“What’s the idea?” he said. “What’s going on?”
“You know what’s going on, you little piece of shit,” T. K. said. “So do we now. You’re the one’s been stealing from us.”
“That’s a goddamn lie—”
I said, “Mayfair Self-Storage in Daly City.”
“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” he said, but some of the bluster and most of the toughness were leaking out of him. He began to twitch and dance the way he had in the garage earlier. “Listen—”
“Shut up,” T. K. said. He looked at me. “Ten minutes alone with him, right?”
“It may take longer.”
“Take as much time as you need.”
I said to Forbes, “What’s through that door over there?”
“Screw you. I don’t hafta stand for this—”
“That’s right. You can sit for it. Nick, you want to help me settle him down?”
Nick said, “Pleasure,” and we each took a piece of Forbes and half carried him through the doorway into a dirty kitchen and banged him onto a dinette chair. Then Nick went out, wordlessly, and left him to me.
“We’re going to talk about Eberhardt,” I said. “You and me, Forbes, until you tell me everything I want to know.”
No answer. He sat there trying to reestablish his belligerent attitude and not making much headway.
“He caught you, didn’t he? Saturday or Sunday night, red-handed.”
His eyes shifted, his body twitched. “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”
“He was staked out in the alley and you didn’t know it until it was too late. You got into the warehouse, came out with the liquor, and he grabbed you. How much of the sour mash did you give him?”
“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”
“He drank cheap whiskey — Four Roses. It was all he could afford. But he had a bottle of Jack Daniel’s the night he died. He had to’ve gotten it from you.”
Fidgets and glowers.
“Come on, Forbes. You want this to go on all night? Or how about if I call the O’Hanlons in here and let them beat it out of you? I’ll do that if you don’t start talking. Believe it.”
He believed it. The last of his toughness dribbled out of him like sand from a ruptured sack. His shoulders slumped; the sinewy body went slack. Only his hands continued to move, lifting, falling, bumping into each other in midair as if he no longer had any control over them.”
“All right,” he muttered. “The fuck’s the use now? Yeah, he caught me. Sunday night. Yeah.”
“And you put up a fight. That’s how you got the busted nose and the eye cut. Eberhardt.”
“Old bastard like him, and half drunk.” Sullen now, expression and voice both. “Dark on the loading dock. Otherwise it’d’ve been his ass that got kicked.”
“Sure it would. Staggering drunk he was twice as tough as you think you are. How much Jack Daniel’s did he take?”
“Two lousy bottles. That’s all he wanted.”
“No it isn’t. He wanted money, too. Five hundred dollars.”
“Yeah.”
“Five hundred not to haul your sorry butt to the police. Five hundred to keep his mouth shut and let you leave with the cases of whiskey.” The words were like fecal matter on my tongue; I spat them out.
“Yeah,” Forbes said. “Yeah, five hundred. I only had fifty on me. He took that, told me I’d better have the rest in cash next day. I had it.”
“When’d you pay him off?”
“Monday night, like he wanted.”
“Where?”
“Bolt Street, where else?” he said, and added bitterly, “I wasn’t the only one ripping off the O’Hanlons.”
“You figured he’d be there Tuesday night, too, so you went back and snuck up on him and shot him.”
Forbes jerked upright, came halfway out of his chair; I pushed him back down. For the first time real fear showed in his shifty eyes. “No! Jesus, I didn’t go near him again after Monday, I swear it. Why would I kill him?”
“So you wouldn’t have to pay any more blackmail.”
“No, he said the five hundred was a one-time thing—”
“Every blackmailer says that and you know it.”
“Jesus, listen... if I wanted to kill him, why wouldn’t I do it Monday night? Huh? Why would I pay him the five hundred and then go back the next night and shoot him?”
“You tell me.”
“I didn’t! I was with a woman Tuesday night, all night at her place, I told the cops that. Give you her name, you go talk to her, she’ll tell you. I stole the liquor, okay, I admit it, but I’m not a killer, man.”
I stared holes through him.
“You gotta believe me,” he said, whining now. “He shot himself, he musta. I heard about it, I couldn’t believe he’d do something like that right after I paid him the five hundred. It didn’t make no sense to me, but I was glad about it, sure, I figured I was off the hook...”
Babbling now, and I couldn’t stand to listen to any more. He was telling the truth; he hadn’t killed Eberhardt. Eberhardt had shot himself. I told him to shut up, reached down and yanked him out of the chair.
“Now you listen and listen good. You say you didn’t shoot Eberhardt, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. But you keep your mouth shut about him when the cops question you again. Don’t tell them he caught you, don’t tell them he smacked you around, don’t tell them about the two bottles of Jack or the five hundred, don’t even mention his name. You understand me, Forbes? None of that happened.”
“Yeah, yeah, I understand. I won’t say nothing, I swear to God I won’t.”
“Better not, because Eberhardt was once a cop and if the police have any reason to suspect you might’ve killed him...”
I didn’t need to finish it; his eyes said he’d gotten the message. Enough, I thought. I pushed him to the door, out into the front room.
“I’m finished with him,” I said to the O’Hanlons. “He’s all yours.”
Nick O’Hanlon came over and caught hold of Forbes’s arm. The look on his face was that of a hound taking possession of a hunk of raw meat.
I motioned to T. K. and he went to the front door with me. “One favor, T. K.,” I said.
“Sure. Name it.”
“When you get around to having Forbes arrested, I don’t want any of the credit. You and Nick were suspicious of him, you’re the ones who followed him to Daly City. Leave me out of it entirely.”
“If that’s the way you want it.”
“Not much of this is the way I want it,” I said. “Most of it is just plain lousy.”
He didn’t know what I was talking about. And just as well he didn’t ask because I was through with him, too, for tonight and for good.
14
So Eberhardt had been much dirtier than I’d imagined. Corrupt his whole life, maybe, down deep at the core; sure as hell rotten at the end. My partner the crook. My pal the stranger. Shaking down a two-bit thief for five hundred dollars and a couple of bottles of Jack Daniel’s. So far gone, so lost, that even his final act of corruption had been weak, petty.
Was that the trigger, then? Disgust, self-loathing at how low he’d sunk?
Part of it, possibly — but there had to be more, some other factor. Who had been the recipient of that five-hundred-dollar check? And what was it in payment for? Key questions that still had no answers. I’d know the answers when the check finally cleared, unless for some reason it wasn’t cashed at all; but even if I knew that much, I might never get at the whole truth. Right now, with the foul taste of Eberhardt’s dishonesty in my mouth, the prospect didn’t bother me as much as it had before. I was no longer sure I cared to find out any more than I already had.