361 - Donald E. Westlake [31]
I stood in the middle of the street and grinned. When I was four days in Germany, two guys took me to a Kaiserslautern whorehouse in Amiland, and I was afraid to admit I was virgin and afraid I’d be too afraid to do anything about it. The whore had been so damn indifferent I’d got mad and jumped her trying to attract her attention. I did, and she had an orgasm. She hadn’t with the other two. Going back to the base, I broke a bus window for the hell of it. I felt the same way now, standing in the middle of the street and grinning, while the Chrysler took a lump of clay around the corner and out of sight.
The Mercury pulled up beside me, and Kapp came struggling back through the hedge. I could hear the dog going nuts. Kapp looked shaky and wobbly. He’d made a great dive for sixty-one, but now he was acting his age. His left trouser leg was ripped at the knee.
I stopped grinning and opened the back door of the Mercury. I threw the empty gun in there and went over and took Kapp’s arm and brought him to the Mercury and shoved him inside. He acted dazed, and didn’t fight back or ask questions. I got in after him, and slammed the door. A black-haired woman in a flowered apron came to a break in the hedge and looked at us. Bill tromped the accelerator and we rode away from Dannemora.
Sixteen
Kapp recovered pretty fast. He pulled Smitty’s gun out from under him and looked at it, and then turned to me. “That was lousy shooting. It took you four shots to find him and then you threw two bullets away.”
“I’ve only got one eye,” I said. “I have trouble with distance judgment.”
“Oh. In that case, it was all right.” He looked at the back of Bill’s thick neck. “If this is a heist,” he said, “you two are crazy. Nobody wants me back money bad.”
“We just want to ask you one or two questions,” I said.
He looked at me again, and grinned. He had white false teeth. They looked better on him than the ones Krishman had worn. “Were you alive when I went in there, boy?” he asked me.
“Yes.”
“Then you’re just lucky you’ve lived this long.” He hefted the gun, holding it by the barrel. “What if I were to break your head in with this? What’s your partner going to do?”
I looked into his grin and said, “We’re not playing.”
He studied me a while, and then he looked sad and dropped the gun onto the floor between our feet. “I’m an old man,” he said. “I’m ready to retire.” He sat back, showing me his profile, gazing up at the ceiling and trying to look sick. “That hard violent world,” he said, “that’s all behind me now.”
“Not all,” I said.
He quit joking. He turned to me and he kept his lips flat and his voice flat. “Ask your questions,” he said, “and go to hell.”
I said, “Why was Willard Kelly killed?”
He looked surprised, worried, wary, blank, one right after the other. He said, “Who the hell is Willard Kelly?”
I reached down and picked the gun up and tapped the butt against his knee. “I hear old men’s bones are brittle,” I said.
“Naw. I’ve got a geriatric formula. I take a spoonful of chancre pus twice a day. It’s a new thing on the market for senior citizens.”
“They let you read magazines. That’s fine, but I’m not playing. How’s your kneecap?” I tapped him again with the gun-butt, and he didn’t manage to hide the wince. I said, “Why was Willard Kelly killed?”
“He had B.O.”
I tapped him again. He put his hand down over his knee. His hand was older than his face; it had blue veins ropy against the skin. I tapped the back of his hand, and he said “Uh,” and took the hand away and held it tight against his chest. I tapped his knee. He said, “Go on and break it, you clumsy bastard. I could use a good faint around now.”
“You won’t faint.” I tapped him again. His face was paler, and there were strain lines around his eyes and mouth. I said, “Why was Willard Kelly killed?”
He turned his head away and glared out the