Уильям Макгиверн - Summitt

Selby checked it with his hand. “You’re registered as Nek son, but you’re one of the Cadle boys. Aron or Ben, one or the other.”

The eyes changed, became watchful. “Where’d you get the name Nelson?”

“That’s not important. Are you Ben or Aron?”

“Tell me about Nelson. Nothing else, sport.”

“Aron, who the hell is that?”

The voice came from the man on the bed. His thick bare legs were furred with reddish hair. He wore white socks.

“Well, if you’re Aron, I guess that must be Ben,” Selby said.

The hairy legs swung off the bed, the wide feet in dirty white socks came down on the floor. “Who’s the clown, Aron?”

Ben Cadle was the younger of the brothers, shorter than Aron but thicker through the arms and shoulders. His body was solid with heavy bone and muscle. He wore jockey shorts and a white T-shirt. His hair was a flaming red, red as paprika. It lay flat over his broad head like a skullcap.

“Look, Selby,” Aron Cadle said, “I think you’re confused about something. You look like good people, so come in and tell us about the Nelsons, okay?”

Selby said fine. An air-conditioner hummed in a window. The room’s meaty smell was sharpened by the tang of whiskey. Selby turned his back to the TV set. “I want to know who’s paying you. I’ve got a message for whoever it is, and I want you to deliver it.”

Aron Cadle put a hand on his brother’s arm, closed the door. “We can’t tell you that, pal,” he said. “There are rules about it.” Moving away from the door, Aron stood so that he and his brother faced Selby. “We can’t tell you about our clients. They pay us for privacy, for discretion. We wouldn’t be any good to them if we didn’t live up to those rules. But you’re not bound by ’em, sport, so you can tell us how you found out we’d registered here.”

“Look, we can settle this thing without the hard-nosed stuff,” Selby said. “I’m trying to find out about the pressure on a trial my daughter’s involved in. She’s fourteen and she was raped. You maybe have heard about it. You’ve made some calls to the deputy DA handling the case. Let’s start with that.”

They shifted their positions until they stood on either side of him. Aron Cadle said mildly, “No, Selby, we got to start back at square one. I’m gonna be frank now. I don’t have any idea in the whole world what you’re talking about. Ben and me are licensed private investigators with out-of-state permits for guns, surveillance equipment, police-band radios. What we do is by the book and strictly legal. We haven’t bothered your DA pal with phone calls.”

“And you didn’t try to run her down — her name is Dorcas Brett — in the black Lincoln you drive?”

“What’s that name again?”

“Brett, Dorcas Brett.”

“Funny kind of name, Dorcas. Never heard that one before. Ben, you know anybody by that name?”

“Dorcas? No way.”

“Selby, you are confused,” Aron said. “We drive a Volvo, not a Lincoln. You got no reason to be bugging me and my brother. Which leaves the Nelson business.”

“That’s the important thing, right?”

“Yes, it’s a matter of security. We went to a lot of trouble to check in here without anybody knowing. But somebody found out and told you. So who was it, sport?”

“Maybe we could swap stories.”

“Let’s try it that way.” Aron smiled. “We don’t want to beat it out of you. If you get your kicks getting roughed up, I’d advise you to go bust up a bar or try to punch out some cops. We’re businessmen, we don’t go in for that. But we’ve got to know how you found us. The rest is shit, Selby. The phone calls, your fourteen-year-old who got raped, the Dorcas lady, that’s all shit. You understand what I’m telling you?”

“I did some checking,” Selby said. “I found out you have an agency on Forty-fifth in Manhattan, between Fifth and Sixth. It’s called Atlas Investigation.” Selby watched their faces tighten as he told them the information he’d gotten from Victoria Kim. “You were bonded by a bank in the Bronx. The trust officer who signed the paper is your third cousin. That, by the way, is known to Mr. Touhy in the Bonding Section in Albany. Neither of you is married and you both belong to a queer health club in Queens, play racquetball on weekends. Aron’s got a girl, though, a legal secretary who works for a firm on Wall Street. It’s your turn now. What have you gents been up to? Never mind the fag health club, or the legal secretary... just the important details...”

They were not as professional as Selby had anticipated. Their reactions were blurred, splintered by a kind of frenzy.

Ben threw a looping punch at Selby’s head. It was a feint, of course, the trigger to turn Selby toward Aron. But Ben’s execution was clumsy, his grunt too theatrical. Selby stepped back and the blow missed him, as it was intended to. You were usually suckered like this in your first year up in the pros, worrying about speedy blocking backs who hit you and were gone, a distraction to make you forget what was right behind them, the pulling guards with ten-flat speed and shoulders like the fronts of trucks.

He was expecting Aron’s punch and took it on his shoulder instead of the face. But the man’s fist was only partially deflected and bounced off Selby’s forehead with painful force. With the heel of one hand, Selby rammed Aron’s jaw up and back. With his other, he hit him in the stomach.

He hit Aron as hard as he could, hoping to knock the wind out of him, but he did better than that; the punch landed in the soft triangle of the big man’s rib cage, and after one long gasp Aron coughed hoarsely and slid to the floor, hugging himself carefully with his arms.

Selby was hit from behind then by Ben, a blow that numbed his shoulder. He ducked and swung his arm in a back-handed slap that caught the redhead in the neck and tipped him back over the bed.

With surprising agility Ben lunged for the lamp table, clawing at the drawer pulls. Selby caught him and dragged him onto the floor, but the drawer came away in the redhead’s hands, spilling out a deck of playing cards, bottles of pills... and a revolver in a spring-clip holster wrapped in a webbing of black harness.

Selby knelt on Ben Cadle’s back and turned up the television. A burst of laughter exploded from the set as teenagers carried a yappy dog into an immaculate kitchen. Aron watched Selby. His face was swollen, flushed a dull crimson. He held his body cautiously, as if he were cradling a fragile package.

Selby pounded Ben’s shoulder and neck and the top of his fiery red head. It was not textbook combat; there was no room for that. Ben heaved under Selby’s weight, squirming first in one direction and then the other like a giant crab trying to dislodge a heavy net from its back.

Selby hit him wherever he could, jarring him with short punches, kneeing him in the kidneys and ribs. Holding Ben’s coarse hair, he slammed his head against the floor.

Aron watched the proceedings with a glazed indifference. The flush of color had receded from his face; he was very pale now.

Selby put a knee into Ben’s back, shoved his face into the carpet and held him until Ben’s mouth opened wide and he stopped moving.

“I want you to be quiet,” Selby told him.

Ben couldn’t close his mouth. His eyes met Selby’s and he nodded with his eyes.

Selby released him and pushed him against the wall beside his brother. Picking up the revolver, he went into the bathroom and tossed it into the toilet.

A knock sounded on the door. Selby came out of the bathroom and looked at the Cadles. Ben’s mouth was still open. His head was twisted at an awkward angle. Blood glinted on Aron’s lips.