Part 7 (1/2)

I moved out of the crush and sipped the beer and looked for the controls. When you have a big noisy center-ring act that mixes lions, tigers, bears, sheep, rabbits, weasels, and cobras, you need the men with the whips and kitchen chairs and s.h.i.+ny pistols, or you start losing too many animals, and end up with an empty ring and a legal paper nailed to the door.

A disturbance started at a far corner of the long bar, and two quiet men appeared out of nowhere and moved in before it had a chance to spread. A good pair, swift and professional, and they picked the right one without hesitation. When they took him by me I saw that his mouth was wrenched apart by pain and his eyes were frightened, his face pallid and sweaty. The two men were smiling, joking with him. A painful come-along of some kind, manual or mechanical, is better for business than a half dozen old-fas.h.i.+oned bouncers. They had hit so quickly I knew that the place had to be under observation. So by picking the best spot from which one could watch the whole room, I finally picked out the watch station. A mirrored insert was set high over the bar. From there a man could sit at his ease and watch all of the bar, all of the tables, the small dance floor, the cash registers, the entrance, and the doors to the rest rooms. The two men came back in and took up their position to the right of the main entrance. One of them pressed the switch of an intercom box and spoke into it. I could guess the probable message. ”He quieted down nice, Charlie. He's driving home, and he won't be back tonight.”

So I stood there, in that absolute and lonely privacy that exists only in the middle of a crush of strangers and a deafening din of festive voices and festive rock staring at the hefty fleshy pumping of the tireless blonde, and wondering why I should feel that too many important parts were missing from my equation.

I had been luckier than I deserved, first in finding that lonely, troubled, talkative old woman, secondly in having her relate to me quickly and trustingly, and thirdly in getting my good look at the private hidden life of Lew Arnstead.

A lot of pieces fit beautifully together, but in some way the fit was too good to be true.

I wished Meyer was standing beside me, so I could try it on him. ”Frank Baither planned the money-truck job. He used Hutch, Orville, Henry Perris, and Lilo, Perris's stepdaughter. We saw Henry, Meyer. He was the broad brown guy with the white teeth who arrived late for work at Al Storey's station that morning. Driving... a blue Rambler. So Henry was in on the Baither killing. It was Lilo Perris (or Hatch) who ran across our bows. Henry set up a little smoke screen. It was too cute because maybe he was too nervous. Grab that envelope and somehow get it to Lilo. Then she went to the Baither place and faked Lew Arnstead into giving her a chance to plant it in Baither's house. Arnstead is on speed and it has turned him erratic and dangerous. All Mister Norm has to do is trace the envelope, from Henry to Lilo to the Baither house, and bring them in and open them up. Henry and Lew and Lilo. In a hurry, before Lew and Lilo run for it with the money off the truck.”

And suddenly I knew Meyer's reaction. I could almost hear his voice. ”If our Sheriff Norman Hyzer knows as much about this county as I think he knows, then he certainly knows that Frank Baither's little girl friend, before the money-truck operation, was Lilo Perris. He knows a young girl was involved. He might suspect that Henry Perris was in on it, too, and he would check back and find out where Henry was that weekend. He seemed absolutely convinced we were involved. As if he had to believe we were. Why?”

”A blind spot, maybe. Maybe he's too close to it to see it. Maybe he's involved in some way. The pieces fit so well, Meyer.”

”Do they always?”

”Hardly ever.”

”So why do you keep asking these dumb questions?”

Meyer disappeared when big King Sturnevan appeared in front of me, c.o.ke bottle dwarfed by his big malformed fist.

Nine.

MCGEE, You didn't come across our buddy now yet, huh?”

”How do you know?”

”I'd put my money on you, like I said, but he'd mark you some. You wouldn't be able to help that. Been asking around. n.o.body's seen that sucker.” King's civilian garb was a big red sport s.h.i.+rt with white palm trees on it, and a tent-sized pair of wrinkled khaki slacks. He had a small straw hat with a narrow brim perched on the back of his head, and a row of cigars in the sport-s.h.i.+rt pocket.

We had to roar at each other to be heard, and I didn't want to roar what I wanted to say to him. So ip willingly followed me out into the abrupt silence if the night, and we went and sat in the top-down Buick.

”Would you say that like six months ago Arnstead started to go bad?”

”Maybe that long ago. I wasn't paying attention.”

”Before that, he was okay?”

”He was pretty good. He was maybe as good as Billy Cable, and Cable is one h.e.l.l of a cop, and you can believe it. But... I don't know. The broads, I guess. A few months back he beat up one of his broads. She filed a complaint and then pulled it. There was something maybe I should have reported. I was in my own car. Six, seven weeks ago. He come the other way, alone in our number four cruiser, on 112 and he had it wound right up to the top. We use Fords with heavy duty suspension and the Cobra 428 mill with a three-point-five-0 rear end, so you got an honest hunner twenny-five, and he come by with that needle laying right on the pin. h.e.l.l, I turned around and went in, thinking maybe somebody had hit the bank. Nothing going on. I ast him, what the h.e.l.l, Lew. You could kill yourself on that kind of road. He told me to shove it. Take fighters now. There have been some greats who went right down the chute when the wrong kind of broad started pecking away at them.”

”Ever think he might be on anything, King?”

He took his time, glowered at a long cigar ash, tapped it over the side onto the parking lot asphalt. ”Now that you bring it up, pally.”

”Suppose I say he is? Definitely.”

”Then I say two things. I say you shouldn't ought to be poking around enough to find out, because it will make Mister Norm a little on the sorea.s.s side. And I say the more I think, the more it fits. Speed, maybe? You take fighters, there isn't maybe one these days doesn't go into a main bout without being stepped up with superpill. It's no good, pal. They go like h.e.l.l and they don't get tired and they get a little more quick, but they can get hurt bad and not know it and get up and get killed. You spend more than you got, and you sack out for two, three days to get back up to normal. Staying on it is something else. Come to think of it, he hasn't been sleeping much lately, and he's dropped weight. What would get him on it?”

”Like the preacher says. Evil companions.”

”Pally, we all got a few of those. All it means is you better not try to find Lew. You better stay the h.e.l.l away from him.”

”And it means his judgment has gone bad. That's why he pounded on Meyer. He could have killed him.”

”I stepped out at the wrong time.”

”Why didn't Billy Cable stop him?”

”Because Billy and him haven't been getting along so good, and when you see a man b.i.t.c.hing himself, why stop him? Anyway Billy finally did stop him or Lew would have killed your friend. Then when it was your turn with Mister Norm, Billy took the chance of giving you a look at your friend so Mister Norm would get the picture on Lew loud and clear and soon. Poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d.”

”King, the woman who signed the complaint and withdrew it against Arnstead, was her first name Betsy?”

”Jesus Q. Christ! You're supposed to be a stranger In town, McGee. Betsy Kapp. Mrs. Betsy Kapp. She's a divorced lady, works hostess in the dining room down at the Live Oak Lodge. Mrs. Teffer's place. Best food in the county.”

Nice to have King confirm Lennie Sibelius's appraisal of the local cuisine. I went back inside with King, and twenty minutes later drove into the middle of the city. It was a little after nine when I walked into the dining room. There was a family celebration at a long table near the far wall, champagne and toasts by middle-aged males to a freshfaced girl and her blus.h.i.+ng husband-to-be. Two quiet couples at small tables, with coffee and dessert by candlelight. Three burly businessmen drawing plot plans on the tablecloth.

As the hostess approached me, menus in the crook of her arm, I knew she had to be Betsy Kapp. She was the lean-bodied blonde who had starred in ten of Lew's Polaroid shots, the one with the attempt at a s.e.xy leer which didn't quite come off. She wore a dark blue s.h.i.+ft with a little starched white collar, and that mixed look of query and disapproval which told me that it was a little late for dinner.

Before she could turn me away, I said, ”My attorney Mr. Sibelius, said that I'd be a fool to eat anywhere else, Mrs. Kapp.”

”Oh?” she said. And then ”Oh.” She turned and looked at the foyer clock. ”Well, it is a little late, but if you... didn't want anything too terribly elaborate...”

”Sirloin, baked potato, tossed salad with oil and vinegar, and coffee?”

”I think that would... Sit wherever you want, while I...”

She took off for the kitchen in a slightly knock-kneed jog and I picked a table by the wall as far from the other four parties as I could get. She came back smiling. ”They hadn't turned the broiler off, thank goodness. But no baked. Home fries?”

”Fine.”

”And the steak?”

”Medium rare.”

”I can get you a c.o.c.ktail from the bar.”

”Plymouth gin, if they have it, on the rocks, straight, with a twist. A double. Booth's, if they don't.”

She gave the order, came back with my drink, then went to the register and took care of the departing family party and then the businessmen. I watched her move around. She looked a little younger and prettier than in the amateur nude studies, probably because there was a lively animation in her face and because she moved quickly and stood well. Had I not seen the pictures, I would have wondered if the imposing thrust of bosom might not be a pneumatic artifice, a fabricated symbol of the. culture's obsession with mammary bounty. But I knew they were real, imposingly, awesomely real.

When she brought my salad she said, ”I have to be the waitress, too. Another drink?”

She brought the dinner. It was a splendid piece of meat indeed. When I was half finished, the last of the two couples paid and left, and I had the dining room to myself.

Betsy Kapp said, ”Would you like your coffee now?”