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A woman who hadn’t had Eddie Kapp for a brother or Robert Campbell for a husband opened the door, smiling at us, saying we must be Kelly. Both of us? “That’s right. I’m Ray and this is Bill.”

“Come in. Arnie’s chewing bones in his den.”

It was the kind of house sea captains are supposed to retire in. Small and airy rooms, with lots of whatnots around.

We went downstairs to the cellar. It had been finished. There was a game room with knotty pine walls. To the right there was a knotty-pine door. A sign on it said, snarl. It had been hand-lettered, with a ruler.

She knocked, and somebody inside snarled. She opened the door and said, “Two Kellys. They’re here.”

“More coffee,” he said.

“I know.” She turned to us. “How do you like your coffee?”

“Just black. Both of us.”

“All right, fine.”

She went upstairs, and we went into the den. Arnold Beeworthy was a big patriarch with a gray bushy mustache. Maybe he’d always looked forty. If he was writing profiles for the
Times
in 1931, he had to be nearly sixty anyway.

The den was small and square. Rubble and paraphernalia and things around the walls and on the tables. A desk to the right, old and beaten, with mismatched drawer handles. Cartoons and calendars and photographs and matchbooks and notes were thumbtacked to the wall over the desk. A filing cabinet was to the left of the desk, second drawer open. A manila folder lay open on top of all the other junk on the desk.

His swivel chair squawked. He said, “It’s too early to stand. How are you?” He jabbed a thick hand at us.

After the handshake and the introductions, Bill took the kitchen chair and I found a folding chair where Beeworthy said it would be, behind the drape.

“1931 is a long time ago,” said Beeworthy. He tapped the open folder. “I didn’t remember the piece you meant. Had to look it up.” He swiveled the chair around and smacked his palm against the side of the open file drawer. “I’ve got a file here,” he said, “of every damn thing I’ve ever written. Some day it’ll come in handy. I can’t think how.” He grinned at himself. “Maybe I’ll write a book for George Braziller,” he said. “It’s fantastic how things that are exciting in life can be so dull in print. I wonder if the reverse is true. It’s a stupid world. And what can I do for you two?” He aimed a thick finger at Bill. “Do you look like your father?”

“I guess so,” said Bill. “That’s what people say.”

“One thing triggers another. When you called, I didn’t know a Kelly from a kilowatt. Then I read that damn thing, and I remembered the look of that son of a bitch Silber in court, and then I remembered the lawyer. Wore a blue suit. I can’t remember what color tie. Anyway, I’m sorry about that piece. I was young and idealistic, then. Went with a girl, a Jewish Communist vegetarian from the Bronx. She gave speeches in bed. That was 1931, a Communist then was somebody who didn’t change their shorts every day. I’ve never been any damn good at interviews, I always do all the talking myself.” The finger shot out at me this time, and he said, “What the hell are
you
so mad about?”

I realized then how tense my face muscles were. I tried to relax them, and it felt awkward, as though I were staring.

He grinned at me. “Okay, you’ve got a problem. It’s a little late to be mad at me for what I said about your father thirty years ago. I take it this is something more current.”

I said, “Two months ago Monday, somebody murdered my father. The cops gave up. It’s something from before 1940. We need names.”

He sat still for a few seconds, looking at me, and then he got to his feet and took one step to his right. “I want to record this. Do you mind?”

“Yes.”

He looked back at me. One hand was on the tape control. “Why?”

“We don’t want anything in the paper. They’re after us, too. The whole family. They killed his wife already, three weeks ago.”

Bill said, “Two weeks and three days.”

“All right, this is off the record. Nothing in the paper unless you say so. Unless and until.” He stepped back, pulled open a green metal locker door, pointed at the shelf. Red and black tape boxes. “I save that crap, too,” he said. “Interviews that go back nine years. Useless. Not a celebrity in the crowd.”

There was a knock at the door. He snarled, and his wife called, “Open up, my hands are full.”

Bill jumped up and opened the door.

She had a round tray that said Ruppert’s Knicker -bocker Beer on it. She set the three cups of coffee around on spaces we cleared. She smiled at everybody, but didn’t say anything, and went right out again, closing the door after her. Beeworthy said, “Will you take my word for it?”

I wanted his cooperation. He was a complicated string-saver. I said, “All right.”

“Fine.” He clicked it on, and the tape reels started slowly turning. He went back to the desk and sat down and pushed papers out of the way, and there was the microphone.

Then he had me tell the story, in detail. I didn’t like spending the time, but I was the one asking the favor.

He was a fake. He knew how to interview. Three or four times he asked questions, and filled in sections I’d blurred. He said, “You’re grabbing for the wrong end of the horse. Find out who’s around
now,
and then see which of them knew your father when. I could do that probably easier than you. Some of Eddie Kapp’s old cronies, maybe. Let me dig around in the files—not here, at the paper—and I’ll give you a call on Monday. Where you staying?”

“I don’t think there’ll ever be any story in this,” I said. “Not that I’d want you to print.”

He laughed and tugged at his mustache. “Don’t believe the reporters you see in the movies,” he said. “The age of creative journalism is dead. Stories today are things editors point at. I want this for me, strictly for my own distraction and edification.” He got up and switched off the tape recorder. “What I really ought to be doing,” he said, looking at the tape reels, “I ought to be editing some small-town paper somewhere. Up in New England somewhere. I never made the move. I should have made the goddamn move.” He turned back. “I’ll look things up,” he said. “Where can I get in touch with you?”

“Amington Hotel.”

“I’ll call you Monday.”

He went upstairs with us. His wife showed up long enough to say goodbye. She smiled and said, “I hope you didn’t sell him a treasure map. I don’t think I could take another treasure map.”

Bill grinned. “No treasure map,” he said.

Beeworthy handed her his cup. “Coffee,” he said.

He stood in the doorway as we went down the walk to the car. He looked too big for the house. He said, “I’ll call you Monday.”

Bill twisted the car around side streets back to Woodhaven Boulevard. “Where to?”

“Manhattan,” I said.

“Okay.” He made a right turn. “Any place special?”

“Lafayette Street. Johnson’s office.”

“You trust him now?”

“Part of the way. I don’t think he’d lie to us. He seems to have the idea he could help. I want to know how.”

“What street was that? You better look it up.”

I opened the glove compartment and got out the map and street guide. It wasn’t that tough to find. But the nearest parking space was four blocks away. We walked back and took the elevator to the fifth floor. It was a rundown building with green halls. Johnson’s office was 508, to the right.

It was one room. Desk, filing cabinet, wastebasket, two chairs, all bought secondhand. Walls the same green as the hall. One window, with a view of a tarred bumpy roof and beyond it a brick building side. The ceiling paint was flaking.

Johnson stood in the corner, wedged between a wall-turn and the filing cabinet. His one arm was up resting on top of the cabinet. His face was bloody. He looked as though he’d been standing there a long time.

He turned his head slowly when we came in. “Hello,” he said. His voice was low and flat, his pronunciation bad. His lips were puffed. “I was going to call you,” he said carefully.

We went over and took his arms and led him over to his desk. We sat him down and I said, “Where’s the head?”

“Left.”

I went down the hall to the left and found it. The tile floor was filthy. I got a lot of paper towels, some wet and some dry, and went back.

Bill had a bottle and glass out of a drawer. He was pouring into the glass. I said, “Let me wash the face first.”

He grunted when I touched the towels to his face. Wet first, and then dry. Somebody’d been wearing a ring. He had scrapes on both cheeks and around his mouth. Bill handed him the glass and he said, “Thanks.”

I wet a couple of towels from the bottle. When he put the glass down, I said, “Hold still.”

He tried to jump away when I pressed the towels to the scrapes, but I held his head. “Christ sake!” he shouted. “Christ sake!”

I finished and stepped back. “Okay, have another snort.”

He did, and Bill handed him a lit cigarette. His hands were shaking.

I said, “How long ago?”

“Half an hour? Fifteen minutes? I don’t know. I just stood there.”

“Why were you going to call us?”

He motioned vaguely at his face. “This was because of you. They wanted to know where you were.”

“And you told them.”

He looked down at his hands. “Not at first.”

“It’s all right. We’ve been looking for them, too. You did right telling them.”

He emptied the glass and reached for the bottle. He drank from the bottle.

I said, “Where did they connect you with us? They didn’t see us together, or they’d know where to find us. You’ve mentioned our names to somebody.”

He coughed and dragged on the cigarette. “Half a dozen people. A couple cops I know, a reporter, a guy works for one of the big agencies.”

“It’s one of them. You find out which one. You need any money?”

“Not now. Later on, maybe. Unless you could advance me twenty.”

I nodded at Bill. He dragged out his wallet and gave Johnson two tens.

I said, “Move as quick as you can. And don’t be afraid to talk. If they come after you again, tell them anything they want to know. It’s okay.”

“Yeah.”

“Call us at the hotel as soon as you’ve got something. If we’re not there, leave a message.”

“You aren’t going to move?”

“Why should we? I told you, we want to find them as bad as they want to find us. We’ll stay at the same place.”

He shook his head. “They’re mean bastards,” he said.

“You okay now?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

We left and went uptown and checked into a hotel forty blocks north of the Amington. We hung around, and when I called the Amington they said there weren’t any messages.

We bought a deck of cards and hung around the room. All we could do was wait.

Bill woke me up at nine o’clock in the morning and said it was time to go to Mass. He wasn’t kidding. I said, “No.”

“You need God’s help, Ray,” he said earnestly.

I said, “Go away.”

“You don’t think you do?”

“The guys in the Chrysler didn’t.”

“Who?”

“The guys who killed Dad. And your wife.”

“Ray, you’re still in the Church, aren’t you?”

“Do I look it?”

“You’ve lost your faith?”

“They shot it out from under me.”

“You’re one of those, huh? The first tragedy comes into your life, and you blame it on God.”

I rolled over on my side away from him. “Go on,” I said. “You’ll be late for Mass.”

He did some more talking, but I ignored him, so he got dressed and went out. I fell asleep again.

I was awake when he came back. I was sitting by the window, looking out at the street and thinking about waking up in the hospital.

He put a bag on the dresser. “I brought you coffee and a danish,” he said.

“Thanks.”

He had the same for himself. We were quiet and ate for a while, and then we both started to apologize at the same time. We broke off and laughed, shaking our heads. “Yeah,” I said. “I was tired, that’s all.”

“I should of left you alone.”

“The hell. I don’t like this waiting.”

He grinned and shrugged. “We need to wait, that’s all. We’ve gone this far, now we wait.” His hand was wrapped around the coffee carton. He tilted it, finishing the coffee, and then tossed it into the can. “All we have to do is take it easy.”

“Yeah.”

I went over and called the other hotel and asked if there were any messages. There weren’t. I went back, and Bill had a rummy hand dealt out on his bed. I scooped up my cards and played standing up, walking around between draws. I went gin on his seventh discard and picked up forty-three points and threw the cards down on the bed and lit a cigarette. Bill told me to take it easy. I walked around some more, and then I came back and shuffled the cards and dealt out the second hand. By the time I went gin I was sitting down.

At quarter to three, I went down and signed for another day and paid. Then I went back up and picked up the hand Bill dealt me and ripped the cards across the middle, so we went out and had hamburgers and bottles of Schlitz. Bill said, “I think we can go back and get the suitcases now. What do you think?”

I shrugged. “What the hell. Anything.”

We got the car. Bill drove and I sat beside him and chain-smoked. I looked out at the people. Two months ago less one day I was here with Dad. One of those people out there recognized Dad and went and made a phone call. Or shadowed us back to the hotel first. One of those people on the sidewalk. I wanted to know which one. I wanted to reach out of the car and grab him by the throat, and drag him along beside the door.

We stuck the car in a parking lot and walked uptown and crosstown and came at our hotel from the back, where there was a dry-cleaning store. A little store in the back corner of the hotel, on the side street, open on Sunday for the tourists.

We went in. There was a good-looking colored girl in a green dress behind the counter. I said, “Hotel maintenance. Survey check. We got to get into the cellar here.”

She shrugged. “Okay with me.”

I looked around and acted mad. “Lady, I’m not playing guessing games with you. I don’t have the whole damn hotel memorized. Where’s the door?”