361 - Donald E. Westlake [69]
I shook my head. “Not now. Try me in a couple of weeks. I’ll be ready for social drinking then.”
“It’s all over, then.”
“Yes, it really is.”
“All right. I’ve got something for you.” He returned the gin bottle to his dresser drawer, under the shirts, and came back with a small envelope. “Two hard types came to the office Friday before last. They said this was for you. If I ran across you anywhere, I should give it to you. I got the feeling I should make an effort to run across you.”
I took the envelope and ripped it open. Inside, there were five one hundred dollar bills. And a note: “No hard feelings, L.G.”
Johnson watched my face. “Well?”
“I don’t get it.” I showed it to him.
“You don’t know anybody named L.G.?”
Then I got it. Lake George. “I know now,” I said. “Never mind.”
“They’re telling you they won’t bother you, is that it?”
“Let’s flush that note down the toilet or something.”
“Shall I burn it, like Secret Agent X 7?”
“I think you ought to.”
He did. Watching it burn in the ashtray, he said, “Do you remember your talk with Winkler?”
“Who?”
“Detective Winkler, of New York’s finest.”
“I talked to him?”
“You wanted to confess to half the killings in the United States. A couple of racketeers named Ganolese and Kapp, and some old lawyer out on Long Island, and I don’t know who all.”
“I did?”
“Winkler says it was a real wild story, except you refused to give any names except of the people you killed.”
I looked around the room. “Then why am I here? Why didn’t he lock me up?”
“Officially, Ganolese and Kapp aren’t even missing. No bodies, no murder weapons, no witnesses. Officially, the lawyer died of a heart attack. It said so on the certificate. Winkler says I should tell you not to come bothering him with any more wild stories.” He grinned at me.
“They don’t care.”
“Not about people like Kapp and Ganolese. Not even a little bit.”
I stood up and walked around the room and stretched. This was the other side. I came through, and this was the other side.
Johnson emptied the ashtray. “One thing more,” he said. “I was looking for you anyway, even before those hard types showed up. Two days after you called me the last time a guy hired me to find you. Arnold Beeworthy, his name is. You mentioned me to him. He said you were supposed to call him back about six weeks ago.”
“I forgot about him.”
“Tomorrow, why don’t you take a run out there and say hello?”
“Okay.”
I slept on his sofa. In the morning, I spent two hours being fitted for a new eye. I paid for that out of the five hundred, and gave the rest to Johnson. He didn’t want to take it, but I told him he was being paid by the guys who beat him up.
In the afternoon, I took the subway out to Queens. Beeworthy grabbed me the minute he saw me and stuck me in front of the tape recorder. We stopped for dinner and went back at it and didn’t quit till midnight. I slept in the guest room. The next morning, he drove me into Manhattan to get my suitcase from Johnson. When we got back, Sara was listening to the tape and crying. Arnie told her to cut that out and make us some coffee.
Table of Contents
Cover
Raves For the Work of Donald E. Westlake!
Excerpt
Other Hard Case Crime Books
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty