Columbo: The Hoffa Connection

by William Harrington

  “All I asked you for is a ride.”

  “Well— Kinda scrootch down, will ya? It’s better they don’t see you with me.”

  He started the Peugeot, listened alertly for a moment to the sound of its engine, then put it in gear and moved down the hill.

  “If you can tell me anything at all, I’ll protect the source,” she said. “I won’t quote you. I won’t acknowledge having talked with you. I won’t use your name.” Columbo drew a deep breath. “She was murdered. Is that what you wanted to know?”

  “How?”

  “She was drowned.”

  “Suspects?”

  “When a person like that is killed, there’s a whole world of suspects. Anybody could’ve killed her.”

  “Maybe somebody who thought she was a bad influence on American youth,” Adrienne Boswell suggested dryly.

  Columbo shrugged.

  “Let me give you my card,” she said. “You might want to call me. Believe it or not, I’ve been known to be helpful to investigators. I can use methods you can’t.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind, ma’am.”

  “I won’t help a man who calls me ‘ma’am,’ ” she said, only half-facetiously. “I’m Adrienne. And there’s my car. I’m grateful to you, Columbo.”

  “My pleasure… Adrienne,” he said.

  2

  “Looka you! Looka you, Columbo!”

  Columbo glanced up from the pool table to the television set mounted on a bracket on the wall of Burt’s.

  “Turn that off, will ya, Burt? How can a man concentrate on a pool shot when he has to look at his own ugly mug on TV?”

  Burt accommodated him and switched off the television set. “Hey, you got a big job on your hands,” he said. “How you got time to play pool?”

  “I get a lunch break, don’t I? I come in here, get my bowl of the best chili in L.A. and shoot a couple racks of nine-ball. Time to think—or would be, if I didn’t have to look at TV.”

  He shot pool in his raincoat. That explained the blue stains: cue chalk. And the red ones: chili.

  “Hey,” said Burt. “Off the record. Way off the record. You saw the body, didn’t ya? What’d she look like?”

  “Like a woman that had drowned and been underwater all night,” said Columbo. “Whatever you got in mind, Burt, I recommend you don’t think about drowned corpses.”

  “She was somethin’, wasn’t she, though? I mean, she showed it all on stage!”

  “I wouldn’t know.” Columbo lined up a shot on the seven. “I never saw her on stage. Not my sort of thing. Mrs. Columbo and I, we take in shows now and again— but none like that. We’re just not interested in that kind of thing. I got nothin’ against it, y’ understand, or against people who like it; but it’s just not my kind of show. If I wanted to see naked. I’d just go to a strip show. Not nearly as loud, and not nearly the price for a ticket. Seven, eight, and nine. You gonna owe me a dollar, Burt.”

  Burt put his dollar on the rail without waiting to see if Columbo sank the last two balls. He knew he would. “Hey,” he said. “Look who’s here! Can’t resist Burt’s chili, can ya, darlin’?”

  “Last week I had my stomach lined with lead,” said Martha Zimmer. “Which your chili will corrode. Yeah, Burt. A bowl of chili. And a Pepsi.”

  Martha mounted a stool and watched Columbo sink the eight and nine balls. He climbed on a stool beside her and reached for his bowl of chili, which stood on the shelf behind the stools.

  “Got it lined up yet?” Columbo asked. “Who killed her?”

  “The water,” said Martha. “She tried to breathe water.”

  Columbo crushed crackers between his hands and dropped them into his chili. “Hey. You got any more specific ideas?” he asked Martha.

  “Two.” She pulled a steno pad from her jacket pocket and tore out a page. “There. That’s the name, address, and phone number of a Mr. Steinberg, who lives next door. He called in to say he heard a commotion last night and is willing to give a statement. In fact, I gather he’s anxious to give a statement.”

  Columbo stuffed the note into his raincoat pocket. He took a spoonful of Burt’s fiery chili. “Mmm!” he said. “You can’t get chili like this—”

  “I know,” she said. “Outside Mexico, which is not where Burt comes from.”

  “You notice how those people this morning weren’t telling the truth, exactly?” he asked. “Oh… Sorry. You said you had two specifics.”

  “Right. The other one is interesting. I had all the usual stuff done: photos, fingerprints… Just on impulse, I had the kitchen knives checked for prints. You know, she was cut with a knife, and—”

  “And?”

  “So I had the knives checked. On the kitchen counter there’s a wooden block with slots in it for seven knives and a sharpening steel. Sabatier knives. You know the name?”

  Columbo shrugged.

  “Expensive kitchen knives. About the most expensive you can buy. Made in France.”

  “In France! Y’ don’t say.”

  “All those knives are sharp as razors,” Martha continued. “I’m serious. You could shave with any one of them. Five of them are covered with prints. The boys lifted those prints, and we’re having them run. But get this: two of the knives are absolutely clean. Wiped clean. A five-inch boning knife and an eight-inch sheer.”

  “Two knives,” said Columbo, frowning. “Two…” Burt brought Martha a deep bowl of meaty chili, crackers, and a Pepsi.

  “Right.” She shook salt onto the chili.

  “You didn’t find a smear of blood, Regina’s type?”

  “C’mon, Columbo.”

  “Sorry, Martha. It’s good work. But two… Huh. That brings up all kinds of ideas, doesn’t it?”

  She took a spoonful of chili and grimaced. “What I figured,” she said.

  3

  Columbo stood for a moment outside the door of the offices of Wilcoxen, Josephson & Steinberg, Attorneys & Counsellors at Law. The building and the elevator foyer on the twenty-sixth floor were formidable. He looked around for someplace to deposit the butt of the cigar he had been smoking in the car; and, seeing no place, he pinched it to be sure the fire was out absolutely and deposited it in his raincoat pocket.

  He opened the door and went in.

  “Sir?”

  The receptionist was haughty.

  “Uh… ma’am, my name is Columbo. Lieutenant, homicide, Los Angeles police. I’d like to talk to Mr. Steinberg. He called and said he’d like to see somebody from homicide.”

  The tall, spare woman wore spectacles hanging from a chain around her neck. She peered at him with the skeptical air of a clerk taking a welfare application. “I shall see if Mr. Steinberg is available.” She picked up the telephone.

  “Mr. Steinberg will be available in a few minutes,” she told him. “You will have to wait.”

  “Waitin’ is a large part of my business, ma’am.” He sat down. “You don’t get any special police training for it. You just have to learn to do it, on your own.” Steinberg was indeed available in a few minutes. His secretary, a short and plump young woman with a friendlier air than the receptionist, led Columbo through a maze of halls.

  The lawyer stepped out of his office to extend a hand to the detective. “Mort Steinberg. I understand your name is Columbo. I’m pleased to meet you.”

  “The pleasure is mine, sir,” said Columbo. “My, you’ve got beautiful offices. And… Well, if you lived next door to Regina, you’ve gotta have a beautiful home.”

  “To be altogether brutally frank, Lieutenant, it beautiful and will be beautiful, now that the woman is dead. Is that a despicable attitude?”

  “I don’t make judgments like that, Mr. Steinberg. I can imagine why you feel that way.”

  “Have a seat on the couch,” said Steinberg. “I’m about ready to call for afternoon coffee. Will you join me? I’m about to light a cigar, too. Are you interested in one of those?”

  “I love a cigar now and then. I have to
admit, I do favor them.”

  He would love this one. It came from a wooden box and was encased in an aluminum tube. Two dollars and a half, he figured. Maybe more. Steinberg was young, he thought, for a man who lived in the neighborhood he had seen this morning, practicing law with his name on the door in offices like these. He was small, though solid, maybe athletic, with curly dark hair, liquid brown eyes, and an imperfect complexion.

  “Let me explain my brutal attitude toward the death of Regina,” he said. “Before she moved in, we had a lovely neighborhood. The people who live along the street are… well, you know, a nice sort of people. Quiet. Take good care of their properties. And so on.”

  “I understand.”

  “Well,” Steinberg continued, “from the time she moved in, nothing was the same. Noise. Intrusion. You know, Lieutenant, she wanted to buy my place, made an offer. What’d she want to do, turn it into a kennel for the kind of people she associated with? Anyway—You saw what it was like this morning. I had to have police assistance to get away from my house. It has been almost that bad many times before, when her devotees mobbed the neighborhood after one of her whorish, vulgar performances.”

  “I get your point, sir,” said Columbo. “’Course, Regina Savona is dead… .”

  “Yes, of course,” Steinberg said. “No one deserves to die by murder. Except maybe Hitler or Stalin, and certainly I don’t suggest she was in their category. You know something? She was worth so much money that I could have sold out and let her have the neighborhood.

  Maybe I would have, if she’d lived.” He stopped, shook his head. “What kind of society have we built, Lieutenant, where a woman doing what she did can earn enough money to buy my home out of her petty cash?”

  “Millions of people are mourning her,” said Columbo. “But between you and me, and off the record, I haven’t come across anybody who mourns her that knew her.”

  “You’re in charge of the investigation, Lieutenant?”

  “Yes, sir. Sergeant Zimmer was the first detective on the scene and took charge. The captain called me next. I was out on the beach, walkin’ my dog, and Mrs. Columbo drives up and says— Well, it was supposed to be my day off. Which makes no difference. You had somethin’ to tell us?”

  “Yes, I do. Really. Apart from venting my spleen. Forgive me for that.”

  Columbo grinned. “I’d forgive you for murdering her yourself, for a cigar like this one. I’d have to arrest you, ya understand… but I’d forgive you.”

  “I’ll have my secretary wrap up half a dozen of them for you.”

  “Well, sir, I’m not supposed to accept gifts.”

  “From suspects.” Steinberg chuckled. “From me? Why not? And it’s off the record, like the comments we’ve made to each other about Regina.”

  “I thank ya, sir.”

  “Well— Ah, here’s our coffee.”

  They suspended the conversation while the secretary poured coffee.

  “What I have to tell you,” said Steinberg, “is that I may have heard the murder being committed.”

  “I wanta hear about that.”

  “She had another one of her rowdy parties last night. Our children couldn’t sleep. My wife and I couldn’t sleep. You know, it’s a good fifty yards between that house and mine, but— Anyway, this time we were spared what often happened—that the party went on until dawn. I guess the woman was tired after one of her so-called concerts and let the postconcert party wind down early. Around midnight it started to get quiet, and by one o’clock it was absolutely silent over there.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  " Except— Except that after a while, I heard a woman screaming. She screamed several times; I’d say four or five times. Then it was quiet again. Finding out this morning that Regina was dead, and hearing on the radio that possibly someone had murdered her, I thought I ought to call and offer this information.”

  “What time did you hear this screaming?” Columbo asked.

  “One twenty-three,” Steinberg said. “I looked at the clock. I suppose I should have called the police, but… Well, hearing screaming over there was nothing unusual. Besides, there were people in the house. There were always people in the house. She was never there alone. And to be perfectly frank about it, Lieutenant, I really didn’t give a damn.”

  □

  In the offices of the coroner, Columbo sat down across the desk from Dr. Culp. “Can you spare me from another look at the corpse?” he asked.

  Dr. Culp nodded. “I can spare you that privilege,” he said.

  “Don’t tell me the cause of death was somethin’ besides drowning.”

  “I won’t tell you that. She drowned, alright. Between one and two A.M. Apart from the cut on her cheek and the bruises and abrasion on her arm, she had suffered no injury. In other words, she didn’t bang her head on the edge of the pool.”

  Columbo scratched his jaw. “Any possibility it was accidental?” he asked.

  Dr. Culp shrugged. “That’s your department. Do you think it was accidental?”

  “It would be easier to think so if she didn’t have that cut on her cheek.”

  “The alcohol content of her blood was point one eight percent. Drunk as a skunk. Also, she’d had a sniff of cocaine during the evening. Not more than one. I’d think, but one for sure.” The doctor paused and smiled slyly. “And guess what else we found. In her stomach.”

  “What?”

  “Semen. Sometime during the evening she gave somebody oral sex.”

  “Any idea when?”

  “Normally, I’d say that would clear out of the stomach in an hour or so. In her case, the amount of gin in her stomach and intestines had slowed down the digestive process. Could have been two hours: within the last two hours before she died.”

  “I’d give a lot to know who the man was,” said Columbo. “Could have somethin’ to do with the motive.”

  “There’s a way to find out,” said Dr. Culp. “We can run a DNA test.”

  “You got a big enough sample to do that?”

  “It doesn’t take much. Of course it’s all mixed up with alcohol and other substances, but I got a sample good enough for the test. Under the microscope, I can see the poor little dead sperm cells in it.”

  “Deoxy— Deox— Finish it for me. Doc.”

  “Deoxyribonucleic acid. Every cell in every living creature on earth contains DNA. It’s the genetic code. When a frog impregnates a frog, the DNA in the chromosomes of both male and female ensure that the offspring will be frogs. Other elements of the DNA cause the offspring to inherit specific traits of the parents. Your own DNA makes you Homo sapiens and makes you something like your parents, yet different, so that your children will be like you and your parents and your wife and her parents but not clones of any of you.”

  “Some tough cases have been cracked with DNA tests,” said Columbo.

  “Actually, Columbo, it works out the other way a lot of times. The FBI reports that twenty-five percent of the DNA in semen taken from rape victims doesn’t match the DNA from the accused. It’s won a lot of acquittals, too.”

  “But it’s a matching process,” said Columbo. “How we gonna match the DNA from what you found with some guy’s semen? I mean, I can’t ask a bunch of guys to—”

  “Blood samples,” said the coroner. “Actually, we could find DNA in strands of hair, fingernail cuttings, and so on. But blood samples would be best. Can you think of some way to get your suspects to give blood samples?”

  “I haven’t got any suspects,” said Columbo.

  “Any man who was in the house that night.”

  Columbo ran a hand through his hair, rumpling it even more. “I guess I can try.”

  “I’ll have the sample run,” said the doctor. “You understand, I don’t run DNA tests. It’s one hell of a specialty and takes a special lab to do it. Something new.”

  “I know the sex-crimes division uses it a lot in rape cases,” said Columbo. “Me, only one time. A charred body, burned
up with gasoline. But there was enough tissue and blood left to get a sample for a DNA test. The technicians matched that with the DNA in hair left in a hairbrush and made an identification of the body. Science…” He laughed wryly. “Someday they’ll actually invent a lie detector—which will retire a lot of guys like me.”

  “Don’t count on it,” said Dr. Culp. “The polygraph is a scam.”

  “You know that, and I know that,” said Columbo, “but it’s one of the great myths loved by the American people.”

  “It’ll take a few days to get the DNA test done. Get us some blood in the meanwhile, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Five

  1

  “Mick.”

  Mickey Newcastle sat on his bed in a vest undershirt and yellowed Jockey shorts, smoking nervously. “I made a mistake,” he said disconsolately.

  “Your first one?” Johnny said sarcastically.

  “C’mere. Look. Look down there. I told that stupid dick Columbo that I saw a guy in a red jacket run into the diving board. Look out there. You can’t th’ fuckin’ diving board from this window. I said I couldn’t see Regina in the pool because of the palm fronds. What I couldn’t see was the diving board. Christ, I suppose we could climb up and cut—”

  Johnny Corleone shook his head. “Don’t even think of it. Look, you’re worrying too much. She drowned. How she got a cut on her face—”

  “Johnny, I couldn’t help it!”

  “Okay. Suppose Columbo decides she was murdered. So who murdered her? There’s no way to hang it on us.

  To start with, what was our motive? I worked for her, so now I’m out of a job. You worked for her, and you are out of a job.”

  “What about our money?” Mickey asked.

  “The old man’s unhappy because of the cut. But he’ll pay. He knows very well that if one of us was arrested for murder, we'd finger him in a minute. He’s got no choice but to pay.”

  “You said you wouldn’t leave me cold turkey.”

  “Hell no, Mickey. Hey, I was tough on ya about that this morning. But you gotta right to relax. I know how it is. I brought somethin’ for ya.”