Suckers - J.A. Konrath

TAKEN TO THE CLEANERS
A Harry McGlade Mystery by JA Konrath
“I want you to kill the man that my husband hired to kill the man that I hired to kill my
husband.”
If I had been paying attention, I still wouldn’t have understood what she wanted me to do.
But I was busy looking at her legs, which weren’t adequately covered by her skirt. She had great
legs, curvy without being heavy, tan and long, and she had them crossed in that sexy way that
women cross their legs, knee over knee, not the ugly way that guys do it, with the ankle on the
knee, though if she did cross her legs that way it would have been sexy too.
“Mr. McGlade, did you hear what I just said?”
“Hmm? Yeah, sure I did, baby. The man, the husband, I got it.”
“So you’ll do it?”
“Do what?”
“Kill the man that my husband—”
I held up my hand. “Whoa. Hold it right there. I’m just a plain old private eye. That’s what
is says on the door you just walked through. The door even has a big magnifying glass silhouette
logo thingy painted on it, which I paid way too much money for, just so no one gets confused. I
don’t kill people for money. Absolutely, positively, no way.” I leaned forward a little. “But, for
the sake of argument, how much money are we talking about here?”
“I don’t know where else to turn.”
The tears came, and she buried her face in her hands, giving me the opportunity to look at
her legs again. Marietta Garbonzo had found me through the ad I placed in the Chicago phone
book. The ad used the expensive magnifying glass logo, along with the tagline, Harry McGlade
Investigators: We’ll Do Whatever it Takes. It brought in more customers than my last tagline: No
Job Too Small, No Fee Too High, or the one prior to that, We’ll Investigate Your Privates.
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