“Amends.”
“Yeah, that’s the word. And I don’t know what he’s talking about, and then there’s all this shit about how he used to be a drunk, he used to be a drug addict, he used to rob people, and all of a sudden the years fall away and it’s him, that son of a bitch, that bastard. In my store, can you believe it? Standing in front of me, saying he wants to apologize!”
“What did you do?”
“What did I do? What do you think I did? Get the fuck out of here, I tell him. Go fuck yourself, drop dead, take your apology and shove it up your ass!”
“And he left?”
“Not right away. ‘Oh, tell me what I can do to make it right. Can I pay money? Can I do anything?’ Fucking cocksucker. What’s he gonna do, grow me two new teeth? All I wanted was for him to get the hell out of my store. So I picked this up.”
The cleaver. “And he left?”
“This he understood. ‘Easy, easy,’ and he backs away, and he’s out the door, and I can put this down again. And then, when he’s gone, the shakes come.”
“And the nightmares?”
He shook his head. “No, thank God. Not so far.” He looked at me. “Why?”
“Why did he come? Well, as I understand it—”
“No, what do I care why he came? He’s a crazy bastard, he’s a son of a bitch. He beats up a man whose fingers can’t open a cash box? A fucker like that, who cares why he does what he does?”
“Then—”
“You,” he said. “Why are you here? What do you want from me?”
“Ellery was killed,” I said. “I’m investigating his death.”
“Somebody killed him? You’re standing there and telling me the son of a bitch is dead?”
“I’m afraid so, and—”
“Afraid? What’s to be afraid? You couldn’t bring me better news. You know what I say? I say thank God the bastard is dead!” He leaned forward, both hands on the counter. “ ‘Mr. Dukes’—’cause of course he gets the name wrong—‘Mr. Dukes, just tell me what I can do to make it right.’ What can he do? I tell him what he can do is drop dead, that’s what he can do. Just drop fucking dead. And he did!”
“Actually,” I said, “he had help.”
“Huh?”
“Somebody killed him.”
“Yeah? You find him, I’ll buy him a drink. How? Beat him to death, I hope?”
“He was shot.”
“Shot dead.”
“Yes.”
“Good,” he said flatly. “Good, I’m glad. A man’s dead and I’m glad. Wait a minute. You don’t think I did it, do you?”
“No,” I said. “Somehow I don’t.”
XVIII
IF HE’D KILLED JACK,” I told Greg Stillman, “he’d have called the cops himself and claimed full credit for it. He was so happy to hear Jack was dead I thought I was going to get some free pork chops for being the bearer of good news.”
“ ‘Ding-dong, the witch is dead.’ He must have felt like the Munchkins after Dorothy’s house made that famous crash landing. And you did say he was short, didn’t you?”
“I don’t think you’d mistake him for a Munchkin.” I’d called Greg after I left Dukacs, met him at a coffee shop a few blocks away. “And he’s not the type to burst into song. But I think he felt liberated in about the same way.”
“No more bad dreams.”
“I guess not.” I drank some coffee. “If that’s what you get when you make amends, I may take my time getting to that step.”
“That was Jack’s reaction,” he said. “I had to tell him he was mistaken.”
“Oh?”
“He wasn’t specific. He called me right after he got his apology thrown back in his face. He didn’t tell me who the man was or any of the circumstances, just that he’d been rejected and cursed out and ordered off the premises. He regarded the whole incident as a complete and total failure, and wondered if he could cross the fellow off his list or had to find a way to take it a step further.”
“And?”
“And I told him he’d done it perfectly. That the object of the action wasn’t to be forgiven. That’s just a fringe benefit. He got the point, but he remained troubled. Said he hadn’t realized just how much damage he’d done. Or that you couldn’t entirely undo it.”
I was still thinking that one over when he said, “Unless I’ve miscounted, we’ve only got one name left. And it’s cloaked in John Doe–style anonymity.”
