361 - Donald E. Westlake [41]
“It hasn’t been easy for you,” he said.
“I don’t think I want to go back to Binghamton. Not yet.”
“It’s your life, Ray. But you’re always welcome, you know that.”
“Thank you.”
We were silent a minute. He wanted to say something, and he didn’t know how. I couldn’t help him; I didn’t know what it was he wanted to say. Finally he cleared his throat and said, “About Betsy.”
“Betsy?”
“Bill’s girl. We’ve been caring for her.”
“Oh. I forgot about her.”
“We’d like to keep her. I’d like to adopt her.” He waited, but there wasn’t anything for me to say. “Would that be all right with you?”
“Oh. Well, sure. Why ask me?”
“You’re her uncle. You’re her next of kin.”
“I don’t even know her, I’ve never seen her. I don’t have any kind of home or anything.”
“I’ll start the papers then. There may be something you’ll have to sign, I don’t know. Where can I get in touch with you?”
“I’ll write you when I get an address.”
“All right.”
He cleared his throat again. “I should start back. I don’t like to drive at night.”
I went down to the car with him. He said, “Oh, yes, one other thing. Bill’s house—”
“Oh, for God’s sake, not now! Some other time, some other year, let me alone!”
“Yes, all right. You’re right. Be sure to send me your address. I’ll take care of things till then.”
He drove away, and I went to a liquor store and asked for two bottles of Old Mr. Boston before I remembered. I took them both anyway, and went back to the hotel room. I sat cross-legged on the bed and smoked and drank and thought. Very gradually, I unwound. Very gradually, I got so I could pay attention to my thoughts again.
It got slowly dark outside, and I treaded heavily through my thoughts to some conclusion I didn’t yet know. And Kapp knocked on the door at a little after nine.
I got up and let him in. He said, “Your uncle gone home?”
“This afternoon,” I said.
“I’ve been watching. You haven’t had any tail. I guess they’re satisfied with the suicide idea.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Crap. Neither are you. If that job was done by a professional, they’ve got a lot slacker than my day.”
“I know.”
He pointed a stiff finger at his forehead. “The angle was wrong,” he said. “You know what I mean? Dead on that way. I saw that right away. Too high.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“What’s that you’re drinking? I brought some House of Lords.” He had a brown paper bag under one arm. He took the bottle out and showed it to me. “Want some?”
“I’ll stay with this.”
I sat on the bed again, and he sat in the armchair in the corner. He said, “You feel like talking, Ray?”
“I think so.”
“Before we found Bill dead, I was going to ask you a question. You know the question I mean.”
“I suppose so.”
“I want to make the move, Ray. I want to get a base and call a few people and tell them okay, they can count on me. And the first thing they’ll ask me, ‘You got your son with you?’ What am I going to tell them?”
I didn’t say anything. I read the label on the Old Mr. Boston bottle. What I was drinking was seventy proof.
He waited, and then he spoke rapidly, as though he were trying to catch up. “I’ll tell you the way it stands, Ray. This thing’s going to happen, one way or another. People are coming back, people are choosing sides. If you say yes, no, it doesn’t make any difference, you see what I mean? It’s still going to happen.” He held up a rigid finger, peered over it at me. “There’s only one difference if you say no. Only the one. Eddie Kapp won’t be running things. I don’t know who will be—maybe there’ll be a fight first, I don’t know—but it won’t be Eddie Kapp. I’ll take my sister away from her husband and go down to Florida like I figured.”
“I hear it’s nice down there,” I said.
He frowned. “Is that your answer?”
“I don’t know. Keep talking.”
“All right. I want you with me. I mean besides everything else, you know what I mean? The hell with it, you’re my son. I never thought about it this way, I never knew it’d hit me this way. When I went in, you were just a—you know, just a little thing in a crib.