I let the sugar lumps drop in my coffee with soft plops. Somehow they had the faraway sounds of bones breaking. I said, “There was no accident. The little bastard ran me down deliberately. He got a roadster and I got a used bicycle. He went off the road to get me and if I hadn’t jumped for it there would have been more than a broken leg.”
“He said he lost control in the gravel drive.”
“Balls. You know better.” I stirred the coffee and tasted it. Now it was too sweet. “Funny, but I was more pissed off about my first bike being wrecked than getting the leg busted.”
“Remember what you did to Alfred when you got out of the hospital?”
My mouth was working to suppress a laugh. I had swiped a short-fused aerial bomb from the July Fourth fireworks display in town and rigged it under his car. It blew right through the seat of Alfred’s roadster and they picked star-dust out of his ass for a month. “How did you know about that?”
“Being of a legal, inquisitive mind, I surmised it, then made inquiries until I located a few witnesses. Tying in a boy with missing pyrotechnics wasn’t too difficult.”
“You could have burned my hide, buddy.”
“Why?” His eyes twinkled. “Frankly, I thought Alfred deserved it and it was an original form of revenge. I don’t think he ever molested you again, did he?”
“Not physically. There were other ways.”
“Except they never really bothered you.”
“What I didn’t have, he couldn’t steal. Alf had more to lose than I did.”
“That brings us up to Dennison.”
“He’s a prick,” I grinned. “I suppose you’re referring to the time that little town twist said she was knocked up and the old man paid off for an abortion?”
Hunter nodded and waited.
“She was an uninvited guest at the picnic. We were all playing in the same area out of sight. I never touched the dame. It was Dennie who took her into the bushes, but he blamed me for it and paid her a hundred bucks to point the finger my way.”
“I understand you were rather severely reprimanded, weren’t you?”
The laugh came out and I nodded. “With a stick. I was in bed for a week, all privileges revoked and before I was on my feet they had even disposed of the dog I had adopted.” I laughed again and sipped at my coffee.
Leyland Hunter frowned again, watching me curiously. “Was it all that funny?”
“In a way,” I told him. “Now it seems even funnier. You see, I was the only one who ever really knew the kid, being the only one who ever managed to slip out into town. She was a smart little slob, a whore at fifteen who used to make it on pay nights with the factory crowd. She was no more knocked up than you were, but she saw money in the deal and pulled the act on Dennie. It scared him shitless, especially since it was his first piece. The old lady everybody thought was her mother actually was Lucy Longstreet who ran a sleazy bordello on Third Street.”
“I still don’t see the humor in it, Dog.”
“Ah,” I said. “It’s there. Dennie boy got the damndest dose of gonorrhea you ever saw. I used to enjoy watching him hang from the overhead pipes in the garage toilet and scream while he tried to piss. His treatment was a closely guarded family secret. I used to take great pleasure in hiding his medication.”
Hunter’s slow smile turned into a silent guffaw. “You know, I wondered what that was all about. There were some dealings with the public health service when the doctor turned in his report. It took some doing to keep it quiet. Small Connecticut towns can make a big to-do about the scion of its leading family getting a dose from a local wench. I don’t suppose there was any attempt to mollify your indignity at having been made a patsy?”
“You’re slipping, Counselor. That’s when the old man made me a present of a new car and told me I could pick my own college. That trust fund didn’t come from the goodness of his heart.”
He picked up his coffee cup and held it in front of his mouth. Over the rim his eyes were birdlike, with a strange intensity. “I think maybe it did, now that I know the whole story. Your grandfather had his own peculiar code. You were the sucker, you could have blown the whistle on his scurrilous nephew and made the family a laughingstock and have been justified in doing so. On your own volition you chose not to. That was when he began to like you. I think it was a great misfortune that you saw little of him from that time on. Does anyone else know about this?”
“Sure. My mother before she died. She thought it was kind of funny. And there was the gardener your skinny-dipping Dubro finally married. You see, he knew me better. The real funny part was that at that time when Dennie was ripping off his first piece, I had been through a dozen women. I was far from a virgin. There wasn’t even a chance of me hitting that little twist because I knew damn well she had the clap. All I did was stand back, take my lumps and wait for the pee pains to hit Dennie. It was worth the wait.”
I waited while Leyland Hunter finished his coffee and set the cup down. Finally he said, “Then I take it that going back is not a personal vendetta?”
“All I want is my ten grand,” I told him. “That is, if I can get past the morals clause.”
“By your own admission, an impossibility.”
“Yeah, but if there’s one for me, there must be one for the others too, isn’t there?”
“An astute observation. However, their lives have always been under careful and constant scrutiny. They have a proven, up-to-date record that will stand the cold light of investigation.”
I laid a five-dollar bill down on top of the check and stood up. “Hunter, my friend, you are old enough to be my grandfather, but there are still some things you have to learn. Everybody’s got something to hide.”
“Even you, Dog?”
“When I bury my bone,” I said, “I bury it deep.”
“Nobody can dig it up?”
“They have to fight me first.”
“All this for ten thousand dollars?”
I shrugged and lit a butt.
We walked across town and back to Hunter’s office in the tower on Thirty-fourth Street. From the elevator starter to the receptionist on his floor, we got the same looks, some bemused, some incredulous. Leyland Hunter never wore the same suit twice in any month, and here he was showing up disheveled and happy along with another randy mutt and there wasn’t any doubt about where we had been or what we had done. The maiden lady behind her desk whipped off her glasses, dropped them in her confusion, tried to hide her embarrassment in a stuttering “good morning” and when we were inside the old man said in a low growl, “She don’t know it, but what I got is just what she needs.”
“Hell, friend, I didn’t mean to turn you into a lecher type. ”
“You didn’t. I’m beginning to think I always was. I just never had time to perfect the art.”
“Never too late,” I said.
His eyes twinkled as he eased into his big chair behind the desk. “Well spoken, Dog. Now I’ll quit giving to those damn high-handed charities and put my excess money into hands that can truly justify their existence. Incidentally ... what was her name?”
“Charmaine.”
“Lovely creature. Would I need your, er—endorsement for another engagement?”
I grinned at him and he grinned back. “Now, what’s on your mind, Counselor?”
Leyland Hunter leaned back in his chair, tugged his tie open a little bit farther and let the air of his profession seep back into his face. “Do you know how often I tried to locate you, Dog?”
“Nope.”
“At least every year,” he said.
“Why bother?”
“Because certain business matters were entrusted to me and I intend to fulfill my obligations. You didn’t make it easy for me at all. You took your Army discharge in Europe and promptly dropped out of sight. I went to every extent possible to find you, ran down every lead, none of which ever panned out, and frankly, Dog, I was beginning to believe you were dead. It wouldn’t have been unusual at all. Army Intelligence, Interpol and the police departments of every country had all too many cases of ex-soldiers heavy with discharge pay suddenly being found dead or not found at all.”
“I had no trouble.”
