361 - Donald E. Westlake [14]
“Killed?”
“Shot. In a moving car, by a moving car. I was with him.”
“Ah. Did you recognize the attacker?”
“I will.”
“I see.” His hands crept up on the maroon blotter, crawled blindly together, clung. “That’s why you’re here,” he said. “You want vengeance.”
“Second,” I said. “First, I want understanding. I was away for three years. Air Force. Germany. I just came back. No girl yet, no plans yet.” I jabbed a thumb at Bill. “He was out of it. Married, with a kid. All I had was home, and all that was was Dad. Twenty-three years and they left us alone. When I needed him most, they came in. Arrogant. Grinning.” I sat there. We were all quiet. I took my hands off the wooden chair-arms. The palms had the red lines of the wood. “I want to know why,” I said.
“They killed my wife,” said Bill. It was a truculent apology for being there.
Krishman sighed, and rubbed his face with one dry hand. He wasn’t the Business Pope, he was just an old man, afraid to retire because his friends died when they retired. “That was all so many years ago,” he said. “That’s behind us now. We don’t have things like that any more.”
“Anastasia,” I said. “The Victor Reisel blinding. Arnold Schuster, the twenty-two-year-old witness got killed in 1951.”
“This firm,” he said, “hasn’t been involved for nearly twenty years. There were circumstances...”
“McArdle number one?”
He shook his head. He looked at me and smiled with closed lips. “Philip Lamarck,” he said. “His name came second, but he was the senior partner.”
“He died in ’35.”
“It takes a while to break free of connections like that.”
“When did you break free?”
“Shortly before the war. 1940, I suppose.”
“Was Dad still working for you?”
“He left us around then. Left the city, I believe.”
“That was the year of the Eddie Kapp trial, wasn’t it?”
“Eddie Kapp? Oh, yes, the income-tax trial. It’s been a very long time, you must understand...”
“Is he out yet?”
“Kapp? I have no idea. You think there’s a connection between him and your father’s death?”
“When he was shot, Dad said his name. ‘Kapp,’ that’s all.”
“Are you sure that’s what he meant?”
“No. But it’s likely. Would McArdle know?”
“Know what?”
“If Kapp was out yet.”
“I doubt it. You want to talk to him, I suppose.”
“Yes.”
He nodded. “I’ll call him. I’m sure he’ll talk to you. We all liked Willard very much. A brilliant legal mind, for such a young man. And a cheerful red-headed Irishman.” He nodded at Bill. “You look very much like him.” Back to me. “You take after Edith more. The fair hair, shape of your face.”
“I suppose so.”
“From what you’ve said, I take it your mother is dead.”
“Died when I was two. In Binghamton.”
“That’s where he went. He should have stayed in New York. His talents would be wasted anywhere else. Corporation law, but with fine courtroom presence.”
“He did corporate work in Binghamton. Small-time. You say you’ve got a different class of client now?”
“Yes. Since before the war. Shipping lines, food packagers. Industrial corporations almost exclusively.”
“McArdle handled the Kapp income-tax case, didn’t he?”
“Yes, I believe he did.”
“Did my father have anything to do with that case?”
“I should think so. He had the Kapp file.”
“What?”
“He was the one who normally handled all of Kapp’s legal affairs. You see, every regular continuous client has a file, kept by the man in this office who is his immediate contact and who does all or most of his legal work. The income-tax trial, of course, was something else again. Not that Willard Kelly couldn’t have handled it as well as anybody. But Kapp was an important client at the time. It was necessary to have one of the firm’s partners in charge of the case.”
“Who were Dad’s other regular clients?”
“I’m sure I have no idea.”
“What about the files?”
He shook his head. “Some files,” he said, “we retain for seven years, some for fifteen years, a few for twenty. We would have no files at all for that far back. Your father left us more than twenty years ago.”
“If you had the same kind of client that you have now, would you have the