Don't Lie to Me by Donald E. Westlake Page B

natural first reaction. Then I saw him look scared, wondering if for some reason he was going to be accused of being the acid thrower. All this in the first two or three seconds, and immediately followed by a wise look, a closed and wary look as it came to him where I was actually going. Defensively, trying to assume the innocent reaction of just a second before, he said, defiantly, “Well, I didn’t do it. I didn’t have anything to do with it.”
    I said, “Dink, it took me about two hours to realize that acid hadn’t been aimed at the cop. It had been aimed at me.”
    â€œListen,” he said. “Listen, now, this is the honest-to-God truth. I don’t hold a grudge. We both know what I’m talking about, we don’t have to spell it out. I let bygones be bygones, and that’s it. I swear on a stack of Bibles.”
    I said, “Dink, I don’t suppose you know for sure yet which one of them did it. But I want you to find out for me. I want you to call me at home by eight o’clock tonight and tell me the name.”
    I remembered that look of outraged innocence from when I’d arrested him on his last burglary charge. “What do you come to me for? I was home in bed all night!”
    â€œI know you were, Dink.” I held up four fingers, and counted off the names. “It might have been Fred Carver,” I said. “It might have been Knox. It might have been Mort. Or it might have been the new kid, Willie Vigevano. You find out for me which one of them it was.”
    Each name hit him like an arrow going into his forehead; he blinked, he grunted, his head bobbed back. Still, when I was finished he went on with the denials: “You can’t make any connection between any of those guys and me. You can’t even make a connection between them and you.” His eyes shifted away from me for a second, and then shifted back. “I am staying clean,” he said. “Grade-A number-one clean. That means completely.”
    I knew that Linda was now up, and in the doorway behind me and to my right; the spot where Dink’s glance had shifted to. But she wasn’t coming into the room, and Dink wasn’t making any overt acknowledgment of her presence, so I too pretended the two of us were still alone. But just as Dink had been playing to the new audience when he’d suddenly started talking about staying clean, I too now played to that audience, saying, “Dink, the cop that got the acid in his face is named Grinella. He’s been blinded. The first word is, they’re not absolutely sure, but they think he’s blind for the rest of his life. That acid was meant for me, so I feel responsible. I feel responsible to this extent, Dink; I want the guy who did it to pay for it.”
    â€œSure, that’s fine,” he said, but he looked troubled now, and he seemed to be frowning and squinting as though to avoid looking at that doorway to my right. “But why put the pressure on me?” he asked me. “You want to help the cops, go ahead. But why lean on me?”
    â€œIf I have to, Dink,” I said, “I’ll go to Grinella’s partner and I’ll tell him the whole truth. I’ll tell him what I’ve been covering up in a murder investigation he’s working on, and why I’ve been covering, and what I did that made Carver and Knox and Mort and Willie Vigevano sore at me. Grinella’s partner is a very tough guy. His name is Hargerson. You know him?”
    He shook his head.
    â€œHe reminds me a lot of Krauss,” I said, talking about a brutal bastard I’d known in the old days. “George Krauss, remember him?”
    Dink nodded, with great reluctance.
    â€œHargerson is the same kind,” I said. “If I have to tell him the whole truth, he’ll make things as rough for me as he possibly can. Maybe have my private operator’s ticket taken away, so I’ll lose my job.