361 - Donald E. Westlake [17]
“We’re going up to the house,” said the girl. She was snotty. She’d had money all her life, she didn’t care if she inherited or not. “Come on, Larry.”
They paused to fiddle with towels and cigarettes and sunglasses. I said, “Better hurry.”
The girl was going to be snotty to me, but then she wasn’t. She grabbed her gear and hip-jiggled away. She looked discontented, frustrated. The boy flexed his muscles at me, frowning because he’d been left out, and followed her.
When they were gone, I turned back to McArdle. “Who would know if Eddie Kapp was out or in?”
“I don’t know. So long ago.” The eyes misted again, cleared a little. “Maybe his sister. Dorothea. She married a chain-market manager.”
“What name?”
“I’m trying to remember. Carter, something like that. Castle, Kimball... Campbell! That was it, Robert Campbell.”
I wrote it down. “That was in New York?”
“He managed a chain market in Brooklyn. A Bohack? I don’t remember. A young man. She was young, too, much younger than her brother. A pretty thing, black hair. Glowing.”
He was starting to dream again. I said, “Who told Willard Kelly to stay out of town?”
“What? What?” His head nearly raised up from the pillow, and then subsided. “Don’t shout so,” he said. His breathing was louder. “I am an old man, my memory is failing me, I have a bad heart. You cannot rely on what I say. I should have told Samuel no. I should have refused.”
“Samuel Krishman? He doesn’t know the answer, does he?”
The belly laughed, shaking him. “He never knew anything. A fool!”
“But you do.”
He started the old man routine again. I said, “Tell me who told Willard Kelly to stay out of town.”
“I don’t know.”
“Who told Willard Kelly to stay out of town?”
“Go away. I don’t know.”
“Who told Willard Kelly to stay out of town?”
“No. No!”
I kept my voice low. “Tell me or I’ll kill you.”
“I’m an old man—”
“You’ll die. Here and now.”
“Let me go. Let the past alone!”
I bowed my head, covered my face with my hands. I plucked the glass oval out. I closed my left eye, and then I was blind. I kept the right lid open, but it was a strain with the eye out. It was warm in my palm.
I lowered my hands in my lap. Still blind, I raised my face toward him. I smiled. “I can see your soul this way,” I said. “It’s black.”
I heard a choking. I opened my eye and he was gaping, staring, choking, his face turning bluish red. I put the glass eye back in.
Bill was already running up the path, shouting for the family.
Nine
I had meant to frighten him. He was afraid of death, and I think he would have answered me. I had no idea how strongly it would affect him. I hadn’t meant him to die.
We had to stay and wait for the doctor. I told them our father had once worked for McArdle, Lamarck & Krishman. I told them he had died recently, but I didn’t tell them how. I told them he had told us once to look up his old bosses, they could maybe help us get a start in life.
They believed me. It was believable. Bill listened to me tell it, and then he knew it too. But he wasn’t meeting my glance. He thought I’d done it on purpose. I’d have to tell him, once we got away from here.
While we waited, I talked with Karen Thorndike. She was the ash-blonde. She was the daughter of Arthur and the woman with the beautician’s smile, as I’d supposed. She was divorced from Jerry Thorndike. She said, “You don’t want to come to New York.”
“Why not?”
“There’s nothing here but people clawing each other. Everybody wants to get to the top of the heap, and it’s a heap of human beings. A big hill of kicking, struggling human beings, trying to crawl up one another and be at the top.”
“You’re thinking of Jerry Thorndike,” I said. “You got burned. Not all the people in a city are like that.”
“They are in New York.”
Linda, the little girl, came over and started asking stupid questions. She was like her mother, interesting until she opened her mouth. I thought of taking my eye out for her, but not seriously.
The doctor was big and