A plate of ham and eggs and a cup of steaming coffee were on the table. “Ridiculous hour for a man to phone,” he said cheerfully. “Ridiculous. Have you eaten breakfast?”
“No—but I’m not hungry.” As soon as I said it I knew it was a lie. It didn’t matter; I’d grab some chow later.
“I shall eat,” he said, as if announcing he was going to build the Sphinx. “Coffee?”
“Yes, thanks.”
He poured a cup for me, sat down, attacked ham and eggs with relish, almost with ferocity. Chewing, he said, “Now, what’s this about spectrograms, Mr. Scott? How did you know I am an expert? What is your purpose in desiring the prints? Are you also a scientist? No, you do not sound like a scientist—you do not look like a scientist, either. Say something. You see, in conjunction with my work on spectrograms, I am endeavoring to determine the physical, mental, moral, and spiritual qualities of an individual from the language, tone, rhythm, inflection, timbre—”
“Professor—”
“—strength, emphasis, accent, and idiosyncracies of his voice alone. So far, it’s merely a hobby, but … who knows?”
“Professor Irwin, this is all very—”
“That’s enough. I would say … hmm. You are—or were—a military man. Army.”
“Marines.”
“Not Army?”
“No.”
“Navy?”
“Please skip the submarine service, and National Guard. I was one of the best goddamn fighting men in the world, Professor, a United States Marine—”
“Goodness, don’t get angry.”
“A Marine.”
“Of course.”
He ate eggs, and thought. “Hmm. At the present time, however, you are—a pugilist?”
“No. Oh, I’ve hit a few guys, but—”
“I have it. You put out fires in oil wells.”
“I’m losing my confidence in you, Professor—”
“A policeman, then.”
“Hey, pretty close! I’m a private investigator.”
“I was going to say that next.” He thrust a huge hunk of ham into his mouth.
“Professor, do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions?”
“I’d be delighted. I may not answer them, but I would be delighted—”
“I know, essentially, what a Voiceprint—or spectrogram—is. But can you, personally, from a tape recording, make Voice-prints of each person who speaks on that recording and be assured each separate Voiceprint reflects one individual’s voice pattern and only his?”
“Of course. Why, except for Lawrence G. Kersta himself, I undoubtedly know more about voice spectrography than any other man alive.”
“Who’s Lawrence G. Kersta?”
“Who’s Lawrence G. Kersta? You don’t know?”
“I’m sorry, but I haven’t the faintest—”
“He is the originator, the developer, the innovator of the Voiceprint Identification System. He is president of Voiceprint Laboratories in Somerville, New Jersey—why, it was from him I got my own Sound Spectrograph. You ask me about Voice-prints, but you don’t know who’s Lawrence G. Kersta?”
“I said I was sorry, Professor. Look, all I want to know is if you—personally—can make identification of a man from his voice alone.”
“Of course. Each of us, Mr. Scott, is an individual, singular, unique, different from all others in all ways. You are a policeman—”
“Detective.”
“—and therefore know a man’s fingerprints may be used to positively identify him. In the same fashion, each man can be identified by the individual structure, quality and vibration of his voice, which is peculiar to him alone.”
“Well, you make it sound simple enough.”
“Of course. You see, intelligible speech is effected essentially by controlled dynamic manipulation of the articulators—including tongue, lips, teeth, jaw muscles, and soft palate—plus both the fixed dimensions of the individual’s vocal cavities—throat, nasal, and two oral cavities, even sinus cavities—and the transitory influence upon those cavities of the tongue’s position in the mouth. That’s simple enough, isn’t it?”
“I like the way you said it the first time.”
“Since individuals possess neither identical fixed dimensions of the vocal-tract cavities,” he went on cheerfully, “nor identical dynamic-use patterns of the muscle-complexes controlling articulator movements, the fact that each individual’s voice—and thus Voiceprint—is unique should be obvious even to the most obtuse.”
“Just so you can do it,” I said.
“Of course. It is merely necessary to prepare from the individual’s voice, or a recording of it, a visible representation or graph which faithfully corresponds to the aural pattern—a picture, a record in line instead of sound. A Voiceprint.”
“OK, say you have a Voiceprint of a guy named Tom. If ever you make another of Tom’s speech you’ll know it was Tom and not Joe. Right?”
“Loose, but reasonably accurate.”
“Assume I give you a tape with seven voices on it. Then I give you a separate tape with maybe fifteen voices on it, including some of the original seven. Can you—in a reasonable length of time—tell me which of the fifteen speak on the original tape?”
“Certainly. What is your conception of a reasonable length of time?”
“Eight hours.”
“Oh, dear, no. Let me explain, Mr. Scott. Basically, we use spectrographic impressions of ten spoken English words: the, to, and, me, on, is, you, I, it, a. We like to have at least eight spoken words, thus eight prints must be made, and of course the true expertise is in analysis and comparison. We look for a minimum of twenty points of similarity—technically, points of identification—and I like to have about two hours for making of prints, and comparison, in each case. One must be very sure, in legal work, or when appearing in a courtroom—”
“This doesn’t have to stand up in court. It might later, but in that case there’d be much more time available. Probable identification would be enough for me.”
“But I have—other work, my new book—”
“I mean if you did nothing else. I simply want to know if what I ask is possible.”
“Oh, it’s possible.”
I told the professor in more detail what I was after. I also told him everything I’d said to the stenographer, and more. It didn’t faze him a bit.
“Phaugh,” he said. “I am a scientist. I am not concerned in the slightest—”
“These guys shoot scientists, too. They don’t give a hoot who they shoot.”
“Whom. But I do rather like the sound of that hoot-shoot. The whom does ruin it, doesn’t it? It’s the mm sound. You’re right. ‘They don’t give a hoot who they shoot.’”
“Professor, I’m talking about real shooting. Real bullets. Real whos—or whoms—”
“Phaugh.”
“Well, if you don’t give a hoot, it’s OK with me. I just wanted you to know what you might be getting involved in.” I paused. “Will you do it?”
He patted his mouth with a napkin—he’d finished eating. Took him about seven bites. I figured he must have a fantastically efficient digestive system, or a cud. “It would be interesting,” he said. “These persons are true criminals? The real—real McCoy, I suppose you would say?”
“They are genuine, copper-plated, A-Number-One criminals. Marvelous specimens. About as good as any you could find anywhere, Professor.”
“You have the specimens with you?”
“Specimens? The criminals?”
“The voices. The recording.”
I took the reel of tape and seven folded sheets of white bond paper from my pocket, placed them on the tabletop. “Recording, and a double-spaced typed transcript of the last six minutes on the tape,” I told him. “The six minutes—and seven voices—I’m interested in.”
“I might make notes on the transcript, if you’ve no objections.”
“No objections.”
“I shall do it.”
By golly, it was as easy as that.
Or, rather, arranging the professor’s end of it was.
The other end—my end—was going to be a little tougher.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Lucrezia blinked at me from the doorway, then smiled sweetly. And hotly. I imagined she did everything hotly. “What in the world are you doing at the back door?”
“Well, I get tired of the same old thing,” I said. “A man can get in a rut—”
“Oh, I’ll bet it’s because … Dad explained what’s been going on, Shell. I pestered him till he told me everything. You were afraid someone might be watching the house?”
“That’s it. And I guess it’s just as well Tony told you, Lucrezia. Only I don’t think he realizes how serious the mess is now—in fact, I know he doesn’t.”
She was silent for a moment., “Oh, thanks for the flowers, Shell. They’re lovely. What can I do to thank you?”
“You might start by asking me into the house.”
She laughed and stepped aside, saying, “You can’t imagine how curious Dad is about that note you sent with the roses. He’s in the den.”
She led me there and inside it. Brizante was sitting on the green couch scowling. After I expressed my admiration of the hues of his left cheek and eggplant-colored left eye, we all sat down and I said, “First thing, Tony, did you get the meeting set up?”
He nodded. “For ten A.M. just like you said in your note with the flowers. I’m going to feel damn foolish if I called a special meeting of the whole council and there’s nothing I can tell them that makes sense.”
“You won’t feel foolish when I get through. You may feel like grabbing the first plane to Australia, though.”
I’d carried my portable AIWA recorder in with me, and when I put it on the low table before the couch, Tony stared at me for long seconds. “You—did you find the tape?” he asked me quietly. “The other one?”
“Yeah, I found it.”
“Why didn’t you let me know? My God—”
“I didn’t want to phone you here. Hell, that’s why I sent the note.”
“Of course.” He nodded. “I forgot.”
It bothered me a little when he said, “I forgot,” but only a little. Not enough.
I was going on, “Besides, I’ve been pretty busy since I left you this morning. Main thing is, this is the tape. And it—well, you’ll hear it yourselves in a minute or two. Have you had any word from Sergeant Striker yet?”
“No. Who is he?”
“Local cop, one of the Villa Security Guards. I’m pretty sure we can trust him. Going to have to trust somebody.”
“We will hear from him?” Lucrezia asked.
“Yeah, he’s coming over. I called him at his home this morning. Didn’t tell him everything, but enough so he’s got the big picture. Interestingly, Striker wasn’t very surprised, he’d felt for a long time some funny stuff has been going on here at the Villas.” I looked at Tony. “Like some of the complaints at that council meeting I attended yesterday—bum sewers, plumbing, potholes in streets. Fishy real-estate deals—like the unusual delay in building whatever you call the Doctors’ Hospital. Plus items I doubt even you know about. It’s the sort of thing to be expected anywhere when the Mob moves in. The Mob boys get fat, while the Ginsburgs and Okiyames—and Brizantes—get leaned on.”
“The Mob? You mean, like this Lecci, or Letch—”
“It will all be explained in a few minutes, Tony. In, well, just a little over six minutes. First, you should know Striker’s coming here—if he can work it out, that is—on duty, as a special guard assigned for your protection. Just as an added discouragement to anybody who might feel like holding a match against your house, or taking even more vigorous action.”
That, which I assumed would bother Tony most, wasn’t the subject of his next question. He said, “The delays, troubles, potholes and that, we have discussed these things in the council over and over. The last two years it gets worse and worse. But we never spoke of crooks. You think crooks are doing some of this?”
“Not necessarily. But when you find fox tracks in the chicken yard, and dead chickens, it kind of makes you think. Take this Doctors’ Hospital of yours. The Building and Trades Union in charge of construction is the same union my recent client in L.A. had trouble with.”
Lucrezia said, “The one you told me of, Shell? When you were shot by those terrible men?”
“Right, and ‘terrible men’ is a very apt description. One of them being Jimmy Ryan, whom I encountered here at the Villas last night. Another reason I figure Striker’s OK, he gave me an additional interesting item of information. When I picked up the tape this morning, I shot a hood named Frankenstein. Around dawn, a Lieutenant Weeton found his body two miles from here, clear out at the end of something called Jackrabbit Street—and wherever that is, it’s not where I shot him. One of his front teeth was broken off in the middle. Apparently recently, since he had also a fat lip.”
Tony touched his swollen-shut eggplant eye. “I did it? When I got this?”
“I’d say that’s a very safe assumption. Well, you might as well listen to the tape.”
I pushed the “Forward” or “Play” button. Six minutes later there was a half-minute, at least, of complete silence.
Lucrezia broke it with a soft explosion of rippling Italian. Tony looked at her sharply. “Lu, you shouldn’t say such things.” Then he added, “But I forgive you,” and ripped off some very similar-sounding stuff himself.
I looked at my watch. “We don’t have much time. Five men on that tape are still unidentified, but the way I see it one of them damn near has to be Pete Lecci. If so, with your help I can prove it, and maybe a lot more. We know The Letch is Mafia, very big once, not so big today. But still alive—and mafiosi as long as he lives. That doesn’t mean the whole meeting was Cosa Nostra, but the rest of those guys aren’t choir boys, which is all we need to know.”
Brizante was squinting at me from his one, stern, hawklike eye. “With my help, you said. How—”
“I’ll get to it. All hoods, mafiosi or not, know their main weapon is fear, terror in the victim, and their two strongest shields are protection—the fix, grease, friendly or bought-and-paid-for cops and judges and politicians—and secrecy. The absolute minimum of publicity about their activities.”
Lucrezia was watching me with interest, but that was all. I judged from Tony’s expression, though, that he felt I was building up to something. Which, of course, I was.
I went on, “These creeps have been making most of the moves so far. I figure it’s time we called a few shots. When you’re up against hoods, if you can shake them around a little, confuse them, keep them off balance—”
“My God,” Tony said. I think he got it right then. He went on in a strange voice, “What are you going to do?”
“At the council meeting, I want you to introduce me. And then I want you to let me, in front of the entire council and whoever else happens to be present, play this tape.”
Silence.
Finally Tony said, “I thought it. But I didn’t believe it.”
“Think about it some more, then,” I told him. “Those bums already know their meeting was bugged. They chased Jenkins and caught him—with you, Tony, which means they know you were almost surely in on the bugging with him. Yet we assume they took off with the tape and Jenkins—but left you behind. Why? For one thing, they knew Fred Jenkins was the guy listening to them while recording their lovely conversation. Fred, not you. They knew Fred had just met you, and obviously you had no chance to play the tape. So if they grabbed Jenkins and the tape and took off, they were home free, no need to worry about Brizante.”
I paused. “That name’s part of it, too, as you just heard toward the end of those six minutes. Unless they feel they have to, they aren’t going to hit Lucrezia Brizante’s papa. Not that guys like these may not come to feel it’s necessary. And …” I paused again
. “All of this, of course, applies to the time when they believed they’d grabbed the tape—”
Tony interrupted. “But by now they know there is another.” He poked a finger at the recorder. “That one, where they say at its end, there is a bug, someone is listening.” He was nodding slowly, holding onto that crazy moustache of his with both hands. He gave the handlebars a gentle yank, first on one side and then the other. “Fred, you think he is dead, like Gil?”
“I wouldn’t take any nickel bets he’s alive. Not if they did haul him off with them, which we’re probably a hundred percent safe in assuming.”
“If he is dead, then before he died—Shell, these men, these assassinos, they not only are aware there is another tape, they also know you found it. I mean, they know. Because Fred must have told them, even where he threw it away.”
“You can depend on it.”
“Unless … maybe he could have kept from telling—”
“He did, Tony. As long as he could. It was a good hour and a half after they grabbed him before Frankenstein and a guy named Bludgett showed up on Willow Lane, where I found the tape. Right where Fred had tossed it.”
He sat very still, and he squeezed his lips tightly together, and his face twisted as if he were in pain. But then he gave his moustache a great yank and said, “That’s a long time. That’s a goddamn long time.”
I agreed with Tony. I hadn’t met Fred Jenkins, but in my book he was—more likely, had been—a helluva man.
Tony blinked his good eye at me several times. “Hey, there is something else. Me. I am in the soup.”
“That does begin to become apparent, doesn’t it? But I think we can cool the soup a little.”
“This playing of the recording,” Lucrezia said, “that is so others know what was said by those men?” She smiled slightly. “This is cooling the soup?”
“Part of it. Those guys can’t knock off a half-dozen or dozen local citizens—and for that matter don’t want to. So let’s make sure they soon understand that a lot of people know what those seven characters talked about, including Reyes’ murder. Besides, the only people identifiable from that tape—which our boys will also realize if any of them hear it or even hear about it—are Ace and Fleepo. Who should suddenly become scarce, which won’t hurt our side a bit.”
Kill Me Tomorrow Page 12
