361 - Donald E. Westlake [10]
“But why Ann?”
“Tell me about that.”
“She was in the Civic Theater. You know, amateur. She spent two, three evenings a week at rehearsals. She’d take the bus in and get somebody to drive her back. I couldn’t go get her on account of Betsy. And the bus doesn’t run that late. That night, she took the bus in like always. It was three blocks to walk to where they rehearsed. She was cross-c-crossing the street. It wasn’t even dark, it was only seven-thirty. Early evening. The car came ou-came out of the side street, clipped her. She got kno-knocked—”
“Okay,” I said. “Take it easy. You don’t have to tell me now.”
“I’ll get it over with,” he said. He lit a cigarette. “Back onto the sidewalk,” he said. “The car knocked her back-back—”
“Okay.”
“Jesus.” He breathed loudly, inhale and exhale, staring at the bedspread pattern. He laid his hand on the bedspread, fingers splayed out. He pressed down and said, “Three people saw it. Nobody saw it clear. The car didn’t even slow down.”
I said, “I wonder if it was the same car.”
He looked at me. “As went after you?”
“Uh huh.”
“I don’t know. I suppose so. Nobody saw it clear.”
He finished his cigarette. I went over to the phone, and looked at the directories. They had the Manhattan and the Brooklyn and the Bronx. I found Chester P. Smith in the Brooklyn book, at 653 East 99th Street. Nightingale 9-9970.
A woman answered. I asked for Smitty, and she said, “Who?”
“Chet. Chester.”
“He’s at work. Who is this?”
“I think we were in the service together,” I said. “If this is the right Chester Smith. Medium height, thin-faced.”
She laughed, as though she were mad. “There’s nothing thin about this Chester,” she said.
“Can’t be the same guy,” I said.
I hung up and looked for the public library in the Manhattan directory. It said there was a Newspaper Division at 521 West 43. I said, “I’m going out for a while.”
Bill said, “Where?”
“Library. You could figure out how we check that license plate.”
“What the hell you doing at the library?”
“I want to see if Dad ever made the paper.”
“You mean with the underworld? Bootleggers?” He got to his feet, frowning and mad. “That punk was lying, Ray. What kind of a son are you?”
“A son with his last eye open,” I said.
He hung fire, and then turned away. “Hell,” he said. “I haven’t been getting any sleep.”
“I’ll be back after a while.”
He flung himself face down on his bed and I left the room.
Five
It was between Tenth and Eleventh Avenue. That whole block was sewing machine wholesalers. The newspaper library was the second floor of a building that looked like a post office. Some papers they had on microfilm, some they had bound in big books.
I looked through the New York Times Index. I found it in 1931. Dad was only twenty-seven then. He was married, but he didn’t have any kids yet. He’d been a lawyer two years.
There was a guy, he owned a lot of buildings. Most of them were tenements, slum buildings. Almost all of them had speak-easies in them. He was up for allowing liquor to be stored and sold on his property with his knowledge. He got off on a brilliant piece of legal footwork on the part of his lawyer, a member of the firm of McArdle, Lamarck & Krishman. It was so brilliant the Times did a profile on the lawyer, whose name was Willard Kelly, and on the firm he worked for.
McArdle, Lamarck & Krishman, “it was alleged,” got virtually all of their business, directly or indirectly, from the liquor syndicate. Willard Kelly had been with the firm less than a year. This was the first time he’d handled a case in court for them. The profile writer was sad that Kelly was selling his brilliance to the underworld.
Your father. You think you know him. You forget he lived a lot of years before he started you. All of a sudden you find out you never knew who the hell he was.
I wrote down all the names. Morris Silber, the landlord. Andrew McArdle and Philip Lamarck and Samuel Krishman, partners in the law firm. George Ellinbridge, the prosecuting