“You don’t think the FBI’s gonna do that?”
“It might take them a while and that might be too late.”
“Just give me the name and we’ll have what you want in fifteen minutes. Well, hell, maybe thirty.”
A half hour later, Coin Kensington walked Kelly to the door. Kelly turned and held out his hand. “Thank you, Mr. Kensington. I’ll let you know what happens.”
Kensington nodded and then scratched the top of his bald head. He looked almost embarrassed. “Your dad leave you any money, son?”
“Yes, he left me some.”
“You wouldn’t want to come study it with me, would you?”
“Study it?”
“I mean study what it really is. You can make a lot of it while you’re studying, if you want to do that, too.”
Kelly looked at the fat old man. He’s lonely, too, I guess. The nation’s wise man is lonely just like everybody else. “What is money, Mr. Kensington?”
The old man brightened. “You come back, son. You come back when you’re done with all this and I’ll tell you.”
Kelly grinned. “I may just do that.”
Coin Kensington looked at Kelly closely and the bright expression faded from the old man’s face. “No, you won’t come back.”
“Why not?”
“Because, son, to learn about money, you gotta be mean and—” Kensington broke off.
“And what?”
“You’re just not mean enough.”
At three o’clock that afternoon Kelly knocked on the door of apartment 612 in a three-year-old building in Southwest Washington. The door was opened by a man who hadn’t shaved that day, or the day before, or the day before that. He stared at Kelly for a moment before he said, “You should’ve called.”
“I took a chance. You busy?”
The man shook his head. “No, I’m not busy.”
“Can I come in?”
“It’s not cleaned up.”
“That won’t bother me.”
The man shrugged. “Come on in.”
Inside Kelly saw that a coffee table was littered with two empty vodka bottles, a half-full one, four crumpled, empty packs of Lucky Strikes, two brimful ashtrays, three smeared glasses, and a .38 revolver. The man took a chair near the vodka and the pistol.
“You want a drink?” he said, and for the first time Kelly noticed the slight slur in his speech.
“No, thanks.”
“You never liked me, did you, Kelly?”
“That’s got nothing to do with it.”
“You never liked me and your dad never liked me.”
“Why did you do it?”
“Why did I do what?”
“Why did you have the chief killed, Fred?”
Fred Mure’s hand moved out and closed around the butt of the revolver. He picked it up and rested it in his lap, not aiming it at anything.
“I loved him, Kelly,” Mure said, his face distorting it self into a parody of grief, although real grief often seems to parody itself. “I loved him like a—”
“Like a son, Fred.”
“That ain’t nice to say.”
“How much did it cost you, Fred, twelve thousand dollars? That’s what you took out of your savings account on July twenty-fifth.”
“Sadie was gonna marry me. We were gonna get married.”
“Sadie never said that.”
“She didn’t have to say it. I knew. I could tell.”
“You mean you took Sadie to bed a few times when the chief couldn’t get it up and you thought it was true romance. Hell, the chief knew all about it and Sadie knew that he knew.”
“He told me—” Mure said. “He told me... uh—”
“What’d he tell you, Fred?”
Fred Mure’s eyes bulged and his mouth twisted. “He told me to stop fucking his wife!” It came out as a long, loud shout.
“After he died, what did Sadie say?”
“She wouldn’t see me. She wouldn’t even talk to me.”
“Jesus,” Kelly said and wiped his hands on his trousers as though they were soiled. “Who’d you hire to do it, Fred? Who’d you broker it through?”
“Goff,” Mure said. “Truman Goff.”
“You got his name out of the papers. Who set it up for you?”
“I killed Goff,” Mure said, and there was pride in his tone now. “I killed him after he killed Don. I killed Don’s murderer.”
“You shit, too,” Kelly snapped. “Who’d you broker it through? Who’d you pay the money to?”
“Bill,” Mure whispered, clutching the revolver more tightly.
“Bill who?”
“Just Bill.”
“Where’d you find him?”
“It was a phone number that I got from some guy I met in a bar. I don’t know who he was. Just some guy. He said if I ever wanted anything done, all I had to do was call that number in New York at ten sharp on any Wednesday.”
“What was the number?”
“382-1094,” Mure said. “Area code 212.”
“Pay phone,” Kelly said. He got up. “Come on, Fred, I’m taking you down.”
“You’re not a cop. You’re not a cop anymore.”
“Let’s go.”
Mure seemed to remember the gun he held in his hand. He aimed it at Kelly. “You’re not taking me nowhere, Kelly. You’re not a cop.”
“Go on, Fred, pull the trigger. Get it over with.” Kelly held his breath and then let it out to say, “You want a real fat mess? Then go ahead. Pull the trigger.”
Fred Mure looked down at the gun, examining it as if he had never seen it before. “They gave it back to me,” he said. “The Pittsburgh cops. They gave it back to me.”
“Let’s go, Fred.”
“Oh, God, I don’t want to live!” Fred moaned and then visibly brightened at the thought. He looked slyly at Kelly, darted across the room, down a short hall, and into the bathroom. As Kelly followed he heard the click of the lock on the bathroom door.
Kelly waited. After a moment, Fred Mure called: “You won’t have to worry about me no more, Kelly. Nobody will. I’m gonna shoot myself.”
Kelly waited some more.
“Tell Sadie. Tell Sadie I still love her.”
Kelly kept on waiting.
“I’m no fuckin good!” Mure screamed.
Kelly waited.
“I’m gonna do it now, Kelly.”
Kelly said nothing. He only waited.
“I hate this fuckin world!” Fred Mure yelled through the door.
Kelly waited another full minute before the door opened and Mure slowly came out, his eyes downcast, a sheepish, embarrassed look on his face. “I just couldn’t do it, Kelly.”
“That’s what I was afraid of.”
29
On October 26, a Saturday, the gray-haired man who sometimes called himself Just Bill came out of his apartment building on West Fifty-seventh and turned left. In his right hand he held a leash that was attached to an aged English pit bull that waddled as it walked and wheezed as it breathed. In his left hand, Just Bill carried a brown, oblong, stamped and addressed manila envelope.
“Come on, Dum-Dum,” Just Bill said to the dog and strolled slowly down the block toward the mailbox. Half way there he stopped and bought a New York Daily News because its screamer headline had caught his eye:
Just Bill raised his eyebrows as he read the story while waiting at a lamppost for Dum-Dum to relieve himself. As he walked on toward the mailbox, Just Bill ran the facts of the story through his mind to determine whether any of them might implicate him. When he was satisfied that there was no possible way that they could, he smiled slightly, and checked the envelope again to make sure its address was correct:
Mr. Karl Syftestad
Room 518
Benser Building
Minneapolis, Minnesota 55401
Just Bill read the address twice to make sure it was right, nodded to himself in a satisfied way, and dropped the envelope into the mailbox.