361 - Donald E. Westlake [34]
Bill moaned. I said to Kapp, “We’ll finish the conversation in the car. Come on.”
“All right.”
He took a step away from the tree and fell down. He looked up at me, shame etched on his face. “There was a time a workout like this would’ve meant nothing,” he said. “Not a thing. Not a thing at all.”
“I believe you.”
I switched the Luger to the other hand and helped him up. He leaned on me and we went back up between the cabins and around to the Mercury. I looked at him. He wouldn’t be running anywhere. I said, “I’ll be right back. You won’t have to go over this part again.”
He nodded. I opened the back door and he sagged onto the seat, his feet hanging out onto the blacktop, his head leaning sideways against the seatback. I turned away from him and went back and found Bill coming up, one arm straight out beside him holding the cabin. His face was square gray stone.
I stood in front of him. I said, “Bill, I want you to know something.”
He said, “Get out of the way.”
“There’s an old man up at the car. If you kill him for telling the truth, I’ll shoot you down for a mad dog. What did you do when they told you Ann was dead? Punch the guy who brought the news?”
He said, “Go to hell.”
I stepped aside. “You can’t stamp out facts with fists,” I said. “Your father was a crook’s shyster. My father is sitting in the car up there. Our mother wasn’t the kind they have in the Ladies Home Journal.”
He let go the cabin and went down on his knees and started to cry with his hands hanging straight down at his sides. I went back to the Mercury and said to Kapp, “He’ll be along pretty soon. He won’t do anything any more.”
“Good.” He nodded. His eyes were half-closed, his hands were limp in his lap. The swollen hand looked worse. “I’m tired,” he said. He pushed his eyelids open more and studied me. He smiled. “You’re my only child, do you know that? The only child I ever fathered. I’m glad to look at you.”
I lit us cigarettes.
Seventeen
September is a good time of year way upstate. I stood beside the car and smoked and looked around. The cigarette smoke was thin and blue in the air. The mountains over us in the west were half in the green of summer and half in the browns and reds of fall. The lake, seen down past the cabins and the tree trunks, was blue and deep and cold. I could smell it. Far away over it was Vermont, dark green.
I didn’t look at Kapp. I didn’t know how to fix my face to look at him. It wasn’t as though I’d been an orphan all my life. I already had a father. Kapp had blood claims, but he was a stranger.
After a while, Bill came up into sight from between the cabins. He stood there, not looking our way, and got a cigarette for himself. He fumbled badly with it, as though his fingers had swollen. Then he came over, slow and heavy, and got silently behind the wheel and started the engine.
I didn’t know who to sit beside. The front seat still made me geechy, but I didn’t want Bill to think he was being cut out. Kapp knew it, and grinned at me. “Sit up front with your brother. I want to stretch out, I’m tired.”
I got in and slammed the door. Bill gazed out the windshield and mumbled, “Back to the hotel?”
I said, “Might as well.”
We drove back to Plattsburg. Kapp said he wanted a drink. Bill went upstairs, walking away with his shoulders hunched, and Kapp and I went across the lobby and into the bar. It was called the Fife & Drum. The glasses were painted red, white and blue to look like drums. Because of the Revolutionary War.
Kapp said, “I haven’t had a drink in fifteen years. What’s a good Scotch?”
I shrugged. “I don’t buy good Scotch.”
The waiter stooped and murmured, “House of Lords?”
“Good name,” said Kapp. “Got a ring to it. Two doubles, on the rocks.”
The waiter went away. I said, “You were in jail more than twenty years. They let you have liquor the first five?”
He winked. “I should of gone to Sing Sing, boy, but I had connections. And there was a time when Dannemora was a little easier. Not like a Federal pen.” He made a sour face. “It is now.