Lawrence Block - Sins of the Fathers

I bent the fingers of his right hand back one at a time until they broke. Just the four fingers. I left his thumb alone. He didn’t scream or anything. I suppose the terror blocked the pain.

I took his knife along with me and dropped it in the first sewer I came to. Then I walked the two blocks to Broadway and caught a cab home.

I don’t think I actually slept at all.

I got out of my clothes and into bed. I closed my eyes and slipped into the kind of dream you can have without being entirely asleep, aware that it was a dream, my consciousness standing off to one side and watching the dream like a jaded critic at the theater. Then a batch of things came together, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep and didn’t want to, anyway.

So I ran the shower as hot as it gets and stood by the side of the tub with the bathroom door closed to create an improvised steam bath. I sweated exhaustion and alcohol out of my system for half an hour or so. Then I lowered the temperature of the shower enough to make it bearable and stood under it. I finished with a minute under an ice-cold spray. I don’t know if it’s really good for you. I think it’s just Spartan.

I dried off and put on a clean suit. I sat on the bed and picked up the telephone. Allegheny turned out to have the flight I wanted. It was leaving LaGuardia at five forty-five and would get me where I was going a little after seven. I booked a round-trip ticket, return open.

The Childs’ at Fifty-eighth and Eighth stays open all night. I had corned beef hash and eggs and a lot of black coffee.

It was very close to five o’clock when I got into the back of a Checker cab and told the driver to take me to the airport.

The flight had a stop in Albany. That’s what took it so long. It touched down there on schedule. A few people got off, and a few other people got on, and the pilot put us into the air again. We never had time to level off on the second lap; we began our descent as soon as we stopped climbing. He bounced us around a little on the Utica runway, but it was nothing to complain about.

“Have a good day,” the stewardess said. “Take care now.”

Take care.

It seems to me that people have only been saying that phrase on parting for the past few years or so. All of a sudden everyone started to say it, as if the whole country abruptly recognized that ours is a world which demands caution.

I intended to take care. I wasn’t too sure about having a good day.

By the time I got from the airport into Utica itself, it was around seven thirty. A few minutes of twelve I called Cale Hanniford at his office. No one answered.

I tried his home and his wife answered. I gave my name and she told me hers. “Mr. Scudder,” she said tentatively. “Are you, uh, making any progress?”

“Things are coming along,” I said.

“I’ll get Cale for you.”

When he came on the line I told him I wanted to see him.

“I see. Something you don’t want to go into over the telephone?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, can you come to Utica? It would be inconvenient for me to come to New York unless it’s absolutely necessary, but you could fly up this afternoon or possibly tomorrow. It’s not a long flight.”

“I know. I’m in Utica right now.”

“Oh?”

“I’m in a Rexall drugstore at the corner of Jefferson and Mohawk. You could pick me up and we could go over to your office.”

“Certainly. Fifteen minutes?”

“Fine.”

I recognized his Lincoln and was crossing the sidewalk to it as he pulled up in front of the drugstore. I opened the door and got in next to him. Either he wore a suit around the house as a matter of course or he had taken the trouble to put one on for the occasion. The suit was dark blue with an unobtrusive stripe.

“You should have let me know you were coming,” he said. “I could have picked you up at the airport.”

“This way I had a chance to see something of your city.”

“It’s not a bad place. Probably very quiet by New York standards. Though that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Ever been here before?”

“Once, and that was years ago. The local police had picked up someone we wanted, so I came up to take him back to New York with me. I took the train that trip.”

“How was your flight today?”

“All right.”

He was dying to ask me why I had dropped in on him like this, but he had manners. You didn’t discuss business at lunch until the coffee was poured, and we wouldn’t discuss our business until we were in his office. The Hanniford Drugs warehouse was on the western edge of town, and he had picked me up right in the heart of the downtown area. We managed small talk on the ride out. He pointed out things he thought might interest me, and I put on a show of being mildly interested. Then we were at the warehouse. They worked a five-day week and there were no other cars around, just a couple of idle trucks. He pulled the Lincoln to a stop next to a loading dock and led me up a ramp and inside. We walked down a hallway to his office. He turned on the overhead lights, pointed me to a chair, and seated himself behind his desk.

“Well,” he said.

I didn’t feel tired. It occurred to me that I ought to, no sleep, a lot of booze the night before. But I didn’t feel tired. Not eager, either, but not tired.

I said, “I came to report. I know as much about your daughter as I’ll ever know, and it’s as much as you need to know. I could spend more of my time and your money, but I don’t see the point.”

“It didn’t take you very long.”

His tone was neutral, and I wondered how he meant it. Was he admiring my efficiency or annoyed that his two thousand dollars had only purchased five days of my time?

I said, “It took long enough. I don’t know that it would have taken any less time if you had given me everything in the beginning. Probably not. It would have made things a little easier for me, though.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I can understand why you didn’t. You felt I had all I needed to know. If I had just been looking for facts you might have been right, but I was looking for facts that would make up a picture, and I’d have done better knowing everything in front.” He was puzzled, and the heavy dark eyebrows were elevated above the top rims of his glasses. I said, “The reason I didn’t let you know I was coming was that I had some things to do in Utica. I caught a dawn flight up here, Mr. Hanniford. I spent about five hours learning things you could have told me five days ago.”

“What sort of things?”

“I went to a few places. The Bureau of Vital Statistics in City Hall. The Times-Sentinel offices. The police station.”

“I didn’t hire you to ask questions here in Utica.”

“You didn’t hire me at all, Mr. Hanniford. You married your wife on — well, I don’t have to tell you the date. It was a first marriage for both of you.”

He didn’t say anything. He took his glasses off and put them on the desk in front of him.

“You might have told me Wendy was illegitimate.”

“Why? She didn’t know it herself.”

“Are you sure of that?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not.” I drew a breath. “There were two U.S. Marines from the Utica area killed in the Inchon landing. One of them was black, so I ruled him out. The other was named Robert Blohr. He was married. Was he also Wendy’s father?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not trying to pick scabs, Mr. Hanniford. I think Wendy knew she was illegitimate. And it’s possible that it doesn’t matter whether she did or not.”

He stood up and walked to the window. I sat there wondering whether Wendy had known about her father and decided it was ten-to-one that she had. He was the chief character in her personal mythology, and she had spent all her life looking for an incarnation of him. The ambivalence of her feelings about the man seemed to derive from some knowledge over and above what she had been told by Hanniford and her mother.