The prolonged process of placing a New York call through the hotel operator gave me more than enough time to check my impeccable nails; in fact, I could have gotten a manicure and a facial in the time it took the Flamingo to hook me up to Manhattan. Finally, the call went through and after three rings, Hilde picked up.
“Mr. LeVine,” she said. The connection was filled with light static and a kind of distant jangly distortion, as if somewhere in the middle of the country a telephone lineman were swinging from the wires.
“Lieber Gott, where are you?”
She sounded as if she hadn’t gone to sleep since the last time I’d seen her.
“I’m out West, actually.” I suddenly felt an almost physical chill of paranoia. “And just call me Buddy.”
This threw her for an immediate and predictable loop.
“‘Buddy’? Vas is ‘Buddy’?”
“It’s just better if you call me that or call me nothing at all, you know? Just don’t use my name.”
“Lieber, lieber …” I could hear the phone on her end begin to clatter like a percussion instrument; she had obviously gotten the shakes. Placing this call was shaping up as the dumbest idea I’d had since taking the case in the first place.
“There’s nothing to worry about, Mrs. Stern.”
“Lieber, lieber, lieber.” The clattering got worse. Much worse.
“Please, relax. Listen, everything’s really going very well. How are you and Linda doing?”
I heard a sigh on her end. The clattering slowed down as she tried to pull herself together. “How should we do?”
“I know. It’s a very difficult time for you all,” I said inanely. “But I’m sure Barbara’s been a big help. She seems like a wonderful girl.”
There was a pause as I waited for God to strike me dead.
“Barbara, she’s not here,” Hilde said.
“She’s not.” My mouth went dry.
“No. She left since two days; she said, ‘I go find who did this to Papa.’ I said to her, this is the detective’s job and the police’s job, but she is very stubborn like her father. She says she knows people from when she was working who could help. I don’t know who or what.… I told her I needed her here, and she said she’d be back in two or three days. Now she called yesterday and said she is in California and will be here on the weekend, and I shouldn’t worry. She sounded good, thanks God.”
“California” I repeated like a mynah bird.
“Ja. She has friends there. She has friends everywhere. Always she has been very popular.”
“Yes, I’m sure,” I said, and suddenly I felt genuinely sorry for Hilde Stern. It must have been an enormous burden to produce a daughter as dazzling as Barbara, a girl who would so effortlessly attract men and trouble. There was no doubt that she’d be a handful for any mother, but for someone as anxious as Hilde Stern it must have been as unsettling and mystifying as if she had given birth to a mermaid.
“If she calls here again, and I’m sure she does, Mr….” Hilde remembered my warning and stumbled. “If she calls, I tell her you phoned. Is there anything to tell me? You have some news?”
“I’m making progress.”
“All right,” she said. “That’s good. I tell Linda.” I heard her voice break and I knew she was crying, crying pretty hard, and I was able to remember why I was still involved in this.
“I’ll see you soon,” I told her.
“Yes,” she said softly. “But you will please be careful.”
“I’m always careful,” I said, then I hung up and left room 207 and took the malodorous service elevator down to the kitchen of the Flamingo Hotel.
TWELVE
The Flamingo’s kitchen was predictably enormous, and even at five o’clock in the morning, its black-and-white-tiled expanse was vibrant with activity. Fruit was being sliced and diced, oranges were being pulped into juice, acres of bacon were being spread across acres of griddles, and immense coffee urns were being filled with Niagaras of water. All this busyness was fortuitous, making it easier for me to get lost in the crowd of still-sluggish employees. I moved through the kitchen keeping my head down as much as possible, but also attempting to look like a man perfectly at home in the world of order slips and steam tables. When a couple of passing waiters threw me quizzical looks, I winked and greeted them.
“Filling in for Joe, he’s got the flu,” I informed them. The waiters nodded and shuffled on. I circled the kitchen and picked up a tray, then strode purposefully to the silverware station. I was backing and filling, stalling for time. Having remembered the Maestro’s informing me that he arose at dawn’s first light, I was looking for any sign that the great man’s breakfast was being prepared. I obviously had no way of knowing whether Toscanini was even staying at the Flamingo, but given Lansky’s presence in the hotel, it seemed like a very good bet. If the old man wasn’t here, I would have lost nothing but time.
I was starting to load up on butter when the aroma of a particularly pungent blend of coffee wafted my way, and then I heard a voice say, “Okay, pal, come and get it.”
I turned around and observed a compact and thick-necked man in street clothes picking up a silver breakfast tray from a horse-faced gent sporting a chef’s toque and whites. The silver tray was topped by an Old World lace doily and it held a plate of freshly washed fruit that Cezanne would have been proud to paint, a basket of rolls and danish, and a highly polished espresso pot. The thick-necked man picked the tray up with one deft hand; he was graceful and light of foot but also had the sharply defined upper body of someone who had spent significant hours lifting barbells over his head. From the look of his well-cut suit and highly polished footwear, he appeared to be professional and well-trained muscle; if the redhead at the Desert Inn was any indication of the local talent, then I guessed this guy to be strictly an import.
The man in street clothes walked swiftly toward a service elevator located at the far end of the kitchen. I grabbed a bowl of fruit and box of shredded wheat, placed a glass of orange juice and a coffeepot on my tray, and followed him over. When the elevator arrived, I followed him on board, yawning ostentatiously.
“Too goddamn early,” I said in a collegial manner.
He looked at me and smiled thinly, then pushed a button for the third floor and shot me an inquisitive glance, his finger still poised over the buttons.
“Same for me, amigo,” I said, then made myself busy straightening the silverware on my tray.
The man in street clothes pressed the button to close the door, then stared at his black shoes. He wasn’t much for small talk. When the door opened to the third floor, he mutely gestured to me to get out first.
“Thanks,” I told him. “Have a good day.”
He nodded again. I got out, pushed open the service door, and took a left; the man in street clothes followed behind me and took a right. I walked ten feet, turned a corner, then put my tray on the floor and started creeping back around on tiptoes, my size-ten loafers silent on the thick carpeting. The man in street clothes was marching inexorably toward a set of double doors set at the very end of the hall. I slipped into a dimly lit alcove that housed an ice machine not much larger or noisier than a garbage truck. When I stuck my head out again, like a house dick in a B-movie, the man in street clothes had reached the double doors. He knocked once, then twice, then repeated the sequence. From the same B-movie.
The door swung open.
Sidney Aaron stood in the doorway.
Aaron was wearing a blue silk robe over a pair of gray slacks and a white shirt. Behind him, I could see Toscanini seated on a red velvet couch, wearing dark slacks and a black smoking jacket, and engrossed in a score. He started to rise when the man in street clothes entered with his breakfast, and then Aaron swung the door shut and the show was over. I sidled out of the alcove and began to creep down the hallway. I got close enough to the room to see that it was identified in pink script lettering as the Royal Valencia Suite, and that it bore number 300–301.1
also got close enough that when the door abruptly reopened, I had a terrific view of Sidney Aaron’s pupils dilating as he registered who I was.
“Well,” he said, then cocked his head toward the man in street clothes. “Gino.”
“Gotta run,” I told Aaron. “The penthouse just ordered a sturgeon omelet.” I turned to go, but it was a fool’s mission. Gino put his hand on my shoulder and started gripping it so tightly that my entire right side began to go numb. When I turned back around, Gino’s jacket swung open and I could see a .38 revolver tucked into his pants. I decided it would be better for all concerned if I stuck around.
Toscanini didn’t even look up when I entered the suite; he had started enthusiastically wolfing down his breakfast, which had been arranged before him on a marble-topped coffee table. The suite had been set up like an apartment: There was a bookcase newly jammed with musical books and scores, and side tables adorned by gold-framed photographs of Toscanini posed with family, musicians, or just by his own legendary self. The most casual glance around revealed that there were at least two other rooms in the suite and a peek at their memento-filled confines confirmed what Lansky had already implied—this was not intended as a quick layover.
I walked toward the old man and greeted him loudly.
“Bon giomo, Maestro.”
Toscanini lifted his head and peered at me nearsightededly.
“Yes?” he said absently, and then I lifted the toupee off the top of my head. The great man’s eyes widened and then he began to laugh heartily. “Que cosa!” he exclaimed. “Boston Blackie!” He extended his hand and half rose to greet me. “Come va?”
“Never better. Had a helluva couple of days. And you, Maestro?”
Toscanini shrugged and gestured vaguely around his strange new living quarters. He suddenly looked small and vulnerable, like an exquisitely dressed immigrant asking for directions.
Aaron glided over.
“Maestro’s doing splendidly, considering all that’s been going on,” he said, as smooth as Mother’s own chicken fat. Aaron put his arm through mine. “Maestro, you’ll excuse me and Mr. LeVine. Enjoy your breakfast in peace.”
“Sì,” the old man said. “Bene.” He sipped the coffee. “Bene. They finally get it right.” He looked to me. “Yesterday, coffee was infamia! Vergognoso!”
“Well, we got that straightened out, Maestro,” Aaron crooned. “If nothing else, now they know how to make coffee in Las Vegas. So we’ve accomplished something, haven’t we?” Aaron chuckled with the oily bonhomie of an uptown art dealer, then led me to an adjoining room dominated by a Steinway grand piled high with yet more music scores. The minute we walked through the door, he dropped the Mister Continental routine.
“What are you, nuts, Jack?” Aaron whispered fiercely. “You have some kind of a death wish, running around the hotel like this? You know it’s not safe.”
“It’s not?” I said, whispering back. You really had to admire Sidney Aaron’s total duplicity. This guy did nothing halfway.
“You may or may not believe me,” he continued to whisper, “but right now I’m the only thing standing between you and the noon show at Riverside Chapel. Do you know the kind of people you’re dealing with here?”
“You, for one, unfortunately.”
“Jack, you really have no idea—”
“I have a very good idea,” I told him. “I know you shipped me to Havana just to get me out of New York and into the loving arms of Lansky. If it wasn’t for Stern’s daughter, I’d probably be lying in a Cuban morgue with a machete sticking out of my butt.”
“That’s completely fanciful,” Aaron said. “The fact is, I told Meyer point-blank I wouldn’t tolerate any more bloodshed.”
“You did.”
Aaron raised his right hand as if taking an oath.
“So by ‘any more bloodshed’ I can assume that Meyer did have Stern killed,” I said. “As if I ever doubted it.”
Aaron looked away and sighed theatrically. “The reality is, it was an accident. A tragic accident. They sent a button man to scare him, but Stern didn’t scare, so this hothead took the path of least resistance and gunned him down.”
“On Meyer’s orders.”
“Meyer doesn’t give those kind of orders.”
“You know that for a fact?”
Aaron just stared at me. No part of his face moved.
“So it had to be Luciano.”
Now he nodded, almost imperceptibly. Aaron was doling out gestures like Christmas pennies at an orphanage. “That’s right, my friend. That’s who we’re dealing with, and let me tell you, it is far from a day at the beach. Luciano’s a highly intelligent man, but not nearly as clever as Meyer and much more cold-blooded.”
“Really? Luciano cold-blooded?”
Aaron nodded ruefully. “Call me naive, but it’s been much worse than I ever expected. Meyer’s a hoodlum, but at least he thinks like a businessman. Lucky likes to fancy himself a businessman, but he thinks like a hoodlum. And that’s both the big difference and the big problem, Jack; it’s made life extremely difficult for us.”
“And by ‘us,’ you’re referring to the esteemed National Broadcasting Company.”
“Correct.” Aaron lowered himself onto the piano bench and rubbed his eyes. “I haven’t gotten up at dawn in a long goddamn time. Can’t say I like it.”
“So NBC set up this snatch, then contracted it out to Luciano and Lansky? That’s some bedtime story.”
The NBC honcho shook his head vigorously. “No, Jack. We would never do something so disgraceful, on the one hand, or audacious, on the other.”
“It was Lucky’s idea?”
Aaron nodded. “Totally. He planned it for two years. Apparently he got the idea in Italy one night, while listening to Abduction of the Seraglio. Mozart. You know it, Jack?”
I shook my head. “Not even close.”
“Lucky says he suddenly had a vision of the whole thing. He can be very dramatic; claims he actually had a dream about it, how it would all work. He told Lansky, who was visiting him in Naples, and then they filled in the details. One night over dinner, in a private room in a restaurant, as he tells it. From that point, it took six months to find the double, a year to train him, and then six weeks for the actual surgery and the healing process.”
“Where’d they do the surgery, Switzerland?”
“Denmark.”
“And who’s the double? When he lets down his guard, he’s got an accent like a guy who toasts frankfurter buns at Nedick’s.”
“They never told me his name. Born in the Bronx but grew up in Utica, New York, had extensive musical training, played in some small orchestras in upstate New York and Pennsylvania. A cellist.”
“He doesn’t talk like a cellist.”
“Most cellists don’t talk like cellists.”
“How did they find this guy?”
Aaron shrugged in a rabbinical fashion. “How does Lucky find people? He asks around, he gets messages to people who get messages to other people. God only knows what the process is.”
“Okay. Then what?”
“Once they found him, they brought him to study conducting privately in Italy; Lucky hooked him up with someone from the Rome Opera. Then, of course, this guy watched all the film on Maestro he could get his hands on. Came to New York and studied him in performance; learned all the gestures. He’s a quick study, I’ll say that. Something of an idiot savant, in fact.”
“I’ve been called that,” I said. “Except they leave out the savant part.”
Aaron smiled grimly. “This guy’s quite astonishing, I have to say, for the degree of nuance he was able to absorb.”
“He’s obviously fooled a lot of people.”
“Except for poor Fritz and a few others.”
“So he gets Maestro down pat, returns to Europe, and gets the full-bore facial surgery. After the weeks of healing, Lucky and Meyer then just go ahead and pulled the switch in Sun Valley, with no advance word? The bla
ckmail notes come after the fact?”
“Right.”
“So you’re saying you had no warning of any sort. It was just, ‘Pay us three million and avoid a public embarrassment.’”
“Right again.”
It didn’t add up at all.
“You look skeptical, Jack.”
“I’m way past skeptical.”
“Why?”
“Why? For one thing, what the hell are you doing here? Why send me to Havana to track down the old man if you could find him yourself?”
“Because LaMarca called me yesterday and told me they were bringing him out here and wanted to conclude the negotiations.” Aaron pretended to get agitated. “How the hell was I supposed to contact you? I called the Nacional, they said you’d checked out.”
“I don’t buy it,” I told him.
“You don’t. You think Toscanini is here on vacation?”
“No. I think he’s here against his will, no question. But I also think that if there is a snatch, you’re part of it; otherwise, why would you be sitting around this suite like the hired help?”
Aaron crossed his legs and ran his hand across his brow. When he started to speak, he sounded like a man trying to explain the family business to his idiot nephew.
“Because I’m trying to protect Maestro, who I love more than I love myself, and because this is no ordinary snatch. Jesus Christ, Jack, I already told you what the problem was, I told you back in New York.”
“That NBC wasn’t in any hurry to get the old man back because the orchestra was becoming a financial headache. Fine. But I still don’t buy that they’d just let him get killed, nor do I think that Lansky or Lucky would be dumb or disrespectful enough to kill him; Lansky because he’s too smart and Lucky because the old man’s like an Italian treasure. Bumping him off for three million bucks makes absolutely no sense; they can earn that moving heroin on a slow afternoon.”
Tender Is LeVine: A Jack LeVine Mystery Page 18
