Dead Man's Tale (2 page)

“I want you to go to Europe for me,” Estelle repeated, distinctly. “And come back to tell me he's dead.”

Steve stood very still. “You've gone nuts,” he said.

“Not I.” Estelle had stopped smiling. “I haven't gone nuts, as you put it. But come on upstairs and see who has.”

Steve opened his mouth. Then he shut it and followed her.

Barney's room was on the north side of the house, facing the Sound. It had a large French door pierced by spears of sun ricocheting off the water. A figure stood before it, but all Steve could see against the glare was the man's short, blocky silhouette.

“Estelle?”

“Barney, you have a visitor.”

Barney turned around. “Steve, you son of a gun!” he cried in a childish voice. “How the hell are you?”

Steve could smell him. He needed a shave and a haircut. His slacks were rumpled and stained. He moved sloppily, as if all his muscles had collapsed. He had put on a lot of weight. He was a fat man. And he smelled.

As they shook hands, Steve felt Barney's—limp and damp.

“You know what, Stevie?” Barney said excitedly. “I'm getting out. For good. You think I'm kidding?”

Steve mumbled something.

“Hurley says I can do it. They wouldn't dare touch an ex-fixer, Stevie. You can see they wouldn't dare, huh? Not even Harry Craven. Not none of them. I'll have the last laugh, Stevie boy. Don't think I won't. ‘Put it all down in black and white and I'll keep it for you if we need it,' Hurley says. He's one right guy. Then if Craven's got any bitching to do, he can just choke on it. I should worry. Huh, Stevie?”

“Sure, Barney. Sure,” Steve said.

“So I made a mistake,” Barney said jovially. “One lousy mistake in ten years. For a fixer that's not a bad score, huh, Stevie? One mistake, and Craven takes a fall for conspiracy. Didn't he know he was in a risky line of work?” Barney chuckled. “Well, maybe it'll do him some good to take a fall. When he gets out he might have some—what they say?—humility.”

“Craven's been out for six months now,” Steve mentioned.

“What? You don't know what you're talking about. They gave him five to ten, Steve, remember? That's plenty of time to burn your bridges. Why, just the other day I saw Hack Northy, and …”

The voice went on, childish, enthusiastic. Hack Northy, a hood in the county strong-arm squad, had lost his face by a shotgun blast on a New York street corner four years before.

Steve listened to Barney Street's new voice and tried not to smell Barney Street's new smell. He didn't know what to say or do. Barney was babbling. He'd gone nuts, as Estelle had said. But that must have happened after he wrote his new will. Otherwise Estelle wouldn't have had a thing to worry about. And I wouldn't be here now, Steve thought. He wanted, suddenly, to be somewhere else. Anywhere. He couldn't stand to see Barney like this.

“I got to be going now,” Steve said.

“No, Stevie! Stick around, Steve, will you please?”

“Barney, honest. I got to be going.”

Barney's face screwed up in a comical grimace of disappointment. “Well, if you got to. I'll walk you to the door.”

Steve thought he meant the entrance downstairs, but Barney went only as far as the doorway of his bedroom. He peered cautiously into the hall, looking both ways, then quickly pulled his head back inside. “Come see me again soon, Stevie,” he said. “You're always welcome here. Make him one for the road, Estelle.”

Estelle said she would. Steve followed her downstairs.

In the living room Steve asked, “How long has he been like this, Estelle?”

“Ever since Harry Craven was paroled. Why?”

“Because with his deposition in their possession and the way he is now, he couldn't testify against them. What's the big tumult? They'd be crazy to touch a hair of his head.”

“That is,” Estelle said, “if they knew.”

“Then tell them.”

“And how about me? The head-shrinker calls it regression. Barney can't face what he's got to face, so he crawls back into kiddieland where everything is nice and safe. You think I want to be saddled with that? He won't leave his room. I practically have to take him to the bathroom.”

“Then have him committed.”

“Don't tell me what to do, Steve, I'm doing this my way.”

“And I thought you said he found out about us,” Steve said suddenly.

“He found out. But back where he is now he hasn't found out. Back where he is now, he doesn't even know he's going to die.”

“You bitch,” Steve said. “You want them to kill him.”

Estelle's eyes shrank to steel points. “He knew about us for almost six months before this happened. He treated me like dirt. He let me know about the will. He crowed about it. He even gave me a copy. He made me read it every night before we went to bed.”

“So you had a talk with Hurley?”

Estelle ignored his question. “Do you have a passport, Steve?”

“Why would I want a passport?”

“Get one. I'm not kidding. Steve. If you think I'm kidding, read the papers in the morning.”

“The papers?” Steve said blankly.

“In the morning. Then get a passport. Then go to Europe and come back to tell me how Milo Hacha died.”

Estelle crossed the living room and went down the hall to the front door. She opened the door, said, “Good-bye, Steve.” Cupping her hands around her mouth, she called out, “Petey! Watch the dogs. Steve's going home.”

Steve went through the doorway.

“
Bon voyage,”
Estelle said pleasantly.

2

Andy Longacre pulled the MG into the driveway, almost hoping Steve would be out. He wanted to think. That was odd; he had had four years in which to think. Four surprisingly good years, because at first he had been dead-set against going to college.

But he had used those four years to explore himself, his new and utterly unexpected self, and to explore a world the old Andy Longacre had not even known existed. From black motorcycle jacket and garrison belt with filed-down buckle to B.A. in Comparative Language and Literature and Phi Beta Kappa Key in four years.
Wunderbar!
And now?

He saw Steve's car in the garage, shrugged and unstrapped his big, battered suitcase from the MG's rack. Maybe, he thought, I should have studied accounting. If I had I'd be able to help my brother spend the money he's earned as right-hand man to Long Island County's ex-Mr. Fixit. Besides, if I'd studied accounting I wouldn't be mixed up now.

The trouble was that the new Andy Longacre, born some time during the past four years, had been weaned on literature and philosophy and … oh, hell, leave us not exhume David Hume. Andy smiled.

Damned gold-plated snob, he muttered to himself. Who the hell are you to judge your brother?

Andy lugged his suitcase up the walk towards the front porch. The grass needed mowing and the porch railing could stand a coat of paint. He'd take care of the lawn first thing after unpacking and maybe having a drink with Steve. He didn't feel at all tired in spite of having driven all night and most of the day, with only two stops along the way to eat.

He was a tall, rangy youth. He had crew-cut sandy hair and wore shell-rimmed glasses for reading and driving. And although he hadn't really pushed it, the coeds at the big Midwestern university had been more than co-operative. He was twenty-two and healthy and had nowhere to go.

And his brother was a crook.

Andy found Steve in the living room, stretched out limply on the sofa, his face grey, his striped suit a mess. There was a trace of spittle on his heavy lips and a strong odour of bourbon.

He tried to make Steve sit up. “Come on, boy. Come on, we'll put you to bed.” But Steve's body was limp and unresponsive. Andy decided to leave him there. He removed Steve's shoes and covered him with a blanket. That was when Steve decided to get sick. Andy went for a washrag and a pan of cold water. Home-sweet-home, he thought.

Then Andy frowned. Steve had never been much of a drinker, certainly not a solo drinker guzzling himself stupid on a sunny afternoon.

Andy sat down and smoked a cigarette. He looked at his suitcase with the Big-Ten stickers, faded and torn, on the worn cowhide. Steve had given him the suitcase as a going-away present when he'd left for college. Since then it had seen bumper service, bouncing back and forth Christmas and Easter and summer vacations between the Midwest and Long Island. Steve had appeared noticeably older and less sure of himself each time Andy had come home.

Even during that time Barney Street had been finished, and so was Steve. Andy knew the history; he had even gotten an obscure satisfaction in using it as the basis of a term paper in an elective criminology course he had taken in his junior year. He had called the paper “The Old-Style Fixer and the New in County Crime.”

Barney Street and his lieutenant, Steve Longacre, were old-style fixers. There were those who claimed that Street's failure to keep Harry Craven out of jail for conspiracy in the county labour-war maiming of a crusading reporter had started Barney's long slide downward, but Barney had been doomed in any case. Barney Street was an old-style fixer, and the end had been inevitable.

The new-style fixer was a lawyer who used a low-handicap golf game and cocktail-party manners the way Barney Street had used strong-arm goons and the outmoded tactics of the Prohibition mobs.

The up-to-date fixer eschewed the hard threat, the schlamin with a sawed-off length of iron pipe or rubber hose and the artillery. For these he substituted a complex
modus operandi
the Barney Streets were incapable of understanding. Andy's term paper described this
modus operandi
in clinical detail.

With the same perversity that had made him write the paper, Andy had shown it to Steve. He had watched Steve's face while his brother read it. Steve's face hadn't told Andy anything, but when he put the paper down he had said, “This is what I send you to college for?”

“I just want your opinion, that's all,” Andy had said defensively.

Steve only thumped him on the back, laughing hard. “You're all right, kid. Getting to be a real professor. But why don't you write about Shakespeare and stuff like that, and leave my racket to the guys who understand it?”

Andy had never mentioned the subject again.

Steve started making funny noises in his throat. His eyelids fluttered and he tried to sit up.

“If I tell Craven,” he said.

“What?” Andy said.

“If I tell Craven,” Steve said again. He sat up, his eyes opening wide. Then he lurched into the bathroom. He came back in a few minutes with water dripping from his hair and face and his jacket soaked.

“Hello, kid,” he said. “This is a great way to welcome you home.” He ran his big hands through his hair, looking Andy over. “Phi Bete, huh? How about that?” But his thoughts were obviously elsewhere.

“What's the matter, Steve?”

“The matter? Nothing's the matter.” Steve sat down heavily on the sofa.

“You mumbled something about Craven.”

“To hell with Craven. All of them,” Steve muttered.

Andy watched him. “I've been thinking. I've had an offer of a fellowship out on the West Coast. To do my graduate work. Why not pack up and come along, Steve? There's nothing keeping you here.”

Steve didn't look up. “Me, run away? You must be rocky.”

“I didn't say anything about running away.”

Then Steve did look up. His face was haggard. “I don't …” His voice faltered. His eyes squinched shut and it took Andy a moment to realize he was crying. Steve turned away. “Go on,” he said harshly. “Go on, get out of here and buy us a steak or something! We'll celebrate. Andy, get out, will you? Give me a couple of minutes, please!”

“If there's anything—”

“God damn it, get out!”

Andy got up and left.

They're going to kill him, Steve thought. They're going to rub out Barney Street for no reason except that the bitch wants them to.

Gutless wonder, Steve said to himself. That's what you are!

He reached for the bottle, but what whisky was left made him gag.

Gutless wonder.…

Because you're not going to do a damn thing about it.

There were only three things Estelle Street had to do that night after Petey Taurasi went into Huntington to see a sexy movie, and all three were apple pie. First, to make sure that the front gate wasn't locked. Second, to see that the gate to the Dobermans' run
was
locked. Third …

Estelle went down the wooden stairs that hugged the bluff overlooking the Sound. It was a warm, windless night. She slipped out of her terry-cloth robe and stood for a moment on the sand, watching the moonlight dapple the water with silver.

This would be her first swim of the season. The water would be cold, but afterwards the thick robe would cuddle her. Estelle loved to swim. She liked it best when the water was cold and her nipples puckered and stiffened. It was best when she was swimming alone, in the night, naked.

She looked back once at the high-gabled house on the bluff, a cutout in black paper against the moonlighted sky. Some house! she thought. Charles Addams would go wild over it. Barney had started with a small Tudor-type building and had added and added to it, endlessly. Good old Barney, Estelle thought. Good old loud, tasteless, big-hearted slob. You were great when you had it. But now …

She said a four-letter word aloud, repeated it, said it a third time. As if it reminded her of something, she looked down at herself with enjoyment, ran her hands over her flanks, gleaming in the moonlight. Then she walked into the Sound.

The water was cold, so cold it made her gasp with delight. She swam a few strokes, rolled over on her back.

She thought she heard a car somewhere above the beach. Not far. On the bluff.