazines. When seated in the pistol they stick out of the frame a little, but it gives me a place to rest my pinky finger. Should things get exciting, the extra length makes for positive seating in a magazine change.
    I fixed Marg’s eyes evenly and said,