361 - Donald E. Westlake [59]
I went left through an empty bedroom. The door was closed, but didn’t set snug. Through the crack, I saw him in the living room, talking on the phone. I could only see a narrow strip of the room, so I couldn’t tell if he were alone.
He was abusing the receptionist for having given away the secret of his address. His face was naked and jagged and gray. I was glad he was afraid of me.
It hurt him that he couldn’t let the girl know just how strongly he was upset. He was having trouble restraining himself, keeping his voice down. He was making do as best he could with heavy sarcasm and cruel caricature of her accent. At last he said, “No, he hasn’t come here. How long ago was he there?—It’s over two hours. You should have called me, sweetheart, and not wait around till I called you.—Honey, none of my clients are ofay, you know that. When was the last time you saw a white man in that office? Oh, the hell, why waste time talking to you? Besides, it’s time for you and Benny Partridge to have lunch together on his sofa, isn’t it?—What do you suppose I mean, dumplin’?”
He listened a few seconds more, then slammed the receiver down and glared desperately around the room. The way his eyes moved, I could tell he was alone. I reached in under the raincoat and jacket and dragged out Smitty’s gun.
Cheever reached for the phone again. He dialed jerkily. I counted ten numbers, so he was calling someone out of town. He told the operator his number, and then he waited, fumbling a Viceroy out of the pack one-handed. All at once he dropped the pack and said quickly into the phone, “Let me talk to Ed. Willy Cheever.—Yeah, sure, I’ll hold on.”
He managed to get the cigarette out and lit before he had to talk again. Then he said, “Ed? Willy Cheever. Somebody came around to my office this morning, asking for me.—Well, the thing is, the stupid girl at the office gave him my address.—I’m home now. I want to come up, Ed. If I could stay at the farm just a couple days—Just a couple days, Ed, until—Ed, for God’s sake, she told him where I live!—There isn’t anyplace else.—Ed, I’ve never asked you for any special favor before. I—Ed! Ed!”
He jiggled the receiver and I stepped into the living room and said, “He hung up on you, Willy.”
His head swiveled around and he stared at me. He didn’t move. I had Smitty’s gun in my right hand. I went over and took the phone out of his hand and cradled it. Then I backed off from him and said, “You better pick up your cigarette. It’s burning the rug.”
He picked it up, moving like a robot, and put it in the ashtray beside the phone. It smoldered there, and he stared at the gun.
I said, “Ganolese threw you away. He’s got too much to worry about, and you’re just a cheap Harlem shyster. He can replace you with a nod of his head.”
“No.” The word jolted out of him. His hands started to twitch together in his lap. “Ed listens to me. Ed respects my advice.”
“He threw you away.”
“Oh, God!” His hands snapped up and covered his face.
I crossed the room and sat down opposite him and waited for him to finish. When he finally took his hands down, his eyes were red and puffed, his flat cheeks gleamed wet. The little mustache was only silly, like a little girl wearing her mother’s shoes. He said, “He called me boy. Like the kid who shines his shoes.”
“Eddie Kapp is taking over,” I said. “Ganolese doesn’t have time for shoe-shine boys. Not even if they went to college.”
“He’s a son of a bitch. Goddamn him, I treated him right.”
“Drive me up there. I’ll put in a good word for you with Eddie Kapp.”
He stared at me a second, than shook his head. “Not a chance. Not a chance.”
“Ganolese is losing. If he was winning, he’d have the time to kid you along like always.”
“Oh, damn!” His eyes squeezed shut and he pounded the chair arms with clenched fists. “I never tommed!” he cried. “I never sucked! He treated me like a white man, he never made me