If I Should Die Before I Die by Peter Israel Page A

him.
    â€œDrugs? You gotta be kidding. The grass is so thick at Rosebud’s they gotta be growing it in the johns.”
    â€œI didn’t mean Rosebud’s. I meant McCloy, his group.”
    â€œNot that I saw. Alfie says the preppy set’s back into booze mostly nowadays. Booze and sex. Says they’re like rabbits, least that’s all they talk about. Even with AIDS. I could’ve been picked up half a dozen times myself if I hadn’t been on the job.”
    Bobby Derr looked the part. He might have been up late every night, but sitting at the Roosevelt that morning, clean shaven, in a yellow button-down Oxford shirt open at the neck to show some chest hair, and jeans, and a brown tweed jacket, with his raincoat slung over the back of his chair, you’d never have guessed it. He had the Ivy League look, and though the way he talked didn’t say Yale or Harvard exactly, it didn’t say not-Yale or not-Harvard either, not in the 1980s.
    He had some other stuff for me too, and not bad. He’d greased the super at McCloy’s building and had learned that though Carter McCloy lived there, he didn’t own the apartment. Some corporation did, the super said. The super had nothing on McCloy in particular, but the apartment, 9B, had been in trouble off and on. Late-night parties, neighbors’ complaints, people coming and going at all hours. The police had been called in a couple of times, and the super knew the apartment had been brought up at the co-op board, but nothing had happened. Bobby thought the super knew more than he’d let on, but he wasn’t sure.
    â€œYou’re in twelve hundred bucks so far, Philly,” he said at the Roosevelt Cafeteria. “Round numbers. What do you want me to do next?”
    I thought about it. What I really wanted was a rundown on Carter McCloy’s whereabouts on certain specific dates stretching back to the spring, but there was no way I could turn Derr loose on that without running the risk of him guessing, and I couldn’t do that without the Counselor’s Wife’s approval. I didn’t think she’d approve. I thought of narrowing it just to the night of the last murder, but that was risky too.
    â€œJust keep it going,” I told him.
    â€œYou want round the clock?”
    â€œNo,” I said. “Just nights.”
    â€œNights’ll cost you double, Philly. I’m not like these guys, I don’t get to sleep all day. Besides, if I keep it up, they’re gonna make me. A face gets familiar after a while. What do I do then?”
    â€œLet it happen,” I said. “Get in the middle of it. Get to know them.”
    I watched him think about it. The money was okay, I figured, and the possibility of getting laid on the job wouldn’t bother him either. But something did bother him. Call it pride if you want to, but I think he was looking for an angle.
    â€œWhat’s Camelot after?” Bobby Derr said. “Wouldn’t it be easier if you just told me? What’s he really after?”
    â€œIt’s not Mr. Camelot,” I said. “I’ve told you that before.”
    â€œI know, I know,” he said, grinning, “it’s not Camelot’s money, it’s the client’s. But who’s the client? McCloy’s folks? And what are they after? Drugs? Do they think little Carter knocked somebody up?”
    I told him I couldn’t answer him on either ground. I was pledged to confidentiality.
    â€œThere’s something else I don’t get,” Bobby Derr said. “You guys always use Bud’s outfit on this kind of deal. Why me this time?”
    â€œTwo reasons, Bobby,” I answered. “One is that Bud doesn’t have anybody for this kind of job, nobody who could get as close as you. The other …?” I hesitated long enough to let him do some speculating on his own. Then: “Well, you know Bud, Bobby. Let’s see how it plays.