361

by Donald E. Westlake

  I turned and looked. “We’ve still got a few minutes,” I said.

  “All right. It’s like this, some women come to life with motherhood. I never paid much attention to Edith at all before, but when she started hanging around again she was different. No, she looked different. Tougher, maybe. More basic. I don’t know what it is, it happens to some women. I took her home. She was a rabbit, but there was something interesting in her besides that. I don’t know how to explain it.” He was getting nostalgic.

  “I don’t even care,” I told him. “Get on with it.”

  That brought him back. He said, “For a while, in ’38, there was some trouble. Baltimore was where heroin and that came into the country. There was a kind of dispute, Chicago and us, as to who was going to run Baltimore. So I went up to a private place on Lake George. I had two boys with me, two I could trust. And Edith. I told her come along and she came. We were there six months, and nobody touched her but me. She came back pregnant. She named the kid Raymond Peter Kelly. That was a private joke between her and me. I owned the cabin as Raymond Peterson.”

  Bill moaned. I said to Kapp, “We’ll finish the conversation in the car. Come on.”

  “All right.”

  He took a step away from the tree and fell down. He looked up at me, shame etched on his face. “There was a time a workout like this would’ve meant nothing,” he said. “Not a thing. Not a thing at all.”

  “I believe you.”

  I switched the Luger to the other hand and helped him up. He leaned on me and we went back up between the cabins and around to the Mercury. I looked at him. He wouldn’t be running anywhere. I said, “I’ll be right back. You won’t have to go over this part again.”

  He nodded. I opened the back door and he sagged onto the seat, his feet hanging out onto the blacktop, his head leaning sideways against the seatback. I turned away from him and went back and found Bill coming up, one arm straight out beside him holding the cabin. His face was square gray stone.

  I stood in front of him. I said, “Bill, I want you to know something.”

  He said, “Get out of the way.”

  “There’s an old man up at the car. If you kill him for telling the truth, I’ll shoot you down for a mad dog. What did you do when they told you Ann was dead? Punch the guy who brought the news?”

  He said, “Go to hell.”

  I stepped aside. “You can’t stamp out facts with fists,” I said. “Your father was a crook’s shyster. My father is sitting in the car up there. Our mother wasn’t the kind they have in the Ladies Home Journal.”

  He let go the cabin and went down on his knees and started to cry with his hands hanging straight down at his sides. I went back to the Mercury and said to Kapp, “He’ll be along pretty soon. He won’t do anything any more.”

  “Good.” He nodded. His eyes were half-closed, his hands were limp in his lap. The swollen hand looked worse. “I’m tired,” he said. He pushed his eyelids open more and studied me. He smiled. “You’re my only child, do you know that? The only child I ever fathered. I’m glad to look at you.”

  I lit us cigarettes.

  Seventeen

  September is a good time of year way upstate. I stood beside the car and smoked and looked around. The cigarette smoke was thin and blue in the air. The mountains over us in the west were half in the green of summer and half in the browns and reds of fall. The lake, seen down past the cabins and the tree trunks, was blue and deep and cold. I could smell it. Far away over it was Vermont, dark green.

  I didn’t look at Kapp. I didn’t know how to fix my face to look at him. It wasn’t as though I’d been an orphan all my life. I already had a father. Kapp had blood claims, but he was a stranger.

  After a while, Bill came up into sight from between the cabins. He stood there, not looking our way, and got a cigarette for himself. He fumbled badly with it, as though his fingers had swollen. Then he came over, slow and heavy, and got silently behind the wheel and started the engine.

  I didn’t know who to sit beside. The front seat still made me geechy, but I didn’t want Bill to think he was being cut out. Kapp knew it, and grinned at me. “Sit up front with your brother. I want to stretch out, I’m tired.”

  I got in and slammed the door. Bill gazed out the windshield and mumbled, “Back to the hotel?”

  I said, “Might as well.”

  We drove back to Plattsburg. Kapp said he wanted a drink. Bill went upstairs, walking away with his shoulders hunched, and Kapp and I went across the lobby and into the bar. It was called the Fife & Drum. The glasses were painted red, white and blue to look like drums. Because of the Revolutionary War.

  Kapp said, “I haven’t had a drink in fifteen years. What’s a good Scotch?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t buy good Scotch.”

  The waiter stooped and murmured, “House of Lords?”

  “Good name,” said Kapp. “Got a ring to it. Two doubles, on the rocks.”

  The waiter went away. I said, “You were in jail more than twenty years. They let you have liquor the first five?”

  He winked. “I should of gone to Sing Sing, boy, but I had connections. And there was a time when Dannemora was a little easier. Not like a Federal pen.” He made a sour face. “It is now.”

  The waiter came back, went away.

  Kapp raised the glass, tasted it, made a face. He coughed. “I forgot. It’s like starting new, it’s been so long. Remember how lousy it tasted the first time?”

  “You want a mix?”

  “A what? Oh, a set-up? Not me, boy. Not Eddie Kapp.” He got out a new cigarette, working one-handed. His left hand looked terrible. I held out my zippo and said, “I’m sorry what I did to you.”

  “Shut your face. Tell me about Kelly. Your brother. He doesn’t look like the type to be here.”

  “They killed his wife, too.”

  “Hah? His wife?” He sat back and nodded at me and grinned. “That means they’re scared,” he said. “Scared of old Eddie Kapp. That’s good.”

  “We found a guy said there was some kind of syndicate trouble brewing in New York. That that was why they killed my—my father. Why they killed Kelly.”

  “Take it easy. You think of him as your father, call him your father. He was a lot more your father than I was, huh?”

  “You were in jail.”

  “That’s the truth.” He swallowed some more Scotch. “I’m getting used to it,” he said. Then he watched himself tap ashes into the tray. “About your mother,” he said. “I don’t want you to get me wrong, what I said before. Edith never worked in a house, nothing like that. She wasn’t ever a professional.”

  “Let’s forget about that.”

  He got mad. He glared at me. “She was a good girl,” he said. “She gave me a good son.”

  I had to grin. “Okay.”

  He grinned back at me. “Okay it is, boy. And I’ll tell you something, they’re out of their heads. They’re panicky. I can look at you two and there’s no question which one of you is Will Kelly’s boy. No question. But there’s always the chance, always the chance. They’re panicky, they’re afraid of the chance. They’ll even go for the kid, you wait and see.”

  “Do you think so?”

  “You wait and see. Hah!” He sat back again, smoking like a financier, his eyes gleaming in the dim light of the bar. “We’ll give them merry hell, boy! Who wants Florida?”

  “The Seminoles.”

  “They can have it.” He leaned forward fast. “You know what I was going to do? I figured I was an old man, washed-up, ready to retire. I wrote my sister—frigid-faced bitch, but I didn’t know anybody else in the world—I told her leave that bum she’s married to. We’ll live in Florida, I’ve still got plenty stashed away, with an extra twenty years’ interest on it. See? Old Eddie Kapp, washed-up, retired to Florida for the sun and the cheap funeral. With my sister.”

  He ground out the cigarette. “Family, family, family, that’s always the same damn thing.” His vo
ice was low and grim and intense. “With the mob, with you, with me. Always the same damn thing. I was ready to spend the rest of my life with my sister. Think of it, with my sister. I hate her, she’s a hypocrite, she always was.”

  “I met her,” I said. “She’s just frustrated.”

  He grinned. “Careful, boy, you’re talking about your aunt.”

  I laughed. “That’s right, isn’t it?”

  “I tell you, I’d given up. Tony and The French and all the rest, they were writing letters to me. Come on back when they spring you, Eddie, we’re ready to roll. We’re just waiting on you, Eddie, and we move in. Yeah, the hell with all that. That’s the way I figured it, I was an old man, time to retire. And just the one relative in all the world.” He curved a grin of pain. “It’s family, it does it every time. Where’s the damn waiter? I’m getting the taste back.”

  We re-ordered and it came, and Kapp went on: “I’ll tell you about family. Listen, when I saw you—who knew what you were or what you wanted? Twenty-two years ago it looked easy. When this baby here is in its twenties, I’ll be out again, and he’ll be at my side. See? But by now, who knew? You were Kelly’s kid, not mine.” He drank, inhaled cigarette smoke, grinned, winked at me. “Then I saw you, boy. Raymond Peter Kelly. Keep the Kelly, who cares? I saw you, and I knew you were mine.” He got to his feet, looking around. “Where’s the crapper?”

  He had to ask a waiter. I sat and thought about him. I thought, He copulated with a married woman named Edith Kelly and impregnated her and she produced me. I could believe and understand that. I thought, He is my father. That was something else again.

  He came back and sat down. He finished the second drink and we ordered thirds. They came and he went on talking as though he hadn’t stopped. “This thing about family, now,” he said. “It’s an important thing with a lot of people. All kinds of people. And I’ll tell you a group of people it’s important to, and that’s the people make up the mob. Particularly in New York. You don’t think so? Hard cold people, you think. No. There wasn’t a two-bit gun carrier on the liquor payroll didn’t take his first couple grand and buy his old lady a house. Brick. It had to be brick, don’t ask me why. It’s in the races, national backgrounds, you know what I mean? Wops at the national level, mikes and kikes at the local level. Italians and Irish and Jews. All of them, it’s family family family all the time. Am I right?”

  I said, “People get assimilated. Americanized.”

  “Yeah, sure, I know that. Believe me, for the last few years, I did nothing but read magazines. I know all about that, when you’re Americans you got no roots, you move around, all that stuff. No family homestead, no traditions, nothing. Who gives a shit about cousins, brothers, parents, anybody? Only if they’re rich, huh?”

  We grinned at each other. I said, “Okay. So what difference does it make?”

  “I’ll tell you, boy, there isn’t a man in the world doesn’t want to be respectable.” He pointed a finger at me, and looked solemn, as though he’d spent long nights in his cell thinking about these things. “You hear me? Not a man in the world doesn’t want to be respectable. As soon as a man can be respectable, he is. You got immigrants, they come into this country, how long before they’re really Americanized? No roots, no traditions, who cares about family, all that stuff. How long?”

  I shrugged. He wanted to answer the question himself, anyway.

  “Three generations,” he said. “The first generation, they don’t know what’s going on. They got funny accents and there’s a lot of words they don’t know, and they’ve got different ways of doing things, different things they like to eat and wear, and all the rest of it. You see? They aren’t respectable. I’m not talking about honest and dishonest, I’m talking about respect. They’re not a part of the respectable world, see? Same with their kids, they’re half and half. They’ve got the whole upbringing in the house, with the old country stuff, and then grade school and high school and the sidewalk outside. See? Half and half. And then the third generation, Americanized. The third generation, they can be respectable. Do you see what I’m getting at?”

  I said, “I don’t think respectable’s the word you mean.”

  “The hell with that.” He was impatient, brushing it away. “You know what I mean. It takes three generations. And the third generation has practically no crooks in it. I mean organization crooks, the mob. That’s almost all first and second generation, you see what I mean? Because every man in the world wants to be respectable, but a lot of guys are going to say, ‘Okay, if I can’t be respectable, I can’t. But I still want to make good dough. And only the respectable types like in the Saturday Evening Post can get the good jobs with the good dough. But my brother-in-law drives a liquor truck bringing in the stuff from Canada and makes great dough, plus sometimes a bonus for an extra job doing this and that, so what the hell. I can’t be respectable, anyway.’ See what I mean?”

  I nodded. “Yes, and I see what you’re driving at. The first and second generations aren’t Americanized. So they’ve got the old feeling for family.”

  “Right! And that’s where you come in, boy.” He leaned far forward over the table. “I tell you, family is all to these people. You kill a man, his brother kills you. Or his son. Like you, for Christ’s sake, going after the guy killed Will Kelly. Or things like this, there’s maybe a dispute of some kind, somebody in the mob gets killed by somebody else. And the guy who did it, or ordered it, he sends like a pension around to the other guy’s wife. You know what I mean, a few bucks every week, help buy the groceries, get the kids some shoes. You know what I mean. There was a time in Chicago, ’27, ’28 I think it was, there was almost forty widows getting bootleg pensions all at one time. You see what I mean?”

  “You said something about this being where I came in.”

  “Damn right.” He stopped and laughed. “You know, I’m not used to all this talking, all at once like this. It makes me thirsty. And I’m not used to this Kings & Lords, whatever it is.”

  “House of Lords.”

  “Yeah. I can feel it in my head already, and what is this, my third?”

  “Third, yes.”

  “Let’s make it fourth.”

  We did, and he said, “The twenties, those were the years. We organized faster than the law, that was the main thing. We were one jump ahead all the time. Until this income tax thing, and I tell you that was unfair. That was a cheat. I’ve got no respect for the Federal Government; if you can’t get a man fair, you just can’t get him, you see what I mean? Now, who in the whole damn country ever filled out a tax form honest? Up till then, I mean.” He shook his head. “No respect for them at all, they don’t go by the rules. Anyway, the point was, we all got organized and we had thirteen good years, and then along came Repeal and we had a tough time getting readjusted, you know? Like the March of Dimes, when this Salk vaccine came along. Shot their disease right out from under them, huh? They had to go quick find some other disease. Same as us. Liquor’s legal again, so there isn’t the profit in it any more. So we’re diversifying, there’s dope and there’s gambling and there’s whores. Gambling’s best, it’s safest. The other two, dope and whores, the people you have to deal with, by the very nature of the business they’re unreliable. You see what I mean?”

  I nodded, while he paused and drank.

  “Of course,” he said, “there’s also the unions. Lepke led the way in that field, around from strikebreakers to trade associations to pocket unions. But Dewey got him, in ’44. Four years after the Federals got me. Frankly, I was one of the people always thought Lepke overdid it. He gave Anastasia more work than you can imagine. Lists of fifteen, twenty people at a time. After a while, it got so that was all he was doing, making up lists of people for Anastasia’s group to kill. So the unions are something else again. It’s a funny thing, that’s the only area with the legitimate base—you know, there’s nothing illegal about unions to begin with, like there is with gambling and narcotics and whores—but it’s th
e worst for killing and breaking things up. You know what I mean? The only area where just an innocent citizen who doesn’t have anything to do with anything can get beat up or shot, because of where he works or something like that.”

  “What’s all this got to do with me?”

  He laughed, shaking his head. “I’m goddamned, boy, this House of Lords is going right up into my head. I can feel the fumes going right up into my head. The point was, I was trying to give you some of the background, you know what I mean? ’33, Repeal, it all started to fall apart. Everybody’s looking for a new way to make a living, fighting it out for territory and what’s whose and all. And Dewey came along to make life tough. And then the Federal Government, with this cheating income tax thing. A lot of us got moved out, one way or the other. Died or retired or went to jail or one thing and another. And these new people came in. Businessmen, you know what I mean? Respectable. No more of this blood bath stuff, that’s what they wanted. Just a quiet business. Buy your protection and run your business, and let it go at that. I could see it in the papers, all through the forties, everything quieting down. Like a few years ago, the meeting at Appalachin. I could see in the papers and the magazines, everybody was surprised. Like nobody knew there was a mob any more. It called itself the Syndicate now, and people figured it wasn’t real, you know what I mean? Here’s a guy, he runs a bottling plant for soft drinks, and he’s got sixty-five guys out to his house for a meeting, and everybody was surprised.”