“Look, God damn it,” I said. “Are you going to listen to me, or aren’t you?”
He turned then, and glared at me. “Mr. Smith,” he said, “I don’t frankly care what you do. You can tell me your little secrets if you want, or you can go to hell.”
I blinked at him. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”
“I’ve been replaced, that’s what the hell’s the matter with me,” he said. “I am leaving this fetid little town you love so well. I am going back to Albany, on the three-fifteen train.” He paused, glowered some more, seemed to think things over a bit, and added, “If you really have information, you can tell the other man when he gets here.”
“Who is he,” I asked, “and when does he arrive?”
“His name is Danile, Archer Danile. And he should be here by seven o’clock.”
Seven o’clock wasn’t much help to me. And if Masetti was leaving at three-fifteen, he wasn’t going to be much help to me either. I’d just have to find somebody else to carry my insurance. Cathy, maybe. I’d thought of her before, and decided against it, partially because I didn’t want to expose her to the possible risk in it, and partially because I didn’t want to expose myself to another one of her lectures.
“All right,” I said. “Thanks anyway.”
“You are quite welcome,” he said angrily, and went back to his packing.
And I went back to the lobby.
Art was still grinning when I got there. “Guess you won’t be needing us any more, Mr. Smith,” he said.
I frowned at him. “Why not?”
“I called Jack while you were upstairs. He just heard on the radio, they arrested the guy who’s been trying to kill you. Arrested him for the killing of the old guy in the grocery store.”
I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t thought Harcum would dare blow the whistle on one of his pals. “Who?” I demanded. “Who was it?”
“A lawyer,” he said. “Ronald Lascow.”
“Lascow!”
That stupid son of a bitch, that Harcum, he’d tried to palm the whole thing off on a fall guy! And he’d picked one of the few people in town I was absolutely sure couldn’t possibly be the one who’d been after me. Ron Lascow. Harcum must be losing his mind, I thought, he must be losing his useless mind.
And then the other part of it hit me. It was on the radio, and they were specifically mentioning that he’d been arrested for the murder of Joey Casale.
The family, the Casale family. They were out buying the rope right now, I was as sure of that as I was sure that Ron Lascow was being framed.
That’s what Hal Ganz had been going to tell me, up there outside the office! And no wonder Harcum had shut him up, because Harcum knew I wouldn’t go for that for a minute.
I had to go over there and get Ron out, but that came second. The first thing I had to do was stop the Casales.
Twenty
I knew where they’d be. Now that old Joey was dead, his oldest son, Mike, would be heading the clan. Mike and another son, Sal, ran a trucking company, and one of their warehouses would be the inevitable place for a family get-together.
I told Art that I’d still be needing him and Ben, that Harcum had tried to pin it all on the wrong guy, and the three of us left the hotel. We hurried down the street to the Ford, Art joined me in front again, and Ben, silent as ever, took up once more his half-asleep pose in back.
Casale Brothers, Moving and Storage, General Trucking, occupied a square block on Front Street, down a ways from the Reed & King Chemical Supplies Corporation plant. On this square block were four buildings, all old and tall and dirty and red brick, three of them with boarded-up windows. These three were the storage warehouses and the garage facilities. The fourth building, which still had glass in its ground-floor windows, held the offices. The rest of the block space was covered with asphalt and used for off-street parking of company cars and trucks, most of it enclosed by storm fencing.
I told Art and Ben to wait for me in the car. I didn’t want Mike to get the idea I was coming to him with a show of force. “You’re a busy busy man, Mr. Smith,” Art told me, in that half-mocking half-impressed manner of his.
“Busy busy,” I answered, and hurried away from the car toward the office building. I could feel Art’s grin on my back.
The girl in the front office told me that Mike Casale, and the four other Casale brothers, and a few other people, were all over in the south building, but she wasn’t sure I could get in to see them. I thanked her, told her I’d just stroll over and see for myself, and went back out to the sidewalk.
The south building was right next door, but the entrance to it was around in the back. I went through the passageway between the two buildings, turned the comer, and there was Bill Casale standing by the door, his arms folded across his chest, still wearing the khakis and T-shirt.
“Your father inside?” I asked him.
“He’s busy right now, Tim,” he said.
“I want to talk to him, Bill. He’s making a mistake.”
Bill didn’t move a muscle. I was an outsider, not family, and only family could be trusted right now. “Let him decide that for himself,” he told me.
“Bill, for Christ’s sake, I’m on your side. You know that, for Christ’s sake. Let me in to talk to your father.”
“What about?”
“Ron Lascow didn’t kill your grandfather,” I told him.
“The radio said he did.”
“And the newspapers said Dewey was President. Harcum’s looking for a fall guy, that’s all. This whole thing is mixed up with politics, and Harcum can’t afford to dig too far.”
“That isn’t what the radio said,” he insisted. “The radio said he tried to kill you because you found out about some sort of crooked tax deal he was trying to work up, and he was afraid you’d tell this reform group in town.”
So now I knew why they’d picked Ron. They were going to try to make him stand double duty. The tax scheme was out the window, so they would make Ron do for the murder and also try to make him bear the brunt of the CCG investigation. And he was too recently one of the boys to be able to do much damage to them.
“It’s a frame-up,” I said. “Ron didn’t kill anybody.”
“The radio said he did,” he said doggedly.
“For Christ’s sake,” I shouted, “what is the goddam radio, the voice of God? Harcum had to find a patsy, that’s all. Bill, quit fooling around and let me talk to your father.”
He shook his head. “Nobody goes in,” he told me. “That’s what they said, nobody goes in. And that includes you.”
“Bill,” I said desperately, “would I try to cover for Ron if he really was the guy who’d been trying to kill me? There were four goddam tries on my life, Bill. Use your goddam head.”
“You could be wrong,” he said.
“And I could be right,” I told him.
He thought it over for a minute, and finally he said, “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
“I’ll wait,” I promised him.
He went inside, and I heard the click of the door locking after him. I lit a cigarette and looked around at the parking lot. It was full, jammed with Casale Brothers trucks and with private cars. It looked as though the whole family must be inside, plus all the truckers working for the company. A small army. Enough to take Ron out of our rickety clink and hang him from one of the City Hall Park trees.
And Harcum wouldn’t exactly overexert himself to keep Ron from being lynched. The murderer dead, saving the delicacy and embarrassment of a trial. Everything solved, and everybody happy.
Bill was gone only a minute or two. When he came back, he closed the door carefully behind him, looked at me, and shook his head. “He said no.”