Play It Again

by Stephen Humphrey Bogart

  Bertelli gave him a firm, friendly handshake. He was maybe thirty, with carefully styled black hair. In spite of himself, R.J. warmed to the younger guy. He was not handsome, but he had a sparkle in his eyes that R.J. liked and knew women would go crazy for. He wore a tailored gray suit and a silk shirt.

  “That’s enough of the orgy,” Kates snarled. “Sit down, Brooks.”

  Boggs sat in a hard-backed chair and Bertelli stepped back and perched on the windowsill.

  “Or is it R.J. Fontaine?” Kates sneered.

  R.J. looked at him. They’d had many heated confrontations. Kates played by the book and made that seem wrong. He’d never liked R.J., who would skate pretty close to the line in order to get a job done and had no use for somebody who liked the rules more than the game.

  R.J. could tell that discovering his relationship with Belle Fontaine had not made Kates fall in love with him. If possible, Kates liked him even less now.

  They’d never fought with more than words, but it had been close more than once. Fred Kates was a big man, Duke Wayne big. He was in his forties with brown eyes and florid cheeks. He brushed his thinning hair straight back. He wore a green three-piece suit that matched the peeling wall paint, with gold accessories on his wrists and fingers. He had snake eyes.

  “What happened to your face?”

  “Fraternity football game. You should see the other guys.”

  Only Bertelli laughed.

  “Why haven’t you come around before now?” Kates demanded.

  “Why should I?”

  “Should’ve known we’d be looking for you, once we tumbled to your tony bloodline.”

  R.J. shrugged. “I’m not that hard to find.”

  “You don’t answer your home phone. Your secretary doesn’t know where you are—what do you call that?”

  R.J. nodded at Kates’s two sidekicks. “They don’t know their way around the neighborhood yet?”

  Boggs snarled at him. “We look like rookies to you?”

  “We’re from Downtown, Homicide Division,” Bertelli explained.

  “Downtown, huh?” said R.J. “Sure, I get it. Pressure from upstairs—commissioner, mayor, governor? Media termites?”

  You had to expect it in a celebrity case. The suits wanted action. Suspects. Arrests. Soundbites. Media trials and convictions. They wanted votes and they wanted administration appointments and they didn’t really care if they got the real killer, so long as they could take a piece of red meat to the nightly news hounds.

  “We’ll ask the questions, Brooks.” Kates reached for the cylinder from a .45 cleverly fashioned into a paperweight. “Where were you the night Belle Fontaine was killed?”

  “What night was that?”

  Kates thumped the desk with his paperweight. “You know goddamned well what night your mother was murdered,” said Boggs. “Now where the hell were you?”

  “On a job.”

  “What job? Where?”

  “Surveillance. Over by the river.”

  “C’mon, Brooks,” Boggs said, a threatening edge in his voice.

  R.J. bristled. “C’mon yourself. You know damned well I’m not going to tell you a goddamned thing about my business without a warrant.”

  “Look,” Bertelli said, “why not be reasonable?” He shifted his Italian loafers on the cigarette-scarred floor and leaned back against the windowsill. “You know we’ve got a job to do.”

  “Better make sure you do it right.”

  Lieutenant Kates pounded the desk with his fist, so hard the paperweight turned onto its side and rolled across the blotter like a toy drum. “I’ve put up with a lot of crap from you before, Brooks. But not this time. This time we play by the book.”

  R.J. jumped up. “Great. Then go by the book—get a warrant. I’ve had enough of this.”

  Boggs put a hand on his waist to restrain him. R.J. slapped the hand away.

  “Jesus Christ.” Boggs came out of his chair in a crouch. “Are you packing in here?”

  “I’ve got a permit.”

  “He does,” said Kates.

  The two men glared at each other like a pair of cur dogs.

  “Just watch yourself,” Boggs breathed.

  “I think maybe I’ll watch you,” R.J. replied.

  Bertelli put an apologetic hand on his sleeve. “Look, R.J.—mind if I call you ‘R.J.’? No? Good, listen. Why don’t you cut us a little slack and we’ll do the same for you.” He spoke with the inflection of his old Bronx neighborhood, with an overlay of night-school polish. “Maybe we came on a little hard, but you’re right, we are getting a lot of pressure on this one. You know what it’s like. We’re all a little uptight, that’s all. Cut us a break here.”

  R.J. took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair. R.J. knew Bertelli was trying to manipulate him, but the guy was smooth and likable. Besides, he could always use a friend on the force.

  So he might as well see what they were up to. Let them think he was taken in by their shopworn good guybad guy, Mutt and Jeff routine. Under different circumstances they were probably okay guys. Except Boggs, of course. And Kates—his was no act. R.J. had long ago pegged him as a dangerous coward.

  “Okay,” he told Bertelli. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place? I just don’t like to be hassled.” He even managed a polite smile. “How can I help?”

  “For starters, you can tell us the last time you saw your mother alive.”

  R.J. was stumped. “Jesus, I’m not sure.”

  “Last week, last month?” Boggs prompted.

  “No, longer. Uh—hell. Ten months ago. Maybe eleven. I think.”

  He saw their reaction. They didn’t believe he could live in the same galaxy as a mother like Belle Fontaine and never see her.

  “Well, where were you the night she was killed, and who can verify it?” Bertelli asked. “We don’t need to know the identity of your client right away.”

  R.J. thought about the prospect of using Burkette’s bodyguard as an alibi witness. He laughed. Kates’s face pulsed like an angry boil.

  “This ain’t getting us nowhere,” he said. “Take him downstairs and reason with him. You don’t get his cooperation we’ll go to the nearest judge and get a warrant.”

  R.J. looked at Kates. “A warrant for what?”

  “For your apartment, your office, and your rectal cavity before I’m through with you. Now get him outta here!”

  CHAPTER 8

  “So you see how it is,” said Bertelli, fanning his mouth as he moved a chunk of hot pizza from one cheek to the other. They had been discussing the case and the pressure on the investigators. “Gesu! Almost burned the tongue outta my mouth, that fuckin’ cheese. Careful how you bite into that thing.”

  R.J. said, “You’re different when you’re on your own time.”

  “Sure, who isn’t? You know. I use that college talk around Kates and his bunch of asshole-suckers. Keeps ’em off balance, makes ’em listen to me. I even red-pencil the Looie’s grammar in his memos—drives him up the fuckin’ wall.”

  They laughed, and R.J. began to relax. He looked around the crowded neighborhood tavern. Ippolito’s. It looked like a place where a hit man walks in the back door and whacks a godfather all over his linguine and clam sauce. The rain had stopped, and the Bronx sidewalk swarmed with a late-lunch crowd.

  “I been coming here since I was a kid,” Bertelli said. “My uncle used to wait tables in the main dining room.”

  “Made a fortune on the ponies and retired to Miami Beach?” suggested R.J.

  Bertelli shrugged. “Drowned when he was forty.”

  “Couldn’t swim?”

  “Not with a grand piano tied to his neck.”

  R.J. laughed. “You’re a cop, and a wop, and a dandy, but you’re okay. What do you want to hear from me? I didn’t kill her.”

  The detective wiped his mouth with a linen napkin. “I didn’t think you did.”

  Bertelli’s nails were manicured, hair immaculately styled.
Eyes and mouth a romance novelist would call sensual. Not handsome, but there was a kinetic aura about him.

  “Kates and Boggs do,” R.J. said, wondering how far he could be trusted.

  “Boggs is an asshole,” said Bertelli. “Wants people to think he’s the strong silent type. You know, Dirty Harry. He’s not, he’s just stupid.”

  R.J. grinned sourly. “The lieutenant’s not stupid.”

  “No, Fred’s smart. And he’s mean.”

  “And dirty?”

  Bertelli’s eyebrows shot up. “Whoa.”

  “Okay, let that go. But if you want me to cooperate, it’s gotta work both ways. What’ve you guys come up with besides what’s in the news?”

  Bertelli sighed. “Not a hell of a lot, and that’s a fact.”

  “Witnesses?”

  “An old couple in the next room, deaf and dumb.”

  “Prints?”

  “Plenty. Good ones too. Palms, feet, tits ’n’ ass. Sorry, I don’t mean to make light of this. But they all match up with the victims—and a couple of our schmucks working the crime scene. Nothing on a possible perp.”

  “Physical evidence?”

  Bertelli shook his head. “That’s the funny thing about the crime scene. Too neat, too tidy for a murder. It looked”—He gestured with his hands—“I don’t know. Like it was staged. Bodies arranged just so.” He shuddered. “Creepy. Anyway, no hairs, no fibers, no shell casings. Nothing.”

  “No shell casings?”

  Bertelli nodded. “What kind of guns you own?” he asked. “We knew about that goddamn cannon you carry. Got any other pieces around the office?”

  “Old army .45, couple .22s, and a .38 Smith & Wesson. All legal and accounted for. What’d the shooter use?”

  “I shouldn’t be talking so much. A .38.”

  “Guess that does make me a suspect.”

  “Aw, you know. Not really, but it’s neater if we can check out your piece.”

  “Well, I don’t know. No offense, but I don’t think I want your co-workers parading through my office and fooling with my guns. They might shoot my secretary.”

  “We can get a warrant.”

  “Sure, Kates would love to have an excuse to open up my files.”

  “I’m not Lieutenant Kates, R.J. And I don’t wanna open your files. I just want to catch a killer.”

  R.J. started to speak, but Bertelli raised a finger and smiled, gave his head a half shake to show he wasn’t done talking yet. “Now, I’m a cop, R.J. I gotta play by the rules, least as long as the Looie is breathin’ down my neck. I know you didn’t kill anybody, and it’s a waste of time chasing after you like you did.

  “So what I gotta do is cross you off the lieutenant’s list as quick as possible, capish? And that way I can knock off alla this stronzo and get down to catching whoever did this thing. We on the same level here?”

  R.J. almost had to laugh. The guy was so smooth and sincere, with those deep brown eyes. He’d go far in the Department, if R.J. was any judge.

  “All right, Jesus. You should sell time-share condos, Angelo. Just say when, I’ll tell my girl at the office to turn it over.”

  Bertelli smiled. “Thanks, man. I mean that.”

  “That’s what good citizens are for.”

  They finished their pizza and Bertelli ordered another beer. R.J. was drinking coffee. When the waitress left, she smiled at Bertelli and smoothed her uniform over her hips as if it were a sequined gown.

  “Jesus Christ,” said R.J. “How do you do that?”

  Bertelli shrugged it off with one of those Italian vowel sounds that mean so much. “Ehh,” he said. “You know, your mother was really something. I seen every picture she ever made. And I saw her on Broadway three years ago in that musical. Man… She was really…” He trickled to a stop, his olive complexion flushing with embarrassment.

  “It was the legs,” R.J. said.

  “What about your stepfather? What was their relationship after the divorce?”

  “They were only together a couple of years. I haven’t seen him in a long time.”

  “Not since you went off to college.”

  R.J. gave him a look. “You know a lot about me.”

  Bertelli shrugged. “I been boning up. Truth is, I’ve been looking forward to meeting you since Kates put me on the case. You got quite a reputation.”

  “Don’t believe everything the cops tell you.”

  “You went to law school,” Bertelli said.

  “No degree. I was expelled for cheating.”

  “I know. Cheating with the dean’s wife.”

  They laughed together.

  “Hey, why are you doing this marital proctology. You know people, you could do a lot of business with the Hollywood crowd. Even right here on Broadway.”

  “Not my cup of hemlock.”

  “What about TV? Ever met a producer named Casey Wingate?”

  R.J. hesitated. “Wingate?” He shrugged. “I never heard of him.”

  He could tell Bertelli wasn’t convinced, but the detective didn’t push it. Which left R.J. wondering just what he had in mind and how Casey Wingate figured into it. When he got back to his office he’d have Wanda run a quick backgrounder on the producer.

  “He the sporting type, your stepfather? You know, guns, shooting?”

  R.J. was jostled by the quick shift in focus; he frowned over long-abandoned memories. “He hunts birds down south somewhere, bigger game out west. That’s all I know. More than I want to know.”

  Bertelli pondered his next question. “Think he could have killed your mother?”

  R.J. was ready for it. “Sure. Anybody can kill, given the right circumstances. Or the wrong ones.”

  “You think he did it?”

  “No.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “You go at your work by elimination. Ever catch anybody?”

  The detective smiled. “Helps to know who didn’t do it.”

  R.J. sipped some coffee. “Okay, Angelo. Now tell me, why is Kates so determined to pin my mother’s death on me?”

  Bertelli shook his head. “I don’t think he much likes you, R.J.”

  R.J. laughed. “No shit.”

  “Besides, you got the best motive. A few million smackeroos ain’t small antipasto.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  Bertelli looked at him like he was stupid. He was starting to feel like maybe he was.

  “You really don’t know? How close were you to your mother?”

  The question stung, and it showed. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “She left everything to you, bucko. At least that’s the way I see it. No brothers or sisters, your father’s long dead, she was divorced from your stepfather. No companions we know about. I haven’t seen the will, of course. Haven’t you talked to Jackson Yates?”

  “How do you know about him?”

  “Called us the morning after your mother was murdered. She’d been working on a TV piece about her career with that producer, Casey Wingate. Yates was handling the legal aspects.”

  R.J. remembered the letter from the lawyer and fished it out of his pocket.

  “Read it,” said Bertelli. “I’ll get us some more coffee.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Bertelli dropped him off at an address on West 33d Street. “I’ll send somebody for your piece, R.J.,” he said as R.J. opened the door. Then Bertelli winked. “Or do I gotta call you ‘Mr. Brooks,’ now you’re rich?”

  “Knock it off, Angelo,” R.J. said. He was in no mood for that sort of kidding. “Talk to you later,” he said, and he slid out of the car.

  Bertelli chuckled as he pulled away into traffic.

  The building was a massive turn-of-the century thing with gingerbread all over the outside. Large gold letters on the door said INDEPENDENT PRODUCTIONS, INC.

  The lobby was deserted except for a uniformed guard with a bank of telephones and a closed-circuit TV monitor behind his desk. He ga
ve R.J.’s bruised face a suspicious look but called upstairs on the strength of his business card.

  R.J. rode up in the elevator alone, pondering the contents of the letter from Jackson Yates. His mother had named R.J. the executor of her estate. And Bertelli had guessed right: He was also the primary beneficiary. According to Yates it was up to R.J. to settle all probate matters as expeditiously as possible. R.J. had phoned him from the restaurant and made an appointment for the following afternoon.

  Upstairs, R.J. stepped out into a floorplan that resembled the shell of an uncompleted warehouse. The shooting studio was in the center, bound by corridors on three sides that serviced a warren of cluttered cubbyholes. The dress code favored jeans and sweaters, loafers and desert boots. The on-camera people were the only ones who dressed for the public.

  A girl wearing an oversized sweater and glasses led him to an office with a hand-lettered sign on the door: CASEY WINGATE.

  An attractive young woman stood in the middle of the room flipping through a file, a pencil clamped between her teeth. Her auburn hair framed a face that was both sensual and hard-edged, a face that said Private School, Smart and Ambitious. She looked up at him and raised a perfect eyebrow.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I’m looking for Casey Wingate.”

  “I’m Wingate.”

  “Say what?”

  She slid the pencil out of her mouth and into a mass of hair, notching it behind her ear. “I’m Casey Wingate.” She looked him over, taking in the bruised face and battered trench coat with a slight smile. “And I know who you are, Mr. Brooks.”

  “Well,” he said, sliding the business card back into his coat pocket, “I’ll be damned.”

  “You may well be.”

  He had the feeling she didn’t like him much. “You called my office this morning,” he said.

  “And yesterday, and the day before.”

  “I’ve been out.”

  She gave him a scornful half-smile and closed the file. R.J. watched as she went to her desk. Probably taller than him in high heels. But today she wore sensible flats with a knee-length wool skirt. She was, he suspected, routinely looked at by men in restaurants, whistled at by hardhats on the sidewalk. A woman used to male attention and not bothered by it.