“A fellow named Keegan.” Morris looked around pleasantly. “Any of you people know him?”
Claire recognized the name as the man Parker had gone to see, the one who had gotten the phone number here from Handy McKay. The one who had died a painful death.
Jessup was saying, “Keegan? Keegan? I don’t think so.”
Manny said, “I knew a Keeler once.”
Jessup said, “Where’s this guy Keegan live?”
“He doesn’t,” Morris said. “He’s dead. Say, this stuff is pretty good.” Meaning the plate of food in front of him.
Jessup had just taken a big second helping for himself. “Yeah, it is,” he said. “One of my favorites. You say this guy Keegan is dead?”
“Well, I’ll tell you what the situation is,” Morris said, “and maybe you might be able to help me out. See, Keegan and Parker and another fellow and I were together last week, but then we went our separate ways. Then I heard from a friend of mine that Keegan had been asking around for me, trying to find me. So I knew where he was, so I went to see him. And damn if he wasn’t dead. Somebody had nailed him to a wall.”
The phrase was so absurd that it skimmed the surface of Claire’s mind at first, and it was only when Jessup repeated it, in tones of shock, that she really heard what had been said: “Nailed him to a wall!”
“It seemed like a hell of a thing to do,” Morris said. “I always thought Keegan was kind of grumpy myself, but I think that was probably more than he deserved.”
Manny said, “Gee. Nailed him to a wall. How about that?” He wasn’t as good an actor as Jessup, who gave him a hard look to shut him up.
“I searched the place,” Morris said. “Somebody else had searched it, but I did anyway, and I found Parker’s name on a sheet of paper with a phone number in New Jersey. So I took it along, and I went looking for a fellow named Berridge.”
Jessup said, “Berridge? Who’s he?”
“He’s somebody else that’s dead,” Morris said, and looked at Claire. “I hope you don’t know any of these people, Mrs. Willis. I’m sorry to be talking about death so much at your table.”
“No, that’s all right,” she said, stumbling. “I mean, I don’t know them.” She didn’t know Berridge.
Morris said, “Berridge is an old man who was going to work with Parker and Keegan and that other fellow and me, but he decided he was too old, and then he got killed. I figured maybe, since Berridge had been the first one killed, maybe somebody that knew Berridge would know what was going on. So I went and talked to some people who knew Berridge, and I found out Berridge had been having a lot of trouble with a grandson of his. The grandson had been hustling him for money. Apparently he’s an acidhead of some kind.”
The air in the room had suddenly changed. No one was eating, or even pretending to eat. Morris was talking calmly, as though there were no tension in the air at all, but Claire could see in his cheekbones, in the way he moved his eyes, that he too was tense.
She shifted her gaze without turning her head— she was almost afraid to turn her head—and saw Manny looking sullenly at Morris, his head down like a bull when frustration is about to make it charge.
Jessup, his voice flat, said, “You think this grandson had something to do with what happened to Berridge and Keegan?”
Morris said, “I think Berridge had promised the grandson money out of this work he was going to do with the rest of us. But then the old man lost his nerve or his wind or something, and the grandson was stuck. So I think the grandson decided to take the money away from the other guys, from me and Parker and Keegan and the other fellow. And I think Berridge was going to warn us about it, and the grandson killed him. But Berridge had told the grandson where we were going to be at one certain point, so the grandson hung around until we left that place, and’ then picked one of us to follow, and it happened to be Keegan.”
Jessup said, “To rob him, you mean.”
“That’s right. And to find out from him how to reach the rest of us. What I don’t understand is the torture, though.”
Claire said, “Torture?” She hadn’t known she was going to say anything at all, and the sound of the word in her own voice startled and frightened her. Vague images of torture—fire, pinching things, whips, electricity—flickered like bits of a silent movie in her mind.
Morris looked at her. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Willis. I won’t describe it. But what I don’t understand is why it was done.”
Jessup said, “Maybe this fellow Keegan wanted to keep some of the money for himself. Maybe he wouldn’t tell the grandson where it all was, just one little part of it.”
Morris shook his head. “Keegan wasn’t crazy. He’d rather be alive and poor than dead and rich. Besides, there wasn’t that much money to give over.”
Jessup said, “How much?”
“I suppose Keegan would have gotten home with about sixteen thousand,” Morris said.
Manny made a sudden startled sound, and Jessup said, quickly, “That little? For the kind of thing he was doing?”
“When you figure it was one night’s ticket receipts, and it was split four ways, and the financing had to come out of it, there wasn’t that much left.” Morris looked appraisingly at Jessup, and said, “Do you suppose that’s what happened? Do you suppose Keegan gave the sixteen thousand to the grandson and he wouldn’t believe that was all of it? Do you suppose they tortured Keegan to death trying to get him to give them something he didn’t have?”
Claire said, “That’s awful. He wouldn’t have any way to make them stop.”
“He could die,” Jessup said. Though he was answering Claire, he kept looking at Morris. He said, “So what now?”
