Death Instinct - Jed Rubenfeld [83]
“You pour yourself the drink,” Littlemore instructed. “Then you put the bottle in your coat pocket. If the law comes in, they say they only serve sodas. They can’t help it if their customers bring liquor in.”
Younger poured himself a double. He and Littlemore toasted silently. Younger felt vaguely louche with the bottle of whiskey in his pocket—if in fact it was whiskey, which Younger doubted, because it tasted more like rubbing alcohol. He finished his glass and poured himself another. “Boisterous little place,” he said. “I like the atmosphere.”
At the bar, men hunched over their drinks, speaking in low voices. Even the bartender was taciturn. A solitary woman wearing a boa nursed a cocktail at one end of the counter; no one approached her. Near the door, the man keeping watch handled a pack of cards by himself at a table—not playing, just shuffling and reshuffling.
“It’s the same all over town,” said Littlemore. “Everybody’s still spooked from the bombing. Only place they’re not spooked is the Bankers and Brokers Club. They were having a ball when I went there a couple nights ago. I think it was relief—that they weren’t the ones who got hit. Guess what: a doctor came to Bellevue today for Two-Heads. He heard about the shooting in the church and recognized her description. Her name’s Quinta McDonald. I found out what’s wrong with her. The doctor said it was confidential, but I got it out of him. She has syphilis. Apparently syphilis can cause a growth on your body?”
“Tertiary syphilis can,” agreed Younger. He thought about it. “It could have made her demented as well.”
“That’s what her doctor said. It got into her brain. Gave her delusions.”
“I did some work on syphilitic dementia a few years ago. If that’s what she has, there’s no reversing it and no cure for it.”
“So here’s what I’m thinking,” said Littlemore. “There may not be anything left for the Miss to worry about.”
“How’s that?”
“Well, let’s start with Amelia, the girl who left the tooth at your hotel. Amelia’s in some kind of trouble, and she needs to leave a tooth with somebody she knows to get them to help her. But the clerk delivers the tooth to Colette by mistake. Meanwhile, Drobac’s following Amelia. He’s hunting whoever she’s trying to leave the tooth with. When the tooth gets delivered to Colette, Drobac thinks Colette is his target. So he and his two pals kidnap her. After that, Amelia gets killed by the bomb, Drobac’s two pals get killed when we rescue Colette, and Drobac himself is behind bars. That leaves only Two-Heads, the McDonald girl. We don’t know why she came after Colette—probably she’s just crazy from her syphilis—but it doesn’t matter because now she’s in a coma. So everybody’s either dead, jailed, or otherwise out of commission. Case closed.”
“What about the other redhead?” asked Younger. “There were two of them outside the police station.”
“Friend of the McDonald girl. Maybe her sister. Nothing to worry about.”
“I thought you didn’t make assumptions,” said Younger.
“I don’t. I was just trying it out to see how it sounded.”
“How did it sound?”
“Didn’t make any kind of sense at all,” said Littlemore.
The two men drank for a long while. Younger could feel the cheap alcohol beginning to work on him.
“So the Miss is going back to Europe?” asked Littlemore.
“You can’t tell me,” answered Younger, “that marriage makes men happy. Do you know one married man who’s actually happy?”
“I’m happy.”
“Apart from you.”
Littlemore thought about it. “No. Do you know any unmarried guys who are happy?”
“No.”
“There you go, then,” said Littlemore.
The men drank.
At another table, a man tried to stand, failed, and fell to the floor, knocking his chair over with him. For a moment Younger thought the sound had been a gunshot. Then he heard more gunfire, but he knew it was inside his head. The recurring image that, ever since the bombing, he could neither forget nor interpret sprang into his mind again, this time with greater clarity. “I know what I saw on the