361 - Donald E. Westlake [8]
That I wanted to see. Not to check the name, but because I wanted to see a library card that this guy would carry.
He showed it to me, and it was a Brooklyn library card. Typewritten, it said: Chester P. Smith, 653 East 99th St Local 36 Apt 2. Then there was a signature that might have been Chester P. Smith and might also have been Napoleon Bonaparte.
So he had a library card. In the same wallet he had forty-three dollars. But no driver’s license, and I’d just been a hundred thirty miles in a car with him. “I’ll call you Smitty,” I said, tossing the wallet back, “but I bet Chester P. got mad when he had to go after a new card.”
He put the wallet away. A couple minutes later, Bill came in with three cups of coffee. Smitty shrank away when he brought the coffee over to him. Bill grinned like a spreading wound, and put the cup on the table beside the chair.
Bill and I sat on the sofa, and Smitty sat in the armchair near the picture window, half-facing us. After a minute, Bill said, “I’m okay now.”
“Good,” I said.
There was silence, and then Bill cleared his throat and said, “What are we waiting for?”
“Smitty to start talking,” I said.
Smitty stuck a nervous thumb at the picture window. “Can’t we close these drapes?”
“Do it yourself,” I said.
He did, and sat down again, and looked miserable. He hunched over his knees and sipped coffee. Bill had made all three cups just black. We both drank it that way all the time. Smitty didn’t like it, but he drank it.
“It’s time to tell us the story, Smitty,” I said.
“I can’t,” he said. He looked earnestly over the cup at us. “I come to do you a favor, pay back your old man. You rough me up. I should of stayed away in the first place.”
I turned my head. “Bill, can you hit him any softer than the last time? I hate waking him up all the time.”
Bill got up, eager, grinning. He wanted to even the slate. “I’ve got some beauties in here,” he said, and showed us his right fist. It had red hair and orange freckles all over it. The knuckles were big.
Smitty said, “Come on. Lay off me, come on.” His voice was higher. He was pushing back down in the chair.
“Tell us an easy part first,” I said. “What was the favor my father did you?”
His eyes were on Bill’s fist. “It was before you were born,” he said. “Before repeal. I was driving a truckload in from New Hampshire when the state boys got me.”
“A truckload of what?” Bill asked him.
“Whiskey.” He would have said it with contempt for Bill’s ignorance, but he still had respect for Bill’s fist. “The people I worked for threw me away, but your old man was my mouthpiece. For no dough.”
“How did he know you?” I asked.
“We worked for the same people.”
Bill took a step toward him. “That’s a lie.”
“Wait,” I said. “Okay, Smitty, now the current events.”
“I told you the whole thing. There’s gonna be trouble in New York. You don’t want any part of it.”
“I want every part of it,” I told him. “Names and addresses. They killed my father.” I pointed at Bill. “They killed his wife.”
He looked surprised, for just a second. Then his face closed up again, and he said, “Okay, right there that tells you.”
“Tells me what?”
“Why you ought to clear out.”
“Because Bill’s wife was killed?”
“You don’t want to be involved.”
“I am involved, whether I like it or not. Tell me about this trouble that’s going to happen in New York.”
He hesitated, considering, looking from me to Bill and back. Then he said, “It’s got to do with the Organization. That’s all I’ll say, that’s too much already.”
“What organization?”
“The mob. The outfit. The syndicate, you might call it.”
“What do I have to do with the syndicate?”
“On account of your father.”
“What does he have to do with it?”
“He used to work for it.”
Bill went over and hit him twice before I could move. Then I got to him and pulled him away. I said, “Control yourself, goddamn you to hell, or I take him away and you can screw yourself. You want to cry in your beer, or do you want to help?”
“All right, all right.” He pulled away from me and went over and sat on the sofa again.
Smitty