361 - Donald E. Westlake [35]
The waiter came back, went away.
Kapp raised the glass, tasted it, made a face. He coughed. “I forgot. It’s like starting new, it’s been so long. Remember how lousy it tasted the first time?”
“You want a mix?”
“A what? Oh, a set-up? Not me, boy. Not Eddie Kapp.” He got out a new cigarette, working one-handed. His left hand looked terrible. I held out my zippo and said, “I’m sorry what I did to you.”
“Shut your face. Tell me about Kelly. Your brother. He doesn’t look like the type to be here.”
“They killed his wife, too.”
“Hah? His wife?” He sat back and nodded at me and grinned. “That means they’re scared,” he said. “Scared of old Eddie Kapp. That’s good.”
“We found a guy said there was some kind of syndicate trouble brewing in New York. That that was why they killed my—my father. Why they killed Kelly.”
“Take it easy. You think of him as your father, call him your father. He was a lot more your father than I was, huh?”
“You were in jail.”
“That’s the truth.” He swallowed some more Scotch. “I’m getting used to it,” he said. Then he watched himself tap ashes into the tray. “About your mother,” he said. “I don’t want you to get me wrong, what I said before. Edith never worked in a house, nothing like that. She wasn’t ever a professional.”
“Let’s forget about that.”
He got mad. He glared at me. “She was a good girl,” he said. “She gave me a good son.”
I had to grin. “Okay.”
He grinned back at me. “Okay it is, boy. And I’ll tell you something, they’re out of their heads. They’re panicky. I can look at you two and there’s no question which one of you is Will Kelly’s boy. No question. But there’s always the chance, always the chance. They’re panicky, they’re afraid of the chance. They’ll even go for the kid, you wait and see.”
“Do you think so?”
“You wait and see. Hah!” He sat back again, smoking like a financier, his eyes gleaming in the dim light of the bar. “We’ll give them merry hell, boy! Who wants Florida?”
“The Seminoles.”
“They can have it.” He leaned forward fast. “You know what I was going to do? I figured I was an old man, washed-up, ready to retire. I wrote my sister—frigid-faced bitch, but I didn’t know anybody else in the world—I told her leave that bum she’s married to. We’ll live in Florida, I’ve still got plenty stashed away, with an extra twenty years’ interest on it. See? Old Eddie Kapp, washed-up, retired to Florida for the sun and the cheap funeral. With my sister.”
He ground out the cigarette. “Family, family, family, that’s always the same damn thing.” His voice was low and grim and intense. “With the mob, with you, with me. Always the same damn thing. I was ready to spend the rest of my life with my sister. Think of it, with my sister. I hate her, she’s a hypocrite, she always was.”
“I met her,” I said. “She’s just frustrated.”
He grinned. “Careful, boy, you’re talking about your aunt.”
I laughed. “That’s right, isn’t it?”
“I tell you, I’d given up. Tony and The French and all the rest, they were writing letters to me. Come on back when they spring you, Eddie, we’re ready to roll. We’re just waiting on you, Eddie, and we move in. Yeah, the hell with all that. That’s the way I figured it, I was an old man, time to retire. And just the one relative in all the world.” He curved a grin of pain. “It’s family, it does it every time. Where’s the damn waiter? I’m getting the taste back.”
We re-ordered and it came, and Kapp went on: “I’ll tell you about family. Listen, when I saw you—who knew what you were or what you wanted? Twenty-two years ago it looked easy. When this baby here is in its twenties, I’ll be out again, and he’ll be at my side. See? But by now, who knew? You were Kelly’s kid, not mine.” He drank, inhaled cigarette smoke, grinned, winked at me. “Then I saw you, boy. Raymond Peter Kelly. Keep the Kelly, who cares? I saw you, and I knew you were mine.” He got to his feet, looking around. “Where’s the crapper?”
He had to ask a waiter. I sat and thought about him. I thought, He copulated with a married woman named Edith Kelly and impregnated her and she produced me. I could