Back at the room, there was a guy with Bill. He had on a brown suit with the coat open. His white shirt was bunched at the waist. He was thin and his tie was brown and orange and green and he wore a brown hat back on his head indoors.
Bill said, “This is Ed Johnson. He’s a private detective.”
Johnson grinned at me. “That’s right,” he said.
I frowned at Bill. “What the hell for?”
“We’re not going to get anywhere on our own. You got some jerky idea about Dad mixed up with the underworld. We need somebody who knows the ropes.”
I looked at Johnson. “Get out,” I said.
His grin faded. “Well, I don’t know,” he said. He looked from me to Bill to me. “I’ve been given a retainer, to check out a license plate.”
“We want to do that,” Bill told me.
I sat down and lit a cigarette. “We don’t want to spread our business around,” I told the match. “We don’t want to finger ourselves.”
“I’m trustworthy,” Johnson told me. “One hundred per cent.”
“Just the license, Ray,” said Bill. He sounded embarrassed.
Johnson said, “You couldn’t do it, I can.”
I shrugged. “The hell with it,” I said. “Go play with the license plate. It was on a Plymouth.”
He looked from face to face again, and then he said he’d be seeing us, and left.
Bill said, “That was a hell of a way to talk. He’s a nice guy.”
I said, “He’s a stranger.”
“We need somebody dispassionate. You’ve got this nutty idea—”
I took out the pad and read aloud from it. Then I tossed it on the dresser and said, “Smarten up.”
Bill pushed words into the silence like a man pushing logs into mud. “It wasn’t Dad. Willard Kelly, that isn’t an uncommon name. Hell, it’s my name, too.”
“Just a coincidence.”
“Sure.”
“Two Willard Kellys. Both the same age. Both in New York. Both lawyers. Both graduates of the same school.”
“Maybe. Why not?”
“You ought to go back to Binghamton, Bill. You’re blind in both eyes. You’ll get us in a lot of trouble.”
He looked at me, and then he went and sat on the bed. He sat in the middle of the bed, knees folded like a yogi. He looked big and pathetic. His blunt fingers, hairy and freckled, traced the pattern of the spread.
After a while, he said, “My father.”
A while longer and he said, “He wasn’t like that.”
“He changed. Reformed. Quit the syndicate and moved away.”
His eyes had sad, shredded edges. “That’s true?”
“Something like that.”
“That was really him, in the paper?”
“You know it.”
He made a fist and pounded the pattern. “How the hell can I have any respect for him?”
I popped the eye out and got to my feet. I put it on the dresser and said, “Get up, Bill.”
He was puzzled. “Why?”
“You lose respect too easy.”
“I don’t want to fight you, Ray.”
He came off the bed with his hands spread, and I hit him on the side of the jaw.
The third time I hit him, he swung back. I was at a disadvantage, I didn’t always judge the distance right. I walked into a few. I kept getting up. He started to cry, and his face was as red as his hair, and he kept knocking me down again. Then he put his hands at his sides and shook his head and whispered, “No more.” I got up and hit him with my left hand. He didn’t dodge or raise his arms or defend himself or fight back. I hit him with the right hand. And the left hand again. He blubbered, “No more.” I hit him right hand and then left hand. He dropped to his knees, and the vibration knocked the Gideon Bible off the nightstand. I hit him right hand, from the knees coming up, and he went over on his back. He wouldn’t get up.
I got the eye from the dresser and went into the head. I washed my face and watched myself put the eye in. It didn’t make me want to throw up any more. My knuckles were scraped and there was a ragged cut on the left side of my jaw.
I went back and sat down in the chair again. After a while, Bill sat up. He said, “All right.”
I said, “You going back to Binghamton?”
“No. You’re right.”
I wasn’t sure he knew. I said, “Why did you think I came here? To play Summer Festival?”
“No,” he said. “I know that.”
“Do you know what we’re doing here?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“We’re looking for the people who killed Dad.”
“For the cops?”
He looked at me. “Jesus,” he said. He shook his head and looked away. “No,” he said. “Not for the cops.”
“For us,” I said. “Why?”
He looked at me level this time. “Because he was our father.”
“That’s right,” I said.