“I must have left it there,” Iverson said.
“He’s lying,” Whitson said. “When he come at me with that ax, I hit him, and he drop it there on the floor. That’s what it’s doing on the floor there.”
“What’d you hit him with?”
“I picked up the rake there. I hit him with that.”
“Why?”
“I just told you. He come at me with that ax.”
“Why’d he do that?”
“ ‘Cause he a cheap bastard,” Whitson said. “That’s why.”
Iverson got to his feet and took a step toward Whitson. Carella moved between them and shouted, “Sit down! What does he mean, Iverson?”
“I don’t know what he means. He’s crazy.”
“Offering me twenty-five cents,” Whitson said indignantly. “I told him what he could do with his twenty-five cents. Twenty-five cents!”
“What are you talking about, Whitson?” Hawes asked, and then seemed to discover he was still holding the ax in his hands. He propped it against the wall of the coal bin just as Whitson wheeled toward Iverson again.
“Now just hold it, goddamn it!” Hawes yelled, and Whitson stopped dead in his tracks. “What’s all this about twenty-five cents?”
“He offered me twenty-five cents to chop his wood. I told him to shove it up his—”
“Let me get this straight,” Carella said. “You wanted him to chop wood for you, is that right, Iverson?”
Iverson nodded and said nothing.
“And you offered him twenty-five cents?”
“Twenty-five an hour,” Iverson said. “That’s what I always paid him before.”
“Yeah, and that’s why I quit choppin’ wood for you, you cheap bastard. That’s why I start workin’ for Mr. Lasser.”
“But you used to work for Mr. Iverson here, is that it?” Hawes asked.
“Las’ year, I used to work for him. But he was only paying me twenty-five cents an hour, and Mr. Lasser he offers me fifty cents an hour, so I quits here and goes there. I ain’t no fool.”
“Is this true, Iverson?”
“I gave him more work,” Iverson said. “I paid less, but there was more work, more hours.”
“That was only until Mr. Lasser start getting all your customers,” Whitson said.
“What do you mean?” Hawes asked.
“All the people here in this building, they starts going next door for they wood. To Mr. Lasser.”
They were staring at Iverson now, staring at the huge man with his hands dangling clumsily at his sides, his teeth nibbling at the soft flesh inside his mouth, his eyes wary and alert, a look of animal disarray about him.
“Is this true, Mr. Iverson?” Carella asked.
Iverson did not answer.
“Mr. Iverson, I want to know if this is true,” Carella said.
“Yes, yes, it’s true,” Iverson said.
“That all your customers started going to Mr. Lasser for their wood?”
“Yes, yes,” Iverson said. “That don’t mean nothing. It don’t mean I…”
Iverson cut himself off. The basement was silent.
“What doesn’t it mean, Mr. Iverson?”
“Nothing.”
“You were about to say something, Mr. Iverson.”
“I said all I got to say.”
“Your customers all began going to Mr. Lasser, is that right?”
“I told you yes! What do you want from me? My head is bleeding. He hit me on the head. Why are you asking me the questions?”
“How did you feel about that?” Carella asked.
“About what?”
“About your wood customers leaving you?”
“I…look, I…I had nothing to do with it.”
“With what?”
“I was angry, yes, but…”
Again Iverson stopped talking. He stared at Carella and Hawes who were watching him quietly and solemnly. And then, for whatever reasons of his own, perhaps because he felt he could no longer communicate, perhaps because he felt he had walked into a trap and the jaws had closed upon him, his face changed and a decision moved across it as visibly as if it had been stamped there in ink. Without another word he turned swiftly and reached for the ax Hawes had propped against the side of the bin. He lifted the ax easily and effortlessly, so quickly that Carella barely had time to move out of its path as it swung around like a baseball bat aimed at his head.
“Duck!” Hawes shouted, and Carella immediately threw himself flat on the floor, rolling over onto his left shoulder as Hawes’s shot rang out behind him, reaching for the service revolver in the holster at his hip just as Hawes got off his second shot. He heard someone grunt in pain, and then Iverson was standing over him with a huge blot of blood spreading on the front of his overalls, the ax raised high over his head, the way it must have been raised on that Friday afternoon just before he had finally sunk it into the skull of George Lasser. Carella knew there was no time to raise the pistol. He knew there was no time to scramble away, no time to dodge the blow. The ax was already at its apogee. It would descend in another split instant.
Whitson threw himself for what seemed the length of the basement, sailing into the air in a flying leap, the entire huge and muscular hulk of him colliding with Iverson’s immense body. Iverson staggered back against the furnace and the ax head crashed against the cast-iron door with a furiously ringing clang and then fell clattering to the cement floor. Iverson pushed himself off the furnace and reached for the ax again, but Whitson had drawn back his right hand, the fist bunched, and then his arm shot out with stunning force, straight and true and unerring, and Iverson’s head snapped back as though his neck were broken, and he collapsed to the floor.
“You okay?” Hawes asked.
“I’m okay,” Carella said. “Sam?”
“I’m fine,” Whitson said.
“He did it for the wood business,” Hawes said, astonished. “He did it for the lousy two-bit wood business.”
I did it for the wood business, Iverson said.
I did it because he stole the wood business from me. The wood business was my idea. Before I became super in 4113, the fireplaces was all boarded up and plastered up. It was me who made the fireplaces work, give the tenants heat. It was me who first thought up the idea of the wood business.
George stole the business from me.
First he starts bringing in big logs from the country where he lives, him and his crazy wife. Then he steals the handyman away from me. He offers him 50¢ an hour to chop up the logs—sure he’s going to take it, who wouldn’t? I don’t mind when he sells the wood to his own tenants. That’s his building, he can do what he wants. But then he starts selling to my tenants, and that I don’t like.
When I go down the basement next door the beginning of the year to tell him about it, I didn’t mean to kill him. He’s sitting there counting his money, putting it in a coffee can, writing down his sales in a black book, putting that in the coffee can, too. When I tell him he has to leave my tenants alone, he starts to laugh. So I went out back to the toolshed and then I came down the basement again with the ax. When he sees the ax, he starts laughing again, so I hit him with it. He comes at me, and he grabs for my clothes, but I keep hitting him, and finally I hit him across the throat. I know he is dead from that one, but I keep hitting him anyway, and he falls down, and I put the ax in his head and leave it there.
I emptied the money from the coffee can—there was $7.50, it rightfully belonged to me. I also took the black book because half the tenants in it, they belong to me.
I wiped off the shelf and also the coffee can. I didn’t want to leave no fingerprints. Then I filled the coffee can with things from the other cans, so no one would know there’d been money in it.