“Yeah. And I was back in again in 1936, though not at Castleview.”
“Where, and what for?”
“I done six months on Walker Island for coercion.”
“Who’d you coerce?”
“I tried to convince this guy who worked for a bank to print up some checks for me, with my name on them, you know?”
“How’d you try to convince him?”
“I told him I’d cut him up if he didn’t get the checks for me.”
“What happened?”
Spedino shrugged. “He went to the cops. So I never got my checks, and instead I got six months on Walker.”
“And since that time?” Hawes asked.
“Clean as a whistle.”
“Except for the crap games in Lasser’s basement, huh?”
Spedino’s expression did not change an iota. “What crap games?” he asked “Who’s Lasser?”
“George Lasser.”
“Never heard of him.”
“At 4111 South 5th.”
“Where’s that?”
“We know you were there, Spedino.”
“When was the game?” Spedino asked.
“Why? Are you going to tell us all about it?”
“No, I was trying to think how maybe I could have been mistaken for somebody else or something. That’s why I wanted to know when the game was.”
“Spedino,” Carella said slowly, “you’re full of crap.”
“Well, that may be so,” Spedino said, smiling his shark grin, “but the truth of the matter is that I have been clean since 1936 when I got off of Walker Island, and I never hope to see the inside of another prison again.”
“What you mean is that you hope you never get caught again, isn’t that it, Spedino?”
“No, sir, I mean I have been on the straight and narrow since that time, that’s what I mean.”
“Since 1936, is that right?”
“Yes, sir, since November 1936, that is correct.”
“When did you meet Lasser? Around that time?”
“I do not know who Lasser is,” Spedino said. His speech, like his manner, had changed abruptly the moment the crap games had been mentioned. He tried very much to sound like an elocution professor now, which meant that he succeeded only in sounding like a cheap hood who had been convicted once for passing bum checks and again for threatening someone with violence if he did not help Spedino in the pursuit of his chosen profession, which seemed to be the hanging of paper. At the same time, he sat up straight in the hard-backed chair and tried to appear very dignified, which meant that he succeeded in looking like a shark who had somehow come to the surface in a dark-blue suit and a gray tie and a neat gray fedora which was perched on his lap.
“Lasser is the man who allowed you to have your crap games in his basement,” Carella said. “You and your friend Siggie Reuhr, who is the only other regular in the game. Who is he, Spedino? We don’t have a record for him.”
“I never heard of him in my life,” Spedino said.
“Spedino, are you listening?” Carella asked.
“I’m listening.”
“Spedino, this is a homicide rap we’re dealing with here.”
“What do you mean, a homicide rap?”
“This isn’t a gambling misdemeanor or some more bum checks being passed. This is a man dead with an ax in his head.”
“I wouldn’t even touch a fly,” Spedino said, “unless it was unzipped,” making a joke the detectives had heard a thousand times before. They continued to stare at him without smiling. “Unless it was unzipped,” Spedino said again, as though repetition would improve the flavor, but the detectives still watched him unsmilingly.
“Homicide,” Hawes said.
“Homicide,” Carella repeated.
“Homicide, my ass,” Spedino answered angrily. “What kind of phony rap you trying to hang on me? I never even heard of George Lasser, or of this Sigmund Freud, either.”
“Siggie Reuhr,” Carella corrected.
“Yeah, him. What the hell is it with you guys, anyway? You can’t bear to see somebody make good? I took two lousy falls back in the thirties, and you’re still bugging me about them. Well, get off my back, huh? You got something to book me for? If not, either let me go, or let me call my lawyer.”
“Oh boy, we’ve got a real big-time gangster in here,” Hawes said. “Look at him—he’s going to call his lawyer. Come on, we’ll do a real grade-B movie bit, okay, Spedino? You call your lawyer, and when he gets here we’ll make like cops and call him ‘Counselor’ and everything, how’s that?”
“Haha, very funny,” Spedino said.
“Tell us about those crap games,” Carella said.
“I don’t know any crap games. I don’t even know how to shoot dice, that’s the truth. Sevens, elevens, they’re all the same to me.”
“Sure,” Carella said.
“Sure.”
“We would like to know what your connection with George Lasser is, or rather was,” Carella said. “Now how about telling us what we want to know, Spedino, before we find something to hang around your neck.”
“What’re you going to find, huh? Who you trying to kid? I’m clean as a whistle.”
“How have you been earning a living, Spedino?”
“I work in a bookshop.”
“In a what?”
“It’s impossible, huh? Impossible for a con to work in a bookshop. Well, that’s where I work.”
“Where? What bookshop?”
“It’s called The Bookends, and it’s on Hampton Avenue, in Riverhead.”
“What’s your boss’s name?”
“Matthew Hicks.”
“How much does he pay you?”
“Eighty-five dollars a week. That’s before taxes.”
“And you try to lose it all in crap games, huh?”
“I don’t try to lose it no-place,” Spedino said. “I’m a married man with two kids, and I’ve been straight since 1936. Listen, I’m not a spring chicken any more, you know. I’m fifty-two years old.”
“George Lasser was eighty-six,” Hawes said.
“That’s a nice age,” Spedino answered, “but I still don’t know him.”
“We’ve just been misinformed, huh?” Carella said.
“I guess so.”
“You’ve never been anywhere near 4111 South 5th, and you never knew about a crap game going on down there in the basement, and you don’t know George Lasser, or Siggie Reuhr, either.”
“That’s right,” Spedino said, nodding. “You’ve got it all right.”
“We’ll get back to you, Spedino,” Carella said.
“Can I go now?”
“Where were you this weekend?”
“Away, I told you.”
“Where?”
“I took the family to the country for a few days.”
“How come you’re not at work this morning?”
“We don’t open till eleven.”
“And what time do you close?”
“Seven at night. This is a bookstore, you know. People don’t come into bookstores eight o’clock in the morning.”
“Who wrote Strangers When We Meet?” Hawes asked suddenly.
“Don’t ask me nothing about books,” Spedino said. “All I do is run the cash register and keep an eye on everybody to make sure they don’t walk out with half the store.”
“Well,” Carella said, “thanks for stopping by, Spedino. You’d better get to work now. You don’t want to be late.”
Spedino rose, his gray fedora in his hands. He looked first at Carella and then at Hawes and then said, “You still think I’m involved in this, huh?”
“We’ll let you know, Spedino.”
“Just do me one favor.”
“What’s that?”
“When you call my boss, when you call Mr. Hicks, just tell him this is a routine check, will you? Don’t make it sound like I done anything.”
“Sure,” Carella said.