“I just got to the office,” I told her. I knew I should explain more than that, but I was looking at the wreckage that was supposed to have been an impregnable filing cabinet, and I was just a little too distracted.
“I heard there was an explosion,” she said, rapid and excited. “I heard you’d been in an explosion, and you were taken to the hospital—”
“I just fell down and cut myself,” I told her. “That’s all. They let me out right away.”
“I’ve been trying everywhere,” she wailed. “Your home phone wasn’t working, and nobody seemed to know where you were, and I’ve been going absolutely frantic here—”
So I told her about my night and my morning and what there’d been so far of my afternoon, and about Harcum keeping me in the clink overnight, and when I was finished, she said, “Tim, I’m scared.”
“I’ve been scared for hours,” I told her. I thought about the bomb in the car, which I hadn’t told her about, and I knew it was true. I’d been scared for hours, and I’d been too keyed up to notice it.
“What are you going to do?” she asked me.
“At four o’clock I’m going to talk to Jordan Reed.”
“What can he do? He promised you yesterday there wouldn’t be anything else like this.”
“I don’t know what he can do,” I told her truthfully.
“What if he can’t do anything?”
“Then I go see Paul Masetti.”
“You ought to go see him now,” she said. “You ought to see him right away.”
“I’ll wait till after I talk to Jordan Reed,” I said.
“Tim, you can’t trust these people, you can’t try to get along with them, it’s too late to smooth things over.”
I was afraid she was right, and I didn’t want her to be right, so I got annoyed and said, “I’ll handle it, Cathy. Don’t worry about it, I can take care of myself.”
“Tim, please. Listen to me.”
“I’ll pick you up at five o’clock,” I told her. “I’ll let you know what happened.”
“Tim, please.”
“I’ve got to hang up, Cathy,” I said.
“Tim...”
I hung up, and stood looking out the window toward City Hall. Why had this all happened, why had the whole thing blown up in my face like this? I’d made the best deal I could, I’d balanced everything, worked to get along with everybody, worked to do my own job well and be both accepted and needed, and everything was going along fine. Everything had been going along fine for a decade and a half. And now it was all blowing up in my face.
The phone jangled again. My hand was still on the receiver, and I automatically picked it up, the second it started to ring. Then I regretted the movement, afraid it was Cathy again, with more of her fears and advice.
But it wasn’t. A voice like gravel said, “Tim?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Jack Wycza,” he said. “What the hell is going on downtown?”
“Everything,” I told him. “Or do you mean something in particular?”
“I mean Reed and that gang trying to crucify me,” he said.
“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised,” I told him. “One of them is trying to murder me, so I don’t suppose they’d stop at crucifying you.”
“Listen,” he said. He sounded harsh and frantic. “Listen, I don’t like phones. Come out here. I got to talk to you, Tim, come on out here. Out to the candy store.”
I had three hours before my meeting with Jordan Reed. It might not be a bad idea to be up on the North Side, away from my usual haunts, until the time to see Reed arrived.
“Tim, listen,” he said into my hesitation. “I always played square with you, you know that. I’ve done you favors. You got to come out here.”
“All right,” I said.
“The candy store,” he said again.
“I’ll be right there,” I told him.
I hung up, stepped over the demolished filing cabinet, and went out to the hall. I didn’t bother to close the office door behind me.
I was midway down the hall when the elevator door slid open ahead of me and Harcum stepped out, with Ed Jason and Hal Ganz in his wake. I thought at first he had come up to see me, but the surprise and uneasiness on his face when he caught sight of me told me different.
“Hi, Tim,” he said, awkwardly, and hurried on by me.
Hal Ganz gave me a big smile. “Well, Tim,” he started, “we found the—”
“Shut up!” Harcum had wheeled around and was glaring at Hal.
Hal blinked and looked confused, but he didn’t say any more.
“By the way, Harcum,” I said. “You might take a look in my office while you’re up here.” Then I went on down to the elevator. Jack, the operator, was holding it for me. I stepped on board, and we dropped toward the street.
I wondered what Harcum had found, that he didn’t want me to know about.
Eighteen
The People’s Candy Store was on Kosciusko Street, a street running up the side of one of the steepest hills in creation. Cars were parked up and down both sides of it, and I had to leave the Ford a block away and walk back down the hill to the store.
Inside, the People’s Candy Store was just what it claimed to be, a candy store occupied by people. But it was other things, too. I stood by the candy counter while a couple of small-fry made up their minds what to do with four cents, and then I told the proprietor, a short, shiny-spectacled, mustached little guy, “Jack Wycza’s expecting me. Tim Smith.”
“Mr. Smith,” he said, the words heavily accented. “Yes, he told me. Go right on up.” He pointed. “Through there, and up.”
“Yes, I know.”
I walked down the row of candy counters, through the door at the back, and into a room where eleven men with hats on their heads played poker at two large tables. A green shade over the lone window effectively kept out all daylight, and the room was lit by sixty-watt unshaded bulbs hung over each table. The air was blue with lazily hanging clouds of cigarette smoke. Coins tinkled and bills crackled, and the cards whispered as they were dealt.
Nobody paid me any attention, and I kept on going. A door in the right-hand wall opened on a flight of stairs. I climbed these to the horse-room on the second floor, which was now empty and dark, these windows, too, covered with dark green shades. I walked across the echoing wood floor to the door of Jack Wycza’s office. The door was closed. I knocked on it, somebody said to come in, and I went in.
Jack Wycza was sitting behind an ancient wooden desk. Two other men leaned against the far wall, on either side of the room’s lone window. A girl — I recognized her as yet another Wycza relative, a cousin of some kind named Cindy — sat in the room’s only other chair, painting her nails with fire-engine-red polish.
Jack Wycza perfectly fitted the part of the ward politician, from the hat shoved far back on his shiny balding dome, through the stogie in his face and the white shirt open at the collar and the wide dark tie with the loose crooked knot, to the fat gut jutting out over his belt and the big soft hands unused to manual labor. His eyes were small and wide-set, squinting now from the cigar smoke, and his jowls were heavy and beard-stubbled. And for the first time since I’d known him, he looked scared.
He took the cigar out of his mouth and pointed it at me. “Tim,” he said, and he had a slight trace of accent, though he’d been born in this country. “Tim, they asked you to finger me.”
“News gets around fast,” I said.
“You turned it down, huh?”
“Sure I did,” I said.
He grinned happily and nodded. “You ain’t working for them any more,” he said. “Ain’t that right?”
“I’ve never been working for them,” I told him. “I’ve never been working for anybody except me.”