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When he left, Miss Benson, the thin one, grabbed the cigarette out of my mouth.

Bill came by every day, for about a week. Then one day he didn’t come around. I asked Miss Benson. She said, “He had to go back to Binghamton.”

“Why?”

She got evasive, and I kept asking her. So she told me, and wouldn’t look me in the eye. “I’m sorry, Mr. Kelly. His wife was hit by a car. She was killed.”

“Oh,” I said. “I never met her.”

When I got out of the hospital, three days after Labor Day, I had two eyes, one of them working. With that one, I saw the guy get out of the Plymouth across the street from the hospital and come walking toward me. I slowed down, feeling naked. I still remembered the one who stuck his hand out the side window with a gun in it.

This one was different. Medium height, thin. He’d lost weight recently, and hadn’t been able to afford a new wardrobe. His jacket hung on him like a style that had never caught on. His hair was sandy; his scalp was probably sand. His face was sharp of nose and chin and eye and bone, but there was weak pulp behind it, peeking through.

He stopped in front of me, looking at the tie Miss Benson had picked out. She’d had to buy me some clothes. My two suitcases got burned in the car. I’d given her the money, some that Bill had sent me.

He acted as though he wanted to talk to me, but was afraid somebody might notice. I said, “Okay,” and sidestepped him and walked across the street to the Plymouth. I might have been afraid of him, but he was afraid of me. He came trotting after me, on shorter legs. I could hear him breathing.

I went around the Plymouth and got in the right side. He slid in behind the wheel, next to me. He looked very worried. He got out a pack of Philip Morris Commanders. On him, they were wishful thinking. He pawed one out with two fingers and thumb, and I took the pack away and got one for myself. We lit up in a leaden silence, with him trying to watch the whole outside world at once, and then, jerkily, he said, “I owe your old man a favor. I come to do it.”

“What sort of favor?”

“A long time back. It don’t make no difference now. You’re his son. I just want to tell you, you ought to go away. Change your name, clear out for good. Go someplace out west, maybe. But don’t go to New York.”

“Why not?”

He lipped his cigarette, made it look terrible. His eyes jerked around in their sockets like ball bearings. At last, he said, “There’s gonna be trouble. You don’t want to get mixed in.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“That’s the favor,” he said quickly. “Even-Stephen. If they saw me talkin’ to you, they’d gun me. I’ve done enough, maybe too much.”

“If
who
saw you? The men who killed my father?”

“Go away.” He was getting more and more jittery by the second. “Interview’s over, favor’s done. Go away. Get outa the car.”

I laid my left arm across his chest, holding him against the seat. My right hand patted him, didn’t find anything that felt like a weapon. He was breathing hard, and looking all over the street like he expected tanks to show up any minute, but he didn’t say anything.

I kept my left arm where it was, and thumbed the glove compartment. The door dropped down, and I took out the gun. I don’t know guns, this was I guess a .32 caliber. It was a revolver, and stubby-barreled, all blue-black metal with a plain grip. The drum had places for six bullets. Two showed thin edges on each side, and those four had cartridges in them. I didn’t know about the one in line with the barrel or the one underneath. Just above where my thumb naturally rested there was a little catch. It pointed at S. I pushed it to O with my thumb, felt it click.

I took my left arm back, and half-turned in the seat, so I could face him and hold the gun in my lap aimed at him. He gave me a flying millisecond glance, eyed the street some more, and said, “I come to do a favor, that’s all. Nothing else, nothing more. All bets are off. I don’t say a word, you might’s well get out of the car.”

“Start the engine,” I said.

He couldn’t believe it. He wanted to know where I thought I was taking him.

“Home,” I told him. “Binghamton’s about a hundred thirty miles down 17. Drive.”

“I won’t do it,” he said.

“Self-defense,” I told him. “I wrestled the gun out of your hands. You were one of the men shot my father.”

He stared at me. But he picked my right eye to stare at, the glass one. He shivered and started the car.

It was a long ride. We didn’t talk much, and the highway looked too familiar. It was the same kind of situation, me in the same seat in the car. I kept looking back, and whenever a car passed us I winced, but nothing happened.

We made it in under four hours. We crossed the river on the first bridge, bypassing most of the town, but it was a little after four and rush-hour. It was slow going out to Vestal.

They built it up a lot in three years. The Penn-Can highway was going to bring civilization to the hometown after all. There were even split-level developments now, and ranch-style houses.

Bill lived in a ranch-style out on 26. There was nobody home when we got there, but the garage door was up and the car was out. I had the guy pull the Plymouth into the garage. We got out, and I switched the gun to my left hand again while he pulled the overhead door down. I’d been changing the gun back and forth from hand to hand about every half hour, when the fingers would start to cramp.

The door in the wall between the kitchen and the garage was also open, and the house was full of mosquitoes. The sink was full of dishes. The living-room floor was scattered with beer bottles and newspapers. Both were delivered, I guess. The beer bottles were twelve-ounce stubbies, the little fat ones you never see anywhere but at clambakes and sandlot ball games. There were two cases of them out in the garage and maybe a dozen cold in the refrigerator. That was practically all there was in the refrigerator.

The mosquitoes had the house to themselves. There were two bedrooms, and they were both empty. One had a crib and a white dresser and pink walls. The dresser drawers were open, empty. But Bill’s clothes were all over the other bedroom and the closet, so he hadn’t moved out. He was just boarding his kid with somebody, that’s all. Probably Aunt Agatha.

We sat in the dinette and drank Bill’s beer, and played gin with a deck of Bill’s cards. The blue-black revolver looked strange on the rose-mottled formica of the table. The guy lost consistently. He couldn’t keep his mind on the game. Every once in a while, he’d talk to me about letting him go. But he didn’t really think he could convince me.

The backyard, just outside the dinette window, gradually became night. In the other direction, through the archway, was the living room and the picture window. It was night out that way, too, with a streetlight off a ways to the side and amber light from the picture window across the way.

Bill came home after ten. By the way he drove, he was drunk. When he was in high school, he owned a Pontiac with no back seat and a Mercury engine, and he shoved it around tracks in stock races. Most of the time he was drunk, and half the time he rode in the money. Sober, he was a good hard driver. Drunk, he shaved his corners.

He came in wide-eyed, blue basketball jacket crooked over T-shirt. He looked at me and shook his head and leaned back against the kitchen wall. “Don’t do that,” he said. His voice trembled. “Jesus, don’t do that. I thought it was Ann.” He held a quaking hand to his chest.

It hadn’t even occurred to me. Who but his wife would be waiting home for him, the lights on? I got up, remembering the gun just in time, and said, “I didn’t think, Bill.”

“Jesus,” he said. He shook his head and licked his lips. He pushed off from the wall and opened the refrigerator door, and dropped the bottle he grabbed for. He shut the door and fumbled for the bottle.

I thought he was going to fall over. I waved the gun at my gin-partner. “Go open it for him,” I said.

He did it. Bill watched him, frowning. He took the bottle and drank from it, and then he said to me, “Who is this?” He waved the bottle at the guy the way I’d waved the gun.

“He met me outside the hospital,” I said. I told the story, finishing, “And he won’t say any more than that.”

“Oh, he won’t.” Bill put the bottle in his left hand, and hit the guy in the mouth.

I’d never seen that before, a man knocked out with one punch. The guy just fell down like his strings were cut.

I said, “That’s bright. He’ll talk a lot better in that condition.”

“I didn’t mean to hit him that hard.” He gulped the beer again, put the bottle down on the drainboard, filled a glass with water.

“No,” I said. I put the gun on top of the refrigerator, knelt beside the guy, slapped him awake. Over my shoulder, I said, “Make yourself some coffee. You’re supposed to be three years older than me.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, Ray. I’ve been feeling sorry for myself.”

“For how long?”

“I know. Two weeks ago today. Ann.” He was on the verge of a crying jag.

“Make coffee,” I said. “Three cups.”

The guy on the floor twisted his head away from my slap. “Cut it out,” he whined. “Cut it out.”

“Get on your feet,” I told him. “He won’t hit you again.”

He didn’t believe me, but he got up, shakily. Bill was watching the water not boil. I said to him, “When you’re sensible, come into the living room. Bring the coffee with you.” I reached down the gun from the refrigerator.

Bill said, “I’m sorry, Ray. Jesus God, I’m sorry.”

“If you start crying,” I told him, “I’ll walk out and the hell with you.” I prodded the guy into the living room. We turned on lights and sat looking across the street, where the picture window framed a happy family watching television, just like the ads in the
Saturday Evening Post.
It looked so normal I wanted to cry. Give me back my three years, Air Force. Four years, counting the year before they sent me to Germany. Give it back, I want to be home again, with Dad sometimes good for a game of catch, with Bill a big brother smelling of beer and Pontiac. I don’t want to be twenty-three, without a home or an old man. I don’t want a brother who’s grieving for a wife I never even met. That makes us strangers.

I said to the guy, “What’s your name?”

“Smitty.”

“Crap.”

“Honest to God. I got a library card to prove it.”

That I wanted to see. Not to check the name, but because I wanted to see a library card that this guy would carry.

He showed it to me, and it was a Brooklyn library card. Typewritten, it said: Chester P. Smith, 653 East 99th St Local 36 Apt 2. Then there was a signature that might have been Chester P. Smith and might also have been Napoleon Bonaparte.

So he had a library card. In the same wallet he had forty-three dollars. But no driver’s license, and I’d just been a hundred thirty miles in a car with him. “I’ll call you Smitty,” I said, tossing the wallet back, “but I bet Chester P. got mad when he had to go after a new card.”

He put the wallet away. A couple minutes later, Bill came in with three cups of coffee. Smitty shrank away when he brought the coffee over to him. Bill grinned like a spreading wound, and put the cup on the table beside the chair.

Bill and I sat on the sofa, and Smitty sat in the armchair near the picture window, half-facing us. After a minute, Bill said, “I’m okay now.”

“Good,” I said.

There was silence, and then Bill cleared his throat and said, “What are we waiting for?”

“Smitty to start talking,” I said.

Smitty stuck a nervous thumb at the picture window. “Can’t we close these drapes?”

“Do it yourself,” I said.

He did, and sat down again, and looked miserable. He hunched over his knees and sipped coffee. Bill had made all three cups just black. We both drank it that way all the time. Smitty didn’t like it, but he drank it.

“It’s time to tell us the story, Smitty,” I said.

“I can’t,” he said. He looked earnestly over the cup at us. “I come to do you a favor, pay back your old man. You rough me up. I should of stayed away in the first place.”

I turned my head. “Bill, can you hit him any softer than the last time? I hate waking him up all the time.”

Bill got up, eager, grinning. He wanted to even the slate. “I’ve got some beauties in here,” he said, and showed us his right fist. It had red hair and orange freckles all over it. The knuckles were big.

Smitty said, “Come on. Lay off me, come on.” His voice was higher. He was pushing back down in the chair.

“Tell us an easy part first,” I said. “What was the favor my father did you?”

His eyes were on Bill’s fist. “It was before you were born,” he said. “Before repeal. I was driving a truckload in from New Hampshire when the state boys got me.”

“A truckload of what?” Bill asked him.

“Whiskey.” He would have said it with contempt for Bill’s ignorance, but he still had respect for Bill’s fist. “The people I worked for threw me away, but your old man was my mouthpiece. For no dough.”

“How did he know you?” I asked.

“We worked for the same people.”

Bill took a step toward him. “That’s a lie.”

“Wait,” I said. “Okay, Smitty, now the current events.”

“I told you the whole thing. There’s gonna be trouble in New York. You don’t want any part of it.”

“I want every part of it,” I told him. “Names and addresses. They killed my father.” I pointed at Bill. “They killed his wife.”

He looked surprised, for just a second. Then his face closed up again, and he said, “Okay, right there that tells you.”

“Tells me what?”

“Why you ought to clear out.”

“Because Bill’s wife was killed?”

“You don’t want to be involved.”

“I
am
involved, whether I like it or not. Tell me about this trouble that’s going to happen in New York.”

He hesitated, considering, looking from me to Bill and back. Then he said, “It’s got to do with the Organization. That’s all I’ll say, that’s too much already.”

“What organization?”

“The mob. The outfit. The syndicate, you might call it.”