Killing Time

Thirteen

During dinner, I told Cathy my day, in a slightly edited version. The one thing I left out was the gunfire from City Hall this afternoon. She laughed when I described Paul Masetti, and nodded with satisfaction when I told her about the meeting with the seven likely candidates, and frowned when I told her about George Watkins having asked me to finger Jack Wycza.

When I was finished, she said, “They’re all scared, Tim. I’ve never seen so much activity around that place as there was today. Dan Wanamaker was making all kinds of phone calls, including one to that travel agent in the Winston Hotel.”

“Kilmer?”

“Uh huh. And George Watkins kept running in and out all day long, both before and after the meeting.”

“Trying to convince everybody he was right about the CCG,” I guessed. “So they could then turn around and convince him.”

“What about the man who tried to kill you?” she asked. “Don’t you have any idea at all which one he is?”

I shook my head. “Not even a guess. And that’s pretty disgusting when you stop to think about it. Somebody tries to kill me, and the likely prospects are seven of my closest and oldest friends, men I’ve known practically all of my life, men I’ve worked with for the last fifteen years. And I not only can’t even make a guess as to which one it is, I can’t eliminate any of them. Not a one. That’s a hell of a thing to be able to say, Cathy, that I can’t look at a single one of those seven people and know absolutely that he wouldn’t try to kill me.”

“How deeply are you involved, Tim?” she asked me suddenly.

“In what?”

“In anything that might interest this reform group.”

I shrugged. “I’m not directly involved in any graft or kickbacks or nepotism or anything like that, if that’s what you mean.”

“But what?” she prompted.

“But I have lived here for the last fifteen years. I have worked at my job, and it’s put me in contact with City Hall, and there has been a lot of mutual back-scratching. That was inevitable.”

“And look at the people you got involved with that way,” she said. “You just told me you couldn’t look at a one of them and be sure he wouldn’t try to kill you.”

I frowned. “I don’t see what you’re getting at.”

“They were the wrong people to get involved with, Tim,” she said.

“I didn’t have much choice,” I told her.

“You could have chosen not to get involved.”

“No, I couldn’t. Everybody’s involved, one way or another. You’ve got to get involved, if you’re going to get anywhere in life.”

“You mean,” she said, “that you have to be dishonest.”

That was a strong accusation, and completely unexpected, and I found myself automatically in hot defense. “I’m not dishonest,” I said. “Not at all. Look, Cathy, don’t confuse me with the police. Their job is to find the criminal and see that he’s punished. My job is strictly investigation. I’m hired to investigate, and it’s up to the people who hire me what they do with the stuff I dig up. I play ball with them, and they play ball with me, and everybody’s satisfied.”

“What if you don’t play ball?”

I laughed. “I’d make a fast fifteen hundred a year doing credit checks.”

“So you have to play ball,” she said. “You have to make a deal with people like these seven.”

“You’re making it sound a hell of a lot worse than it is,” I told her.

“People get away with things with your help,” she said.

“Without my hindrance,” I corrected her.

“That’s the same thing.”

“No, it isn’t. Cathy, nobody has ever come to me and said, ‘Here, Tim, here’s a couple hundred. I’m getting a kickback on that street-paving job, and I’d like you to look the other way.’ If I find out about the kickback, I find out afterward. And if there’s no point in raising a stink, I don’t raise a stink.”

“They still pay you off,” she said. “You get money from the city, and from Reed & King, and from Amalgamated—”

“Investigator,” I said. “It’s on the payrolls. And I work for the money.”

“Tim,” she said, her face serious and intense, “it doesn’t work that way. It can’t. You can’t just say that your job is to have no conscience, and so people can’t blame you for not having a conscience because that’s your job. Either you’re honest or you’re dishonest. If you’re faithful to the rules of your job, and your job is a dishonest one, then you’re being dishonest.”

“I am no more honest or dishonest than anyone else in the world,” I said. I didn’t particularly care for this discussion, and I wanted it to end as soon as possible.

But she wouldn’t let it go. “You are,” she said. “You have a greater opportunity to be one or the other.”

I pushed back from the table and got to my feet. “Let’s go into the living room and talk about other things,” I said. “We’re not going to prove anything one way or the other.”

“I suppose you’re right,” she said wearily, and we went into the living room, where we talked about other things, non-essentials, and at ten o’clock she threw me out. “Tomorrow’s another working day,” she reminded me. “And I got practically no sleep last night.”

I kissed her good night, and she told me to be careful and then frowned, as though she were mad at herself for saying it. I promised her I’d be very careful, and then I went out to the car.

It was too early to go home. I drove over to the New Electric Diner, and Al and I had a grand time talking about the gouge in the formica. That killed an hour, and then I went home.

I got there about quarter past eleven. The grocery store was closed, but one light was still on, and inside I saw Joey Casale, cleaning the cold-cut slicer. I tapped on the window and waved, and he smiled and waved back. I went on upstairs.

I walked straight through the apartment to the kitchen, switching on lights as I went. I opened a can of beer, and then headed back toward the front of the apartment again. I opened the double doors leading to the den, switched on the light, and looked at a real mess.

I had had a visitor. He had been sloppy, and he had apparently been in a hurry. My desk drawers were scattered all over the floor, emptied onto the rug. The filing cabinet had gotten the same treatment, and the file drawers, now empty, were stacked haphazardly in a corner. The chair behind the desk was knocked over, the books had been swept off the bookshelves onto the floor, and the phone had, apparently for the hell of it, been ripped off the wall.

I’m grateful for that last item. If there hadn’t been any mess in that room, I would have settled myself behind the desk, had some beer, and doodled awhile, trying to think. If the mess had been there but the phone was still working, I would have sat down behind the desk and called for some law.

As it was, I stayed just long enough to get a good look at the wreckage, and then I turned on my heel. I didn’t even bother to switch the den light off. I went back to the stairs, shut the door behind me, and started down to call the cops from the store, thinking what a good thing it was Joey was still there.

I was halfway down when the explosion rocked the house. I lost my footing, slid down the rest of the way on my well-padded rump, somersaulted when I reached bottom, and came up hard against the front door.