Colder stopped his recitation because the waitress arrived with the rye toast. He put the notebook down to butter the toast. He ate one piece, drank some coffee, and picked up the notebook again. Dill watched him silently and wondered what had taken place between Colder and Strucker, and how nasty the argument had been.
Colder again read from the notebook. “The toolbox lock was forced by Sergeant Meek, who then opened the toolbox in the presence of Chief Strucker, Captain Colder, Detective Lowe, and Lucinda McCabe.” Colder looked up at Dill. “Then there’s a whole list of things we found in the top tray, but I’m not going to read those.”
Dill nodded.
“In the lower compartment of the tray, the following items were found, removed, and tagged by Sergeant Meek:
“One — Ten thousand two hundred dollars in one-hundred-dollar bills.
“Two — four fulminate of mercury blasting caps.
“Three — a.25-caliber Llama automatic pistol, serial number—” Colder broke off and looked up at Dill again. “You want the serial number?”
Dill shook his head no.
Colder closed the notebook. “Well, that’s it. The Spanish piece is at ballistics. They’re checking whether it’s the one that killed Clay Corcoran. If it is, then it means Snow wired up Felicity’s car for a price, and then killed Corcoran, who must have been on to him. Your next question is going to be, who killed Harold Snow? We don’t know yet. And that’s why I argued against telling you what we’d come up with. You’ve got a loose mouth, Dill, and you move around in pretty funny circles. I told Strucker I didn’t think you’d keep your mouth shut about this, but he told me to tell you anyway. Maybe he figures you can swing him a few votes when he runs for mayor. But that’s none of my business either. So. Any questions?”
Several seconds went by before Dill shook his head and said, “I don’t think so.”
“I don’t know if knowing who killed Felicity makes you feel any better or not. I hope it does.”
“I guess I feel about the same.”
“So do 1. Snow was just hired help. Nailing the bastard who hired him is the only thing that’ll make me feel any better.”
“Harold Snow,” Dill said thoughtfully.
“Harold Snow,” Colder agreed.
“Ten thousand bucks.”
“Ten thousand two hundred.”
“Somehow,” Dill said, “I thought killing Felicity would’ve cost a whole lot more.”
Dill rode up to his room in the elevator alone. Just as he passed the sixth floor he smiled a wry, almost sad smile and said aloud, “Well, Inspector, I guess that wraps this case up.”
In his room, he showered and shaved. Wearing only his shorts, he lay on the bed, his hands folded behind his head, and stared up at the ceiling. At ten o’clock, he ordered a pot of coffee. At one, he had them send up a ham sandwich and a glass of milk. When he finished his lunch, he put the tray out in the hall, sat down at the desk, and outlined the facts as he knew them. When he was done he tossed the ballpoint pen onto the desk, almost certain he would never know who had actually had the bomb wired to his dead sister’s car.
At 2:30 P.M. he picked up the phone and called information for the number of the police department. He then dialed the number and asked for Chief of Detectives John Strucker. Dill had to identify himself to two officers, one male and one female, before he was put through.
After Strucker said hello, Dill said, “It wasn’t Harold Snow, was it?”
“Wasn’t it?”
“No,” Dill said. “Harold was from Kansas City.”
“Kansas City,” Strucker said.
“It hadn’t occurred to you — Kansas City?”
Strucker produced one of his sighs — a long mournful one that seemed to go on forever. “It occurred to me.”
“When?”
“About eighteen months ago.”
“You’re away ahead of me, aren’t you?”
“It’s what I do, Dill. It’s what I’m good at.” Strucker sighed again, wearily this time. “Don’t fuck it up for everybody, Dill,” he said, and hung up.
Dill rose from the desk, took his blue funeral suit from the closet and laid it on the bed. From the bureau drawer he took his next to last clean white shirt. He dressed quickly, mixed himself a Scotch and water with no ice, and drank it standing by the window, staring down at Broadway and Our Jack Street. When he finished the drink it was five minutes till three. He turned and started for the door. He passed the bureau, stopped, and went back. After a moment’s hesitation, he opened the bureau drawer and from beneath the wad of soiled shirts took out the.38 revolver that had once belonged to Harold Snow. Dill stared at the revolver for several seconds. You don’t need it, he told himself. You wouldn’t use it even if you did need it. He put the pistol back beneath the soiled shirts, closed the drawer, stood there for a second or two, opened the drawer again, took out the pistol, and shoved it down into his right hip pocket. There was a full-length mirror on the door that led out into the corridor. Dill noticed the pistol made almost no bulge at all.
When Jake Spivey’s gray Rolls-Royce Silver Spur sedan pulled up in front of the Hawkins Hotel, it was, according to the First National Bank’s sign, 3:01 P.M. and 105 degrees.
Dill got into the air-conditioned car and waited until Spivey had pulled out into the traffic before he said, “How long’ve we known each other, Jake?”
Spivey thought about it. “Thirty years, I reckon. Why?”
“In all those thirty years, did you ever imagine that one day you’d be picking me up in front of the Hawkins in a Rolls-Royce?”
“Wasn’t ever a Rolls,” Spivey said. “Back then I always thought it’d be a Cadillac.”
They drove west on Forrest, which had been named after the Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest. Some old-timers, mostly from the deep South, had once called it “Fustest Street” in honor of the general’s strategy — or tactics — which had been to get there fustest with the mostest. Dill had heard the story from his father, although he himself had never heard anyone call it Fustest Street. When he asked Spivey about it, Spivey said his granddaddy had called it that, but his granddaddy had been a real old geezer who’d been born in 1895 or thereabouts.
As they drove through the rebuilt downtown area they tried to remember what had once stood on the sites of the new buildings that had gone up — or were still going up. Sometimes they could remember; sometimes they couldn’t. Spivey said it made him feel old when he couldn’t.
“Why’d you come back here, Jake — really? It wasn’t just to grow yourself a briarpatch. You could’ve done that anywhere.”
Spivey thought about it for a while. “Well, hell, I guess I came back for the same reason Felicity never left. It’s home. Now you, Pick, you always hated it. I never did. I remember that summer you were eleven and your old man took you up to Chicago and you saw the first body of water you couldn’t see all the way across. I thought I’d never hear the end of it. Chicago. Jesus, you made it sound like a fuckin’ paradise. But I got up there when I was seventeen or eighteen and all I saw was one big horseshit town that some folks who talked funny’d built on a big old dirty lake.”
“I still like Chicago.”
“And I still like it here because I understand the sons of bitches here and, like the fella says, that means it’s home. And I guess home is where I wanted to grow my briarpatch and show off how rich poor little old Jake Spivey done went and got.” He grinned. “That’s part of it. Showing the sons of bitches how rich you got.”
“Revenge,” Dill said.
“Don’t knock it.”
“I don’t,” Dill said. “I don’t knock it at all.”