Clandestine

I figured on another five minutes. I was wrong: three minutes later Brubaker was running back across the street, my carton in his arms, his face the picture of absolute panic. He didn't run for his front door—he bypassed it and ran for the parking lot adjacent to his building. I was right behind him, and as he plopped the carton down on the trunk of a Pontiac roadster and groped in his pocket for the keys, I came up behind him and jammed my gun into his spine.

"No, Larry," I said as he cut loose with a sound that was half wail and half shriek, "not now. You understand?" I cocked the hammer and dug the barrel into the fleshy part of his back. Brubaker nodded his head very slightly.

"Good," I said. "Eddie is in hell, but I'm not, and if you play your cards right you won't be either. Do you dig me, Larry?" Brubaker nodded again. "Good. Do you know who I am?"

Brubaker twisted slightly to see my face. When recognition flashed into his pale blue eyes he whimpered, then covered his mouth with his hands and bit at his knuckles.

I motioned him toward the back door of his cocktail lounge. "Pick up the box, Larry. We have some reading and talking to do."

Brubaker complied, and in a few moments we were seated in his modest living quarters at the rear of the bar. Brubaker was quivering, but holding onto his dignity, much as he had on the day Smith and I had questioned him. I pointed with my gun barrel to the carton that lay between us.

"Open it up and read the first ten pages or so," I said.

Brubaker hesitated, then tore into it, obviously anxious to get it over with. I watched as he hurriedly read through the sheets I had annotated, setting each one aside with trembling hands as he continued reading. After ten minutes or so he had gotten the picture and started to laugh hysterically, but with what seemed like an underlying sense of irony.

"Baby, baby, baby, baby," he said. "Baby, baby, baby."

"You ever kill anyone, Larry?" I asked.

"No," Brubaker said.

"Do you have any idea how many people Doc Harris has killed?"

"Lots and lots," Brubaker said.

"You're a sarcastic bastard. You feel like surviving this thing, or going down with Doc?"

"I went down on Doc in 1944, baby. So did Eddie, so did Johnny DeVries. Just to seal our pact, you understand. I didn't mind: Doc was a gorgeous hunk. Eddie didn't mind, he was a switch-hitter. But it ate Johnny up, no pun intended. He liked it, and he hated himself for it till the day he died."

"Who killed him?"

"Doc. Doc loved him, too. But Johnny was talking too much. He never turned his share of the stuff over. He was giving it away to all the hopheads on Milwaukee skid. Then he started talking about kicking. We were friends. He called me and told me he wanted me to hold his stuff until he got out of the hospital. He wanted to kick, but he didn't want to lose the money he could get by pushing the stuff, you dig?"

"I dig. So you were afraid that if he got clean he'd blab and implicate you, and you told Doc."

"That's right, I told Big Daddy, and Big Daddy took care of it."

Brubaker managed to keep his pride, though he was clearly accepting of his subservience and self-hatred. I honestly didn't know if he wanted to go on living or die with his past. All I could do was go on asking my questions and hope that his detachment held.

"What happened to the rest of the dope, Larry?"

"Doc and I are turning it over, a little at a time. Have been, for years."

"He's blackmailing you?"

"He's got pictures of me and a city councilman in what you might call a compromising position," Brubaker laughed. "I fixed the councilman up with Eddie. Eddie was a status fiend, the guy was in love with status and horses, and that councilman had both. Doc took some pictures of them, too, but the councilman never knew it. Eddie did, though—that's how Doc got him to take the fall for Maggie."

I started to tremble. "Doc killed Maggie?"

"Yes, baby, he did. You got the wrong man when you popped Eddie. But you paid, baby. It's funny, baby, you don't look like a Commie." Brubaker laughed, this time directly at me.

"Why?" I asked. "Why did he do it?"