361

by Donald E. Westlake

  I’d told him about Bill’s wife being killed. That gave him the idea to sell me that family-purge story. Because then all he had to do was point me. I was a loaded gun, held by Eddie Kapp.

  Bill. My brother Bill.

  When I’d left Lake George, I thought I was ridding myself of Eddie Kapp forever. I wasn’t. I had to find him again. Now.

  Twenty-Eight

  That afternoon, I went up to Riverdale. It was just a week to the day since the revolution had started. Five days ago, the first sign of the counterattack had appeared in the papers, when Patros Kanzantkos fell down the stairs in his Riverdale home and broke his neck. The address was given in the newspaper story.

  I took the subway as far as it would go, looking out at the big-shouldered, dull brick apartment buildings when the train became an elevated in the Bronx. At the last stop, I got a cab. I had three hundred more in my pocket from Bill’s dwindling bank account. Bill’s Luger was huge and bulky against my side, tucked under my belt. The raincoat was supposed to cover it.

  The house was colonial-style, two stories, white, in a very good section, all curving roads and trees and backyard wading pools. There was a black wreath still on the door.

  The obituary notice had said that Kanzantkos was survived by a wife, Emilie, and a son, Robert. It was the son who answered the doorbell, an angry black-haired boy of my chronological age, his face marred by a petulant mouth, his black suit oddly awkward on his frame.

  I said, “I’d like to talk to your mother, please.”

  He said, insolently, “What about?”

  “Tell her Eddie Kapp’s son is here.”

  “Why should she care?”

  “If she wants you to know, she’ll tell you.”

  That struck a nerve. He paled, and when he said, “Wait there,” his voice was harsher, more strained.

  He closed the door, and I lit a cigarette and looked at the careful rock garden fronting the pretty house across the way. And then he came back and said, “All right. Come on in.” He was still angry.

  I followed him upstairs to a small room furnished with two sofas and a stereophonic record player. The walls were ranked with bookcases holding record albums. Mrs. Kanzantkos, a small and brittle woman with a narrow nose, said, “Thank you, Bobby. I’ll want to talk to Mr. Kapp alone.”

  He went away, glowering, reluctantly closing the door. I said, “He doesn’t know what his father did for a living?”

  She said, “No. And he never will.”

  “A boy should always know who and what his father is,” I said.

  Coldly, she said, “I’ll be the judge of that, Mr. Kapp.”

  “Kelly,” I corrected her. “Ray Kelly.”

  Instantly she was on her feet. “You said you were Eddie Kapp’s son.”

  “I am. I was brought up by a man named Kelly.”

  The distrust didn’t all leave her eyes. “And what do you want from me?”

  “I was with my father when he got out of Danne-mora,” I said, “and at the meeting at Lake George. I met your husband there. He mentioned me, didn’t he?”

  “Mr. Kanzantkos rarely discussed business with me,” she said.

  “All right. The point is, my father and I were separated after Lake George. I had another job to do. Now it’s done, and I want to get in touch with him again.”

  “I would have no idea where you could find him.”

  “I know that. But you must know at least one or two of the other people who were at Lake George. I wish you’d call one of them and tell him I’m here.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to get together with my father again. Isn’t that natural?”

  “And he didn’t tell you where you could get in touch with him?”

  “We parted hastily. I had this other thing to do.”

  “What other thing?”

  “I had to kill a man named Ed Ganolese.”

  She blinked. The silence was like wool. Then she got to her feet. “Wait here,” she said. “I—I’ll call someone.”

  “Thank you.”

  She seemed glad to leave the room. She closed the door softly after her.

  Ten minutes later, the door opened again, and the son came slipping in. He shut the door after him and leaned against it and said, his voice low, “I want to know what’s going on.”

  “Nothing’s going on,” I said.

  “She’s keeping something from me,” he insisted. “You know what it is. You tell me.”

  I shook my head.

  “Why are you here?”

  “It has nothing to do with you.”

  “My father?”

  “No.”

  “That’s a lie. Who’s my mother calling?”

  “I have no idea.”

  He came away from the door, arms high. “I’ll twist it out of you—”

  Before I had to do anything to him, the door opened and his mother was standing there. She ordered him from the room, and he refused to go until he found out what all the mystery was. They screamed at each other for five minutes or more. I spent the time looking at the record collection. Classical music and stringed dinner music. One small section of Dixieland jazz.

  When at last Robert left, his mother said to me, “I’m sorry. He should have known better.”

  “As you say, it’s your business.”

  “Yes. I phoned a friend of my husband’s. He promised to call back as soon as possible. Would you like to come down to the kitchen for coffee?”

  “Thank you.”

  The kitchen was white and chintz. Through the window, I could see a well tended back lawn and a flagstone patio. Rose bushes lined the fence at the back of the property. From the cellar came the drumming rhythm of someone at a punching bag. That would be Robert, forcing me to talk.

  We waited in silence. She didn’t ask me any questions. We sat there twenty minutes before the phone rang in another room on the ground floor. She excused herself and went away, coming back a minute later to say, “He wants to talk to you.”

  It was Kapp. He said, “Ray? Is that you?”

  “Yes, Kapp, it’s me.”

  “You recognized my voice?”

  “Why not?”

  “That was you got Ganolese Monday night?”

  “That was me.”

  “I’ll be a son of a bitch.” He sounded happy, and half-drunk. “You lovely little bastard, you’re a chip off the old block. You’re done now, huh?”

  “I’m done. It’s squared away. And there’s nothing else for me to do. I’d like to stick with you.”

  “Goddamn it, Ray, you don’t know how that makes me feel. Oh, goddamn it, boy, that’s great. I hoped to God you’d decide that.”

  “I’m glad,” I said. “I came looking for you right away, as soon as I was done with the other.”

  “Do you want me to send a car?”

  “Are you in the city? If you are, it’d be quicker for me to take the subway.”

  “Sure thing. We’ve got ourselves a suite at the Weatherton. That’s at Lexington and 52nd.”

  “I know where it is.”

  “It’s under the name Peterson. Raymond Peterson. You remember?”

  “I remember. I’ll be right there.”

  I hung up, and the woman said, “I’ll drive you to the subway, if you want.”

  “Thank you.”

  We went out to the garage. From the cellar came the drumming of the punching bag.

  Twenty-Nine

  I walked the block from the subway stop to the Weatherton Hotel. I remembered it. It was the one where Dad had stayed, where we’d both stayed the night before they killed him. Kapp wouldn’t know that.

  I asked for Mr. Peterson’s suite, and they sent my name up, then told me the fifteenth floor. I rode up in the elevator. 1512 was to the left. I could hear party sounds.

  I knocked on the door and a smiling man with a broken nose opened it and said, “You’re Kapp’s kid, huh?”

  “That’s right.”

&n
bsp; “Put her there! He keeps tellin’ us how great you are!”

  His hand was huge, but soft. I shook it, and went inside.

  The suite went on and on, room after room. A nervous little man took over from the first one and showed me my bedroom. I left the Luger on the bed, under the raincoat. Then I followed the nervous man through more rooms to the party.

  It was a huge parlor, with French doors leading to the terrace. A radio played bad music in one corner, competing with a television set across the way. Sectional sofas and coffee tables were scattered all around. Two portable bars stood full and handy.

  There were about thirty people in the room, maybe ten of them women. The women all had high breasts and professional smiles. The men were laughing and shouting at one another.

  Kapp had one of the women in a corner. He was talking steadily to her, and his right hand kneaded her breast. She kept smiling.

  Somebody saw me and shouted, “Hey, Kapp! Here’s your kid!”

  He looked around and then came running over. Behind him, the woman smoothed out the wrinkles with a little contemptuous shrug, but kept smiling.

  Kapp punched my arm and hugged me and shouted at me how great I was. Then he pranced me all around the room, introducing me to all the men and telling them all how great I was. He didn’t introduce me to any of the women, but they all kept watching me.

  For fifteen minutes, it all whirled around. Half a dozen people told me the reason for the celebration. The national committee had given the nod. They were in. Coup successful. And they all had me to thank, because bumping Ganolese had done the trick. That was what had clinched it. There was only a little reorganizing left to do, and from there on life was gravy.

  Kapp finally calmed down a bit, and people stopped shouting in my ear. I took his arm and said, “Kapp, I want to talk to you. I want to tell you about it.”

  “Goddamn it, boy,” he said, grinning at me. “Let’s get away from this mob.”

  I led the way toward the bedroom where I’d left the raincoat. On the way we came across the nervous man, hurrying somewhere. I grabbed his elbow and said, “Come along with us for a minute.”

  Kapp said, “What the hell for?”

  I said, “You’ll see.”

  We all went into the bedroom and Kapp said, “What the hell do you want Mouse here for?”

  “He’s my messenger,” I said. I reached under the raincoat and took out the Luger and held it on them as I closed and locked the bedroom door.

  Kapp stared at the gun, and sobriety washed down his face like lye. He said, “What the hell are you up to?”

  I said, “Mouse, you listen close. My name is Ray Kelly. Eddie Kapp is my natural father, my father by blood. Isn’t that right, Kapp?”

  “Sure that’s right. Why the hell—?”

  “Hold on. You got that part, Mouse?”

  He nodded jerkily, his eyes on the gun.

  “All right. I also had a mother and a foster father and a half-brother and a sister-in-law. My mother killed herself because of Eddie Kapp here. Isn’t that right, Kapp?”

  Relief hit him so hard he sat down heavily on the edge of the bed. “Oh, for God’s sake, Ray, that was twenty-one years ago. And who knew she was going to do something like that? You pull a gun on me for something twenty-one years old?”

  “I’ll get more current in a minute. Just hold on. About my mother, and Will Kelly. He was your sideman, he worked with you every step of the way. You were just about to make the move, take control of the New York organization, and Will Kelly was an active part of it, working right next to you all the way. Then somebody sicked the Federal Government on you because—”

  “Ganolese,” he said. “That filthy bastard, Ganolese.”

  “—because of your taxes. The government put you out of the way, so Ganolese could take over instead of you. And Will Kelly had to get out of town. His wife couldn’t stand the small town life, but she didn’t dare come back to New York. She killed herself.”

  “Twenty-one years ago, Ray. For God’s sake—”

  “Shut up. I told you I’d get more current. You knew you were getting out September 15th. You got word to Will Kelly, one way or another, that you were going to make the move again. And you started lining people up, telling them Kelly was going to be with you. The word got to Ganolese. He had Kelly killed.”

  “You’re a sharp boy, Ray,” he said. “You figured that out all by yourself.” He wasn’t really worried at all yet.

  “I figured more than that,” I told him. “Those people out there at the party wouldn’t buy you without Will Kelly. Without somebody reasonably young as the heir-apparent. They figured you were too old.”

  “Not Eddie Kapp. I’ll live to a hundred.”

  “No, you won’t. I’m not done yet. My sister-in-law got killed in a hit-run accident. They caught the guy.”

  “Good for them,” he said.

  “Up till I showed up, you thought you were through. You wrote your sister, you figured to retire. Then you saw me, and it was worth a try, see if you could get the boys to accept me rather than my father.”

  “I’m your father, Ray.”

  “You sired me. It isn’t the same thing. You knew I wasn’t interested in your empire, so you gave me that song and dance about family and symbols, to talk me into sticking with you. When I told you my sister-in-law had been killed, that gave you the idea. If she hadn’t died, you wouldn’t have been able to pull it.”

  “I would of thought of something else.” He grinned like a banker. “Aren’t you proud of your old man, boy? I think on my feet.”

  “Not for much longer. There’s one more. My brother Bill. He was killed, too. He was my half-brother by blood, just as you’re my father by blood. And you’ve always got to avenge blood.” I turned to Mouse. “You’ve always got to avenge blood, Mouse? Isn’t that right?”

  He swallowed noisily, and bobbed his head.

  “Now, Mouse, Eddie Kapp here killed my brother Bill.”

  Kapp jumped up from the bed, howling. “What the goddamn hell are you talking about? For Christ’s sake, why would I do a stupid thing like that?”

  “You wanted me with you, or you wouldn’t be leading the revolt. You were afraid, once I found out Will Kelly wasn’t my father, I’d stop, I’d lose heart and give the thing up. Same as if I found out he was still part of the mob, all this time. And then I wouldn’t stick with you for a second. So you murdered Bill. I was supposed to think Ganolese did that one, too, and you could offer the partnership. ‘We both want the same people, only for different reasons.’ That’s exactly what you said.”

  He shook his head. “You got it wrong, Ray. I was with you from the time Bill went upstairs to the time we found him dead.”

  “No. You were gone ten minutes, to the head. And nobody else could have gotten their hands on Bill’s gun. He would have put it on the dresser. Any stranger came in, the gun would have been in Bill’s hand. You could go in and talk to him, tell him you want to be friends, and walk around the room until you angle over to the dresser, and there you are.”

  When he moved, it was dirty. He jumped for Mouse, trying to shove him into me. I ran back and to the side, jumping up onto the bed and down on the floor on the other side, turning to face the door. He had his hand on the key when I shot him. I emptied the Luger into him before he could hit the floor.

  Mouse lay quivering on his stomach on the floor, arms over his head in stupid protectiveness. I wiped my prints from the Luger and dropped it on the floor and went around to poke Mouse in the side with my toe. I said, “Get up. I’m not finished talking to you.”

  It took him a while to get his limbs working right. I waited till he was standing, then I said, “You wait till I leave here. You give me a good five minutes. Then you go back to the party and tell them what happened. And tell them why it happened. You got that?”

  He nodded. There was white all around the pupils of his eyes.

  “This was a blood matter,” I told him
, “not a mob matter. Blood revenging blood. There’s no need for them to come after me, to avenge Eddie Kapp. I’m his son, and I say there’s no need for it. And I don’t remember a single name or a single face that I saw here today or at Lake George two weeks ago. You got that?”

  He nodded again.

  “Five minutes,” I said.

  I went out to the hall. The party was raging to my left, too loud for them to have heard the shots in that closed and bulkily furnished bedroom. I walked down to the right. The big man with the broken nose was sitting in a fragile chair by the door. He said, “What they doing? Shooting guns off the terrace? They’ll get cops up here if they don’t look out.”

  “I hope it’s over pretty soon,” I said. “I need my sleep.”

  “You moving in?”

  “Just going to get my luggage.”

  “You won’t get much sleep here.” He laughed. “This’ll go on for a couple days yet.”

  I left, and took the elevator down, and went out to the street.

  Thirty

  I went into the first bar I came to on Lexington Avenue, but it was lunchtime and full of bland smooth people. I stayed only long enough for one shot of bar whiskey on the rocks and one long session emptying my stomach into the toilet in the men’s room. Then I headed west.

  It was all bland and arid till Sixth Avenue. My stomach was empty, but from time to time I had to lean against light standards and wait through an attack of dry heaves. On Sixth Avenue I found a White Rose, where the drinks were ample and cheap.

  I couldn’t stay in one place. I spent about an hour in that first place, and then moved downtown, stopping for a while in each bar I came to. At four in the morning, another guy and I were thrown out of a place somewhere downtown, and the other guy said he knew a great place to sleep out of the wind, behind a theater. We went there, and someone was sleeping there, with a half-full bottle of wine. We took it away from him and found another place, and went to sleep. But before we did, I tried to tell him all my troubles. I couldn’t enunciate very well, and he couldn’t concentrate at all, so he never found out that I was trying to tell him that I had killed my father.