361 Read Online Free PDF

pad and read aloud from it. Then I tossed it on the dresser and said, “Smarten up.”
    Bill pushed words into the silence like a man pushing logs into mud. “It wasn’t Dad. Willard Kelly, that isn’t an uncommon name. Hell, it’s my name, too.”
    “Just a coincidence.”
    “Sure.”
    “Two Willard Kellys. Both the same age. Both in New York. Both lawyers. Both graduates of the same school.”
    “Maybe. Why not?”
    “You ought to go back to Binghamton, Bill. You’re blind in both eyes. You’ll get us in a lot of trouble.”
    He looked at me, and then he went and sat on the bed. He sat in the middle of the bed, knees folded like a yogi. He looked big and pathetic. His blunt fingers, hairy and freckled, traced the pattern of the spread.
    After a while, he said, “My father. ”
    A while longer and he said, “He wasn’t like that.”
    “He changed. Reformed. Quit the syndicate and moved away.”
    His eyes had sad, shredded edges. “That’s true?”
    “Something like that.”
    “That was really him, in the paper?”
    “You know it.”
    He made a fist and pounded the pattern. “How the hell can I have any respect for him?”
    I popped the eye out and got to my feet. I put it on the dresser and said, “Get up, Bill.”
    He was puzzled. “Why?”
    “You lose respect too easy.”
    “I don’t want to fight you, Ray.”
    He came off the bed with his hands spread, and I hit him on the side of the jaw.
    The third time I hit him, he swung back. I was at a disadvantage, I didn’t always judge the distance right. I walked into a few. I kept getting up. He started to cry, and his face was as red as his hair, and he kept knocking me down again. Then he put his hands at his sides and shook his head and whispered, “No more.” I got up and hit him with my left hand. He didn’t dodge or raise his arms or defend himself or fight back. I hit him with the right hand. And the left hand again. He blubbered, “No more.” I hit him right hand and then left hand. He dropped to his knees, and the vibration knocked the Gideon Bible off the nightstand. I hit him right hand, from the knees coming up, and he went over on his back. He wouldn’t get up.
    I got the eye from the dresser and went into the head. I washed my face and watched myself put the eye in. It didn’t make me want to throw up any more. My knuckles were scraped and there was a ragged cut on the left side of my jaw.
    I went back and sat down in the chair again. After a while, Bill sat up. He said, “All right.”
    I said, “You going back to Binghamton?”
    “No. You’re right.”
    I wasn’t sure he knew. I said, “Why did you think I came here? To play Summer Festival?”
    “No,” he said. “I know that.”
    “Do you know what we’re doing here?”
    “Yes.”
    “What?”
    “We’re looking for the people who killed Dad.”
    “For the cops?”
    He looked at me. “Jesus,” he said. He shook his head and looked away. “No,” he said. “Not for the cops.”
    “For us,” I said. “Why?”
    He looked at me level this time. “Because he was our father.”
    “That’s right,” I said.

Seven
    We spent the evening in the room, with separate bottles of Old Mr. Boston. Johnson woke us on the phone at nine in the morning. I talked to him. He said, “Those plates are registered to a ’54 Buick. Stolen three months ago. Not the car, just the plates. Lots of Plymouths stolen. It’s a popular car.”
    I said, “Thanks. The retainer cover it?”
    “If that’s all you want,” he said.
    “Thanks,” I said.
    “Listen, Mr. Kelly, you don’t have to dislike me.”
    “I don’t dislike you.” I hung up and forgot him. I spent a few minutes with the phone directory and a pencil, and then we went out to eat.
    It was now McArdle, Krishman, Mellon & McArdle. It was a building on the east side of Fifth Avenue, just down a ways from the cathedral. Friday morning, the early tourists streamed north to look at the cathedral and the Plaza. We pushed