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Woodhouse flung the door wide open and said, “Come right in. I’m on a streak, so I hope this won’t take too long. Some of the boys have to get home to their wives.”
I checked out the house as we walked in. Stucco walls, overstuffed furniture, framed photo of Mrs. Woodhouse draped in black hanging over the fireplace. An arched passthrough connected the living room to the dining room, where five men in their forties to midsixties sat around the snack- and beer-bottle-laden dining room table. They were holding cards.
Conklin said to Woodhouse, “We can talk in the kitchen.”
“No, just come in and ask what you want. I don’t have secrets from my friends and family.”
Woodhouse took his seat at the head, named the men at the table, including his father, Micah, and his brother, Jeff. After turning down an offer to “pull up a chair,” Conklin asked Woodhouse, “Have you driven your car this evening?”
“Of course. Went out for food and beer. What’s this about?”
Conklin said, “About this shopping trip. Were you in Bayview?”
“Bayview? No, I went to the Lucky on Sloat. You didn’t answer me, son, and I’m asking you for the third and final time before I kick you the hell out. What’s this about?”
“Shots were fired through Connor Grant’s windows this evening at around eight. A car was spotted leaving the area that matches the description of your Land Rover.”
“Oh, I see. This is because I shouted at that scum sucker. Was he killed, I hope?”
One of the men at the table said, “Eight o’clock? Cary was right here at eight, wasn’t he, boys?”
The men around the table agreed: “Yeah,” “Uh-huh,” “Right here,” and “I can vouch for that.”
Woodhouse smiled, put down his beer bottle.
“I’ve got, count ’em, five alibis. Any other questions?”
I said, “What kind of guns do you own, Mr. Woodhouse?”
Woodhouse said, “Oh, come on. I have a lot of weapons, and some of them are recently fired. I used them at the gun club range this morning. If you want to check them out, I guess you’re going to need a warrant.”
I said, “Mr. Woodhouse, if anything should happen to Connor Grant, you’re suspect number one.”
“Duly noted,” he said, giving me a look that could stop a tank in its tracks. He went on to say, “I can’t believe that you, of all people, are trying to protect that maniac. Please. Show yourselves out.”
Woodhouse placed a deck of cards in front of the older man to his right.
“Dad, you’re up. Dealer’s choice.”
Out again on the street, Rich and I said our good-nights. With luck, I’d be back in my favorite pj’s in a half hour. As for dreamland, I wasn’t sure I still had a ticket.
CHAPTER 57
NEDDIE LAMBO WAS pacing in Ward Six of the North Tower just after lights-out. He walked from window to window, to the bathroom, and back to the bunk room, restless as a man could be.
He thought about Mr. Homes, the broker he’d put down, and the story on The Six O’Clock News Hour about Salesman of the Month Bobby Riccardo’s heart attack. That he was so young and so well regarded and how much he’d be missed—and it just pissed Neddie off. Big-time.
Yes, indeed, it was a good thing that Bobby Riccardo had gotten all the attention, but it was maddening not to get any himself. People had thought he was a true moron since he was a little kid, and he’d learned how to work that angle to perfection. But sometimes, like right now, he wished a woman, or even a shrink, would see that someone was home inside of Neddie Lambo. That he was someone very special and very smart.
Neddie paced some more. He looked at his sleeping bunkies, Fred Mouse and Quarter to Ten. He blew on Oscar’s face until the old dude flipped onto his stomach. He hid Goose Thomson’s shoe in Randy Rockefeller’s trunk because Goose would go full-bore insane when he couldn’t find his shoe.
But Neddie was getting nowhere fast. Or slow, either.
He had a lot of anger right now, thinking about that damned real estate salesman, and he had to blow it off. He had been at the Loony Bin for thirty-six years and had amassed many privileges. The best of them was not the bunk by the window, the seat at the head of the table, or the title of Dorm Dad.
It was that he could leave the Bin on his own.
Normally, he spaced out these trips abroad. He’d put down the broker only a week ago, but tonight, since the TV coverage of the big funeral for Bob-Bob-Bobby Riccardo, he felt an urgent need to fly.
