361

by Donald E. Westlake

  “My brother?” Her voice was cold, too. “What brother?”

  “Eddie Kapp.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t have any brother.” The door started to close.

  “We don’t have any father,” I said.

  The door stopped midway. “What do you mean?”

  “He’s dead. He did wrong things when he was young. But we never turned our backs on him.”

  “Eddie Kapp put me through hell,” she said angrily. But she was being defensive about it. I waited, and then she let go of the door and turned away. “Oh, come in if you have to,” she said. “Tell me what you want.”

  “Thank you.”

  We went in, and I was the one who closed the door.

  The living room was small, and the furniture was all too big for it. The colors were dull. The metal-cabinet television set looked as though it had been left in that corner by accident.

  We sat down on a fat green sofa, and she sat facing us in a matching chair. I said, “Did you ever know Willard Kelly? Your brother’s lawyer. People say Bill here looks a lot like he did.”

  “I was eight years younger than my brother,” she said. “Even if we’d been the same age, we wouldn’t have known the same people. I never had anything to do with his cronies at all.”

  “This wasn’t exactly a crony. It was his lawyer.”

  She shook her head stubbornly. She didn’t intend to think about 1940.

  I shrugged. She probably didn’t have a memory to avoid, not one that was useful to me. I said, “Is Eddie out of jail yet, do you know?”

  “September fifteenth.”

  “That’s when he gets out?”

  “He sent me a letter. I threw it away. I don’t care what happens to him. Let him rot in prison. I don’t care. I don’t want his dirty money!”

  “He offered you money?”

  “I don’t need his pity. A man twenty-two years in prison! And he has the gall to pity me!” She remembered she was thinking out loud, and there were strangers present. Her mouth twisted shut like a tricky knot.

  “He’s still in Dannemora?”

  “How do I know who you are?” she demanded.

  I took out my wallet and tossed it into her lap. She looked suddenly ashamed. “I don’t know,” she said. “Sometimes, I don’t think there’s any justice in the world at all. I don’t know what to think any more, I don’t know what to do.”

  “He’s in Dannemora?”

  “I wish he’d stay there. I wish he wouldn’t write me. After twenty-two years of silence.”

  “And he’s getting out next Thursday, is that right? The fifteenth?”

  “So soon?” Desperation flickered in her eyes. “What am I going to do?”

  “He wants to stay here?”

  “No, he—He wants me to leave my husband. Brother and sister. He wrote that I was all the family he had. That he had plenty of money. We could live in Florida.” She looked around at what Robert Campbell had given her. “My daughter works for the phone company,” she said suddenly. She looked at me again. “I didn’t realize it was so soon. Next Thursday. I didn’t write him back. I threw his letter away.”

  She looked at the window. It faced an airshaft running down through the middle of the building.

  I got to my feet, walked over, took my wallet back from her lap. “Thank you,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said, distracted. She kept looking out at the airshaft.

  Bill and I walked over to the door. I opened it, and then she turned and stared at us as though she’d never seen us before. She said, “What am I going to do?”

  I told her, “Don’t count on Eddie.”

  She started to cry.

  We went downstairs and walked back to the car. Bill said, “Now where?”

  “Morris Silber,” I said. “I didn’t find any obituary on him, but there’s nobody by that name in the phone book.”

  “Who was he?”

  “The landlord Dad defended when he got the write-up in the Times.”

  “Hell, kid, that was thirty years ago. He died in Florida long ago.”

  I took a cigarette out, but it broke in my fingers. I threw it out the window, and got another one. “I can’t get hold of the story,” I said. “It was all so goddamn long ago. People have died, changed, forgotten, reformed, moved away. Nobody cares any more. Dad had a whole file of regular clients, and most of them came from the underworld. We know two of them. Eddie Kapp and Morris Silber. Kapp’s in jail. God knows where Silber is. Nobody knows or cares who the rest of the clients were. We can’t even be sure it was Eddie Kapp that Dad meant. Or what exactly he was tying to say. Eddie Kapp did it? Eddie Kapp would know who did it? Maybe he meant Eddie Kapp would be on our side. We don’t know enough about anything. And nobody else knows any more, either.”

  “Somebody must, or they wouldn’t have started killing people.”

  “Morris Silber,” I said. “He might know a couple other clients. They might know some more. With a starting point, after a while we could probably have the whole list.”

  “That would take a lot of time, Ray.”

  “Time’s the only thing I’ve got.” I looked at him, but he didn’t say anything. I said, “I know, it’s different for you. You’ve got the job, and the kid. House and car and the whole thing. I don’t have any of that.”

  “I’m going to have to go back pretty soon, Ray. I’m sorry.”

  “If only we had a starting point.”

  He scratched his nose and said, “What about the guy who did the profile in the Times?”

  Every once in a while, Bill said something brilliant like that. I said, “Let’s go back to Manhattan.”

  Twelve

  His name was Arnold Beeworthy. I found him in the Queens directory, on 74th Road. He was the only Arnold Beeworthy in New York City. NEwtown 9-9970. I called from a drugstore, and a sleepy, heavy baritone answered. I said, “Did you used to work for the New York Times?”

  “I still do. What the hell time is it?”

  “A little after one.”

  “Oh. All right, I ought to get up anyway. Hold on a second.”

  I heard the click of the lighter, then he came back. “All right, what is it?”

  “You once did a profile of my father, Willard Kelly.”

  “I did? When?”

  “1931.”

  “Holy hell, boy, don’t talk like that!”

  “It wasn’t you?” He didn’t sound old enough.

  “It was me, but you don’t have to remind me.”

  “Oh. Can I come out and talk to you?”

  “Why not? But make it this afternoon, if you can. I have to go to work at eight.”

  “All right.”

  We had lunch first, but didn’t go back to the hotel. Then we went out to Queens. We started on the same route as yesterday, when we went to see McArdle. Then we turned off onto Woodhaven Boulevard.

  The cross-streets were all numbered. Some of them were avenues and some of them were roads and some of them were streets. We saw 74th Avenue. The next block was the one we wanted, 74th Road.

  Beeworthy lived in a block of brick two-story houses all attached together at the sides. His was in the middle. There was a white-painted, jagged-edged board on a stick set into the middle of the narrow lawn. Reflector letters were on the board: BEEWORTHY. It looked like one name, and sounded like another.

  A woman who hadn’t had Eddie Kapp for a brother or Robert Campbell for a husband opened the door, smiling at us, saying we must be Kelly. Both of us? “That’s right. I’m Ray and this is Bill.”

  “Come in. Arnie’s chewing bones in his den.”

  It was the kind of house sea captains are supposed to retire in. Small and airy rooms, with lots of whatnots around.

  We went downstairs to the cellar. It had been finished. There was a game room with knotty pine walls. To the right there was a knotty-pine door. A sign on it said, snarl. It had been hand-lettered, with a ruler.

  She knocked,
and somebody inside snarled. She opened the door and said, “Two Kellys. They’re here.”

  “More coffee,” he said.

  “I know.” She turned to us. “How do you like your coffee?”

  “Just black. Both of us.”

  “All right, fine.”

  She went upstairs, and we went into the den. Arnold Beeworthy was a big patriarch with a gray bushy mustache. Maybe he’d always looked forty. If he was writing profiles for the Times in 1931, he had to be nearly sixty anyway.

  The den was small and square. Rubble and paraphernalia and things around the walls and on the tables. A desk to the right, old and beaten, with mismatched drawer handles. Cartoons and calendars and photographs and matchbooks and notes were thumbtacked to the wall over the desk. A filing cabinet was to the left of the desk, second drawer open. A manila folder lay open on top of all the other junk on the desk.

  His swivel chair squawked. He said, “It’s too early to stand. How are you?” He jabbed a thick hand at us.

  After the handshake and the introductions, Bill took the kitchen chair and I found a folding chair where Beeworthy said it would be, behind the drape.

  “1931 is a long time ago,” said Beeworthy. He tapped the open folder. “I didn’t remember the piece you meant. Had to look it up.” He swiveled the chair around and smacked his palm against the side of the open file drawer. “I’ve got a file here,” he said, “of every damn thing I’ve ever written. Some day it’ll come in handy. I can’t think how.” He grinned at himself. “Maybe I’ll write a book for George Braziller,” he said. “It’s fantastic how things that are exciting in life can be so dull in print. I wonder if the reverse is true. It’s a stupid world. And what can I do for you two?” He aimed a thick finger at Bill. “Do you look like your father?”

  “I guess so,” said Bill. “That’s what people say.”

  “One thing triggers another. When you called, I didn’t know a Kelly from a kilowatt. Then I read that damn thing, and I remembered the look of that son of a bitch Silber in court, and then I remembered the lawyer. Wore a blue suit. I can’t remember what color tie. Anyway, I’m sorry about that piece. I was young and idealistic, then. Went with a girl, a Jewish Communist vegetarian from the Bronx. She gave speeches in bed. That was 1931, a Communist then was somebody who didn’t change their shorts every day. I’ve never been any damn good at interviews, I always do all the talking myself.” The finger shot out at me this time, and he said, “What the hell are you so mad about?”

  I realized then how tense my face muscles were. I tried to relax them, and it felt awkward, as though I were staring.

  He grinned at me. “Okay, you’ve got a problem. It’s a little late to be mad at me for what I said about your father thirty years ago. I take it this is something more current.”

  I said, “Two months ago Monday, somebody murdered my father. The cops gave up. It’s something from before 1940. We need names.”

  He sat still for a few seconds, looking at me, and then he got to his feet and took one step to his right. “I want to record this. Do you mind?”

  “Yes.”

  He looked back at me. One hand was on the tape control. “Why?”

  “We don’t want anything in the paper. They’re after us, too. The whole family. They killed his wife already, three weeks ago.”

  Bill said, “Two weeks and three days.”

  “All right, this is off the record. Nothing in the paper unless you say so. Unless and until.” He stepped back, pulled open a green metal locker door, pointed at the shelf. Red and black tape boxes. “I save that crap, too,” he said. “Interviews that go back nine years. Useless. Not a celebrity in the crowd.”

  There was a knock at the door. He snarled, and his wife called, “Open up, my hands are full.”

  Bill jumped up and opened the door.

  She had a round tray that said Ruppert’s Knicker -bocker Beer on it. She set the three cups of coffee around on spaces we cleared. She smiled at everybody, but didn’t say anything, and went right out again, closing the door after her. Beeworthy said, “Will you take my word for it?”

  I wanted his cooperation. He was a complicated string-saver. I said, “All right.”

  “Fine.” He clicked it on, and the tape reels started slowly turning. He went back to the desk and sat down and pushed papers out of the way, and there was the microphone.

  Then he had me tell the story, in detail. I didn’t like spending the time, but I was the one asking the favor.

  He was a fake. He knew how to interview. Three or four times he asked questions, and filled in sections I’d blurred. He said, “You’re grabbing for the wrong end of the horse. Find out who’s around now, and then see which of them knew your father when. I could do that probably easier than you. Some of Eddie Kapp’s old cronies, maybe. Let me dig around in the files—not here, at the paper—and I’ll give you a call on Monday. Where you staying?”

  “I don’t think there’ll ever be any story in this,” I said. “Not that I’d want you to print.”

  He laughed and tugged at his mustache. “Don’t believe the reporters you see in the movies,” he said. “The age of creative journalism is dead. Stories today are things editors point at. I want this for me, strictly for my own distraction and edification.” He got up and switched off the tape recorder. “What I really ought to be doing,” he said, looking at the tape reels, “I ought to be editing some small-town paper somewhere. Up in New England somewhere. I never made the move. I should have made the goddamn move.” He turned back. “I’ll look things up,” he said. “Where can I get in touch with you?”

  “Amington Hotel.”

  “I’ll call you Monday.”

  He went upstairs with us. His wife showed up long enough to say goodbye. She smiled and said, “I hope you didn’t sell him a treasure map. I don’t think I could take another treasure map.”

  Bill grinned. “No treasure map,” he said.

  Beeworthy handed her his cup. “Coffee,” he said.

  He stood in the doorway as we went down the walk to the car. He looked too big for the house. He said, “I’ll call you Monday.”

  Thirteen

  Bill twisted the car around side streets back to Woodhaven Boulevard. “Where to?”

  “Manhattan,” I said.

  “Okay.” He made a right turn. “Any place special?”

  “Lafayette Street. Johnson’s office.”

  “You trust him now?”

  “Part of the way. I don’t think he’d lie to us. He seems to have the idea he could help. I want to know how.”

  “What street was that? You better look it up.”

  I opened the glove compartment and got out the map and street guide. It wasn’t that tough to find. But the nearest parking space was four blocks away. We walked back and took the elevator to the fifth floor. It was a rundown building with green halls. Johnson’s office was 508, to the right.

  It was one room. Desk, filing cabinet, wastebasket, two chairs, all bought secondhand. Walls the same green as the hall. One window, with a view of a tarred bumpy roof and beyond it a brick building side. The ceiling paint was flaking.

  Johnson stood in the corner, wedged between a wall-turn and the filing cabinet. His one arm was up resting on top of the cabinet. His face was bloody. He looked as though he’d been standing there a long time.

  He turned his head slowly when we came in. “Hello,” he said. His voice was low and flat, his pronunciation bad. His lips were puffed. “I was going to call you,” he said carefully.

  We went over and took his arms and led him over to his desk. We sat him down and I said, “Where’s the head?”

  “Left.”

  I went down the hall to the left and found it. The tile floor was filthy. I got a lot of paper towels, some wet and some dry, and went back.

  Bill had a bottle and glass out of a drawer. He was pouring into the glass. I said, “Let me wash the face first.”

  He grunted when I touched the
towels to his face. Wet first, and then dry. Somebody’d been wearing a ring. He had scrapes on both cheeks and around his mouth. Bill handed him the glass and he said, “Thanks.”

  I wet a couple of towels from the bottle. When he put the glass down, I said, “Hold still.”

  He tried to jump away when I pressed the towels to the scrapes, but I held his head. “Christ sake!” he shouted. “Christ sake!”

  I finished and stepped back. “Okay, have another snort.”

  He did, and Bill handed him a lit cigarette. His hands were shaking.

  I said, “How long ago?”

  “Half an hour? Fifteen minutes? I don’t know. I just stood there.”

  “Why were you going to call us?”

  He motioned vaguely at his face. “This was because of you. They wanted to know where you were.”

  “And you told them.”

  He looked down at his hands. “Not at first.”

  “It’s all right. We’ve been looking for them, too. You did right telling them.”

  He emptied the glass and reached for the bottle. He drank from the bottle.

  I said, “Where did they connect you with us? They didn’t see us together, or they’d know where to find us. You’ve mentioned our names to somebody.”

  He coughed and dragged on the cigarette. “Half a dozen people. A couple cops I know, a reporter, a guy works for one of the big agencies.”

  “It’s one of them. You find out which one. You need any money?”

  “Not now. Later on, maybe. Unless you could advance me twenty.”

  I nodded at Bill. He dragged out his wallet and gave Johnson two tens.

  I said, “Move as quick as you can. And don’t be afraid to talk. If they come after you again, tell them anything they want to know. It’s okay.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Call us at the hotel as soon as you’ve got something. If we’re not there, leave a message.”

  “You aren’t going to move?”

  “Why should we? I told you, we want to find them as bad as they want to find us. We’ll stay at the same place.”

  He shook his head. “They’re mean bastards,” he said.