I walked the block from the subway stop to the Weatherton Hotel. I remembered it. It was the one where Dad had stayed, where we’d both stayed the night before they killed him. Kapp wouldn’t know that.
I asked for Mr. Peterson’s suite, and they sent my name up, then told me the fifteenth floor. I rode up in the elevator. 1512 was to the left. I could hear party sounds.
I knocked on the door and a smiling man with a broken nose opened it and said, “You’re Kapp’s kid, huh?”
“That’s right.”
“Put her there! He keeps tellin’ us how great you are!”
His hand was huge, but soft. I shook it, and went inside.
The suite went on and on, room after room. A nervous little man took over from the first one and showed me my bedroom. I left the Luger on the bed, under the raincoat. Then I followed the nervous man through more rooms to the party.
It was a huge parlor, with French doors leading to the terrace. A radio played bad music in one corner, competing with a television set across the way. Sectional sofas and coffee tables were scattered all around. Two portable bars stood full and handy.
There were about thirty people in the room, maybe ten of them women. The women all had high breasts and professional smiles. The men were laughing and shouting at one another.
Kapp had one of the women in a corner. He was talking steadily to her, and his right hand kneaded her breast. She kept smiling.
Somebody saw me and shouted, “Hey, Kapp! Here’s your kid!”
He looked around and then came running over. Behind him, the woman smoothed out the wrinkles with a little contemptuous shrug, but kept smiling.
Kapp punched my arm and hugged me and shouted at me how great I was. Then he pranced me all around the room, introducing me to all the men and telling them all how great I was. He didn’t introduce me to any of the women, but they all kept watching me.
For fifteen minutes, it all whirled around. Half a dozen people told me the reason for the celebration. The national committee had given the nod. They were in. Coup successful. And they all had me to thank, because bumping Ganolese had done the trick. That was what had clinched it. There was only a little reorganizing left to do, and from there on life was gravy.
Kapp finally calmed down a bit, and people stopped shouting in my ear. I took his arm and said, “Kapp, I want to talk to you. I want to tell you about it.”
“Goddamn it, boy,” he said, grinning at me. “Let’s get away from this mob.”
I led the way toward the bedroom where I’d left the raincoat. On the way we came across the nervous man, hurrying somewhere. I grabbed his elbow and said, “Come along with us for a minute.”
Kapp said, “What the hell for?”
I said, “You’ll see.”
We all went into the bedroom and Kapp said, “What the hell do you want Mouse here for?”
“He’s my messenger,” I said. I reached under the raincoat and took out the Luger and held it on them as I closed and locked the bedroom door.
Kapp stared at the gun, and sobriety washed down his face like lye. He said, “What the hell are you up to?”
I said, “Mouse, you listen close. My name is Ray Kelly. Eddie Kapp is my natural father, my father by blood. Isn’t that right, Kapp?”
“Sure that’s right. Why the hell—?”
“Hold on. You got that part, Mouse?”
He nodded jerkily, his eyes on the gun.
“All right. I also had a mother and a foster father and a half-brother and a sister-in-law. My mother killed herself because of Eddie Kapp here. Isn’t that right, Kapp?”
Relief hit him so hard he sat down heavily on the edge of the bed. “Oh, for God’s sake, Ray, that was twenty-one years ago. And who knew she was going to do something like that? You pull a gun on me for something twenty-one years old?”
“I’ll get more current in a minute. Just hold on. About my mother, and Will Kelly. He was your sideman, he worked with you every step of the way. You were just about to make the move, take control of the New York organization, and Will Kelly was an active part of it, working right next to you all the way. Then somebody sicked the Federal Government on you because—”
“Ganolese,” he said. “That filthy bastard, Ganolese.”
“—because of your taxes. The government put you out of the way, so Ganolese could take over instead of you. And Will Kelly had to get out of town. His wife couldn’t stand the small town life, but she didn’t dare come back to New York. She killed herself.”
“Twenty-one years ago, Ray. For God’s sake—”
“Shut up. I told you I’d get more current. You knew you were getting out September 15th. You got word to Will Kelly, one way or another, that you were going to make the move again. And you started lining people up, telling them Kelly was going to be with you. The word got to Ganolese. He had Kelly killed.”
“You’re a sharp boy, Ray,” he said. “You figured that out all by yourself.” He wasn’t really worried at all yet.
“I figured more than that,” I told him. “Those people out there at the party wouldn’t buy you without Will Kelly. Without somebody reasonably young as the heir-apparent. They figured you were too old.”
“Not Eddie Kapp. I’ll live to a hundred.”
“No, you won’t. I’m not done yet. My sister-in-law got killed in a hit-run accident. They caught the guy.”
“Good for them,” he said.
“Up till I showed up, you thought you were through. You wrote your sister, you figured to retire. Then you saw me, and it was worth a try, see if you could get the boys to accept me rather than my father.”
“I’m your father, Ray.”
“You sired me. It isn’t the same thing. You knew I wasn’t interested in your empire, so you gave me that song and dance about family and symbols, to talk me into sticking with you. When I told you my sister-in-law had been killed, that gave you the idea. If she hadn’t died, you wouldn’t have been able to pull it.”
“I would of thought of something else.” He grinned like a banker. “Aren’t you proud of your old man, boy? I think on my feet.”
“Not for much longer. There’s one more. My brother Bill. He was killed, too. He was my half-brother by blood, just as you’re my father by blood. And you’ve always got to avenge blood.” I turned to Mouse. “You’ve always got to avenge blood, Mouse? Isn’t that right?”
He swallowed noisily, and bobbed his head.
“Now, Mouse, Eddie Kapp here killed my brother Bill.”
Kapp jumped up from the bed, howling. “What the goddamn hell are you talking about? For Christ’s sake, why would I do a stupid thing like that?”
“You wanted me with you, or you wouldn’t be leading the revolt. You were afraid, once I found out Will Kelly wasn’t my father, I’d stop, I’d lose heart and give the thing up. Same as if I found out he was still part of the mob, all this time. And then I wouldn’t stick with you for a second. So you murdered Bill. I was supposed to think Ganolese did that one, too, and you could offer the partnership. ‘We both want the same people, only for different reasons.’ That’s exactly what you said.”
He shook his head. “You got it wrong, Ray. I was with you from the time Bill went upstairs to the time we found him dead.”
“No. You were gone ten minutes, to the head. And nobody else could have gotten their hands on Bill’s gun. He would have put it on the dresser. Any stranger came in, the gun would have been in Bill’s hand. You could go in and talk to him, tell him you want to be friends, and walk around the room until you angle over to the dresser, and there you are.”
When he moved, it was dirty. He jumped for Mouse, trying to shove him into me. I ran back and to the side, jumping up onto the bed and down on the floor on the other side, turning to face the door. He had his hand on the key when I shot him. I emptied the Luger into him before he could hit the floor.
Mouse lay quivering on his stomach on the floor, arms over his head in stupid protectiveness. I wiped my prints from the Luger and dropped it on the floor and went around to poke Mouse in the side with my toe. I said, “Get up. I’m not finished talking to you.”
It took him a while to get his limbs working right. I waited till he was standing, then I said, “You wait till I leave here. You give me a good five minutes. Then you go back to the party and tell them what happened. And tell them why it happened. You got that?”
He nodded. There was white all around the pupils of his eyes.
“This was a blood matter,” I told him, “not a mob matter. Blood revenging blood. There’s no need for them to come after me, to avenge Eddie Kapp. I’m his son, and I say there’s no need for it. And I don’t remember a single name or a single face that I saw here today or at Lake George two weeks ago. You got that?”
He nodded again.
“Five minutes,” I said.
I went out to the hall. The party was raging to my left, too loud for them to have heard the shots in that closed and bulkily furnished bedroom. I walked down to the right. The big man with the broken nose was sitting in a fragile chair by the door. He said, “What they doing? Shooting guns off the terrace? They’ll get cops up here if they don’t look out.”
“I hope it’s over pretty soon,” I said. “I need my sleep.”
“You moving in?”
“Just going to get my luggage.”
“You won’t get much sleep here.” He laughed. “This’ll go on for a couple days yet.”
I left, and took the elevator down, and went out to the street.