Where There's Smoke

Three

The address Abner had given me for Rhoda Gibson, widow of the departed corpse, was in a row of brown-stones close to one of the city’s five universities, and about ten blocks from his funeral home. I located the building, and then drove around the block twice before I found a parking space. The car I drive is a 1973 450SL Mercedes-Benz, a gift from a grateful German countess for whom I’d recovered $700,000 worth of jewels stolen from her hotel room. I always leave it unlocked when I park it on any city street. The steering wheel locks when the ignition key is removed, and so I’m never worried that someone’s going to drive off with the car. But if a booster wants to steal my radio, I’d rather he simply opened an unlocked door, instead of slashing my con­vertible top to steal the radio, anyway.

1214 Matthews was the third brownstone in from Cooper Street, a stately three-story building with wide white steps leading up to the entrance door. As I approached the building, I saw a bearded young giant of a man inserting a key into the outer vestibule door at the top of the steps. He was wearing dungaree trousers, a pullover sweater, and track shoes. His hair and his beard were red. Since he seemed to fit the description Abner had given me of Jeffrey Gibson, the dead man’s son, and since he was inserting a key into the door of Rhoda Gib­son’s residence, I came to a not spectacularly brilliant conclusion, started up the steps, and said, “Mr. Gibson?”

Mr. Gibson (or whoever he was) turned from the door. I recognized the look in his eyes an instant before it was too late. The look was one of total panic. His right hand yanked up the ribbed bottom of his sweater, I saw the butt of a revolver sticking up out of the waistband of his dun­garees, and then the revolver was in his hand. I was at a decided disadvantage, being two steps lower than the gun and the man. I hurled myself up and forward, grabbing him around the knees and knocking him off balance, and together we came rolling down the steps and onto the sidewalk.

If there’s one thing I detest, it’s any kind of sweaty combat. The day I’d had my cheek permanently adorned, I’d struggled for a good ten minutes in embrace with a man holding a six-inch-long switchblade knife and intent on taking out my liver and intestines, though he wasn’t li­censed to practice medicine in this city. I’d clung to his wrist for what seemed an eternity, and had managed—but only after he’d slashed open my cheek—to bring a knee up into his groin, and finally to take the knife away from him. I had learned elementary judo at the police academy, but as soon as the cheek healed, I began studying the art in earnest. I still don’t consider myself an expert, but I know how to kill a man with a swift, hard, edge-of-the-hand blow across the bridge of his nose, or a sharp, two-fingered jab at his Adam’s apple. I also know how to break a man’s arm or leg with a minimum of effort, an economy of motion, and a power usually generated by his own physical thrust. I prefer my fights short and sweet, and preferably not at all. Real-life fights are not like those you see in the movies. Two stalwarts do not stand there punching at each other until one or the other falls sense­less and bleeding to the ground. Instead, there’s usually utter confusion, a tangle of arms and legs, broken knuck­les when bare fists collide with unyielding skulls, kicks, grunts, fingers clawing at eyes and hair, attempts to stran­gle, headlocks, biting—a totally animalistic display bet­ter suited to a pair of moose locking horns in the north woods. I’ve learned three things about street fights. (1) Unless it’s absolutely necessary, never start up with a man who has nothing to lose. He’ll kill you. (2) Get it over with fast, the quicker the better. (3) Never expect help from a passing stranger; this is the city.

As Jeffrey Gibson (or whoever he was) struggled to get the pistol in firing position while I kept a tight grip on his wrist, and as I struggled to get my free hand where I could hurt him, perhaps two dozen pedestrians walked past us on the sidewalk, intent on getting to wherever they were going. The pistol was a .32-caliber Smith & Wesson, meaning he had six chances to do me in. I didn’t know why he was so intent on having me dead, but panic is a good enough reason for murdering someone, and panic was stampeding his eyes like a herd of wild buffalo. My right hand still clenched around his wrist, and hold­ing his flailing arm out and away from me, I managed to clutch a handful of groin, and I squeezed hard, and he let out a wounded shriek and fell back on the pavement. I grabbed his wrist in both hands now, and battered his gun hand repeatedly against the sidewalk until he released his grip on the weapon. Straddling him, I slapped him across the face, and then slapped him again and again, humiliat­ing him, breaking his will to continue the fight. I was sweating, and breathing very hard.

“All right?” I said.

He didn’t answer. I brought back my hand to slap him again, and he twisted his head away, and closed his eyes like a child expecting punishment from a wrathful father, and then he nodded and said, “Please... no more.”

I got to my feet. He was writhing on the pavement, his hands clutching his abused genitals. I picked up the .32, tucked it into my belt, helped him to his feet, and sat him down on the bottom step of the stoop. “Are you Jeffrey Gibson?” I said.

“Yes,” he answered.

“What the hell’s the matter with you, Gibson? Why’d you pull a gun on me?”

“You know why,” he said.

“No, I don’t.”

“Who are you?” he said.

“Who’d you think I was?” I said.

“One of them.”

“One of who?”

“The men who killed my father.”

“What men?”

“I don’t know who they are.”

“What makes you think someone killed him?”

“I know.”

“How do you know?”

“They threatened to do it, and now they’ve done it.”

“Why’d they threaten to kill him?”

“Because he owed them money.”

“How much money?”

“Twelve thousand dollars. My father was a gambler,” Jeffrey said, and then raised his head and grimaced, and said, “A very bad gambler.”

“Tell me,” I said.

Anthony Gibson had been not only a bad gambler, ac­cording to his son, but actually the worst kind of gambler. I have very little respect for people who play for a living. In my book, the world is divided between the Players and the Workers. Thieves and gamblers are Players. So are prize fighters, entire football teams, tennis champions, golf pros, and men gifted with the talent of tossing a dart a hundred yards across a pub to hit the bull’s-eye in the center of a board. Even expert gamblers, those who’ve made a science of figuring the odds, are still only Play­ers. But the worst sort of gambler is the man who’ll bet on anything, the man who actually believes Lady Luck is controlling the outcome of any given event.

Anthony Gibson had been such a man. He would bet on a cockroach race or the eventuality of a snowstorm in July. He would bet that Jack Benny’s real name had been Myron Fenstermacher; he would bet that any given blonde walking down the street was in reality a brunette; he would bet that on the twelfth of October, in the city of Rangoon, a rat would bite a Buddhist monk on the back­side. Such a man is a fool. He’s a bigger fool if his in­come can’t keep up with his wild wagers. Anthony Gibson had worked as an advertising copywriter for the firm of Haley, Blake & Bonatti, and had earned a yearly salary of $47,500, which he’d squandered on ponies, crap games, card games, lottery tickets, and bets as to whether or not the moon would rise over Seattle at 7:10 p.m. on Monday night. His wife and recent widow, Rhoda, ran an interior-decorating business that brought in another thirty thousand a year—much of which Gibson begged or bad­gered from her to get him out of one gambling debt or an­other.

A month back, the phone at the Gibson residence had begun ringing with calls for Gibson père. The calls some­times came in the middle of the night. Gibson would hold a brief conversation with whoever was on the other end of the line, and then instantly get out of bed and go down to the riving room, where he sometimes sat drinking till dawn. During one of those early-hour calls, Jeffrey had picked up the extension and eavesdropped on the conver­sation. He learned that his father owed twelve thousand dollars for an I.O.U. he’d signed during a poker game in July. His father promised the caller he was working on raising the money, and that all he needed was a little more time, and would they please stop phoning in the middle of the night, as they were beginning to alarm his family. The man on the other end said the family would be even more alarmed in the future if Gibson didn’t come up with the cash damn soon. Toward the end of August, two men arrived at the house shortly after dinner. One of them was about my size, with a scar on his face, which was why Jeffrey had mistaken me for him not five minutes ago, and drawn the revolver—in self-defense, of course. Jef­frey overheard the terse discussion they had with his fa­ther. The men told Gibson that if he didn’t pay the twelve thousand dollars before September 8, they would kill him. As best as he could recall, the visit had been some­time during the weekend of August 24. Today was Mon­day, September 9, and his father had met with a fatal automobile accident last night on his way home. Jeffrey had to assume the “accident” had been arranged by the men who’d been dunning his father. Nor did he believe they were finished yet. On their warning visit, he had been the one who’d opened the door to let them into the house; he had seen them, he knew what they looked like. He was certain they would come after him next.

I listened to Jeffrey’s theory with only polite interest. In the code of men who accept markers from losing gam­blers, the debt must be paid in one way or another. But these men are in business, and they realize just as cer­tainly as any other businessmen that if they kill the per­son who owes them money, the money will never be collected. Better to break his arm a little, or rearrange his nose. Homicide is the last resort of creditors; the money owed will never be retrieved. At the same time, it is an extremely convincing reminder to future I.O.U. writers. When murder does become necessary, however, it’s usu­ally done more dramatically, so that there’ll be no mis­take about who ordered the execution or why. An automobile accident? This hardly seemed the style of men trying to teach an object lesson. If you want to warn other gamblers that they can’t welsh with impunity, you don’t commit a murder that might be misconstrued as an accident. And even if someone had tampered with Gibson’s automobile, or forced him off the road, or otherwise arranged for his collision, his son’s fears seemed unrea­sonable. Rarely will underworld creditors knock off a debtor and then go after his family as well. That’s merely wasted motion, and Players like to conserve their energy.

I asked Jeffrey where I might find his mother, and he gave me the address of her place of business uptown. This bothered me immediately. Granted Mrs. Gibson owned a business, granted she needed to put all her time and energy into running it, especially since her late spouse had done his utmost to squander her earnings as well as his own, it nonetheless seemed passing strange that she would go to work on the day after her husband had been killed in an automobile accident. In my years as a cop, I’d run across a great many self-possessed women, but never had I met a grieving widow who’d carted her dead husband’s body to a funeral home, left instructions on how to dress and package it, and then gone off to busi­ness as usual. Rhoda Gibson’s sang-froid seemed a bit unusual, to say the least.

I had no wish to carry around with me a pistol that might have been a stolen one, so I returned the Smith & Wesson to Jeffrey, with the suggestion that he try not to shoot himself in the foot with it. It was twenty-five min­utes to eleven. I went back to where I’d parked the Mer­cedes, and drove east toward the television-repair shop of Henry Garavelli.