“Brothers Guido couldn’t be that stupid,” I said.
“Maybe not. Right now they’re trying to prove it. I wouldn’t want to get caught in the crossfire.”
“Not you, Al.”
He grinned at me and stopped swabbing the tabletop with his beer can. “Dog ... I don’t give a damn, but my curiosity is killing me.”
“What?”
“Guys can get themselves in trouble all kinds of ways. Sometimes it’s not just the direct action ... it’s more like the links that tie one thing to another.”
“You’re not making sense, kid.”
“Somebody’s tagging you on this narcotics deal.”
I shrugged, not answering him.
“All my phone calls got me some other information too.”
I waited.
“You got wrapped up in black marketeering right after the war, didn’t you?”
“Asking or extrapolating again?”
“That was something you could handle. You still had all that war craziness inside you. You liked the action as long as it spiced up the day and Europe was just the place to find it. You were big and tough and could handle trouble with even bigger trouble and enjoy every minute of it. Killing was nothing new to you and by that time it was simply a natural function of things.”
“That’s what you think?” I asked him.
“That’s what I’m going to find out in a minute,” Al told me.
“I hope you enjoy the answers.”
His eyes had that quizzical expression in them again, deep and heavy, partially closed. “Were you in the black market?”
“Yes.”
“That whole operation was tied in with narcotic traffic, wasn’t it?”
I nodded.
“You ever kill anybody since the war?
“Quite a few,” I said.
When he finished studying my face he said, “I’m sorry I asked.”
I got up and put on my coat and hat, picked the last butt out of the pack and lit it.
“What are you planning to do, Dog?”
“Take a little trip to my old hometown. Just simple business like the way I hoped everything would be.”
“Watch it. You’re leaving pretty deep tracks.”
I walked to the door and opened it. Al was sitting there watching me and tossed me a sad salute. I said, “There’s a question you didn’t ask, buddy. You would have liked that answer.”
XV
I changed rental cars twice before I reached Linton, threading my way over a prearranged route I had picked out on the map, driving at night so it would be easier to spot a tail and easier to lose if I had one. Before the first switch I thought somebody had picked me up, but I got off the main road and the other car went by, its headlights out of focus and didn’t show again.
Now the early glow of dawn was winking off the buildings up ahead and I pulled into a diner just outside of town, found a booth in the back and ordered breakfast. Traffic hadn’t gotten started yet and outside of a lone trucker at the counter I had the place to myself.
Back in the city, Hobis and The Chopper were staked out where I wanted them, two others ready to stay in close on Lee and Sharon, all the little wheels were put in motion and I was wound up so tight I could hardly eat.
I was back in the game again. Hell, I didn’t want it that way. They could have laid off me and the whole stinking mess would have stayed in the usual state of ferment. Now it was getting ready to explode. And that was the trouble with an explosion ... it took everything with it, the good, the bad and the neutral. All that was left was ruins until somebody else built on the rubble and let that ferment into an explosion too. For twenty years the crashing thunder of the blast had been all around me and I was tired of it, the kind of tired that makes your bones ache and your mind want to get off into a lonely space and just sit and sit and sit forever.
Home. There never was any such place. It was just something you thought you had and something you thought you wanted, but when you went to find it, it wasn’t there at all. I was playing kid games with myself, using a penny ante inheritance for a ticket to find home again.
My ticket had been punched a long time ago.
Home wasn’t any place on the line.
I reached for a cigarette and pulled Lee’s note out with the pack. He had left it on my dresser and I had stuck it in my pocket without reading it. I unfolded it and laid it on the table.
Across the top Lee’s scrawl read, “Doorman gave me this.” The rest of the note was only two words and a number printed carefully in pencil with an odd flourish to the letters. “Dog. Ferris. 655.” It didn’t make sense at all. I turned it over, but the other side was blank and I looked at the message again. The paper was cheap, but water-marked and seemed to be the bottom half of the small stationery sheets you find in hotels. There was some odd familiarity about the whole thing, but nothing that wanted to come out of my memory.
Yet somebody knew where I was. Somebody delivered it and somebody expected me to understand the cryptic message. Had it been from any of the old bunch it would have been coded so that I could decipher it. Of all the shiny new faces I had met since I got off the plane, I couldn’t pick one who’d bother corresponding this way. And it wouldn’t be the hunters. They didn’t write notes. They just tracked you down and killed, picking their own time and place.
When the details of each letter and numeral were clear in my mind I touched a match to the note and let it burn in the ashtray on the table. The counterman looked over at me curiously, then shrugged and turned away. The trucker finished his coffee, paid his bill and left. Outside, the sun had pushed up over the horizon and Linton had started to come alive. I picked up my check, handed the guy at the register a five, took my change and left.
At the comer of Bergan and High, cars flanked both sides of the street outside Tod’s and men in working clothes were drifting inside in groups of twos and threes. I parked at the end of the line, cut across the street and went in with a couple of men in their fifties who looked at me curiously.
One said, “You with the union?”
“Nope. Just a visitor. Used to live here.”
“Come back for a job?”
I grinned at him and shook my head. “I’m in a different business. I know Tod, that’s all. What’s going on?”
“Barrin’s taking on more men,” the one guy told me. He gave me a wink over his glasses. “They won’t have much to work with. They could use some young blood like you.”
“You flatter me, friend, I’m one of the oldies too.”
“Not like us, son, not like us.”
Tod had given up in exasperation and put three girls behind the bar. A couple more were hustling coffee in the next room where all the noise was coming from and Tod was sitting it out at a back table with a schooner of beer in front of him and his ear glued to a portable radio. When he saw me his eyebrows went up and he pointed to the chair beside him.
“Hi, kid. I shoulda known something would happen. You’re like your old man, always action when he was around. A good fight, maybe, plenty of singing, lots of action.”
I took the beer the girl brought me and let it sit there. The suds wouldn’t go right on top of breakfast. “Don’t look at me, Tod. Whatever’s going on isn’t my bit.”
“Pig’s ass. Maybe you just stirred the soup.”
“What’s happening?”
Under the sweater the bony shoulders tha: used to be weighed with solid muscle gave a small shrug. “Barrin’s got new contracts, that’s what. They’re hiring again.”
“The labor pool looks a little sad,” I said.
“Good guys, but old-timers. Half of ’em have been on welfare for years. The fuckin’ union’s flipping. They can’t get anybody down here since McMillan’s paying higher than union wages and these old coots’ll do anything to get back on the job again. You know what this meeting is all about?”
“I just got here.”
“Barrin wants to go under unio
n minimums and the labor leaders are screaming. This bunch is about to tell the unions to go frig themselves and cut out. All they want is work and they’re not going to let them city boys tell them they can’t.”
“What’s going to happen, Tod?”
“You ought to know, kid. They’ll picket, run goons up here and try to stop the contracts. Those city boys know all the cute tricks. Right now they’re meeting with some of the Washington boys and putting on the big squeeze.”
I wiped the sweat off the cold beer with my fingers and let out a laugh. “You got it wrong, Tod.”
“Come on, bucko.”
“Labor’s running scared on this one if you’re telling it right.”
“Oh hell!”
“Take a good look,” I said, “a dying town, impoverished workers who want off public welfare and an opportunity to get back on their feet, blocked by fat, rich, politically oriented organizations howling for dues money.”
“So what?”
“A newspaper’s dream story and a labor lobby nightmare.”
Tod watched me for a moment, then shut the radio off impatiently. He took a long pull of his beer and put the stein back down. “I’ll be a son of a bitch,” he said. “You know, you may be right.”
“They won’t picket and they won’t run in any goons,” I said. “They’re a little too smart. They’ll let it go ahead. If it falls, then it falls. If it works, then they’ll wait until they have the power back again, then move in for a reorganization. By then all those old boys who are voting now will be smothered by the newer ones. The game never changes, Tod.”
“You said...‘if it falls.’ ”
“Something looks pretty damn spooky to me.”
“Maybe you ought to know, kid.” His tone didn’t sound friendly anymore.
“I’m sure going to find out, Tod. There’s always a winner in every game.”
“Who wins in this one?”
“Right now there’s a couple leading the field.”
“Old Alfred and Dennison Barrin?”
“How can they lose?”
“That’s what I figured. The rich get richer.”
“Not in this case,” I said. “I think they’re trying to hold on to what they’d like to have.”
Tod finished his beer, got a refill and looked at me with a direct, earnest glance. “Tell me somethin’, kid. Are any of those old guys gonna get busted?”
Something funny crawled up my back and I had to take the top off my drink so he didn’t see what I was thinking. I put the glass down and looked back up at him. “Not if I can help it.”
“Will they get hurt?”
Now I could see him back the way he was behind the bar in the old days, ready to pick somebody up by his neck with one big, beefy hand and toss him into the wall. He was watching my face and whatever he saw put the assurance back into his expression, and when I said, “No,” Tod nodded slowly.
“Just like your old man,” he said.
“Thanks.”
“Too bad you never met him.”
“I can look in the mirror, Tod.”
“Ah, that you can, that you can. You might even see your grandfather, the old bastard.”
“That’s my title, Tod.”
“It means something different the way I’m saying it. You know, he woulda liked it right now.”
“Hell, that’s the way he started.”
He put down the rest of his beer in a single big gulp. “And you’re going to finish it.”
I grinned at him.
“You haven’t changed either,” he said.
“Don’t fool yourself.”
“The only thing’s missing’s the pretty lady.”
“She’s working,” I told him. “Too much of me is no good.”
“Sheee-it.” One corner of his mouth turned up in a smile. “The little lady is all yours, Kelly.” He ran the back of his arm across his mouth and let his eyes dance across the table. “I got to asking questions after you left.”
“So what’s new?”
“Fuck you, Kelly. Find out for yourself.”
“You’re a big help.”
“Sure I am.”
“Where’s your pay phone?”
“Outside in the hall.” He sat back and folded his hands across his stomach. “You gonna raise some more hell?”
“Just a little,” I said.
“Damn,” he told me, “you kids have all the fun.”
Nothing could perturb the butler. He was too coldly professional, too remote. In his own way he was a contract man too, ready to protect his own as long as the pay was right, but not quite ready to go beyond the bounds of his limitations when it came to Big Casino time. I said, “Hello, Harvey,” and Big Casino time was there and Harvey smiled with a facial expression that didn’t mean anything at all except to me and opened the door.
“Miss Pam and Miss Veda are inside, sir.”
“Where’s Lucella?”
“Drunk, sir. May I be so bold?”
“You may be so bold, Harvey. And my male cousins?”
“At a meeting, sir.”
“Great. I have arrived at the opportune time.”
“I would say so, sir.”
“And why would you say so, Harvey?”
There was no smile, no raising of the eyebrows, just the simple, unspoken acknowledgment of small dog to top dot and he said, “Because you have been the subject of countless discussions since your last visit, sir.”
“I hope they didn’t say anything good about me.”
“You can be sure of that, sir.”
“They’re afraid the plans of mice and men may get screwed up, I guess.”
Harvey almost smiled, but didn’t quite make it. “A rather awkward misquote, sir, but the inference is correct.”
I gave him my coat and hat. “You know, Harvey, I’m beginning to like you.”
“Thank you, sir. This way, please. Shall I announce you?”
“Don’t bother.”
I could hear the two of them before I ever got near the library. Age had touched everything except their voices and to me they were still pigtailed brats laughing at me behind the curtains when I was catching hell, and sniveling slobs when they got caught with their hands in the sugar bowl.
Right now they were hissing at each other like snakes and never heard me come into the room until I said, “Why don’t you flush all that shit, ladies?”
Veda spun around with all that acquired arrogance ready to lash out at me with that venomous tongue of hers, then stopped in midsentence with a startled expression that was almost matched by Pam’s.
I said, “Sit down and shut up,” then walked over to the desk and picked a cigarette out of the cut-glass container. I lit it, gave the butt a disgusted look, then dropped it on the rug and squashed it out with my heel. My own brand tasted better and when it was fired up I turned back to my two cousins and smiled just enough so that they sat down fast without ever taking their eyes off me, their hatred filling the room like smoke.
It was a good scene. Hell, it was a beautiful scene. I leaned back against the desk and soaked it all in, letting them take their time to see what I was really like and when the tight lines in their faces started to droop into age wrinkles around their chins and the flab let loose under their arms I took another long drag of the butt then moved around the desk and sat in my grandfather’s old chair and leaned back nice and comfortable like he used to do and they were seeing him as well as me with scared little eyes and micey moving hands.
I said, “The last time was only for fun, girls.”
Veda tried the bluff. For a lifetime she had been pulling it and for a while it had worked, until she hit the tables at Vegas and Monte Carlo where the experts were better at the game. She started to say, “Dogeron, I will not have this...”
But I was holding the cards and stopped her. “Cut the crap, Veda, we’re not kids anymore, but I took enough cuts across my ass for you to keep those days in mind. You try pla
ying cute and I’m going to hoist your white tail over the edge of that chair and whip the skin off it with my belt. You looked up my bleeding asshole for the last time and now it’s my turn.”
“Well!”
“The sight of it might make me sick, Veda, but I’m willing to try. Just open your big mouth.”
She seemed to push back into the chair, her hands tight on the arms. I looked at Pam.
“The same goes for you, only your ass gets kicked, not whipped.”
If Pam had had a gun she would have killed me. For some reason she couldn’t seem to get her mouth shut and I could see her mind working for something to say. When she finally found it she couldn’t get it out and I grinned at her.
“Where’s old Marvin?” I asked her. “Your husband,” I reminded her.
Every word was stiff and forced. “Out. He’s ... downtown.”
“I can’t blame him. If he’s lucky he’s screwing some bag in the back seat of the car. He sure never gets any from you.”
Pam arched with indignation and almost spoke again, but I added, “Cut it, baby, I remember you getting your first taste of love when you were fourteen and thought nobody was watching. And I mean taste. That delivery boy was a big stud, wasn’t he?”
My cousin damn near fainted. Her face got red to the roots of her dye job and she gave Veda a helpless glance that was returned with equal amazement, then she almost raised one hand for me to stop.
I wasn’t about to. “Don’t sweat, Pam. You liked it. You tried every guy who used the delivery entrance until one wanted it straight and stuck it in you. Lest you forget, gal, all that screaming you did you blamed on me for knocking you down the back porch and I got jumped for that one. Hell, all I did was walk into the laundry room to get a shirt at the wrong time. Incidentally, what ever happened to your bloody panties?”
The Erection Set Page 21
