Broadway Bounty

Chapter Twelve

Ready left the girl, Marcy, in his room with the money. He knew she wouldn’t dare take any. Hell, she wouldn’t even touch it. But she’d stay around as long as there was the slightest chance she might end up getting some of it.

Ready caught a horsecar to Fourteenth Street, then walked up to Tenth Avenue. He found the building he was looking for and entered a shop in it. From what he could see, all that was sold there was junk.

“Can I help you?” asked a man behind the counter. He was in his fifties, with gray hair and a barrel chest. He looked at Ready from over a pair of wire-framed glasses.

“Yeah,” Ready said, “maybe you can. I’m looking for Albert Bolan.”

“Yeah?”

“Do you know him?”

“Maybe. What are you looking for him for?”

“Friend of mine is a friend of his,” Ready said. “He told me to look him up.”

“What for?” the man asked. “Business or pleasure?”

“Business.”

“What kind of business?”

Ready took out a hundred-dollar bill and said, “The kind that pays.”

“You’re not the law, are you?”

“Do you know any lawmen who carry around this kind of money, friend?”

The man thought for a moment, then came to a decision.

“Flip that sign on the door around so it says, CLOSED,” he instructed.

Ready walked to the door and turned the sign around. Then he asked, “Are you Bolan?”

“I’m Bolan. Come on in the back room. And bring your friend with the zeros with you.”

A little later on, Oakley Ready left the junk shop, turning the sign around so that it read, OPEN, again. He walked down Fourteenth Street to a point where he could catch a horsecar again.

He was a couple of hundred dollars lighter than he was when he went in, but by this time tomorrow he should have two professional guns good enough to take care of Dover.

If he didn’t, his new friend Albert Bolan was going to owe him a refund—and an explanation.