361 - Donald E. Westlake [56]
I got yesterday’s papers out of the closet, wondering if I’d missed the opening gun. But I hadn’t. It had started last night.
I felt twenty pounds lighter. I had been hating the hotel room. I put the top on the Old Mr. Boston bottle and called Ed Johnson. When I told him who it was he said, “I wondered what happened to you. It’s been almost a month now.”
I said, “Have they been asking you questions about me any more?”
“No, thank God. Just the one time. I had a tail for about three days after that. He was lousy, but I figured it would be a bad move to lose him. Since he left, nothing at all.”
“Good. I’ve got a job for you, if you want it. Can I trust you?”
“If you think you can trust my answer to that,” he said, “you think you can trust me.”
“All right. I want a man’s address. I want to know where I can find him for sure.”
“Is this number one, or are you still poking around?”
“If I don’t tell you, you can’t tell anybody else.”
“All right, I’m not very brave. I don’t get paid enough to be brave. What’s the name?”
“Ed Ganolese.” I spelled it for him. “I’m not sure what the Ed is short for.”
“All right. He’s in New York, for sure?”
“Somewhere around here. Maybe he commutes.”
“Wait a second, I’ve seen this name somewhere.”
“He’s one of the people who run the local syndicate.”
“Oh. Well—I’m not sure. I can’t guarantee anything.”
“I know that.”
“I’ll have to be careful who I ask.”
“More than last time.”
“I know who it was that time. I wish I had the guts to do something about it. Where do I call you?”
“I’ll call you Saturday. Three in the afternoon. At your office.”
“I don’t blame you,” he said. “This isn’t my league.”
“Then don’t kick yourself for it. I’ll call you Saturday.”
Then I went out and bought a pair of scissors. I came back and clipped the war news.
Twenty-Three
The afternoon papers carried more of it. A boiler explosion in a residence hotel off Eighth Avenue, in the middle of Whore Row. A liquor-store owner shot to death in what the papers called a hold-up attempt, though the “bandit” had stolen nothing—it was suggested that he had been scared off after firing the four shots that had killed the owner. Another fatal automobile accident, this one in Jackson Heights, in which the driver, who had been alone in his year-old Bonneville Pontiac, was listed in the paper as “unemployed.”
The coup was less than twenty-four hours old. I had seven clippings. Each separate item was explainable in some manner less dramatic than the truth. No outsider, reading these separate and minor reports from the front, would guess that a revolution was taking place.
Most of the action wouldn’t be hitting the papers at all. There were surely men who had disappeared in the last twenty-four hours, and who would never be heard from again, but no one would be calling the police to find them. Other men, insisting that they had fallen downstairs, would be entering hospitals with no more public fanfare than is given any obscure accident victim. Store owners would be gazing gloomily at wrecked showcases and merchandise, about which they would not be calling the police or the insurance company.
Thursday night I walked around Manhattan steadily for five hours. I avoided midtown and Central Park, so most of my time was spent between 50th and 100th Streets, on and near Broadway. I had no goal. I simply had to burn the energy off. I saw no signs of the struggle.
Friday morning, I added three more clippings. Friday afternoon, I added another five. Among them was a resident of the Riverdale section of the Bronx, who broke his neck when he fell down a flight of stairs in his house. I recognized the name. He was one of the men who’d been at the meeting in Lake George. So the incumbents were fighting back.
The police must know what was going on. But they wouldn’t be anxious to advertise it. Like Irving