The Heckler

The sailor stopped. Cautiously, he turned to face the .38.

“Wh—what’s the gun for?” he asked.

“Who are you?” Hernandez asked.

“John Smith,” the sailor replied.

Hernandez moved closer to him. The voice had been young, and the man’s body was trim and youthful in the tight-fitting Navy blues. Hernandez blinked, and then realized he was not looking at a reincarnation of the dead man they’d found in Grover Park, but he was damn well looking at a spitting image of him, some forty years younger.

“Where’s my father?” Smith said.

“John Smith your father?”

“Yes. Where is he?”

Hernandez didn’t want to answer that question, not just yet he didn’t. “What made you think you’d find him here?” he asked.

“This is the address he gave me,” the young John Smith said. “Who areyou?”

“When did he give you the address?”

“We’ve been writing to each other. I was down in Guantanamo Bay on a shakedown cruise,” Smith said. His eyes narrowed. “You a cop or something?”

“That’s what I am.”

“I knew it. I can smell fuzz a mile away. Is the old man in some trouble?”

“When did you hear from him last?”

“I don’t know. Beginning of the month, I guess. What’s he done?”

“He hasn’t done anything.”

“Then what are you doing here?”

“Your father’s dead,” Hernandez said flatly.

Smith backed up against the wall as if Hernandez had hit him. He simply recoiled from Hernandez’s words, inching backward until he collided with the wall, and then he leaned against the wall, and he stared into the room, without seeing Hernandez, simply stared into the room blankly, and said, “How?”

“Murdered,” Hernandez said.

“Who?”

“We don’t know”

The room was silent.

“Who’d want to kill him?” Smith asked the silence.

“Maybe you can tell us,” Hernandez said. “What was his last letter about?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember,” Smith said. He seemed dazed. He kept leaning against the wall, his head tilted back against the plaster, looking up at the ceiling.

“Try,” Hernandez said gently. He holstered the .38 and walked to the bar unit. He poured a stiff hooker of brandy and carried it to Smith. “Here. Drink this.”

“I don’t drink.”

“Take it.”

Smith took the glass, sniffed it, and tried to hand it back. Hernandez forced it to his mouth. Smith drank, almost gagging. He coughed and pushed the glass away from him.

“I’m all right,” he said.

“Sit down.”

“I’m all right.”

“Sit down!”

Smith nodded and went to one of the modern easy chairs, sinking into it. He stretched out his long legs. He did not look at Hernandez. He kept studying the tips of his highly polished shoes.

“The letter,” Hernandez said. “What did it say?”

“I don’t know. It was a long time ago.”

“Did he mention a girl named Lotte Constantine?”

“No. Who’s she?”

“Did he mention anyone called the deaf man?”

“No.” Smith looked up. “Thewhat?”

“Never mind. Whatdid he say in the letter?”

“I don’t know. I think he started off by thanking me for the shoes. Yeah, that’s right.”

“What shoes?”

“I got a pair of shoes for him from ship’s service. I’m on a destroyer, we were just commissioned last month up in Boston. So my father sent me his shoe size and I picked up a pair for him in the ship’s store. They’re good shoes, and I get them for something like nine bucks, he couldn’t come anywhere near that price on the outside.” Smith paused. “There’s nothing dishonest about that.”

“Nobody said there was.”

“Well, there ain’t. I paid money for the shoes. It ain’t as if I was cheating the government. Besides, it’s all one and the same. Before he got this job, his only income came from the government, anyway. So it’s six of one and half a dozen of—”

“What job?” Hernandez asked quickly.

“Huh? Oh, I don’t know. In his last letter, he was telling me about some job he got.”

“What kind of job?”

“As a night watchman.”

Hernandez leaned closer to Smith. “Where?”

“I don’t know.”

“Didn’t he say where?”

“No.”

“Hemust have said where!”

“He didn’t. He said he was working as a night watchman, but that the job would be finished on May first, and after that he could afford to retire. That’s all he said.”

“What did he mean?”

“I don’t know. My father always had big ideas.” Smith paused. “None of them ever paid off.”

“Afford to retire,” Hernandez said, almost to himself. “On what? On a night watchman’s salary?”

“He only just got the job,” Smith said. “He couldn’t have meant that. It was probably something else. One of his get-rich-quick schemes.”

“But he said he’d only be working until May first, is that right?”

“Yeah.”

“He didn’t give the name of the firm? He didn’t say where he was working?”

“No, I told you.” Smith paused. “Why’d anyone want to kill him? He never hurt a soul in his life.”

And suddenly he began weeping.