Tender Is LeVine: A Jack LeVine Mystery

by Andrew Bergman

  “You had quite the snooze,” the old man said, speaking with a pronounced Brooklyn accent.

  “Excuse me?” I said. This was straight out of Alice In Wonderland. I had obviously been injected with enough high-octane opiates to scramble a hippo’s consciousness.

  “You were out like a light,” said Toscanini. “We’re almost in Vegas. Another half hour.”

  “Really,” I mumbled. I lifted my head, looked around the small plane. I could see nobody else. “Where’s everybody, Maestro? Where’s Signore LaMarca?”

  “Joey?”

  “Yeah. Joey.”

  “He’s in the other plane,” Toscanini said.

  “There’s two planes?”

  “That’s correct.”

  I shut my eyes again. When I opened them, Toscanini was still in the green fatigues and army hat. No matter how many times I opened and closed my orbs, this bizarre fact remained the same. Maybe I had just snapped, or maybe … It finally dawned on me.

  “You’re the other one,” I said. “Jesus Christ, how dumb can a guy be? You’re the double.”

  What I could only presume was the ersatz Toscanini leaned back in his chair. He was seated directly across the aisle and I realized that I was lying not on a mattress or cushion, but on an airplane seat that had been forced all the way back, so that I was virtually prone. Leather straps bound my arms to the rests and my legs were strapped tightly to the seat.

  “Double?” Toscanini said with a smile. “Che fantasia!”

  “Too late to parle Italiano, Charlie; I already met the genuine article,” I told him, then began coughing. And coughing. My saliva tasted like lighter fluid. The faux-Toscanini thoughtfully produced a spittoon, which I immediately utilized.

  “Jesus,” I muttered. “What did they give me?”

  “Drug cocktail. A highball.”

  “I can’t stop sweating.”

  “Wait till you get to Vegas, you want to know from sweating. Hits about a hundred ten, hundred fifteen at midday. But it’s a dry heat, that’s what the locals like to say. Hundred and ten and dry. You leave a wet bathing suit outside for over an hour, you can fuckin’ break it in two.”

  “I assume you’ve been there.”

  “Lots of times. Tremendous place.”

  “Really. Never read about it in the papers. Toscanini in Vegas. Must’ve been a sensation.”

  “Papers don’t print everything.” He smiled shamelessly and took off his cap. Beneath, he had the same pink dome as the old man.

  “They did some job on you, unbelievable,” I told him. “What was it, some clinic up in the Swiss Alps? Or was it in Sweden, some joint hidden away in the fjords? Blond physical therapists catering to your every need?”

  “I don’t know what you’re referring to,” he said, and put the cap back on.

  I closed my eyes again. My head was slowly beginning to clear.

  “Why play this half-assed game?” I said, my eyes shut as if speaking to a silent psychiatrist. “Just say who you are. Who am I going to tell, ten thousand feet up in the air and tied down like a magician’s stooge?”

  “As far as you’re concerned, I’m Toscanini, okay? That’s all you need to know.”

  I opened my eyes. The man in the army fatigues smiled.

  “Everything’s going to be fine. Just keep the questions to a minimum.” With that he arose and walked to the front of the plane. I lay back and stared out the window at the night landscape. There was nearly a full moon out, casting a spectral light across the vast cratered desert. A lone highway unspooled below, looking largely unoccupied; as I gazed out the oval pane of glass I observed a car, then a truck, slowly moving west. That was it. There was no other sign of what we like to call civilization. I could have just as well been flying over Saturn.

  As I studied this moonlit void with a child’s fascination, I felt a tap on my knee. When I turned around, Lansky was leaning against a seat across the aisle.

  “Enjoying the view?” he asked.

  “Not in the slightest,” I told him. “Why the hell do you keep drugging me? Is this some goddamn medical experiment?”

  Lansky nodded. “We’re studying the effects of certain pharmaceuticals on circumcised detectives. Sending the results up to Yeshiva.” He shook his head. “Sorry, Jack. I didn’t think it was really necessary. But others disagreed.”

  “‘Others’? Come on, Meyer, let’s stop playing footsie. You’re calling the shots here; it sure isn’t LaMarca or this department-store Santa you got pretending to be Toscanini.”

  “Me?” Lansky shook his head in exaggerated innocence. “I never give the orders. That’s why I’ve survived this long.”

  “Please …”

  “I’m serious, Jack. Don’t overestimate me.” Lansky sat down in the seat the surrogate Maestro had just vacated. “People always try to give me credit, like I’m some fucking mastermind arch-criminal. I don’t need that kind of credit.” He smiled. “It’s bad for the health.”

  I just sighed and shifted in my seat. Lansky leaned over and untied my legs.

  “We didn’t want you to hurt yourself while you were knocked out.”

  “You could have avoided the trouble by not knocking me out.”

  “Well, that’s a moot point, isn’t it? Fact is”—and now he undid my arms with sure and quick hands—“it probably was overcautious, but it’s over and done with and that’ll be the last time.”

  “Until the next time.”

  Lansky rubbed his substantial nose and smiled. “Yeah.”

  “Where’s LaMarca?”

  “On the other plane.”

  “With the old man?”

  Lansky nodded. “With the old man and the old man’s nurse.”

  “Nurse?”

  “Just in case. He’s eighty-three, Jack.” Lansky smiled. “Nurse is about thirty-five and the old man handpicked her. From what I hear about him, he’s probably slipping it to her. Horny old guinea, loves the ladies. Lot of stories about him and they’re probably all true. He’s still got the pizzazz, am I right?”

  “Certainly does. Magnetic old bastard.”

  “Yeah.” Lansky stared evenly at me. His lips pursed, as if he were sucking on a sourball. “Speaking of ladies, I understand that you and Barbara started to develop something of a relationship.”

  I couldn’t think of anything very cogent to say, so I stayed mum.

  “Who’s gonna fault you, Jack?” Lansky sat back down. “You’re a single man, she’s one of the great pieces of ass of the twentieth century. You’re only human. Smoke?” He offered me a Lucky and I took it. “I’m sure you’re aware of the fact that we were together at one time, but that’s strictly in the past. I’m happily married now, which I’m sure you’re very glad to hear.”

  “I’m delighted, Meyer.”

  “I appreciate the sentiment.” He lit both our cigarettes. “Barbara only came back to me because she was in need of assistance.”

  “Which is why I got poleaxed thirty seconds after I got into bed with her? What was the point of that?”

  “She had nothing to do with it.”

  “She didn’t?”

  “No.” Lansky shook his head. “Jesus, you’re more paranoid than I am, and that ain’t easy.”

  “Is she on her way to Vegas?”

  The little hoodlum shook his head. “Sorry, pal. I told her she oughta be with her mother and baby sister right now. She would have liked to come, I think. She’s torn, you know—her devotion to her family, knowing how much they need her on the one hand, her desire to do justice for her father and be with you on the other.”

  “She said that?” I wasn’t too much of a sap. Even the hint of a nice word from Barbara Stern and I rolled over on my back like an Airedale.

  “She likes you. God knows why. Obviously, she’s got a thing for old men.”

  I felt a chill and shivered.

  “Freezing in here.”

  “It’s the drugs, Jack; air-conditioning’s barely working in
this fucking crate.” He rubbed his eyes, looking weary. “Anyhow, she hopes to come out in a few days.”

  “A few days? How long are we going to be out there?”

  Lansky now took his jacket off and folded it over the seat.

  “That’s a good question. Depends on how long it takes to bring this to a head.”

  “You mean the payoff.”

  “Sure,” Lansky said vaguely. I was still so hammered I didn’t trust myself to gauge mood and meaning. I just fumbled my way forward.

  “You mean the three million,” I said.

  Lansky scratched his nose. “Jack, this is a whole lot bigger than three million. You’re a smart guy, you can understand this—I’m telling you, this is the dawn of a new fucking civilization.”

  “In Vegas?”

  “In Vegas. We’re talking about something that’s gonna make history—hotel history, entertainment history, economic history. We’re talking about amounts of money that’s gonna make Monte Carlo and Havana look like crap games in Harlem.” He smiled as broadly as a survivor of Lower East Side tenement life ever could. “This Toscanini, he’s gonna be the foundation of the greatest thing that ever happened to business in this country. Mark my words, Jack, you’re in for an eye-opener.”

  “I am?” I was still feeling pretty woozy. “How’s that?”

  Lansky measured me with his eyes, as if calculating how much of the truth he would share before he ran out of it, like a stretch of road, after which he would continue alone and on foot.

  “He’s gonna lead an orchestra in Vegas, Jack. Just imagine.”

  I closed my eyes and tried unsuccessfully to imagine such a thing, then opened them again. “You’ve gotta be shitting me.”

  Lansky slowly shook his head.

  “Arturo Toscanini in Las Vegas. At the biggest hotel ever constructed. Welcome to the second half of the twentieth century, Jack. It’s gonna be money like no one ever dreamed of before, and all clean as a whistle.” He smiled, but not with his eyes, and I knew at that instant that he had ordered Fritz Stern’s death. It was clear that the snatch of Toscanini was only the tip of the proverbial Titantic-crushing iceberg and that the little fiddler’s curiosity had been an enormous threat.

  “Can you comprehend what this means?” Lansky asked.

  “The beginning of the legitimization of your businesses. That’s why the old man is so important.”

  “There’s nobody in the world more legit than him. Nobody. Maybe Einstein, but Einstein can’t play a casino.” Lansky smiled. “Not yet, at least.”

  “So Vegas becomes a cultural center?”

  “An entertainment center. One day it could be the entertainment center of the whole goddamn country. The old man comes, then the biggest names in show business come. They attract the customers. The customers have a wonderful time in the most beautiful hotels ever built on the face of the earth and they’re happy to lose their money. They’re entertained. They’re dazzled. They leave happy and they mainly leave broke.”

  “So Maestro’s a front man. Nice way for him to go out. From Carnegie Hall to this.”

  “He’s more than a front man, Jack. Don’t belittle what we’re doing here. Toscanini spreads culture across the whole country. It’s not just confined to rich society broads in New York or old-money German Jews. He beings it out West, to where ordinary people can hear him.”

  “Hear his double, you mean. He’s not going to conduct some cockamamy orchestra in Vegas.”

  “Fuck do those yokels know? And in the end, does it make a difference which one they heard? I don’t think so, long as they leave happy.” Lansky tapped my arm and arose. “We’ll talk more after we land.” I felt yet another wave of fatigue about to engulf me.

  “They gave you too much dope,” I heard Lansky said. “They wouldn’t listen to me,” and then I was asleep again.

  I was awakened about twenty minutes after we landed, or at least that’s what they told me later. The ersatz Toscanini fed me a cup of double-strength coffee, which enabled me to at least disembark the plane unaided, although I descended the small portable stairway in a most gingerly and tentative fashion. It was a windy night in Vegas and the air was blast-furnace hot. When I looked around the airport, it appeared to be a small and somewhat jerrybuilt affair; in the distance, I could make out a blaze of light, which must have been the casinos. There didn’t appear to be any other signs of life in the surrounding area and I felt like I had landed on a distant and much-overheated planet.

  A cream-colored Cadillac was parked on the tarmac. A uniformed driver with shoulders no wider than a subway car stood by an open back door, his arm extended to guide me. He stared at me with an odd mixture of deference and disdain, like I was some sort of VIP drug addict. I looked over my shoulder and saw Toscanini’s double bouncing down the stairs behind me, mutely chewing gum. He was wearing dark glasses and a Hollywood Stars baseball cap and he slipped very quickly into the front seat of the car.

  “Where’s Lansky?” I asked the driver.

  “I don’t know nothing about any Lansky,” he answered, then hooked his arm under mine, steered me into the backseat, and slammed the door.

  The red plush interior of the Caddy was air-conditioned sufficiently to transport an ice sculpture. My teeth were chattering as the driver pulled out and exited the airport through a steel gate trimmed with barbed wire. This airport had all the charm of the death house at Sing Sing.

  I leaned back and took a deep breath; I was starting to feel slightly less muddled. The ersatz Toscanini sat quietly in the front seat, stirring only to lean over and switch on the radio; he fiddled with the dial until he located Artie Shaw bopping from the rooftop of some nameless hotel in Hollywood.

  “No Mozart tonight, Maestro?” I asked him.

  The faux-Toscanini just grunted and hummed along with the music. The driver said very little, except to bemoan his poor state of health every time he blew his nose, which was frequently.

  “I’m dyin’ here,” he grunted.

  “It’s the air-conditioning,” I told him.

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Why don’t you turn it down?” I told him. “You could store a side of beef in here.”

  “Nix. This fancy piece-of-shit car, it’s all or nothing.” He sneezed again, louder.

  “Can’t shake it,” he said to the ersatz Toscanini. “Two weeks this fucking cold.” The Maestro’s double just shook his head and tapped his finger on the dashboard in time to Artie Shaw.

  I looked out the window and saw a sign indicating that we were passing the site of the future Las Vegas Racetrack. From the looks of it, nothing had been accomplished at the site except for a sizable accumulation of Nevada trash. Then we passed a series of cupid-and-heart-adorned wedding chapels with names like Wee Kirk in the Heather, Gretna Green, and Chapel de Amour. The lights above the chapels glowed in fluorescent greens and pinks; the buildings looked to have been designed by thirteen-year-old girls. My head continued to clear, which was both the good and the bad news. I’m a city boy, but Las Vegas didn’t look so much like a city as a kind of candy-colored amusement park for dipsos and fly-by-nighters.

  “We’re getting close to what we call the ‘Strip,’” the driver announced. “That’s where the major hotels are located.” We passed some dingy motels and a handful of near-empty restaurants and pizza joints. This looked like a great town to commit suicide in, except you might not realize you were dead.

  “That where we’re headed?” I asked. “The ‘Strip’?”

  “Sure is, chief,” he replied.

  “And what about Toscanini here?”

  “Why don’t you ask him?”

  “He seems kind of quiet tonight.” I waited a beat, then asked him directly. “What about it, Maestro—you headed for the Strip?”

  The faux-Toscanini just chewed his gum and nodded.

  “Any idea where the real Maestro is staying?” I asked him.

  Not surprisingly, there was no reply. The
driver sneezed yet again, rubbed his wet nose with the back of his hand. “Fuck me,” he muttered. The car seemed colder than ever.

  Suddenly the Caddy slowed; we took a sharp right and passed a festive and high-class establishment called El Rancho Vegas. It looked to be a sprawling one-story hotel spread around a large illuminated swimming pool; EL RANCHO VEGAS was spelled out in orange and green lights that blinked in rapid sequence, and a spotlit sign indicated that Tito Guizar was the star attraction in the nightclub.

  We rolled on, now approaching yet another large hotel-casino, the Thunderbird by name. According to a massive sign in front of the hotel, Mel Torme and Betty and Jane Kean were starring in the Royal Stardust Room. As we neared the Thunderbird, the cream-colored Caddy abruptly braked, then pulled directly into the parking lot.

  “This is where I’m staying?” I asked.

  “Stay put,” the driver said.

  The ersatz Toscanini pulled his cap low over his head and got out of the car without even saying good-bye. A gray truck bearing no identifying marks of any kind was idling in the Thunderbird lot. I watched as the Maestro’s surrogate raced across the lot and pulled himself up and into the truck, which took off the instant he slammed the door shut. The truck accelerated and doubled back onto the highway and out of sight, a ghost vehicle in the night.

  “Should I stay back here?” I asked the driver.

  “Why not?” he replied. “We’re almost there.”