The Innocent Bystanders

'You killed him,' said Kaplan. There was amazement rather than accusation in his voice.

'That's right,' said Craig. He unscrewed the silencer from the gun he'd picked up, then stuffed the silencer into his pocket, the gun into his pants' waistband, and opened the door, using his fingernails only. The corridor was still empty.

'At least you haven't got nosy neighbors,' said Craig. 'Did you touch anything?'

Kaplan shook his head. Craig jerked his head at the door and Kaplan left, Craig followed, still a little behind, and to the right. The way the bodyguards walk on television, thought Kaplan. The only crazy thing was he still wasn't scared. He still couldn't believe it was happening.

Inside Kaplan's door the manservant waited to take Kaplan's hat and tell him that Madam was having a cocktail in the drawing room. Craig looked the man over. The voice was phoney, but a splendid phoney; rich and plummy as fruitcake. The man himself, lean and rangy in his white mess jacket, with cold, expressionless eyes that noticed the bulge at Craig's middle, and became more expressionless than ever.

'Cocktail?' said Kaplan. 'Sounds like a good idea. We'll have one too.'

He led the way and Craig found himself shaking hands with a plump and hennaed matron who took one look at her lord, and blamed it all, whatever it was, on Craig.

She thinks I've had him out drinking, thought Craig, and waited for the introductions.

'This is Mr. Craig, honey,' said Kaplan. So he knew I was on my way here.

'How d'you do?' said Mrs. Kaplan, uncaring. 'Hether-ton, mix the drinks will you?'

Craig looked over his shoulder. Hetherton had exchanged the mess jacket for a swallowtail coat that fitted badly on the left-hand side. Craig asked for Scotch on the rocks, and Hetherton mixed it and passed it to Craig with his left hand. When Craig took it with his right, Hetherton began to look happy. Kaplan accepted a modest vodka martini and at once said, 'Business, Ida. I'll take Mr. Craig to the study.' This was the merest routine, and yet, Craig thought, she still hates me. She knows there's something wrong.

'Will you be needing me, sir?' Hetherton said. His right hand, Craig noticed, was adjusting an already impeccable tie, six inches away from his gun butt.

'No, no,' said Kaplan. 'Mr. Craig and I are old friends. We'll look after ourselves.'

Hetherton bowed and relaxed still further. Craig assumed he had the place bugged.

The study was small, untidy, and masculine, more den than study, full of small cups that Marcus and Ida Kaplan had won at bridge tournaments, and larger cups that Marcus Kaplan had won at skeet shooting. There were also two huge and highly functional lamps. Kaplan tossed off his martini and promptly refilled it from a bottle in the base of one of them.

'Scotch is in that one,' said Kaplan, pointing. 'Help yourself.'

Craig twisted the base and pulled, as Kaplan had done. Inside the lamp was a bottle of Red Hackle. He freshened his drink.

'The trouble with Ida is she worries too much,' he said, then began to shake as the fear hit him, and from his mouth came a travesty of laughter. 'No, that's not right— is it Mr. Craig? The trouble with Ida is she doesn't worry half enough.' The laughter resumed then, shrill and crazy. Craig leaned forward politely. 'You can stop if you want to,' he said, but the laughter went on. Craig reached out and his fingers touched, very lightly, Kaplan's forearm, found the place he needed, and pressed. Pain seared across Kaplan's arm, terrible pain that stopped at once as his laughter died.

'You see?' said Craig.

Kaplan said, 'I see, all right.' His body still shook, but his voice was steady. 'You really got a message from Aaron?'

'Mr. Kaplan, you know I haven't,' said Craig. 'I've come for your information.'

'Again?' said Kaplan. Somehow Craig's body stayed immobile.

'Again,' he said.

'But I gave it to the other two.'

'Which other two, Mr. Kaplan?'

'Mr. Royce,' said Kaplan. 'And that nice Miss Benson. They took me on a trip in a motor launch. Taped the whole thing.'

'So they did,' said Craig. 'Now tell it all to me.'

Kaplan told it and Craig listened, and remembered. When he had done, Craig said:

'Thank you. You've been very helpful.'

Kaplan said. 'Helpful. Yeah. Is it going to find my brother?'

'It's possible,' said Craig.

'I'm fifty-nine,' said Kaplan. 'I haven't seen him since I was twelve years old—and he was seven. But he's my brother. I want him found.'

Craig said, 'So do a lot of people. Friends and enemies. If the friends find him first—you'll see him.' Before Kaplan could speak, Craig said, 'Do you know a man called Laurie S. Fisher?'

'Sure,' said Kaplan. 'He's the guy who got me into this thing—whatever it is. Flew me out to his ranch in Arizona. And that reminds me—what in hell are we going to do about the Bol-'

Craig's voice cut across his. 'Mr. Kaplan, I met you on your doorstep, you invited me in, and we talked. I'm grateful for the time you spared me, but that's all that happened.'

Kaplan looked down at the arm Craig had touched, where the memory of pain still throbbed.

'Jesus,' he said. 'You're a cold-blooded bastard.'

'If I'm to find your brother I'll have to be.' Craig put down his glass. 'Thanks for the drink,' he said. 'I never drank from a table lamp before. It was delicious.'

'Okay,' said Kaplan. 'I get it. Keep my mouth shut or you'll tell Ida.'

'Is it really so important?' said Craig.

'It is to me,' said Kaplan. 'And to her too. Looking after me—all that. You don't care about all that crap. Right?'

Craig said, 'You've had a shock, and I handled you roughly. I'm sorry.'

'Where I was brought up we used to have a saying,' said Kaplan. 'With you for a friend, who needs enemies?'

'Not you, Mr. Kaplan,' said Craig. 'You already got them.'

He left quietly. Sounds from another room told him that Thaddeus Cooke's corps de ballet were performing on television, and that Mrs. Kaplan approved. Craig kept on going and met Hetherton in the hall without surprise.

'How long have you been with him?' Craig asked.

'Three weeks, sir,' said Hetherton. 'May I ask-'

'Department K,' said Craig. 'M-16.'

'Ah,' said Hetherton.

'Ah, is right,' said Craig. 'Stay on a while, Hethers, old top. He needs you.'

Hetherton said in quite a different voice, 'There's been nothing out of line so far.'

'Number 37,' said Craig. 'The Boldinis. They're away in Maine. Somebody broke in and smashed a vase. Then somebody else broke in and smashed somebody's head. And somebody had a gun. With a silencer. Like this.' His hand dipped into his pocket, showed the silencer, replaced it. 'It's a good silencer, and Kaplan's a hell of a target. If I were you, old top, I'd put him on a diet.'

He went back to his hotel room, and wrote down what Kaplan had told him. He was hungry and tired, but that didn't matter. The hunger sharpened his memory and the tiredness could be ignored. It was all a matter of will. When he'd finished he read it through three times, then repeated it back to himself. Twice his memory failed him, so he read it three times more. When he'd got it right he lay down on the bed and slept at once, waking two hours later as he'd willed himself to do. Again he repeated Kaplan's message. It came back word-perfect. The only thing wrong with it was it didn't tell him enough. One picture postcard sent from Kutsk, in Turkey, and a message about a rabbi they'd both known as children. And Kaplan had lost the postcard. Craig screwed the paper into a twist, set fire to it, and dropped the pieces into a metal trash can. When they had burned out he flushed the pieces down the toilet and went out to eat.

By now it was close to midnight and New York was much too quiet. (If Cinderella had lost her glass slipper in New York, Loomis had said, her foot would have been in it at the time.) He found a place that sold him clams,