“So?”
“So maybe you ain’t so dumb, after all — although I gotta say comin’ here wasn’t smart on your part. It’d figure I’d have this place spotted, wouldn’t it?” He paused, then added slyly, “Or maybe there’s somethun here you didn’t want to leave behind. Like the Styversent haul, for instance.”
“All the dough I got in the world is here,” I said. “My travelin’ money.”
He stared. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. “I’ve got a friend,” he said finally, “who would be satisfied with half of the Styversent jewels. Three pieces. You could wrap ’em in a box, Garcia, and mail the box to R. M. McCracken, 451 °Crescent, City.”
“What for?”
His shrug was slight. “The price may seem a bit heavy, but freedom costs, right? Figure it that way if you wanna.”
“I might,” I conceded, “if I had the stones.”
He scowled. “You keep goin’ dumb on me. I don’t like that.”
“And I don’t know nothun’ ’bout no jewels,” I insisted.
“So what did you just dig out of the bed springs — potatoes?”
“My travelin’ money.” I showed him the fold of bills in my hand.
His scowl deepened. He seemed to be thinking hard. “How much?”
“Two hundred.”
“That ain’t much.”
“It’s all I got.”
“No jewels?”
“No.”
“If I ever find out you’re lyin’ to me, Garcia, you’re dead.”
The way I saw it, I could be dead in the next thirty seconds. I didn’t have what he wanted. And it was no trick to shoot down an escaped prowler who was resisting arrest, no trick to find some kind of weapon and jam it in the prowler’s hand after the shooting.
I felt as if I was walking a very thin thread between life and death as Keever sat there staring up at me, and I held out the fold of bills, turning meek again. “It’s all I got. Honest.”
He eyed the bills. Then he snubbed out his cigarette and stood. He ignored my extended hand. He went to my door, stopped, looked back.
“You can put the two hundred in the mail, Garcia, if you think that’s the right thing to do. My friend ain’t gonna turn handsprings over it, but it could buy you a little time, I guess.”
“I can leave town?” I asked.
“You can try if you’re not scared of endin’ up in a box,” he nodded.
“Buy if I pay—”
“My friend’s gonna wanna think ’bout you. Like I said, he’s gonna be disappointed, not findin’ jewels in his mailbox. He had big ideas for you, Garcia. I mean, he figured a guy who collects suspicions but damn few busts...
“Well, he figured that kind of guy has a little savvy, might be interested in a soft touch or two, you know, on a partnership basis, sorta, where two guys could profit... but now I dunno. You’re gonna seem like awful small spuds to my friend, I think.”
Keever left. I went to the chair he had vacated and sat on the edge. I felt like a condemned man who had been granted last second reprieve. I also felt frustrated. I’d wanted Keever to take the two hundred.
Or had I?
I got up and paced. Keever’s R. M. McCracken had surprised me. But the McCracken angle confirmed something else too. It’d take time to set up an R. M. McCracken at a legitimate address. And 451 °Crescent had to be legitimate or the mail gimmick wouldn’t produce. McCracken could be Keever, probably was — or McCracken could be McCracken, a partner.
Either way, Keever wasn’t setting up his first take. So who had been his prowlers before me? And where were they now? How many of them had been labled “victim of gangland slaying?”
And how many “touches” had they lasted? One? Two?
I felt as if I was breathing on borrowed time. I got the small Saturday Night Special from the false bottomed suitcase and put it under the pillow on the sagging bed. The next morning it was in my trouser pocket as I walked to a Post Office substation and mailed an envelope.
I was especially alert to all sounds, all movements after I left the substation. But no sniper cut me down in the first ten blocks of walking, and I began to breath easier. My borrowed time was taking on some stature.
The house at 451 °Crescent was a pale green bungalow. It sat nestled among other bungalows on the quiet street in the quiet neighborhood. There were young trees, grass and other green things growing all over the area. Middle class lived on Crescent. Lawn mowers, tricycles, and sprinklers dotted the front yards.
R. M. McCracken was a surprise again.
Her Christian name was Rhonda. She was about thirty, rather tall, dark-haired, pleasantly attractive, and lived alone in the bungalow. She drove a 1971 blue Volkswagen sedan. But no one really knew her.
She was some kind of saleslady. She traveled. She was at the bungalow only on weekends, normally arriving after dark on Friday evenings and leaving on Sunday evenings.
No one had ever seen a visitor arrive or leave the bungalow. A high school boy kept the bungalow yard shaped for her. He was paid weekly in cash by mail.
None of this was particularly difficult for me to learn.
Keever came to my place in the early hours of Thursday morning. He let himself inside. The sound awoke me. I jerked into a sitting position in the bed and yanked the small gun from under the pillow.
Keever told me to take it easy, and then he closed the door and stood in the dark. I kept the gun gripped tightly in my hand under the bed sheet. Keever was a dark bulk against the door. He didn’t move.
“There’s an old guy named Albert Wineschlager,” he said. “Lives alone in a ground floor back room at 6807 Morgan. I think you’ll find his place interesting, Garcia.”
I felt tremendous relief. I’d gained reprieve again. But I said, “Yeah?” making it sound as if I was tremendously suspicious. Which was not difficult.
“Look,” Keever said from the heavy shadow around the door, “do you want this guy, or don’tcha? You ain’t in the best position in the goddam world, yuh know. Like I figured, my friend wasn’t very goddamn happy ’bout a lousy two hundred clams. But he does like your sheet. Only two busts outta twenty pickups, he figures yuh gotta have some talent. Now, if you ain’t—”
“Okay, okay,” I said quickly.
“Okay, what?”
“I’m in.”
“It keeps you livin’, Garcia — and it’s gonna get you more than two hundred clams.”
I ignored the sarcasm and asked, “My choice on hitting this guy?”
“No choice. You sit out today, you hit tonight. Eleven or after. The old man watches television til ’round ten-thirty, seldom later. When his lights go out, you hit him.”
“Hold it. I don’t hit places where people are at home.”
“This time you’re gonna, Garcia, ’cause Wineschlager seldom goes out — and never at night.”
“But—”
“As long as yuh don’t kill the old devil, I don’t care how yuh get to him. Sap him, take along a pipe, I don’t care. But don’t kill him. Just clean out his place.” Keever paused, and then added, “And remember, I’ll read the squeal at the precinct station. So I’ll know how much you find. You mail half.”
“To R. M. McCracken...” It was my turn for sarcasm.
Keever snarled, “Half!” And then he departed as quickly as he had arrived.
His interest in Albert Wineschlager puzzled me when I discovered that the old geezer was a laugh along Morgan Street.
Wineschlager was a pensioner and a recluse. He was supposed to be senile, his mind sharp at times and as foggy as a London night at other times. But I figured Keever had his reasons. He wouldn’t send me here for nothing. A test? Maybe.