“Live-in nurse? That’s pretty expensive.”
“It certainly is. What’s the other question? You said you had two.”
“Question number two is—and just think about it for a second before you start ranting and raving …”
“What?”
“Does anybody in your family or in the circle of your father’s acquaintances have any connection to the mob, or familiarity with people involved in organized crime? That may seem like a nutso question, I know….”
Barbara Stern slid off the desk very slowly, keeping a hand on it to retain her balance. She looked a little green.
“You okay?” I asked her.
“Yes. Fine.” She sat back down in the chair. “Little too much stress right now.” She stubbed the cigarette out. “And smoking’s no help, that’s for sure. Gives me this buzz sometimes. So, gangsters in our family, is that the question?” She tried to smile, but it was a near-miss. “Let me think.”
“I don’t necessarily mean in your immediate family, you understand. I mean people who might have run into situations—”
“Relatives who might have had ties, because of business or whatnot. I understand.”
The dead man’s daughter gazed at the wall behind me, put a graceful hand to her chin. I didn’t want to be thinking what I was thinking, but I was thinking it all the same—she was stalling.
“I mean, I can’t account for everybody,” she said. “Obviously I’m just limited to what I’m told, but I don’t think anybody was ever involved with anyone, you know, nefarious or anything. Certainly not that I can remember, but I’m trying to think, you know, of all our family and even acquaintances, what they did for a living …” She was talking way too much. I tried to chalk it up to shock.
“So the answer is no?”
“As they say, to the best of my knowledge. Now let me ask you: Why in the world would you even think that? I mean, my family? They’re all scared of their shadows.” Some color was returning to her face.
“Because a man named Giuseppe LaMarca attended your father’s funeral and I can’t figure why.”
Barbara shook her head. “LaMarca? That name I’ve never heard. Who is he, like a mobster?”
“Used to work for, maybe still works for, Lucky Luciano, which makes him a mobster in my book.”
“Indeed it does. Giuseppe LaMarca …”
“Alias Joey Big, alias Joey Little, Alias Joey Blinks, alias Joe Lane. A regular basketball team all in one, except he’s about five-foot-two.”
She didn’t bat an eye. “Doesn’t ring a bell, by any of those names.” She stood up. “I really should go; I promised my mother I’d be home by lunch.”
“Sure.” I arose with her. “Anything else you want to tell me, Barbara? Anything at all?”
For an instant, something like a wild, uncontrollable fear flew into those big brown eyes, but then flew right out again, like a barn swallow.
“No, Jack. Not right now.” Then she turned and left the office.
She called me “Jack.”
I noticed them the instant I left my building. They were standing a half a block down Broadway, feigning interest in the menu displayed outside Jack Dempsey’s Restaurant. One was looking over the other’s shoulder, which wasn’t all that easy because the guy closer to the menu stood about six-foot-five. No big surprise—they were the same pair of bookends who had chased Stern and me from the missing Maestro’s villa up in Riverdale.
I started walking in their direction, which momentarily threw them for a loss; they backed up, at which point I turned and began hotfooting it south down Broadway. They started right after me. I glanced over my shoulder; they were double-timing it down the sidewalk. This was no tail; they were after me. I started running; they started running.
They were faster.
I reached 50th Street and already my heart was pounding. Frick and Frack were about thirty yards behind me and gaining, pushing civilians freely out of their way. When the light turned against me on Broadway, I crossed, the traffic bearing down on me. I dodged a cab.
“Hey, fuckface!” the cabby screamed at me. I looked around; the two apes were stepping off the curb onto Broadway. One held up his beefy paw, bringing a Daily Mirror truck to a rubber-burning halt. I stood in the middle of the street. A bus was about fifteen yards from me and accelerating. The bus driver honked; I faked indecision, headed back toward the two mugs, who came racing toward me. I stood my ground, then backed up in the center of the street, into the path of the speeding bus. The bus driver honked frantically. I turned, saw the bus ten feet away, and put on a burst of speed, racing toward the east side of Broadway. The two apes came right after me, their vision blocked by a double-parked parcel van, and stepped directly into the path of the oncoming bus. After that, the laws of physics were in play.
I had reached the sidewalk when I heard the awful thud. I turned around to see the larger of my two pursuers flying through the air like a punted football before landing on the roof of a Silvercup bread truck. He wasn’t bleeding much more than a slaughtered cow. The smaller of the two was attempting to crawl back to the sidewalk when he got hit once again, this time by a blue Packard. People were racing toward the scene of the accident; the bus had stopped and the driver was getting out, his hat in his large Irish hand. I felt badly for the poor slob, but I wasn’t about to hang around; I straightened my tie and made my way to Sidney Aaron’s office.
“Jesus Christ,” said Aaron.
“Yeah.” I was seated on the couch in his office. Miss Elizabeth Hamilton had led me in with the hushed respect usually accorded a British viceroy in India; when I informed her that I had just witnessed a tragic pedestrian accident, she scurried off to fetch me a cup of herbal tea that smelled better than the Brooklyn Botanical Garden.
“Very good for the nerves,” she told me, and then retreated back into the outer sanctum.
Aaron watched the door close. “You think they’re both dead?” he asked.
“The ape who landed on the Silvercup truck, if he wasn’t dead when I left, will be within ten minutes. The way he was bleeding—”
Aaron held up a hand.
“Please … I have a weak stomach.”
“No you don’t, but I’ll spare the details because that’s the kind of guy I am. Now, the other thug, I don’t know. That was like a two-cushion shot—the bus, then a Packard with tired brakes. If he’s alive, I’d say his gun-slinging days are certainly over. He must’ve broken half the bones in his body.”
“And you’re sure they were after you.”
“No. They could have been training for some Olympic event—a human steeplechase through live traffic.”
Aaron sat back in his chair. “Jesus Christ,” he said again.
“Yeah. Ditto.”
“And you say these same two characters had pursued you up at Villa Pauline?”
“Correct. But I don’t believe they’re going to represent much of a problem in the future, like I said, due to the fact that they’re both either dead or disabled.”
Aaron got up and went over to his desk. “If I was a drinker, I’d start drinking now,” he said.
“Don’t let me stop you.”
“Just joking.” Aaron looked as a grim as a funeral director—grimmer, actually; funeral directors are by and large a cheerful bunch. He opened the top drawer of his desk and extracted a sheet of paper, then walked back to me holding the sheet between his thumb and forefinger as if it were radioactive.
“The most recent demand,” he told me. “As of yesterday.” I took the sheet of paper from his two fingers and held it about a foot and a half away from my eyes. Sooner or later, I would have to invest in either a well-trained baboon or a pair of reading glasses.
The document, once it swam into focus, was a typed letter on the stationery of the Hotel Nacional in Havana, Cuba. The letterhead art depicted a large double-winged hotel surrounded by tropical flora and high-rollers of all ages. A sunny gamblers’ paradise. The terse note re
ad:
“We expect THREE MILLION cash by next Friday or you will receive TOSCANINI’S right hand by registered parcel.”
That was it.
“Nice touch, the hand.”
Aaron remained standing. “Can you imagine?”
“Yes I can.”
“Me, too. Makes me dizzy, just the thought.” Aaron walked back to his desk. “Have you ever been to Havana, Jack?”
“No. Miami’s as far south as I’ve traveled. I did once date a Cuban dancer….”
“Havana’s quite fabulous, quite decadent.” He opened another desk drawer.
“You’re not about to pull out an air ticket, are you?”
Aaron smiled thinly. “There’s a nonstop flight out of Idlewild at nine-thirty tomorrow morning that’ll get you into Havana at a quarter to three in the afternoon.”
“That’s just great. Then what am I supposed to do, rent a couple of bloodhounds and a magnifying glass? Or do I go to plan B and assemble a mercenary army?”
Aaron shrugged. “You’re the detective.”
I jumped out of my chair, more than a little irritated. “Listen, I just got chased across Broadway by two gorillas intent on extreme physical harm. Now you want me to storm into Havana like I’m Teddy Roosevelt, six-guns blazing, and carry the old man out on my back? Blow it out your ass. That’s point A. Point B, I’m still working for the Stern family and not for NBC.”
“I spoke to the widow this morning.”
“To Hilde?”
“I asked her if we might share in the expense of Mr. LeVine.”
“And she said yes, of course.”
“She said she and her daughter were very fond of you.” Aaron scratched his cheek. “Particularly the daughter.”
“Stop it.”
“She’s unbelievable, Jack. I haven’t seen a body like that—”
“Enough. So Hilde’s willing to let me do this?”
“She was very supportive of the idea.”
“Does the daughter know?”
“I have no idea. Now, I’m not sure what Fritz was paying you, but we’ll give you two thousand dollars just to go to Havana, and ten thousand more if you bring Maestro back alive.”
“Who’s ‘we’? I thought the top brass didn’t want the old man returned.”
“I have a budget to play with. There’s funds in there for what we call development,” Aaron explained. “Okay?”
“So you’re out on your own on this?”
“I want him back. Period.” I was starting to think this guy was maybe a little nuts, but I also was starting to like him. “Now, I don’t expect you to go in there like the Rough Riders.”
“But you expect me to bring him back?”
“I didn’t say that. But obviously that would be the optimum result.”
“What’s the minimum result?”
“I want to know who’s behind this.”
“You really have no clue?”
“None.”
“And all the NBC gumshoes …?”
“They’re idiots. Security here is mostly ex-army. They strategize and bullshit, but mostly what they do is cover their own asses, in the time-honored tradition of the military. That’s why I feel it’s time to go outside the company.” Aaron pulled the air ticket from his drawer.
I got up and walked over to his desk. He held the ticket toward me.
“I want twelve thousand if I bring him back alive,” I told him. “Not ten.”
Aaron didn’t blink. “Done.”
“What would you have said if I asked for fifteen?”
Aaron smiled. “Given it to you.”
“That’s what I thought.” I took the air ticket from his hand. “I used to be considered very bright.”
“You still are. Have a good trip.”
“Guess I’ll stay at the Hotel Nacional.”
Aaron’s phone started ringing. “You’re already booked,” he said. “Ocean view.” He picked up the phone and I left the office.
With a knot in my belly.
José had another greeting for me when I returned to 1630 Broadway.
“Two cops,” he told me, and slammed the elevator door shut.
“Sure they’re cops?”
“Definitely. They got that stupid look. Too much hair.”
“Never a good sign.”
“No.” José touched his own disappearing coiffure. “Us baldies, we stick together, right, Señor Detective?” He opened the doors to the ninth floor. “Don’t take no shit from them.”
No surprise—it was O’Malley and Breen, holding up the wall across from my office.
“Now my day is perfect,” I greeted them.
They grunted in reply and watched me unlock my front door as intently as if I were performing a magic trick, then followed me inside.
“Lights are on,” O’Malley observed. “You were here already.”
“That’s sound detective work.”
“Then you went running some errands?”
“Now you’re two out of two,” I told the younger of the two cops. “Want to go for the hat trick?”
“Why are you giving him shit?” Breen asked huffily.
“He’s seen too many Bogart pictures,” O’Malley said. “That’s how the shamuses talk at the Roxy.” Now they followed me doggedly into my inner office. I took my hat off and tossed it onto the antlers of my moosehead.
“Cute,” said Breen.
“I like to think so,” I told them, then sat behind my desk and yawned. It was a quarter past twelve, but I would have been very happy to go back to bed.
“Busy day so far, Jack?” Breen sat down without being asked. O’Malley pulled the other chair over and sat down beside him.
“Have a seat, boys,” I told them.
“Don’t mind if we do,” O’Malley said. “Shall we continue jesting at each other?”
“Fine with me.” I lit up a Lucky. “I’m good at it.”
“I’m sure you are,” Breen said. “Busy day so far?”
“You asked me that already.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t answer.”
Now the two buzzards just stared at me.
“Is this what they call a significant pause?” I asked them.
O’Malley grunted, while Breen reached into his pocket and pulled out a small brown notebook. “About an hour and a half ago,” he began, flipping through the book, “there was a serious vehicular accident a block from this office involving a city bus and two pedestrians. It resulted in the death of one individual and the serious injury of the other. The injured party is at Roosevelt Hospital; his prognosis is about fifty-fifty.”
I pulled a bit of tobacco from my lower lip. “Do tell.”
“The dead man was identified as Michael Carbone, otherwise known as Mikey Blond or Mike the Kraut, on account of his blond hair pigmentation.”
“Should I be taking notes?”
Breen rolled on. “The injured party is one Vincent Galliano, who also goes by the name of Vinnie Meatballs.”
“Not very imaginative. Must of been an off day in the nickname department,” I said.
“I have to agree,” said Breen.
“That’s not really the point,” O’Malley added helpfully.
“Both these guys are out of Brooklyn and they’re in the Anastasia crew. Used to work for our old pal Lucky Luciano.”
“No shit.”
“Yeah.” Breen put the notebook away. “So how come, Jack, how come they’re chasing your fat kosher ass up the street?”
“And don’t even try to deny it,” O’Malley said. He took his hat off and placed it in his lap. “We got three eyewitnesses.”
“Am I denying it?”
“You’re not?”
“No.”
“So they were pursuing you.”
“Correct. But God’s blessed truth is, I don’t know why.”
The two cops looked as pleased as if I had just puked on their shoes.
“Jack,” Breen began, h
is voice tightening to a nasty whisper, “I’m starting to lose my fucking patience here.”
“You can lose your patience here or in the lobby, that’s not my concern,” I said cheerfully. “The fact is, I didn’t know who these guys were, nor did I know that they were mobbed up.”
“You never saw them before.”
“I never said that. I said I didn’t know who they were.”
“So you had seen them on a prior occasion?” asked O’Malley, using his meaty thumb to pick his nose ever so subtly.
“Once. In Riverdale.”
“Riverdale.” Breen opened his notebook again.
“Where in Riverdale?” O’Malley asked.
“That I can’t tell you.”
Breen’s eyes turned to ice chips. “Jack, stop pulling this coy shit. We have a homicide case here.”
“I thought we were discussing a traffic accident.”
“We’re talking about the Stern case, for crying out loud,” O’Malley interjected. He crossed his legs and looked at his partner in exaggerated dismay.
“You’re sure they’re connected? Listen …” I got up and opened the window. “I’m really not trying to make your life more difficult, but Stern hired me on a matter that’s shaping up as a lot more complicated than I originally thought.”
“So try to help us out, Jack,” said Breen. “And maybe we can help you out.”
“Guys, don’t play dumb, you know the drill. I’m a licensed PI. Confidentiality goes with the territory.” Breen opened his mouth, but I ran right over him. “I know you’re going to say this is a homicide, but that still doesn’t mean I’m gonna share every half-assed lead I have with you. I can’t.”
I sat back down. The two cops looked glum.
“I will share one thing with you, however, because there’s no confidentiality associated with it. You say the guys who got whacked by the bus were out of the old Luciano mob. Well, there was another of Lucky’s cronies at Sterns funeral, a squirt named Giuseppe LaMarca, and nobody can figure what he was doing there.”
Tender Is LeVine: A Jack LeVine Mystery Page 9
