361 by Donald E. Westlake Page A

closed at four and we took the subway back. There wasn’t anything to drink in the room. I lay on my back in the dark and stared at the ceiling. “Bill,” I said, “I think I know why they futzed around on all those little islands.”
    But he was asleep already.

Fifteen
    Monday afternoon I called the other hotel. Beeworthy and Johnson had both called, leaving messages for me to call them back. Since I now knew it was Eddie Kapp I was looking for, at least to begin with, there wasn’t any point in calling either of them.
    Bill went out for a deck of cards and was gone an hour. When he came back, he had a haircut and he said he didn’t know I’d be worried. We played cards and I walked around and the room got smaller. We went out after a while and went to see a movie up in the Bronx. Then we went to a bar.
    Tuesday, I called Johnson, just to have something to do. He was frantic. He said, “Where the hell are you people? I’ve been going nuts. Did you move out or something?”
    “Hell, no,” I said. “We’re still here. We aren’t around the room much.”
    “Jesus Christ, I guess not. I’ve been over there half a dozen times. I was ready to think those guys got to you.”
    “Not a peep,” I said.
    “They haven’t been around at all?”
    “Nope.”
    “You son of a bitch, you’ve moved someplace else.”
    I grinned. It was fine just to be talking to somebody. “We’re still registered at the Amington,” I told him, “and our suitcase is still there. I mean here.”
    “All right, you shouldn’t trust me with the address, but you don’t have to lie to me.”
    “We’re still at the Amington, Johnson,” I said.
    “All right, all right.” He was irritated. “On that other thing,” he said, “do you want to hear what I’ve got to say or not?”
    “It’s up to you.”
    “Oh, crap. You’re just trying to get under my skin. I’ve got it narrowed down to two people. A cop named Fred Maine. And a guy named Dan Christie, he’s an investigator works for Northeastern Agency. It’s got to be one of those two. I’m pretty sure Maine gets two paychecks every week, one of them from the city. And Christie is a poker buddy of Sal Metusco, he’s a numbers collector midtown on the west side.”
    “Keep up the good work,” I told him. I didn’t say anything about the veteran in the parking lot, because Johnson would only have told the next guy who broke his arm.
    We talked a little, about nothing at all, and I said I’d call him back. I didn’t say when. Then I looked at Beeworthy’s number, but I resisted the impulse. He’d want to do a lot of interviewing, and I wasn’t in the mood.
    Bill wanted to go to another movie that night, but I couldn’t take it. So we sat around the room and drank and after a while I threw a gin hand out the window. A little after midnight, we went down to 42nd Street and saw an important movie that had been made from a Broadway play called A Sound of Distant Drums. It was about homosexuality and what a burden it was, but the hero bore the burden girlfully. It didn’t convert me.
    Wednesday we checked out of the hotel. We also went down and checked out of the Amington. We figured they were looking for us somewhere else by now, so we didn’t sneak around. Nobody noticed us particularly. Then we took the tube to Jersey City and got the car and drove up to Plattsburg. I rode in the back seat because I still couldn’t face highway driving in the right front. Sitting back there, I read the papers we’d bought in the city. The Post had an article about Eddie Kapp getting out of prison tomorrow. They were unhappy about it, and wanted to know if Eddie Kapp had really paid his debt to society. There was a blurred photo of him twenty-five years ago. No other paper referred to him at all.
    In Plattsburg, we checked into a hotel on Margaret Street. Bill was bushed, he’d driven three hundred and thirty miles in eight hours. I went out alone and found a bar and traded war