The phone at the other end rang three times and was lifted.
“Yes?” said a woman’s voice.
“Mrs. Williamson?”
“Yes.”
“Larry Kent. I’d like to speak to your husband.”
“I don’t think he’ll talk to you, Mr. Kent.”
“It’s very important that he does. It has to do with that information you gave me, Mrs. Williamson. Drugs are involved—drugs that are smuggled into the country through your husband’s import business.”
“He’s in the study,” she said. “I’ll talk to him. Please hold the line.”
At least three minutes passed before I heard a click, then Lester Williamson’s voice: “What is it, Mr. Kent?”
“I want to have a talk with you in private, Mr. Williamson.”
“Say what you have to say now.”
“Not over the phone.”
“Mr. Kent, I told you how I felt in the beginning. I said I didn’t want you investigating my son’s murder, that I wished to avoid scandal. He’s being buried tomorrow. Can’t you leave us in peace?”
“No. Not when there’s murder involved. Of course, I can go to the police and the newspapers with what I know. It’s up to you.”
There was a long pause. Finally: “Very well, Mr. Kent. Come to the house.”
“I’ll be there in about thirty minutes.”
The gates were wide open. I drove through. The guard wasn’t in sight. Only a few windows showed light on the ground floor of the Williamson mansion. I parked near the broad entrance steps and walked up. The door opened before I reached it. Mrs. Williamson stood there, her face pale.
“My husband had me send everyone away,” she said. “Joanne is on her way to your apartment in the city. I told her that you’d phoned and said you’d meet her there.” She grasped my arm. “Mr. Kent, what is it? Lester is acting so ... strangely.”
“Where is he?”
“He went into his study a while ago. He said that you were to go there alone.”
“Then that’s how it’ll be,” I said.
She held onto my arm. “Are you sure it’s all right? I’ve never seen Lester like this. You mentioned drugs. What did you find out?”
“That’s between me and your husband, Mrs. Williamson.” She let go of my arm.
“I know my way to the study,” I said, and I left her there at the front door.
I rapped on the study door. The sounds echoed back. I waited a short time, rapped again. Nothing. I opened the door.
Lester Williamson lay on the floor on his stomach. Near his right hand was an overturned brandy glass. There was a wet stain on the carpet. A piece of paper on the desk caught my eye; it was impaled on a desk pen. I walked to the desk, saw typing on the sheet of paper and a scrawled signature. Not touching the paper, I read:
I can no longer live
with the guilt of
my son’s
death.
Lester M. Williamson
Using my handkerchief, I lifted the brandy glass to my nose and got the faint but unmistakable odor of burnt almonds. There was a groan from Williamson. He was still alive! But not by much. His throat worked. He was trying to speak. He didn’t make it. His eyes glazed and his head rolled and he was dead. There was a noise behind me. I turned, saw that the door was partly open.
I said, “What are you trying to say, Mr. Williamson? You didn’t? You didn’t what? The poison? You didn’t put the poison in the drink? Mr. Williamson! Mr. Williamson!”
I was down on one knee. Conscious that I was being watched, I straightened up and said, “You didn’t really have to tell me, Mr. Williamson. As for the suicide note, your signature was forged.”
I picked up the phone. There was the slightest of creaks from the door, then a voice:
“Put it down, Mr. Kent.”
Antonio Cicero entered the room. He was followed by Mrs. Williamson. There was a Luger-type gun in Cicero’s right hand. I cradled the phone.
“You messed up your timing,” I said.
Cicero shrugged. “Those things happen.”
I looked at Mrs. Williamson. “You poured the brandy for your husband, didn’t you?”
She glanced down at her husband’s body, nothing showing in, her face. Tonelessly, she said, “He usually drinks it immediately. This time, for some reason or other, he didn’t.”
“Well, like Mr. Cicero said, those things happen. You make careful plans and then someone decides to go a little out of character.” My gaze went to Cicero and back to Mrs. Williamson. “Love in the afternoon,” I said. “Touching.”
“You know you have to die,” Cicero said.
“But you’re not going to let me die ignorant, are you?”
“I won’t be killing you.”
“Let me guess. Comstock? Where is he?”
“He’ll be here soon.”
“In the meantime,” I said, “you can fill me in on some of the things I haven’t been able to figure out. The murder of Stanley Williamson, for example.”
“He wasn’t murdered,” Mrs. Williamson said. “He got my husband on the phone and said he was going to shoot himself. Lester heard the shot and put the phone down. He did it so ... so calmly. And then he told me that my son was dead.”
“Your son,” I said. “Not his. He knew, didn’t he?”
She nodded. “He knew all these years and he never said a thing about it. And he knew that Stanley was on drugs. In fact, he saw to it that Stanley had a good supply of cocaine. He wanted Stanley to suffer.”
“Because he was my son,” Cicero said, an edge to his voice, naked hate in his eyes as he looked down at the dead man. “Hypocrite,” he said to the corpse. His gaze went to me. “He wanted nothing to do with me because I was Mafia. But he was smuggling cocaine into the country. Well, I used that. Mary knew the people who made the carved heads in Colombia. Some of the heads had heroin in them. Williamson had an identifying mark on his pieces, we had a mark on ours.”
“Then Albert Donato was working for you.” I said.
“Yes.”
“And you used him to suck me in. You, Mrs. Williamson, you gave me that information while we took a ride through Central Park. You knew my investigation would take me to Donato. You arranged for Donato’s girlfriend to put on an act, just to make it look good.”
“And you played right along,” Cicero said. “You didn’t go to the police with what you knew. You decided to make a big grandstand play face-to-face with Williamson.”
“I wasn’t sure,” I said. “There were blanks to fill in. The one thing I didn’t figure on was Stanley Williamson killing himself.”
“I couldn’t let the world think my son had killed himself,” Mrs. Williamson said.
“Sure,” I said. “Besides, getting rid of the suicide gun was a neat way to get back at your husband. Did he know that you took the gun?”
“No,” she said. “At least he didn’t say so. He kept things to himself. There’s been hate in him all through these years; he nursed it.”
I said, “You dropped that brooch pin near Stanley’s body, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“You know of course that you’re responsible for your son’s death. You could have got him to a sanitarium.”
“I told her not to,” Cicero said. “We couldn’t take a chance on it coming out that Williamson was smuggling in cocaine because we were waiting for a really big shipment of heroin. Stanley might have told all he knew.”
Mrs. Williamson pointed a finger at the corpse. “He’s the one responsible for Stanley’s death. Stanley worked for him and he learned about the cocaine smuggling. That was why he went on drugs—it was his way of getting back at his father.”
“You mean the man he thought was his father,” I said.
“Besides,” Cicero put in, “Stanley got some money from his sister—Mary read about it in Joanne’s diary—and he was able to pay off some of his debt and buy more stuff. He was buying from one of his father’s pushers; the guy had no idea who he was selling to.”
I threw a look of disgust at Cicero. “You and all your talk about finding out where Stanley was buying the stuff—lies! You knew. You let your own son become a junkie.”
“I was going to see that he took the cure.”
“After your big shipment got through. You had to wait for that.”
“Cocaine isn’t as bad as heroin,” Cicero said lamely. “The cure is a lot easier on a man.”
Mrs. Williamson moved closer to Cicero. “We needed money, a lot of it,” she said as though that explained everything.
Cicero took it from there. “There’s a way to get out of the Mafia—but it’s very, very expensive. You need armed guards around the clock. You need a place to live in that’s easily fortified. And there is such a place. A Greek island.”
“We deserve some happiness,” Mrs. Williamson said.
“I’m touched to the quick,” I said. I jerked my head in the direction of the corpse. “Why didn’t you just kill him and make it look like an accident? People as clever as you two could have arranged that.”
“He changed his will,” Mrs. Williamson said. “I get only a pittance from the estate; Joanne gets the rest.”
“Now you know it all,” Cicero said. He glanced at his wristwatch. “Comstock and Blunt have been waiting for a phone call from me, an ‘all clear.’ I didn’t make the call so they’ll be on their way here. They should arrive any—”
I followed the direction of Cicero’s gaze and caught a glimpse of car headlights through the French windows. A few moments later there was the sound of tires skidding to a stop on gravel.
“Speaking of signals,” I said, “I was supposed to give one. Now watch this ... any second it’ll happen ...”
Mrs. Williamson gasped as the grounds outside were bathed in harsh light. Three men armed with sub-machine guns walked over the grass. Behind them was Gabe Paul of the Mutual Network. Paul waved his arms as he directed a pair of two-man camera crews. There were shouts, then a few shots that came from the front of the place. The three men knelt and their sub-machine guns kicked.
“Exit Comstock and Blunt,” I said.
Cicero stared at the scene, his mouth open slackly. At that moment two men with sub-machine guns appeared just outside the French windows.
“Drop your gun!” one shouted.
“Shoot!” Mrs. Williamson cried.
Cicero shook his head at her, dropped his gun. “You always have to assess the odds, Mary,” he said. “A good lawyer is a much better bet.” To me: “Nice work.”
I smiled. “You know me, Mr. Cicero. I always give it a good try.”
Kinsella and one of his men entered the study. Kinsella glanced at the corpse.
“Lester Williamson,” I said. “A phony suicide. How about Albert Donato and his girlfriend?”
“I sent some men to arrest them,” Kinsella said.
“Good. I have an idea they’ll be singing like a pair of canaries before the night is out.” I looked at Cicero. “That lawyer you get—he’d better be really something.”
I got home two and a half hours later. Joanne’s car was parked at the curb. She was asleep behind the wheel. The doors were locked. I rapped at the window and woke her up.
“Where have you been?” she demanded. “Mother told me that you’d be waiting for me.”
“Your mother says a lot of things that aren’t quite true,” I said gently. “Come upstairs.”
She broke down when I told her. I put her to bed and cuddled her as she sobbed. After a while she went to sleep. I kept my arms around her for another five minutes or so and then I went out to the living room, poured myself a deep measure of Paddy’s Old Irish and sat down near the window to watch dawn’s gray fingers touch at the city. John Lindsay, one of New York’s more public relations-minded mayors, had dubbed the place Fun City. I’m sure that all the killers, muggers, drunk rollers, pimps, dope pushers and con men thoroughly agree with him. New York City is also called the Big Apple. It’s an apple loaded with worms. But I’m not complaining. Take away the worms and I’d have to find another way to make a living.