361 - Donald E. Westlake [20]
“Knew something? About what? Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Somebody told my father to get out of New York. Back in 1940. McArdle knew who.”
“That’s nonsense.”
“He said you were a fool. He said you never knew anything.”
“What? That’s a lie. Andrew wouldn’t say such a thing.”
I said, “Goodbye.” I hung up.
When Bill called, he said, “Twice. Once, he was along as witness for divorce evidence. With a husband breaking in on a wife in a hotel room. Somebody’d killed the wife when they went in. Johnson was mentioned as a witness, that’s all. There were a couple more stories on the murder, but nothing about him.”
“Okay. Any police names?”
“Detective Winkler. Homicide West. They have two homicide offices here, did you know that? East and West.”
“Winkler,” I said, writing it down. “What about the other one?”
“His car was blown up. About three years ago. There was a policeman named Linkovich at the wheel. There wasn’t any explanation, and I couldn’t find any later stories on it at all.”
“Okay, I’ll call Winkler. You come on back. How long ago was this?”
“The divorce evidence thing? Four years ago. April or May, I forget which.”
It took a while to get through to Winkler and then he said, “Johnson? Private detective? I’m not sure.”
“There was a woman found killed in a hotel room,” I said. “Four years ago. Her husband and Johnson found her. They were there to get divorce evidence.”
“Yeah, wait a second,” he said. “I remember that. Edward Johnson. Vaguely. What about him?”
“I’m thinking of hiring him,” I said. “But I wanted to get a recommendation I could trust first.”
“Did he tell you to call me?”
“No. I found your name in the Times. The story on that hotel killing.”
“Oh. Because I barely remember the guy. Hold on a minute.”
I held on. After a while, a man named Clark came on the line. “You want a recommendation on Edward Johnson, is that it?”
“That’s it.”
“Okay. He’s honest. He’s also stubborn, and a coward. He’s efficient, but don’t ask him to do anything dangerous because he won’t.”
“But he is honest.”
“I think you can count on it, yes.”
I thanked him. Then I looked up Robert Campbell in the Brooklyn phone directory. There were two of them. I dialed the first one and asked for Dorothea and the woman said, “This is she.”
“Wrong number,” I said, and hung up. Then I copied down the address: 652 East 21st Street. I got out the Brooklyn map and the street guide. I found the address, and penciled a route to it. Then Bill came back and we got the car out.
Eleven
It was a decayed genteel apartment building, with iron grillwork on the front doors and no elevator. We climbed the stairs to 4A and rang the bell.
Dorothea Campbell was about fifty, tall and stocky and gray-haired. Decayed genteel, like the building. She wore a housecoat and an apron and scuffed slippers. Her face was cold. She had the right and the power to close the door in our faces if she felt like it. She wasn’t used to power, she might abuse it.
“Hello,” I said. “I’m Ray Kelly. This is my brother, Bill. Our father used to be your brother’s lawyer.”
“My brother?” Her voice was cold, too. “What brother?”
“Eddie Kapp.”
She shook her head. “I don’t have any brother.” The door started to close.
“We don’t have any father,” I said.
The door stopped midway. “What do you mean?”
“He’s dead. He did wrong things when he was young. But we never turned our backs on him.”
“Eddie Kapp put me through hell,” she said angrily. But she was being defensive about it. I waited, and then she let go of the door and turned away. “Oh, come in if you have to,” she said. “Tell me what you want.”
“Thank you.”
We went in, and I was the one who closed the door.
The living room was small, and the furniture was all too big for it. The colors were dull. The metal-cabinet television set looked as though it had been left in that corner by accident.
We sat down on a fat green sofa, and she sat facing us in a matching chair. I said, “Did you ever know Willard Kelly? Your brother’s lawyer. People say Bill here looks a lot like he did.”
“I was eight years younger than