Lawrence Block - The Specialists

“I don’t really know.”

“Does he know you pinched his wallet the other day? You wouldn’t take money, you’re not that stupid, but you must have been looking for something.”

“His driver’s license. I expected him to be older than he said he was, and I wanted to check without being obvious about it.”

“You’d better go have that coffee now.”

“Sure,” he said.

When he was halfway to the door, she called his name and stopped him. He turned. She said, “He won’t be back for a couple of hours. He went to see the Greeks in Trenton. He never gets back from there before midnight. Take your choice.”

“My choice?”

“Choose coffee and I tell him. About the safe and the wallet. He might believe you.”

“And the other choice?”

“Me.”

He killed time lighting a cigarette. His mind flipped through alternatives. Easiest and safest was to knock her cold and just go out. Platt was away and he could come and go as he wished. Or did the guards have instructions to keep him on the premises? He didn’t really know, and it could be bad to commit oneself in advance.

Coffee or Marlene? He was almost certain that it would be at least as dangerous to accept her offer as to reject it. He had the feeling he was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t.

“You can always have the coffee afterward, Eddie. Don’t take so long to make up your mind, dear. It’s not very flattering.”

“Hit him.”

Manso tried to tense his stomach muscles, but he didn’t have anything left. He let his gut stay slack. The fist hammered into his midsection and he felt his gorge rising, tasted bile in the back of his throat. He was almost sick, but he managed to hold onto it.

“You bastard. I take you in my house and you go with my wife. Hit him again.”

The blow was the same as the last. All of them had been the same, delivered to Manso’s gut with monotonous regularity by one of the nightshift guards. Platt and two of the guards had dragged him out of his bed and down the basement stairs, and now he was tied to a pillar in a small empty windowless room. The guard was giving him a beating and Manso was taking it.

“My son. If you ain’t my son, you’re dead. You hear?”

He heard. His stomach was on fire, his legs rubber, his head pounding. Damned if he did and damned if he didn’t which was what he had suspected all along, because she was a crazy bitch who didn’t know what the hell she wanted, and there was just no right way to play it.

“And if you are my son, then what? The son comes and screws the father’s wife. What kind of son is that?”

The hell of it was that he hadn’t. He had passed her up and picked the coffee. I couldn’t do it, not my father’s wife — it had sounded phony even as he said it but at the time it seemed safer than throwing it to her.

“Al, Mr. Platt, Dad—”

“Listen to him, he don’t even know what to call me.”

“It never happened. What she said, it never happened.”

“So why does she lie? Why say she screwed you if she didn’t?”

“Your money.”

“I don’t get you.”

“Your will,” he said, desperate. “She wants me dead, don’t you see? She wants you to kill me. She’s afraid otherwise you’ll split up your estate instead of leaving it all to her.”

The guard braced himself for another blow. Platt laid a hand on his arm. “Hold it,” he said. “You go on back upstairs, kid. We don’t want to take it too far too fast, you know?”

“Sure, Mr. Platt.”

After the guard left, Platt went a long time without saying anything. Finally he said, “Both ways it’s solid enough. She could be telling the truth, and then you’re a wise ass working an angle who hustled her into the hay.”

“Why would I take the chance?”

“Because men think with their cocks instead of their heads. Especially at your age. But don’t interrupt. She could be telling it straight. Or she could be lying for the reason you said, the money, and then you’re telling it straight.” He paused. Then, “You know something? Only one thing matters.”

Manso waited.

“And that’s if you’re my son or not. If you’re my son, hell, blood’s blood. If there was a misunderstanding, we just call it a misunderstanding and the hell with it. If you’re not my son, if it’s either a story of yours or else your mother was off her nut, then you get planted in the backyard next to Buddy. Because if you’re not my kid, what the hell do I care who screwed who or who didn’t screw who and who’s lying and the rest of it. You follow me?”

“Yes.”

“Tomorrow and the next day I’ll talk to some people and see what I can find out. I’ll tell them to fix it so you’re more comfortable, but you better figure on making do with this room for a couple of days. It used to be the coal cellar. When I bought the place, I put in a gas furnace right away. There was a chute behind you where the coal came in, I had them brick that up. I figured it would be handy, a nice solid room with no windows.” He laughed, then broke it off short. “Eddie?”

“Yeah?”

“A couple of days and we’ll know, see? We can forget about all of this and the whole subject never comes up again. The hell, the door locks, you’re not going any place. I’ll cut you loose.”

Manso steadied himself. Platt cut the ropes around his ankles and wrists. He was ready to spring at the man as soon as he was free, but he didn’t even get to try. As soon as the bonds were loose, his feet went out from under him and he slid down the length of the pillar and sprawled on the floor. He couldn’t move. He just didn’t have it.

“Yeah. You rest and take it easy.”

“I got a date.”

“What’s that?”

“A date,” Manso said. “This girl I’ve been trying to get to. I got a date with her for tomorrow night.”

“We won’t have anything that quick.”

“Call her for me? Just that Eddie can’t make it, so she doesn’t think I stood her up. Would you do that?”

“I guess.”

“I’ll give you the number,” he said. “Her name’s Helen Tremont.”

The colonel sat in his wheelchair and massaged the stumps of his legs. Both of them had ached ever since the phone call. It had come at eight o’clock. It was nine now, and they were all gathered in the library waiting for the colonel to speak, and all he could think was that his legs hurt. It was psychosomatic, and he knew it was psychosomatic, but somehow the knowledge did nothing whatsoever to alleviate the pain.

He said, “It’s obvious that Eddie is in very serious trouble.”

He circled the table with his eyes and studied the four faces. They gave back virtually nothing. He thought at first that they were impassive, stoic. Then he realized that it was something else. They were merely waiting for orders.

But he was not yet ready for orders. He said, “At the very least, we are forced to assume that Eddie has been exposed. The illegitimate son facade was never designed to withstand long scrutiny. Eddie insisted that it had been completely successful, however, and felt it might be worthwhile to remain behind enemy lines until the last possible moment. Evidently he’s been found out.”

“We have to get him out of there.”

The colonel raised his eyes, sought out the speaker. “Howard?”

“Sir. If Eddie’s in there with his cover blown, we have to get him out. And the sooner the better.”

Dehn said, “This phone call. You said it was a man?”

“Yes.”

“But definitely not Eddie?”

“Definitely not.”

“Meaning he conned someone into making the tipoff call. He could be dead already, sir.”