“Listen, then. Kellum has a guilt complex a mile wide because of his perversion. It ain’t doing what comes naturally to most people, as the expression goes. Kellum feels terrible about it and wants to be hurt so he can expiate his sins. Not that I’ve made a study of it or anything. I just read about it once.”
“O.K. I’ll buy so far. What has that got to do with…”
“You hurt Kellum and he’ll like you for it. He’s liable to hang around you like a Pekinese lap dog.”
I shrugged, then said, “I’ve got most of the pieces of the puzzle now. I need a few more and I’ll get the picture. But I can’t make change ten hours a day and make progress, too.”
“If you quit, what will you use for money?”
“I still have some government bonus left. Don’t worry about that.”
“Why don’t you leave it to the police, Gid? This had nothing to do with murder and look what happened to you. Maybe the police are slow, but they get results. They’re here every day, poking around and asking questions and getting facts which they’ll put together and come up with a killer.”
“Look what happened to the other guy,” I said jauntily. I didn’t feel jaunty. I ached all over and the way Karen averted her eyes I must have looked a mess.
“I don’t care what happened to the other guy. I care what happened to you. I love you, Gid. Do you love me back?”
I looked at her and watched her staring at my cut face. I said, “I, uh, love you back. And your front, and your sides and top and bottom and all over. Now will you let me up? I’ve got to see a man about his wife.”
Karen let me go, all right, but not until I’d become a walking advertisement for Bandaids. I toted my freshly covered scars in the direction of Ben Lutz’s place. Now I knew how a beautiful woman felt walking down the street. Only, of course, everyone was gawking at Bandaids now.
Ben was outside lowering his awning with a long metal pole. “Going to be a strong sun today,” he said. “What happened to you, Frey?”
“You,” I repeated because it always told people to stop talking about the fight, “ought to see the other guy. Ben, I want to talk to you.”
He jerked a thumb toward the entrance. “Come on inside.”
I followed him in and sat at the bar while he went around behind it and sprayed some blue liquid at the mirror with a squirt bottle and then began to rub it clean. His eyes tried to peel off the Bandaids and see what they covered. “Drink’s on the house.”
This wasn’t exactly the cocktail hour, but Ben poured a double from a Seagram’s Seven bottle and lowered a bombshell. “Goddamn, Frey. How do you people do it? I even had you fooled, it tastes so much like the real thing. You see, Becky woke me up last night and made a confession. We don’t keep secrets, the wife and I. It makes me a little scared to hear I’m finally going to move up in the old organization after all this time.
“I’m forty-three years old, Frey. I’ve gone through the first forty-three years keeping my nose clean. But now I’m beginning to poke my nose into things. Becky says it’s the only way to get ahead. I say I don’t know, but there’s only one way to find out. Do you really think I’m ready to move up the ladder, Frey?”
It tastes so much like the real thing.
… So they manufactured bathtub brew at Tolliver’s. At least, that’s what it looked like. But what the hell, there wasn’t any Prohibition. So why go to all that trouble to get yourself a reservation at Sing Sing or some such place? I didn’t know but I could find out. All I had to do was go on convincing people I was a big wheel in what Ben called the organization. And maybe find myself floating out on the tide with the sewage that polluted Coney Island waters.
“You want to know what Becky told me? She figures you for the letter writer himself. It makes sense. Bert Archer gets ornery. He wants out. So what happens? You come along and Bert dies.”
I leaned across the bar and balled up the front of Ben’s T-shirt and pulled him toward me. “Listen, punk,” I said. “If you know anything else about Bert Archer and how he died, start talking.”
“Hey, go easy. I didn’t mean anything. I figured Bert found out Karen Tanner had gone along with the organization and he didn’t want any part of it. When he finally went to the cops he must’ve figured she’d get off with a light sentence or something. Only he was so naive you know what he did? He marched his story straight down to Billy Drake!” Ben rolled laughter around in his mouth. “Can you imagine that? Billy comes right back and tells Mr. Soolpovar and the rest of us. Naturally we tell the letter writer we’ve got a blabbermouth with us.”
“Naturally,” I said.
“The way I figure it, though, you’re not him, Mr. Frey. You’re not the letter writer. Maybe you’re his right hand man. You probably know who he is, but since he’s never come out in the open and shown himself, I guess he wouldn’t do that now.” Ben scowled. “The fact that he conducts all his business by mail means he’s someone we know only he doesn’t want us in on the fact he’s boss. I’m probably telling you something you already know, but the letter writer must be Mr. Soolpovar, or that there tangerine, Kellum. Might even be Karen Tanner. But it better not be Vito, nossir. Otherwise I’ve put my foot in something up to here.” Ben drew a line across his throat.
“You’ve left out two people,” I reminded him. “It could be either Mrs. Lutz or yourself.”
Ben laughed again. “But you’d know. You’d know and so would I. It’s got to be one of the others.”
“You’re quite astute, Ben.”
“Listen, I don’t want you to say anything you’d rather keep mum, but it isn’t Vito, is it?”
“Why don’t you ask Vito?” I said.
“Hey, now, wait a minute. I thought you said I was ready to move up and all.”
“I did. I didn’t say when. And moving up doesn’t mean horning in on the boss’ private business. You’ll be told what to do and when to do it.”
I left Ben with a bad taste in my mouth. Lovely characters at Tolliver’s, all of them — and not a one innocent. From Soolpovar through Kellum and on down to Vito and the Lutz’s there wasn’t a fragrant blossom in the bunch. Too bad about Sheila, though.
But it was Karen who left the bad taste in my mouth. From what I could gather Karen had taken over Bert’s business for him while he fought in Korea and had drifted right along with the tide at Tolliver’s, getting polluted with it. Karen was left holding the bag when Bert came back and she didn’t know what to do with it. If Bert sold out they might be suspicious of him and decide to do something about it. So he went to the cops — to Billy Drake. Great. It wasn’t bad enough I’d fallen for my dead best friend’s ex-fiancee. It now turned out she was responsible for his dying in the first place.
I took a long walk and didn’t go near Tolliver’s the rest of that day. Sooner or later I’d have to see Karen, but one part of me would want to kiss her and hold the firmness of her against me and murmur those nice things she insisted on while the other part would want to whale the tar out of her and curse and go off in a huff.
I took half a dozen ice cold bottles of High Life back to my room. By the time I uncapped the third bottle it had warmed to room temperature, so I smoked a few cigarettes and hit the sack, still stewing. I continued stewing all day Saturday.
Sunday morning I went down the hall to the communal bath and waited till the shower stopped hissing inside. Presently a small runty woman whose flaccid breasts revealed themselves wetly under a thin dressing gown emerged from the bathroom with a smile for all the world and mostly me. I wasn’t having any and it seemed to disappoint her.
“Foggy morning,” she said.
“Umm.”
“I haven’t seen you before, Mr.—”