361 - Donald E. Westlake [64]
It took him a week, and probably a lot more arguments than that, but he talked them into it. And he gave me that song-and-dance about me as a symbol because he knew I didn’t want to have anything to do with his mob. Once he was in the driver’s seat, after the coup, he didn’t care how many of his cronies knew the truth.
I’d told him about Bill’s wife being killed. That gave him the idea to sell me that family-purge story. Because then all he had to do was point me. I was a loaded gun, held by Eddie Kapp.
Bill. My brother Bill.
When I’d left Lake George, I thought I was ridding myself of Eddie Kapp forever. I wasn’t. I had to find him again. Now.
Twenty-Eight
That afternoon, I went up to Riverdale. It was just a week to the day since the revolution had started. Five days ago, the first sign of the counterattack had appeared in the papers, when Patros Kanzantkos fell down the stairs in his Riverdale home and broke his neck. The address was given in the newspaper story.
I took the subway as far as it would go, looking out at the big-shouldered, dull brick apartment buildings when the train became an elevated in the Bronx. At the last stop, I got a cab. I had three hundred more in my pocket from Bill’s dwindling bank account. Bill’s Luger was huge and bulky against my side, tucked under my belt. The raincoat was supposed to cover it.
The house was colonial-style, two stories, white, in a very good section, all curving roads and trees and backyard wading pools. There was a black wreath still on the door.
The obituary notice had said that Kanzantkos was survived by a wife, Emilie, and a son, Robert. It was the son who answered the doorbell, an angry black-haired boy of my chronological age, his face marred by a petulant mouth, his black suit oddly awkward on his frame.
I said, “I’d like to talk to your mother, please.”
He said, insolently, “What about?”
“Tell her Eddie Kapp’s son is here.”
“Why should she care?”
“If she wants you to know, she’ll tell you.”
That struck a nerve. He paled, and when he said, “Wait there,” his voice was harsher, more strained.
He closed the door, and I lit a cigarette and looked at the careful rock garden fronting the pretty house across the way. And then he came back and said, “All right. Come on in.” He was still angry.
I followed him upstairs to a small room furnished with two sofas and a stereophonic record player. The walls were ranked with bookcases holding record albums. Mrs. Kanzantkos, a small and brittle woman with a narrow nose, said, “Thank you, Bobby. I’ll want to talk to Mr. Kapp alone.”
He went away, glowering, reluctantly closing the door. I said, “He doesn’t know what his father did for a living?”
She said, “No. And he never will.”
“A boy should always know who and what his father is,” I said.
Coldly, she said, “I’ll be the judge of that, Mr. Kapp.”
“Kelly,” I corrected her. “Ray Kelly.”
Instantly she was on her feet. “You said you were Eddie Kapp’s son.”
“I am. I was brought up by a man named Kelly.”
The distrust didn’t all leave her eyes. “And what do you want from me?”
“I was with my father when he got out of Danne-mora,” I said, “and at the meeting at Lake George. I met your husband there. He mentioned me, didn’t he?”
“Mr. Kanzantkos rarely discussed business with me,” she said.
“All right. The point is, my father and I were separated after Lake George. I had another job to do. Now it’s done, and I want to get in touch with him again.”
“I would have no idea where you could find him.”
“I know that. But you must know at least one or two of the other people who were at Lake George. I wish you’d call one of them and tell him I’m here.”
“Why?”
“I want to get together with my father again. Isn’t that natural?”
“And he didn’t tell you where you could get in touch with him?”
“We parted hastily. I had this other thing to do.”
“What other thing?”
“I had to kill a man named Ed Ganolese.”
She blinked. The silence was like wool. Then she got to her