“I think you know. I think there is a very good chance that you know.”
He stood up straight, forgot shooting pool for the moment, holding his cue tight in his fist, erect, like somebody carrying the flag in a parade. “Frankly, I don’t know what you are… other than a damn fool. I get the feeling you’re fishing around for something, that you aren’t sure of yourself. You’ve searched out a confrontation with me and now you aren’t quite sure what to do with it.” He shook his head side-to-side, his lips drawn back tight over very white teeth. “And frankly, Mr. Quarry, you scare me a little, with your implications, insinuations about my brother-in-law’s death… murder, if you will.”
“Four thousand dollars,” I said.
“… what?”
“For four thousand dollars I’ll leave you alone.”
He laughed. “I guess you are a damn fool at that. As you’ve said yourself, Mr. Quarry, I’m a businessman, and I’m not about to buy something without knowing what it is.”
“Let me ask you something, then. Why would anyone want to kill Albert Leroy?”
He shrugged, sat on the edge of the table. “The robbery motive is the one I accept, I suppose. The pack rat’s buried treasure. No one felt malice against Albert, really. He was a harmless enough guy, most people liked him, he had a smile for everybody, even if it was a simpering kind of a smile. I for one will miss him. We used to play pool up here together, Albert and I. He’d come over Sunday, after church, and we’d all have supper together, my wife and I and Albert and the aunts and uncles and cousins who take part in the radio show and the businesses, our weekly family gathering, a forced, silent charade. But after supper Albert and I would come up here and play eight- ball for a few hours, and I’d let him win one out of every three games or so, and the final game I’d let run close, then purposely sink the eight-ball to let Albert win and go home happy.”
I thought back to Boyd’s surveillance report on Albert Leroy: the list of activities hadn’t included visits here. I said, “He came around every Sunday?”
He nodded. “Up until a month and a half ago, when he and my wife had a falling-out, a little family quarrel… You know, Mr. Quarry, you do manipulate people well, you have a way of sneaking up on a person… you’ve had me talking when you should have been, because if you don’t start talking in a convincing manner about something I’m going to toss you out on your ass, and from up here that could be painful.”
I said nothing; I was confused.
“Look,” he said, “just why are you asking questions about Albert, anyway?”
“Trying to establish a motive.”
“A motive for what?”
“His murder. I want to understand why you hired somebody to kill your brother-in-law.”
His face reddened and he got slowly to his feet. He raised the cue as if to strike me and said, “I ought to break this thing over your head! You stun me. You crazy son of a bitch, where do you find the incredible, idiotic nerve to come barging into my house, a complete stranger, and blurt out an insane accusation like that!”
“Maybe you’d feel better about it if you were swinging a wrench instead of a cue.”
He got a puzzled look on his face; had what I’d said really been a non sequitur to him, or was this a mask? He said, “You’re insane. Get out of my house.”
“Not without four thousand dollars.”
He looked at me blank-faced for a moment. Then he started to laugh.
Now I was the startled one.
He said, “I have to give you credit.”
I said, “Credit?”
“You’re good. Better than you should be You know, I ruled Vince out at first, because you didn’t look right, you didn’t seem like the type who’d get involved with him. But this ridiculous attempt to implicate me in Albert’s death… who but Vince could come up with something so absurd?” He laughed again, more harshly this time. “You even had me wondering if maybe Peg put you up to this, to force me into handing Bunny’s to her on a platter… though I couldn’t really believe Peg would try anything of this sort. But Peg is a friend of Carol’s and could possibly have known about Carol and me, so I was thinking about it.”
I swallowed. I wondered what the fuck was going on. I felt like an actor who had wandered into the last scene of a strange play.
“Vince is just crook enough,” he was saying, “just cretin enough, to try something ridiculous like this… what’s the matter, isn’t he satisfied with the cushy job I set him up in? Does he know anybody else driving a hack making that kind of money?”
I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. We’d been playing a game, both of us, but different games. Suddenly I was filled with doubt. Suddenly I knew Springborn was not the man with the wrench, and that I was digging a nice deep grave for myself by tossing around all those hints about Albert Leroy’s death.
I stood up and said, “Four thousand isn’t so much to ask.”
“No,” he said, “it isn’t. That’s one reason I figure this is Vince’s scheme. A small-time thinker, Vince, a man with extremely limited vision. Let me give you some advice. You seem like a reasonably intelligent guy. I don’t know how in Christ’s name you got mixed up with Vince, whether he’s a friend of a friend, or somebody you met in service, or someone you ran into in a bar, or what. But however you picked him, you picked a loser, Mr. Quarry. Now. I’d advise you to head back to wherever it is you hail from. Do not pass go. Do not collect four thousand dollars.”
“I don’t bluff easy,” I said, aching to go but for appearance sake not wanting to give in too quickly.
“How much do you know about Vince?”
“Not much,” I admitted. Christ, not much.
“You don’t… go in for that kind of stuff, do you?”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Maybe you aren’t, uh… listen, hasn’t he tried anything?” Those gray eyes were trying to tell me something.
“I don’t understand you.”
“Maybe. Maybe you don’t. Well, Mr. Quarry, you just find your own way out. You seem to have enough ingenuity to do that, anyway. I’m going to stay up here and shoot myself some pool… the activities downstairs are too morbid for my tastes. You know, you’re not a bad pool player yourself, Mr. Quarry, though you wouldn’t do well if we were to play a game for money. When we were shooting around I was sandbagging, you know.”
“So was I.”
“No you weren’t. You were playing full out. It’s a naive quality you seem to have. You’re a trusting sort, for a blackmailer. However, you do shoot a fair game of pool. But you won’t win playing with me. Pool’s my game.”
“Wrong, Springborn,” I said, with some admiration. “Your game is poker.”
He bent comfortably over the big old table and batted an eight-ball into a corner pocket and I left him.
25
One thought throbbed through my brain: get the hell out of here! I walked quickly across the unlit second floor hallway, anxious to reach the glowing area of light ahead that marked the top of the winding stairway which would lead me down into that big empty entryway and then outside into dreary, overcast freedom. I’d been an asshole to stay in Port City, an asshole to think I could find my way through so complex a maze in so short a period of time, an asshole to risk everything to regain four thousand dollars and maybe have a shot at avenging Boyd and myself on that son of a bitch with the wrench. Well, I wasn’t going to play asshole any longer. I was going to grab Peg by the hand, take her back to her apartment and bang her good-bye, then head on home, to Wisconsin. I actually sighed with relief as I neared the staircase. In the middle of the sigh, somebody touched my shoulder.
I shivered. Not from being cold, though cold I was, cold-sweat variety; I’d been all but running through that hallway like a kid afraid of the dark. And now somebody was touching my shoulder and I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, scream or crap my pants. So I didn’t do anything. I waited for something to happen. Linda Sue Springborn stepped out of the darkness and said, “I heard it all.”
She was speaking very softly. This made sense, because she’d just finished eavesdropping and we weren’t
