Silent Screams - C. E. Lawrence [118]
He looked through the contents of the dresser: half a dozen shirts, a couple of pairs of pants, socks and underwear, and a couple of sports jackets. The rest of Eddie’s possessions were unremarkable—pens, paper, and other simple office supplies, a few cans of soup, a box of crackers, several decks of cards, well thumbed and grimy—but one thing caught Lee’s eye. It was a racing form dated the day Eddie died. In the first race, a horse’s name was circled in red pen: Lock, Stock, and Barrel. Lee looked at the night clerk and held up the form.
“Can I keep this?”
The man stuck the unlit cigarette behind his ear. “You can keep all of it, Mac. Poor Eddie won’t be needin’ it now, I guess. Unless he had family somewheres, but I don’t think so.”
“Did he seem depressed in the last few days?”
The man cocked his lopsided head to one side. “Naw, that’s the thing—he seemed really happy, y’know? Told me he’d bet on a sure winner.”
Lee held up the racing form and pointed to the circled name. “This horse?”
The man squinted to read the name and shook his head. “Don’t know. Just said he had a feeling his horse was gonna win. Never saw him after that. Poor guy. He was a good egg, you know?”
Lee slipped the clerk another twenty before leaving, because the man seemed to feel sorry for Eddie. As he stepped out of the building, hot tears clouded his vision. He took a deep breath and headed out into the night.
The next stop was Eddie’s bookie—another bit of information he managed to get out of Diesel and Rhino. He didn’t know what he expected to find; he only knew that he owed it to Eddie to try and find out anything he could.
The apartment was in the ground of floor of a five-story walk-up, one of the rows of brick tenement buildings the lined the forties and fifties from Eighth Avenue to the river. The long, narrow “shotgun” apartments (so named because you could fire a shotgun at one end and the bullet would pass straight through to the other end) were once crammed with poor migrant families—and more recently, struggling actors and writers. But now you could buy a house in New Jersey for the price of a one-bedroom co-op on West Forty-seventh Street.
The building showed all the signs of a neglectful landlord. The hallway was drafty and badly lit. The walls were an insipid shade of pale yellow, and hadn’t seen a paintbrush for years, and the tile floor was chipped and stained. Lee knocked on the door of apartment number 1C and waited. After a moment the metal peephole cover slid open.
“Yeah?” The man’s voice was wary, hoarse.
“Hi. I’m Eddie Pepitone’s friend.”
“Yeah?” There was an echo, as though he was inside a cave.
“He made a bet with you the other day. Lock, Stock, and Barrel—trifecta in the third race.”
“Yeah? So?”
“What happened? In the race, I mean.”
“His horse won.”
“I need to know if he spoke to you about it.”
“So why don’t you just ask him?”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?” The voice was suspicious.
“He’s dead.”
There was a long silence. Lee heard the sound of something frying inside the apartment. The smell of rancid oil floated out into the hallway.
“Who are you?” The voice was tighter, accusatory.
“I just want to talk to you for a minute.”
There was the sound of a chair scraping over a bare floor, then the sound of many dead bolts being unlocked. The door opened a few inches, restrained by a metal chain. Lee got a whiff of bacon grease and fried potatoes. A bloodshot eye peered out at him.
“You a cop?”
“No,” Lee lied. “I’m just a friend who wants to find out who killed Eddie.”
“Shit,” the man said. “So you weren’t shittin’ me? Somebody iced Eddie?”
“That’s what I think. I just need to know one thing: Did he talk to you about his horse coming in?”
“Yeah. Two days ago. Said he was comin’ over for the money. Never showed up—I figured something came up, y’know? How did he die?”
“He was run over