361 - Donald E. Westlake [43]
He laughed nervously, saying, “It comes around to the same thing, Ray, doesn’t it?”
“To kill the man who killed the me who might have been. Not exactly the same thing, Kapp.”
He emptied his glass, refilled it. “What the hell,” he said, “however you say it, you’re still after the same people as me. The ones running the organization in New York. Same people, different reasons. Why go off by yourself and fight them?”
“Because it’s my own purpose.”
“We could double up. I help you, you help me.”
“Fine. What’s the name of the man who owns the pointing finger?”
“What?”
“The guy who gave the order to kill Will Kelly. What’s his name?”
“How the hell do I know?”
“You want the crown, Kapp. You’ve got to know who’s wearing it now.”
“Hell, yes. But you don’t know this kind of organization. It might be any one of half a dozen guys. I don’t know which one.”
“A fair trade, Kapp. You give me the name, I’ll give you two weeks. You won’t need any more than that. The people you want to impress, they want to see me at first, that’s all. Once you’re organized, they’ll be too busy to wonder where the kid is.”
“You mean that? You’ll stick around till we’re set up?”
“Two weeks. Until—what’s the date today? Thursday was the fifteenth, so this is the Seventeenth. Thirty days hath September. Okay. Saturday, the first of October, I’m leaving.”
“But you’ll play it like you’re going to be sticking around, right?”
“Sure.”
“You’re my son and heir, right? As far as these guys are concerned, you’re set to sit in the throne when I pop off, right?”
“I’ll play it that way. All you have to do is give me the name.”
“I will. By the first of October, I’ll know which one it was.”
“Not that way, Kapp.”
He jumped to his feet, slamming the empty glass on the dresser. “Goddamn it, I don’t know which one! Ray, face it, I know it’s got to be one of maybe six or seven men. I could toss out one of their names and you’d swallow it, you know damn well you would. But I don’t know for sure which one it is, and I’m trying to play this square. I want you to go gunning! That’d work out fine for me, you know what I mean?”
“All right.”
“I’ll find out which one it was. I’ll have him fingered definite by the time you want to leave. I swear my oath on that.”
“All right.”
“Shake on it!”
I shook his hand. When he left, I finished the other bottle.
Nineteen
Monday afternoon we left Plattsburg. The Friday before, Kapp had had a lot of funds transferred to a local bank from a couple of New York and Jersey City banks, and then he’d taken it all out in cash. Monday we walked into the local Cadillac-Oldsmobile-Buick agency, and Kapp bought the showroom Cadillac for cash. I had to drive, because he didn’t have a license. I was getting more and more used to judging perspective with just the left eye, and after a while I found a way to get my right foot comfortable on the accelerator, so it wasn’t too bad.
We drove straight south to Lake George, and Kapp rented a place around on the eastern side of the lake. The south and west, he said, were all built up from what he’d known, he didn’t like it. Over on the northeast, it wasn’t much different from the old days.
The house was big and white, built amid evergreens on a steep slope down to the edge of the lake. There was a dirt road along the top of the slope past the summer houses, and a cleared space beside it for two cars to park. We got out of the Cadillac and walked across the tire ruts of the road to the hedge that bordered it for this section. There was a gate in the hedge, and a Quonset-hut mailbox on an arm. On the side of the mailbox was written reed. We’d rented from an agency in town who handled the property for the Reeds off-season. The spaced summer houses along the slope between the road and the lake were all empty, except for us.
We opened the gate in the hedge and went down twelve wooden steps to a screen door and a screened-in porch. On this side, the house looked small. One story high, and just a small screened-in porch with beer and soft drink cases stacked up against the