Dead Man's Tale Read Free Page A

and smoked a cigarette. He looked at his suitcase with the Big-Ten stickers, faded and torn, on the worn cowhide. Steve had given him the suitcase as a going-away present when he’d left for college. Since then it had seen bumper service, bouncing back and forth Christmas and Easter and summer vacations between the Midwest and Long Island. Steve had appeared noticeably older and less sure of himself each time Andy had come home.
    Even during that time Barney Street had been finished, and so was Steve. Andy knew the history; he had even gotten an obscure satisfaction in using it as the basis of a term paper in an elective criminology course he had taken in his junior year. He had called the paper “The Old-Style Fixer and the New in County Crime.”
    Barney Street and his lieutenant, Steve Longacre, were old-style fixers. There were those who claimed that Street’s failure to keep Harry Craven out of jail for conspiracy in the county labour-war maiming of a crusading reporter had started Barney’s long slide downward, but Barney had been doomed in any case. Barney Street was an old-style fixer, and the end had been inevitable.
    The new-style fixer was a lawyer who used a low-handicap golf game and cocktail-party manners the way Barney Street had used strong-arm goons and the outmoded tactics of the Prohibition mobs.
    The up-to-date fixer eschewed the hard threat, the schlamin with a sawed-off length of iron pipe or rubber hose and the artillery. For these he substituted a complex modus operandi the Barney Streets were incapable of understanding. Andy’s term paper described this modus operandi in clinical detail.
    With the same perversity that had made him write the paper, Andy had shown it to Steve. He had watched Steve’s face while his brother read it. Steve’s face hadn’t told Andy anything, but when he put the paper down he had said, “This is what I send you to college for?”
    â€œI just want your opinion, that’s all,” Andy had said defensively.
    Steve only thumped him on the back, laughing hard. “You’re all right, kid. Getting to be a real professor. But why don’t you write about Shakespeare and stuff like that, and leave my racket to the guys who understand it?”
    Andy had never mentioned the subject again.
    Steve started making funny noises in his throat. His eyelids fluttered and he tried to sit up.
    â€œIf I tell Craven,” he said.
    â€œWhat?” Andy said.
    â€œIf I tell Craven,” Steve said again. He sat up, his eyes opening wide. Then he lurched into the bathroom. He came back in a few minutes with water dripping from his hair and face and his jacket soaked.
    â€œHello, kid,” he said. “This is a great way to welcome you home.” He ran his big hands through his hair, looking Andy over. “Phi Bete, huh? How about that?” But his thoughts were obviously elsewhere.
    â€œWhat’s the matter, Steve?”
    â€œThe matter? Nothing’s the matter.” Steve sat down heavily on the sofa.
    â€œYou mumbled something about Craven.”
    â€œTo hell with Craven. All of them,” Steve muttered.
    Andy watched him. “I’ve been thinking. I’ve had an offer of a fellowship out on the West Coast. To do my graduate work. Why not pack up and come along, Steve? There’s nothing keeping you here.”
    Steve didn’t look up. “Me, run away? You must be rocky.”
    â€œI didn’t say anything about running away.”
    Then Steve did look up. His face was haggard. “I don’t …” His voice faltered. His eyes squinched shut and it took Andy a moment to realize he was crying. Steve turned away. “Go on,” he said harshly. “Go on, get out of here and buy us a steak or something! We’ll celebrate. Andy, get out, will you? Give me a couple of minutes, please!”
    â€œIf there’s anything—”
    â€œGod damn it, get