Willy Kunkle checked the list of ex-tenants that Liz Babbitt’s landlord had given him, and then consulted his watch. He wasn’t bored, or longing to get home. He’d been known to work for days on a whim, and knew Sam was chasing leads anyhow, and that home therefore meant an empty apartment. The thought made him smile ruefully. There’d been a time when the mere notion of having a woman living with him was a fantasy, much less something to count on.
He’d been married once, long ago, and had completely messed it up. An ex-New Yorker from a troubled family, briefly a NYPD cop, also a former combat sniper, he’d amassed enough psychological baggage to propel most people straight to suicide. But he’d held off, perhaps out of perverseness, as he claimed, or from a stubborn need to simply defy the odds. Whatever the motivation, he was still around, and looked like he might be enjoying the best time of his life.
Besides, right now, he was doing what he loved most: hunting, sitting in his car in the village of Bellows Falls, by the curb, waiting for the next name on his list to appear.
This happened three minutes later. An older car with a pizza sign magnetized to its roof went whipping by on its mission with a skinny, worn-out man at the wheel.
Kunkle pulled in behind him with surprising dexterity, given his one-handedness, passed him, and then cut him off, forcing him to either stop or become a lawn ornament.
He swung out of his unmarked vehicle, marched back to the delivery car, and thrust his face through the driver’s open window, smiling widely at the terrified, sweat-covered face of one Terry Stein.
“Hi, Terry,” he said. “How’s tricks?”
The other man gaped at him. “Kunkle? You almost killed me. What the hell was that?”
“I want to talk. Shove over.”
“What?” Stein stared from Willy to the pizza box beside him. “I have a delivery.”
Willy opened the door. “Hold it in your lap. Move over.”
“You can’t do this. I’ll lose my job if I’m late.”
Willy shoved his face so close, it was barely an inch from Stein’s, making the latter cringe. “MOVE,” he shouted, forcing the man to obey.
Scrambling awkwardly, Stein tried to maneuver the large, hot box, as well as slide his butt over the console of the small car, muttering, “I didn’t do nuthin’. This is wrong.”
Willy slid behind the wheel and slammed the flimsy door, barely noticing the stink and heat of the car’s interior. Terry had been known to use the vehicle as much to live in as for transportation, and was no advertisement for personal hygiene. In a phrase, he was one of “Willy’s people,” as Joe and many others referred to them—overlooked members of the occasionally working poor, given to life at the edges and to whatever opportunities arose, many of them illegal.
“You used to live on Manor Court,” Willy stated.
Terry stared at him. “Maybe,” he said tentatively, adding, “that was a while ago.”
“What did you do with the key?”
The other man was trying to keep the pizza off his lap and not burn his hands. His employer was too cheap to buy insulated delivery bags. “I kept it on me.”
Willy glanced out the window, sucked on his upper lip a moment, rubbed the side of his nose with his index, and tried again, his voice tightly under control.
“Not then, you moron. What did you do with it afterward?”
“After I left? Gave it to the next guy.”
Willy reached out suddenly, grabbed the box with his large hand, and jammed it between the windshield and the dashboard, crumpling it in two and releasing an odorous cloud. He quelled Stein’s predictable outburst with, “Focus, Terry. Listen to what I’m saying here.”
It was a bluff, of course. Willy had no idea if it had been Terry who’d circulated an extra copy of Liz Babbitt’s apartment key. He didn’t even know if a duplication had occurred. That had just been a guess, if an educated one. But after having spent some time researching the theory—and interviewing others in the same manner—Willy had become comfortable thinking Terry Stein might supply him with what he needed to know.
He grabbed Terry’s shirtfront and yanked him around to where the back of his head almost jammed against the dashboard.
“Terry,” he said quietly, “who did you give the key to?”
It worked. Stein blinked up at him a couple of times, swallowed hard, and said reluctantly, “Some guy. He paid me for a copy—two months’ rent.”
“I don’t know. He just said it wouldn’t matter till I was out of the apartment. I didn’t believe him, course, so I put an extra padlock on for the rest of my time there.”
“And?” Willy released his grip.
Terry straightened and smoothed the front of his T-shirt. “And nuthin’, man. I never saw him again, nobody ever fucked with my stuff, and I got the money. It was a good deal.”
“You ever read the papers?” Willy asked him.
“Sometimes.”
“That murder in Bratt?”
Terry’s mouth opened slightly. “Yeah?” he said hesitantly.
“Your old apartment,” Willy stated.
Terry was already shaking his head. “I had nuthin’ to do with that. Nuthin’.”
“You read who the dead man was?”
“No.”
“Who did you give the key to?”
The pizza man shrugged. “I didn’t know him. Funny last name.”
“Castine?” Willy asked.
“Maybe.”
Willy pulled a cleaned-up postmortem portrait from his pocket and showed it to Stein in the streetlight.
“That him?”
Terry nodded, grimacing. “Jesus—yup.”
“How’d you meet?”
The man lifted a shoulder. “You know—around town.”
Willy poked him hard in the ribs, making him gasp. “And you sell him your front door key ’cause, what the hell, you want everything you own ripped off.”
Willy leaned into him, making him cringe. “You are fucking with me,” he said slowly and carefully. “I don’t like that.”
Terry caved. “So I knew him.”
“How?”
“I sold him some dope; we shared a few drinks. You know, we did stuff, now and then.”
Vague as that sounded, Willy knew it to represent an entire lifestyle of random, day-to-day interactions for a good many people. The Terry Steins of this world often functioned with the accuracy of bumper cars, never knowing where they were headed or who they might meet at any moment—including a one-armed cop during a pizza delivery.
“So, why did he want the key?” Willy asked him. “Even you would’ve asked that.”
“He said he wanted to get laid.”
“In your apartment, when you were at work or wherever,” Willy suggested.
“Yeah.”
“Who with?” Willy asked.
Terry made a face. “I don’t know. Some broad.”
Willy took hold of his hot, sweaty hand and bent one of his fingers back, making Terry flop around, trying to ease the pain.
“Oh, fuck. That hurts, man. Shit. Stop. You can’t do that. It isn’t legal.”
“LEGAL?” Willy yelled in his ear. “You handed over an apartment key to a man who then got murdered there. You have any idea how deep the shit is around you?”
“I didn’t know,” Terry howled.
“Tell me what you do know. NOW.” Willy let go of him.
Stein sat piteously holding his hand, rubbing his finger. “You coulda broke it.”
“I will break it, if you don’t talk. Who was Castine seeing?”
“A married broad,” Terry admitted. “Small place, lots of kids. They had to be quiet about it.”
“You’re not gonna make me ask, are you?”
Terry sighed. “Karen Putnam. Her hubby was in the can then. I don’t know about now. Wayne and her had a thing.”
“Where does she live?”
“West Bratt Mobile Park,” Terry said without hesitation.
Willy smiled. “Suddenly, you’re the goddamn Answer Man.”
Terry merely nodded, still pouting.
“Then answer me this,” Willy pursued. “Why your apartment and not his own?”
“He said she wouldn’t go there—too much of a dump.”
“They couldn’t just rent a room?”
Terry lifted both skinny shoulders. “I don’t know—maybe this turned him on.”
Willy thought a moment. “Tell me more about Wayne.”
Terry was sullen. “What about him?”
“He like anything besides married women?”
Terry stopped staring at his finger and looked at Willy. “What’s that mean?”
“Boys? Girls? What else?”
Stein wrinkled his nose. “That’s gross, man. I don’t know nuthin’ about that.”
“You ever see him with Putnam?”
“I walked in on ’em once, by mistake.”
Willy laughed. “You little pervert. This had to be after you stopped living there, unless you just lied to me about the padlock.”
“How long did you wait around in the bushes, waiting to quote-unquote walk in on them?”
Terry laughed guiltily. “About an hour,” he conceded.
He then stared at Willy intently. “But I didn’t know nuthin’ about anything else, and I wouldn’t’ve helped him with that.”
“Maybe,” Willy told him. “Maybe not.”
He reached for the door handle and swung his legs out, still speaking. “I know something, though. I know that you will not be leaving your place or your job or going anywhere on vacation without letting me know first, right?”
Terry nodded emphatically. “Right.”
Willy slammed the door and poked his head in through the open window. “And I know you’ll be calling me if you got any more to tell me about this.”
“Right.” Terry wiped his damp face with his open hand and caught sight of the crushed pizza box.
He groaned. “I am so fucked. I’m probably fired already.”
Willy reached into his pocket, threw a twenty-dollar bill onto the driver’s seat, and said with a smile, “Keep the change.”
Terry’s eyes were wide. “What about the customer? He’ll be pissed.”
“I am the customer, stupid,” Willy explained.