“You better be sure, chicken,” I said.
Her voice was getting a hysterical calm. There was a dull happy look in her eyes that meant she was crowding the deep end and so was I. “I am sure, señor.”
I said very deliberately, “How do you know?”
“I know those of who Juan would be afraid. You are such a one. You thought he had his money when he died. He did not. Those ten thousand dollars, señor... it was here.”
“Ten thousand...” My voice was soft, but she heard it.
Her smile was vicious. “But it is not here now. It is safe. It is in the bank and it is mine. For such a sum Juan died. Now you can follow him.”
She took too long to shoot. She thought of Juan first and her eyes flooded at the wrong time. I slapped my hand over hers and the firing pin bit into my skin when I yanked the rod out of her hand. When she started to scream, I belted her across the mouth and knocked her into a chair. She tried another one and I backhanded it loose and as though I snapped my fingers, the glazed look left her eyes and she stared at me from a face contorted by fear.
When she had it long enough I said, “Ease off. You won’t get hurt.”
She didn’t believe me. She had lived with one idea too long.
“Lucinda... I never knew Juan. I don’t want his bundle. That clear?”
She nodded.
“Where’d the ten grand come from?”
Defiance showed across her face. Then it all came back again; fear, disbelief, hatred, defiance.
I said, “Listen to me, sugar. If I wanted to I could make you talk a real easy way. It wouldn’t be hard. I could make you scream and talk and scream and talk and you couldn’t stop it. You know this?”
She bobbed her head once, quickly.
“But I don’t want anything that bad. I’m not going to do anything like that. Understand?”
“Si.”
“Then once more... where’d the ten G’s come from?”
Nervously, she ran her fingers through her hair. “He came home from the docks one day and told me that soon we would go back to the island. Only now it would not be a mud hut but in a fine building that we would live. He said we were going to have much money. We would travel around the world, maybe.”
“When was this?”
“The week before he died, señor.”
“He had it then?”
“No.” She stood up quickly and stepped to the table, turned and leaned back against it. “He was getting it then, he said. He was feeling very good. But he did not drink.”
She shrugged. “He changed. He became a scared one. He would tell me nothing. Nothing at all. The same night he... died...” she paused and put her face in her hands a moment before going on, “...he came in and took something from where he hid it in the closet.”
“What was it?”
“I do not know. It was not very big. I theenk it could have been a gun. One time he kept a gun there wrapped up in rags. He did not show me. He went out for maybe an hour. When he came back he had this money. He gave it to me and told me to pack up. Then he left.”
“Where to?”
“To die somewhere, señor. He said he was going to... how you say it... arrange things.”
“You have the dough.”
“Is it really mine?”
I flipped the rod in my hand then tossed it on top of the table. “Sure it’s yours,” I told her. “Why not?”
She picked up the gun, studied it and laid it down again. “I am sorry if I... almost shot you.”
“You could have been sorrier. You could have gotten your picture in the morning papers real easy.”
Her smile was grim. “Yes. Like Juan.” She opened a drawer in the dish closet and took out two front pages from recent tabloids and handed them to me. In one Juan was a hero. In the other he was dead.
But on his last public appearance there was an out-of-character bit for what I had been thinking. The truck driver who killed him was sitting on the curb crying.
I reached for the door. Before I opened it I said, “Did Juan ever mention a man named Lodo?”
“Lodo? Si. Twice he says this name. It was when he was very scared.”
I let go the door, all edgy again. “Who is he?”
“He was asleep when he said this name, señor. I do not know. I do not ask, either.”
I closed the door quietly behind me and went back downstairs.
It had started to rain and the street stank.
The truck that had killed Juan was one of the Abart fleet from Brooklyn. I told the harried little boss I was an insurance investigator and he told me I had 20 minutes before Harry Peeler would be in and to have a seat.
At 5:40 a short thin guy with grey hair came in and the girl there said, “That gentleman’s waiting to see you, Harry. Insurance investigator.”
“It’s about the... accident, I suppose.”
“Well, yes.”
“Terrible.” He glanced at me ruefully. “I’m finished driving, Mr. Ryan. I can’t go it any more.”
“I want you to tell me about that night.”
“But I told...”
“You’ve had a chance to think it over since then, Mr. Peeler. You’ve gone over every detail a thousand times, haven’t you?”
He moaned, “Oh, help me, yes. Yes, every night. I can’t forget it.”
“Tell me about it, Mr. Peeler.”
“How can I explain something crazy like that? It was three A.M. and nobody was on the streets. I was driving toward the bridge when this guy comes from in front of this parked truck. Right under the wheels!”
“Was he running?”
At first he didn’t answer. When he looked up, he had a puzzled expression working at his face, then he said, “He kind of flew.”
“What?”
“I know it sounds crazy, but that’s what it was like. He must have been standing there all along, just waiting. He didn’t run. He dove, like. You know what I mean. Maybe he was committing suicide. He dove, like.”
“Could he have been pushed, like?”
Harry Peeler’s eyes opened wide, startled. He swallowed hard, thinking, “He... could have been.”
“You’ve been thinking that, haven’t you?”
He swallowed again.
I said, “It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have done anything to prevent it.”
He wasn’t looking at me. He was squinting at the far wall and I heard him say, “Somebody ran from behind that truck. I know it. It took a while to remember, but I know it! I was yelling for somebody to get a doctor. It was a long while before anybody came. Somebody was behind that truck, though.”
I stood up and patted his shoulder. “Okay. You feel better now?”
“Sure.” He grinned. “It ain’t good to kill somebody, but it’s better knowing you couldn’t of stopped it anyhow.”
“That’s the way. You keep driving.”
I made a double check around Harry Peeler’s neighborhood. He was a long time resident and strictly a family man. Everybody liked the guy. When I got done asking questions, I was pretty sure of one thing.
Harry Peeler hadn’t been in on any killing except by coincidence.
The rain had started again, driving the city indoors. DiNuccio’s was crowded and smelled of beer and damp clothes. Art was waiting for me, in the back. When I sat down, I said, “Let’s have it.”
“Sure. Killed with a .38 slug in the chest, two in the stomach. Now here’s an item the papers didn’t have. He wasn’t shot where he died. My guess is that he was thrown from a car. The officers on the scene first aren’t talking so it’s my guess again that he talked before he kicked off. Item two: I ran into so many icy stares when I pushed this thing that I got the idea something pretty hot was being covered up. A check through a good friend came up with this bit... there’s some kind of a grumble on where the high hoods sit.”