His name was Arnold Beeworthy. I found him in the Queens directory, on 74th Road. He was the only Arnold Beeworthy in New York City. NEwtown 9-9970. I called from a drugstore, and a sleepy, heavy baritone answered. I said, “Did you used to work for the New York Times?”
“I still do. What the hell time is it?”
“A little after one.”
“Oh. All right, I ought to get up anyway. Hold on a second.”
I heard the click of the lighter, then he came back. “All right, what is it?”
“You once did a profile of my father, Willard Kelly.”
“I did? When?”
“1931.”
“Holy hell, boy, don’t talk like that!”
“It wasn’t you?” He didn’t sound old enough.
“It was me, but you don’t have to remind me.”
“Oh. Can I come out and talk to you?”
“Why not? But make it this afternoon, if you can. I have to go to work at eight.”
“All right.”
We had lunch first, but didn’t go back to the hotel. Then we went out to Queens. We started on the same route as yesterday, when we went to see McArdle. Then we turned off onto Woodhaven Boulevard.
The cross-streets were all numbered. Some of them were avenues and some of them were roads and some of them were streets. We saw 74th Avenue. The next block was the one we wanted, 74th Road.
Beeworthy lived in a block of brick two-story houses all attached together at the sides. His was in the middle. There was a white-painted, jagged-edged board on a stick set into the middle of the narrow lawn. Reflector letters were on the board: BEEWORTHY. It looked like one name, and sounded like another.
A woman who hadn’t had Eddie Kapp for a brother or Robert Campbell for a husband opened the door, smiling at us, saying we must be Kelly. Both of us? “That’s right. I’m Ray and this is Bill.”
“Come in. Arnie’s chewing bones in his den.”
It was the kind of house sea captains are supposed to retire in. Small and airy rooms, with lots of whatnots around.
We went downstairs to the cellar. It had been finished. There was a game room with knotty pine walls. To the right there was a knotty-pine door. A sign on it said, snarl. It had been hand-lettered, with a ruler.
She knocked, and somebody inside snarled. She opened the door and said, “Two Kellys. They’re here.”
“More coffee,” he said.
“I know.” She turned to us. “How do you like your coffee?”
“Just black. Both of us.”
“All right, fine.”
She went upstairs, and we went into the den. Arnold Beeworthy was a big patriarch with a gray bushy mustache. Maybe he’d always looked forty. If he was writing profiles for the Times in 1931, he had to be nearly sixty anyway.
The den was small and square. Rubble and paraphernalia and things around the walls and on the tables. A desk to the right, old and beaten, with mismatched drawer handles. Cartoons and calendars and photographs and matchbooks and notes were thumbtacked to the wall over the desk. A filing cabinet was to the left of the desk, second drawer open. A manila folder lay open on top of all the other junk on the desk.
His swivel chair squawked. He said, “It’s too early to stand. How are you?” He jabbed a thick hand at us.
After the handshake and the introductions, Bill took the kitchen chair and I found a folding chair where Beeworthy said it would be, behind the drape.
“1931 is a long time ago,” said Beeworthy. He tapped the open folder. “I didn’t remember the piece you meant. Had to look it up.” He swiveled the chair around and smacked his palm against the side of the open file drawer. “I’ve got a file here,” he said, “of every damn thing I’ve ever written. Some day it’ll come in handy. I can’t think how.” He grinned at himself. “Maybe I’ll write a book for George Braziller,” he said. “It’s fantastic how things that are exciting in life can be so dull in print. I wonder if the reverse is true. It’s a stupid world. And what can I do for you two?” He aimed a thick finger at Bill. “Do you look like your father?”
“I guess so,” said Bill. “That’s what people say.”
“One thing triggers another. When you called, I didn’t know a Kelly from a kilowatt. Then I read that damn thing, and I remembered the look of that son of a bitch Silber in court, and then I remembered the lawyer. Wore a blue suit. I can’t remember what color tie. Anyway, I’m sorry about that piece. I was young and idealistic, then. Went with a girl, a Jewish Communist vegetarian from the Bronx. She gave speeches in bed. That was 1931, a Communist then was somebody who didn’t change their shorts every day. I’ve never been any damn good at interviews, I always do all the talking myself.” The finger shot out at me this time, and he said, “What the hell are you so mad about?”
I realized then how tense my face muscles were. I tried to relax them, and it felt awkward, as though I were staring.
He grinned at me. “Okay, you’ve got a problem. It’s a little late to be mad at me for what I said about your father thirty years ago. I take it this is something more current.”
I said, “Two months ago Monday, somebody murdered my father. The cops gave up. It’s something from before 1940. We need names.”
He sat still for a few seconds, looking at me, and then he got to his feet and took one step to his right. “I want to record this. Do you mind?”
“Yes.”
He looked back at me. One hand was on the tape control. “Why?”
“We don’t want anything in the paper. They’re after us, too. The whole family. They killed his wife already, three weeks ago.”
Bill said, “Two weeks and three days.”
“All right, this is off the record. Nothing in the paper unless you say so. Unless and until.” He stepped back, pulled open a green metal locker door, pointed at the shelf. Red and black tape boxes. “I save that crap, too,” he said. “Interviews that go back nine years. Useless. Not a celebrity in the crowd.”
There was a knock at the door. He snarled, and his wife called, “Open up, my hands are full.”
Bill jumped up and opened the door.
She had a round tray that said Ruppert’s Knicker -bocker Beer on it. She set the three cups of coffee around on spaces we cleared. She smiled at everybody, but didn’t say anything, and went right out again, closing the door after her. Beeworthy said, “Will you take my word for it?”
I wanted his cooperation. He was a complicated string-saver. I said, “All right.”
“Fine.” He clicked it on, and the tape reels started slowly turning. He went back to the desk and sat down and pushed papers out of the way, and there was the microphone.
Then he had me tell the story, in detail. I didn’t like spending the time, but I was the one asking the favor.
He was a fake. He knew how to interview. Three or four times he asked questions, and filled in sections I’d blurred. He said, “You’re grabbing for the wrong end of the horse. Find out who’s around now, and then see which of them knew your father when. I could do that probably easier than you. Some of Eddie Kapp’s old cronies, maybe. Let me dig around in the files—not here, at the paper—and I’ll give you a call on Monday. Where you staying?”
“I don’t think there’ll ever be any story in this,” I said. “Not that I’d want you to print.”
He laughed and tugged at his mustache. “Don’t believe the reporters you see in the movies,” he said. “The age of creative journalism is dead. Stories today are things editors point at. I want this for me, strictly for my own distraction and edification.” He got up and switched off the tape recorder. “What I really ought to be doing,” he said, looking at the tape reels, “I ought to be editing some small-town paper somewhere. Up in New England somewhere. I never made the move. I should have made the goddamn move.” He turned back. “I’ll look things up,” he said. “Where can I get in touch with you?”
“Amington Hotel.”
“I’ll call you Monday.”
He went upstairs with us. His wife showed up long enough to say goodbye. She smiled and said, “I hope you didn’t sell him a treasure map. I don’t think I could take another treasure map.”
Bill grinned. “No treasure map,” he said.
Beeworthy handed her his cup. “Coffee,” he said.
He stood in the doorway as we went down the walk to the car. He looked too big for the house. He said, “I’ll call you Monday.”