361 - Donald E. Westlake [48]
“No.” I swung my legs over the side. “The hell with it. I’m not sore at anything.” I put the ashtray on the dresser and got out Smitty’s gun. It was full again. The barrel was cold.
“Get dressed up sharp,” Kapp told me.
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Surly as they come.” He went out, grinning and shaking his head.
I put on a dark gray suit and a light gray tie and black shoes. Square shirt collar. I stuck Smitty’s gun inside my belt around on the left side, with the butt forward. So I could reach over with my right hand and get it. Then I went upstairs.
Most of them were there. The archway between the two rooms was wide, almost as wide as the rooms. The chairs were set up informally around the two rooms, but so that everybody could see everybody else and nobody had their back to anybody else. The poker players had quit. People in tight suits and fat grins were shaking hands and showing their teeth. Three chauffeurs were doubling as bartenders, bringing glasses of beer or House of Lords out from the kitchen. All thirty-eight were talking. Most of them were smoking cigars. The rest were smoking cigarettes. I lit one myself and went around the wall to Kapp. He was with Rovito and a little baldheaded guy with a big nose.
Kapp put his arm around my shoulders and said, “You remember Nick.”
“Sure.”
We nodded at each other, and Rovito smiled first.
Kapp motioned the cigar hand at the other one. “And this is—”
“Little Irving Stein,” I said. I nodded at him. “Nice to meet you.”
“You reckanize me? Sure, why not?” He poked Kapp’s elbow. “Did I tell you? I got a broad works for me, she does nothin’ but read books for a mention of Little Oiving. I put the covers on the living room wall. Mostly paperbacks, you know? Half the wall I got already. You think they forgot? Nobody forgot, don’t let ’em kid you. They’re still grateful, Ed, they still got a soft spot in their hearts for the selfless bums kept them in booze all those years in the desert. Ain’t that right, Nick?”
Nick showed teeth, and didn’t quite look down at Little Irving. Kapp said, “Well, the hell, let’s get going.” He turned and put his cigar on the edge of an ashtray and then straightened again and clapped his hands. “Cell and block!” he shouted. “Cell and block!”
A lot of people laughed, and then it got quiet.
Kapp said, “Let’s all sit down, what do you say?”
It was the same as any bunch of people at a meeting. Chairs squeaking around, people finishing conversations. Then there was the last cough, and silence.
There were five of us standing, thirty-five of them seated. Kapp leaned against the archway between the rooms, his arms folded and his cigar pointing at the ceiling. I stood to his right and back just a little. Nick Rovito stood leaning against the wall near the corner diagonally to my right. Irving Baumheiler, a very fat man in a vest with his thumb in the vest pocket, stood behind a chair facing me, midway between Nick and the opposite side of the arch. Against the far wall in the other room stood Little Irving Stein.
Except for me, there wasn’t a man in the room under fifty-five. Most of them were the other side of sixty. Gray hair, dyed hair, and no hair. Half of them in new out-of-date clothes. All of them watching, smoking, waiting.
Kapp motioned to one of the chauffeurs, in the doorway to the kitchen. He came over with a tray and Kapp took a House of Lords. So did I. It was quiet.
Kapp broke the silence. He looked at the full glass in his hand and said, “There’s a lot to tell in this little glass. What’s in it made a lot of guys a lot of dough. People who didn’t want it said nobody else should have it, and then it made some other people even more dough.” He grinned at the glass. “Or maybe the same people, who knows? I made my share out of it when they said it wasn’t legal. Then they grabbed me for not splitting with them on money they didn’t want me to make. And said it was legal after all. And then I went to a place where they didn’t serve it, legal or otherwise. Fifteen years without a drop, boys. That’s a hell of a long trip to take on a