Monday afternoon I called the other hotel. Beeworthy and Johnson had both called, leaving messages for me to call them back. Since I now knew it was Eddie Kapp I was looking for, at least to begin with, there wasn’t any point in calling either of them.
Bill went out for a deck of cards and was gone an hour. When he came back, he had a haircut and he said he didn’t know I’d be worried. We played cards and I walked around and the room got smaller. We went out after a while and went to see a movie up in the Bronx. Then we went to a bar.
Tuesday, I called Johnson, just to have something to do. He was frantic. He said, “Where the hell are you people? I’ve been going nuts. Did you move out or something?”
“Hell, no,” I said. “We’re still here. We aren’t around the room much.”
“Jesus Christ, I guess not. I’ve been over there half a dozen times. I was ready to think those guys got to you.”
“Not a peep,” I said.
“They haven’t been around at all?”
“Nope.”
“You son of a bitch, you’ve moved someplace else.”
I grinned. It was fine just to be talking to somebody. “We’re still registered at the Amington,” I told him, “and our suitcase is still there. I mean here.”
“All right, you shouldn’t trust me with the address, but you don’t have to lie to me.”
“We’re still at the Amington, Johnson,” I said.
“All right, all right.” He was irritated. “On that other thing,” he said, “do you want to hear what I’ve got to say or not?”
“It’s up to you.”
“Oh, crap. You’re just trying to get under my skin. I’ve got it narrowed down to two people. A cop named Fred Maine. And a guy named Dan Christie, he’s an investigator works for Northeastern Agency. It’s got to be one of those two. I’m pretty sure Maine gets two paychecks every week, one of them from the city. And Christie is a poker buddy of Sal Metusco, he’s a numbers collector midtown on the west side.”
“Keep up the good work,” I told him. I didn’t say anything about the veteran in the parking lot, because Johnson would only have told the next guy who broke his arm.
We talked a little, about nothing at all, and I said I’d call him back. I didn’t say when. Then I looked at Beeworthy’s number, but I resisted the impulse. He’d want to do a lot of interviewing, and I wasn’t in the mood.
Bill wanted to go to another movie that night, but I couldn’t take it. So we sat around the room and drank and after a while I threw a gin hand out the window. A little after midnight, we went down to 42nd Street and saw an important movie that had been made from a Broadway play called A Sound of Distant Drums. It was about homosexuality and what a burden it was, but the hero bore the burden girlfully. It didn’t convert me.
Wednesday we checked out of the hotel. We also went down and checked out of the Amington. We figured they were looking for us somewhere else by now, so we didn’t sneak around. Nobody noticed us particularly. Then we took the tube to Jersey City and got the car and drove up to Plattsburg. I rode in the back seat because I still couldn’t face highway driving in the right front. Sitting back there, I read the papers we’d bought in the city. The Post had an article about Eddie Kapp getting out of prison tomorrow. They were unhappy about it, and wanted to know if Eddie Kapp had really paid his debt to society. There was a blurred photo of him twenty-five years ago. No other paper referred to him at all.
In Plattsburg, we checked into a hotel on Margaret Street. Bill was bushed, he’d driven three hundred and thirty miles in eight hours. I went out alone and found a bar and traded war stories with a guy who’d been stationed in Japan. If he was telling the truth, he had a better time in Japan than I did in Germany. If I was telling the truth, so did I.
In the morning, we checked out again and drove the fifteen miles to Dannemora.
Dannemora is a little town. In most of it, you wouldn’t know there was a penitentiary around at all. The town doesn’t look dirty enough, or mean enough. But the penitentiary’s there, a high long wall next to the sidewalk along the street. The sidewalk’s cracked and frost-heaved over there. On the other side, it’s cleaner and there’s half a dozen bars with neon signs that say Budweiser and Genesee. National and local beers on tap. Bill had Budweiser and I had Genesee. It tasted like beer.
The bar was dark, but it was done in light wood lightly varnished and it was wider than it should have been for its depth. You got the feeling the bar wasn’t dark at all really, you were just slowly going blind. The bartender was a short wide man with a black mustache. There were two other customers, in red-and-black hunting jackets and high leather boots. They were local citizens, and they were drinking bar scotch with Canada Dry ginger ale.
The Post had said Eddie Kapp would be a free man at noon, but we didn’t know for sure. We got to town shortly before ten and sat on high stools in this bar where we could see the metal door in the wall across the way. I wasn’t sure I’d recognize Eddie Kapp. The picture in the Post was blurred and twenty-five years old. But he was sixty-one years of age. And how many people would be getting out all in one day?
We sat there and nursed our beers. I wore my shirt-tail out, and when I sat leaning forward with my elbows on the bar, the butt of Smitty’s gun stuck into my lowest rib. Bill had the same problem with the Luger.
At eleven-thirty a tan-and-cream Chrysler slid to the curb in front of the bar. Bill looked at it and turned to me and said, “Is that them? Is that the ones who killed Dad?”
I didn’t say anything. I was looking at the guy in the right front seat. I knew him when.
I started to get down from the stool, flipping the shirt-tail out of the way, but Bill grabbed my elbow and whispered, “Don’t be a jerk. Wait till Kapp comes out.”
I stood there, not moving one way or the other. The gun butt felt funny in my hand. The side that had been against my skin was hot and moist. The other side was cold and dry.
Then I said, “All right. You’re right.” He let me go and I said, “I’ll be right back.” I let go of the gun and smoothed the shirt-tail and walked down the length of the bar past the other two customers, who were talking to the bartender about trout. I went into the head. There was one stall. I went in there and latched the door and took the gun out from under my belt so I could lean over. Then I threw up in the toilet. I washed my mouth out at the sink and got back to the stall just in time to throw up again. I waited a minute, and then washed my mouth out again. There was a bubbled dirty mirror over the sink and I saw myself in it. I looked pale and young and unready. The gun barrel was cold against my hairless belly. I was a son of a bitch and a bad son.
I went back out and sat down at the stool and held my glass without drinking. Bill said, “Nothing new.” I didn’t answer him.
After a while, I got fantastically hungry, all of a sudden. I waited, but a little before one I asked the bartender what sandwiches he had and he said he had a machine that made hamburgers in thirty seconds. I ordered two and Bill ordered one. The machine was down at the other end of the bar, a chrome-sided infra-red cooker.
I was halfway through the second hamburger when the door across the street opened and an old man without a hat came out.
His suit, even from across the street, looked expensive and up to the minute. It hadn’t been given him by the government. It was gray and flattering. His shoes were black and caught the sunlight. His hair was a very pale gray, not quite white. None of it had fallen out. His face was tough to see from this far away; squarish and thick-browed, that was about all.
As soon as he came out, I spat my mouthful of hamburger onto the plate and got off the stool. Bill said, “Wait till he reaches the car.”
I said, “Yeah, sure.”
I walked over by the door. Only Kapp wasn’t coming toward the car, he was turning and walking in the other direction. His shadow trailed him aslant along the wall.
He had to be Eddie Kapp. Age and timing. Expensive suit.
The Chrysler slid forward, staying close to the curb. It purred down the block, moving at the same rate as Kapp, keeping behind him. He didn’t look around at it. Apparently, he hadn’t seen it.
Bill said, “What the hell is that all about?”
I said, “Go get the car. Stay at least a block behind me.”
He shook his head, baffled. “Okay,” he said, and went out to the car. The bartender and the other two customers were looking at me. I went out onto the sidewalk and strolled along after the Chrysler.
We went three blocks that way, like some stupid parade. Kapp out in front, on the left-hand side of the street. Then the Chrysler, on the right side, half a block behind him. Then me, also on the right side, another half a block back. And then Bill, a full block behind me on this side, in the Mercury. Kapp was headed for the bus depot, from the direction he was taking. Downtown, anyway.
Then we got to a quiet block, and the Chrysler jolted ahead, angling sharp across the empty street, and it was clear they meant to run him down. I shouted, “Look out!” and ran out across the street after the Chrysler. The goddamn ankle slowed me down.
Kapp turned when I shouted, saw the Chrysler jumping the curb at him, and dove backwards through a hedge onto a lawn. A dog started yapping. The Chrysler jounced around on a parabola back to the street, up and down the curb. The guy on the right had his head and arm out the window, and was shooting at me, the way he’d shot at Dad. He had a little mustache.
I dragged Smitty’s gun out and pointed it down the street and pulled the trigger six times. The guy’s head slumped down, and his arm hung down beside the door. The Chrysler made a tight hard right turn, and the guy hanging out the window flapped the way live people don’t.
I stood in the middle of the street and grinned. When I was four days in Germany, two guys took me to a Kaiserslautern whorehouse in Amiland, and I was afraid to admit I was virgin and afraid I’d be too afraid to do anything about it. The whore had been so damn indifferent I’d got mad and jumped her trying to attract her attention. I did, and she had an orgasm. She hadn’t with the other two. Going back to the base, I broke a bus window for the hell of it. I felt the same way now, standing in the middle of the street and grinning, while the Chrysler took a lump of clay around the corner and out of sight.
The Mercury pulled up beside me, and Kapp came struggling back through the hedge. I could hear the dog going nuts. Kapp looked shaky and wobbly. He’d made a great dive for sixty-one, but now he was acting his age. His left trouser leg was ripped at the knee.
I stopped grinning and opened the back door of the Mercury. I threw the empty gun in there and went over and took Kapp’s arm and brought him to the Mercury and shoved him inside. He acted dazed, and didn’t fight back or ask questions. I got in after him, and slammed the door. A black-haired woman in a flowered apron came to a break in the hedge and looked at us. Bill tromped the accelerator and we rode away from Dannemora.