Lucrezia had been listening more intently than I’d assumed. “You mean, because they are the only two who answered when spoken to by name.”
“On the button. There’s no way to tag the other five from what was said, or even from the sound of their voices. Which, by the way, should make those five feel safer. And we want them to feel safer—for a while.”
I looked at my watch. It was twenty minutes of ten, so I wrapped it up. “The last part of it is this.” I pulled the left lapel of my jacket away from the transistorized and battery-operated mini-recorder nestled snugly next to the holster of my .38. “I want every one of those council members to say something, so I can get their voices recorded.”
“A vote?” Tony asked. “Each must say Yes or No?”
“Yeah, something like that. Maybe this will help.” I hadn’t mentioned the Voiceprint angle to them, and there was no need to now, anyway. But when I’d had the stenographer make the transcript, which I’d given to Professor Elliott Irwin, I’d had one carbon made. I pulled it from my coat pocket and gave it to Tony, explaining what it was. “Maybe you can use it at the meeting.”
“Ah, fine,” he said, good eye skimming the first page. “Like, I suggest we forward the transcript to the mayor and the City Council. For information and possible action. And, on that, we take a vote. Or would you object—”
“No, sounds like a good idea. The main thing is, try to work it so each of the men has to speak a few words. Ask them for an opinion, to repeat their vote, anything, but get at least half a dozen words out of each of them if you can. Also, I want them to speak in order, right around the table, so I can keep track of them.”
“I can handle it.”
“Now, look, Tony—and you, too, Lucrezia—you don’t have to go along with any of this. That’s why I’ve spent so much time explaining, so you’d both know—”
“Please, no more of that. I want to hear no more.”
The way he said it, I believed him. Lucrezia was equally emphatic that she approved. Though she was less concerned, since she wouldn’t be going to the meeting with us.
“You also understand, I suppose,” I told them, “that the making of this tape was extraordinarily illegal. And simply my playing it may make me personally eligible for much legal, not to mention extralegal, action. However, you can be certain the hoods aren’t going to admit they were bugged, so we might get away with it.”
Lucrezia said softly, “Shell … I see that doing this may, for a little while, help Dad. And me. Make us—safer, a little. But you, will not these men be more—”
“Don’t worry about that. Nothing I do—or don’t do—is going to change their minds about me.” I looked at Tony. “One thing, you know from nothing. Just introduce me and I’ll take it from there. Don’t act a bit different toward Lecci—DiGiorno—or anybody else. The hoods already know the score, sure. But if the law also gets peeved, let it be with me—I’ve been there before. Besides, no sense all three of us being involved if it isn’t necessary, and it isn’t.”
Lucrezia stood up. I haven’t mentioned—though I had, of course, noticed—that she was wearing a cream-colored turtle-neck sweater which was very loose-fitting, and tight jeans or slacks which were very form-fitting, and as she stood up she pulled down on the bottom of her sweater, thus for a moment causing the top half to be as form-fitting as the bottom half. I have mentioned that hers was an exceptionally fit form to begin with, and the sight threatened to exhaust my entire reserves of testosterone.
It was a brief and lovely moment, which she shattered completely by saying, “Let’s go.”
“What do you mean, let’s?” I said. “Tony and I are going—”
“Tony and you, and Lucrezia.”
For thirty seconds there was a great deal of pyrotechnic Italian and a little English. It ended when Tony, his upper arms pressed against his sides, elbows bent and hands open and pointing outward near his shoulders lifted and dropped his shoulders in a very expressive gesture, saying something like, “… la sua mamma,” and a few other things, none of which sounded like a direct order to Lucrezia.
“Tony,” I said. “What the hell? Why don’t you just tell her she can’t go?”
He did that funny little hands-spread-out-near-the-shoulders thing again. “She’s just like her mama.”
“But—you—you wear the pants,” I said. “You’re her father. I mean, last night … You simply said, ‘Lucrezia! This is not for women! Go to your room!’ Things like that. It was, well, kind of thrilling. Do it again, Tony.”
He didn’t speak. He did give me a look of profound disgust, however. Or maybe it was pity.
“Lucrezia!” I said. “Go to your room!”
She laughed. “You both sound so silly,” she said.
I gave Brizante a look. Same kind of look. We were beginning to understand each other.
Lucrezia said, “If my father can go to the meeting, and my”—a little smile grew, and stayed, on her face—“my detective can go, then I can go.”
The doorbell rang.
Lucrezia started out of the den but I said, “Hold it.” She stopped. “Don’t let power go to your head, baby. I’ll get it.” She obeyed me, just as if she were my slave.
Every day, I thought, I may learn a little more about women. Then, again, I may not.
I stood next to the door, not in front of it, with my Colt in my hand—it may sound silly, but just such silliness has helped me live to a ripe old age. Well, to thirty. Which is a lot riper than it would otherwise have been.
“Yeah?” I said. And if a man’s voice replied, “Teluhgram from Western Uhnyun,” I was going to shoot him right through the door.
“Striker.” I recognized his voice, but didn’t put the Colt away until I’d gotten a look at him.
When he came inside he watched me shove the gun into its holster, his expression almost—not quite—bored. “You’re a little itchy?”
“Just careful.”
“Good way to be. You want to fill me in a little more?”
I did. Quite a bit more. Then we were ready to go, and we went.
Brizante rode with Striker in the sergeant’s car, and I followed them in the Cad with Lucrezia. Two blocks from the Town Hall I pulled up at a stop sign, and noticed a man on our right walking toward the intersection. He looked at the car, smiled, and waved one hand at us.
It was Henry Yarrow.
He’d already had a good look at me—and Lucrezia—so I hit the horn lightly, motioned him over. As he started toward us I put my hand beneath my coat, near my gun. Not because I meant to yank it out; it was merely that the recorder’s “On-Off” switch was there. My coat was unbuttoned, so no cloth covered my very sensitive tie clasp.
Yarrow leaned on the side of the car, Lucrezia’s side, and looked in the open window at me. “Hi,” he said pleasantly, and by that time was looking at Lucrezia.
“Just curious, Mr. Yarrow. Any more trouble about the—problem last night?”
“No. I had to make a statement and sign it, that’s all.”
“You on your way to the council meeting?”
“Meeting?”
He’d been heading straight toward the Town Hall, only two blocks away. But I said, “There’s a special meeting, starts at ten o’clock.”
“I did hear something about it,” he said.
“I think you’d find it very interesting.”
“Well, perhaps I’ll look in.”
“See you there if you do,” I said.
He took one last look at Lucrezia, stepped back and gave us a little wave again. I switched off my recorder, then took out my notebook and jotted on a blank sheet. “No. 1—Henry Yarrow.”
Lucrezia said, “Yarrow. Is he—”
“He is. The bug was in his house. That’s where those seven jokers were holding their little murder meeting.”
She looked shocked. “He’s such a … nice-looking man. That’s the man Mr. Reyes talked to—Tuesday morning when he was with Dad?
”
“Uh-huh. That’s what makes it so interesting.”
“You mean … he was one of those seven men?”
“Probably, but I’m not sure. I will be sure tonight. I just took his prints.”
Lucrezia wondered what that meant, but I didn’t enlighten her. Instead I put the Cad in gear and headed for the Town Hall.
The first three or four minutes of the meeting weren’t much. Routine, getting date and time into the record and such. But then it stopped being routine. It became the most unusual meeting of the Sunrise Villas Community Representation Council, ever, at least to that date.
Half a dozen people were seated in the spectators’ section. Not many, but a pretty fair turnout for a special and very recently called meeting. Particularly considering that I knew two of them. Henry Yarrow was not present, after all. But Mrs. Blessing was. Yarrow hadn’t been planning to attend the special meeting? Well, maybe not. Also present was burly Lieutenant Weeton. He gave me a cold glare, then ignored me.
All twelve members of the council had been at their seats around the long oval table when Lucrezia and I walked in. A few looked slightly annoyed at having had their day unexpectedly interrupted. They continued to look annoyed as Brizante explained the meeting had been called solely in order that a certain presentation could be made by a Mr. Sheldon Scott, an investigator, not a resident of Sunrise Villas. He then introduced me and I walked to the head of the oval table as Brizante moved his chair aside.
The cassette in my portable recorder was rewound and ready to go. So I simply lifted the compact machine onto the table and said, “I want to play a tape recording for you, gentlemen. I can’t tell you how it came into my possession, precisely where it was recorded, or anything else about it. It will have to—well, speak for itself. I will merely say that it is authentic, and was recorded here, at Sunrise Villas. Among other things, the individuals you will hear speaking—not, of course, realizing a record was being made of their words—discuss the murder, by members of their company, of a Sunrise Villas resident named Gilberto Reyes.”
All traces of annoyance vanished. That even caused some hubbub and mild tumult. I was trying to watch for extreme reactions, but spotted nothing of the kind. On my left was an elderly gentleman who vaguely resembled a graying beagle, and on my right “Mr. DiGiorno.”
When I looked at him, at The Letch, he simply lifted his eyes to mine and let them stay upon them, unblinking. There was death in those old eyes of his. I don’t mean he was necessarily shooting thoughts of hate or murder at me, merely that there was in them the coldness, the tombstone chill, the almost-emptiness, often seen in the eyes of men who have killed, and killed again, and again.
Of course, if Lecci was on the tape, he knew it—and he knew damn well what I was doing. Further, if his voice was on the tape and he did not yet know how poor was its quality, his self-control was remarkable.
I added, “There is, as you will note, gentlemen, extended discussion about the desirability, even the necessity, of killing a man referred to only as Scott. The Scott referred to is Sheldon Scott. I mean, I am the fellow to whom such reference is so often made.”
That didn’t cause a lot of hubbub. So I said, “Well, I thought you might get a boot out of that. One other thing, there is some profanity upcoming, which I mention in the event any ladies in the audience desire not to hear such language, and prefer to leave.”
There were only two gals besides Lucrezia present, one of them Mrs. Blessing, the second a more-than-middle-aged babe who had brought along her knitting. Mrs. Blessing remained in her seat, but looked around. For the exit? For the president of her real estate agency? The other gal also remained in her seat, knitting. It was my hunch, had fifty old gals been present, fifty old gals would have remained in their seats. But, in some ways, I’m a cynic.
I didn’t say any more. I merely punched the “Forward” button, and the tape began to play.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
For the next six minutes there was, except for the flat voices issuing from the machine’s speaker, silence. I mean silence, total and complete.
And a thought occurred to me which I had not really considered before this moment. Most of those present—not all, but certainly most—were experiencing a moment unique in their lives. This was something they were hearing for the first time and would probably never hear again: hoodlums, professional muscle-men and killers, discussing—with a casual bluntness that made it more chilling than even the most expert professional actors could have made it—murder. Murder accomplished, murder planned. The real thing, the “hit,” the shot from darkness, the taking of human life.
Even if there were many in the audience who did not believe this was what I had claimed it to be, the words and phrases carried a peculiar conviction of their own. It would be difficult, I thought, for anyone to hear this recording, even if he knew nothing of thieves and mafiosi and hit-men, without feeling a kind of combined fear and revulsion, a feeling that “Maybe …”
And then:
“… The bastard can’t be far from here right now—”
“Sonofabitch—”
“Fleepo, get the heap—”
I punched the “Stop” button, slipped the recorder into its carry bag, took the machine with me as I walked in silence—still that silence had not been broken—to a chair in the spectators’ section, next to Lucrezia.
Tony did his bit. The vote was unanimous to send the transcript to the mayor and council, with some tacked-on recommendations, consulting the sheriff and such. Lucrezia had given me the names of the council members and they were already written down in my book, so as the eleven members, other than Tony, voted or spoke I merely checked off the numbers, made a few notes.
Some gave me more words by far than I needed. For example, Reverend Archibald stood up and, I do believe, began to deliver a speech—or possibly a sermon—in that syrupy, sonorous, oracular style of his, but Tony chopped him off after a few sentences. He sat down reluctantly, but managed to get off a final oboe-like “‘Sinners and whoremongers!’” plus a bit more. I missed the chapter and verse; no matter, it was something Holy. I listed Archie as No. 6. DiGiorno-Lecci was No. 2, first of the council members to speak. The Beagle, on Brizante’s left, became No. 12. So I switched on my mini-recorder again, then walked over to Lieutenant Weeton for No. 13.
It wasn’t necessary to draw a comment from him. I no sooner sat down in an empty seat next to him than he said, his voice imbued with no less grating whininess than when last we’d chatted in front of Yarrow’s, “Scott, I never heard nothing so dumb. What’d you do, hire some out-of-work actors for that crap?”
“Actors?” I said, raising my eyebrows. “It sounded authentic to me. Matter of fact, Lieutenant, it was the legit.”
He lifted one of his hamlike, almost misshapen fists, and shook it gently. “If I thought for a minute that was the up-and-up I’d have to guess somebody broke the law.”
“Presumably you do not mean those lads who were talking about hitting Reyes. So I suppose you imply you’d have to arrest me. In front of all these people. Who just listened to all those actors. Something like that?”
His jaw muscles bulged. “Maybe it’ll come to that, Scott.” He paused, continuing to exercise his jaws. “For crissakes, everybody on your supposed authentic tape sounded like the same guy. Could’ve been anybody talking—even you.”
“Sure. Or you. Or Cary Grant. Or Ace. Or Fleepo. Can you tell me anything about those two actors, Lieutenant?”
He didn’t answer. I had enough, anyway. And I’d come to this meeting with a slight worry that Weeton might actually arrest me. That, of course, would mean he believed in me—and in my tape. And it did seem the lieutenant wasn’t a believer. I assumed he’d be glad to put the arm on me anyway, should a complaint be filed. But the complainant would almost have to admit his voice was on my recording, and I didn’t expect that to happen.
So I left him with one final comment. “Just suppose this was t
he McCoy, Lieutenant. Maybe it isn’t possible to tell from the sound who was speaking—I’ll admit that much. But … deductions can be made.”
“What does that mean?”
“I can tell you one guy who, for sure, was not at the party.”
“Yeah? Like who?”
“Like Lucky Ryan.”
He stared at me, touched his tongue to his upper lip, and sort of wiggled it there, as though thinking with it, and continued to stare. I told him good-bye, politely.
Lucrezia and I left, sat in the car until Tony and Sergeant Striker came out, then followed them back to Brizante’s home. I had told Lucrezia I’d be taking off right away, and before she and Tony went into the house, she asked me if I’d come in for a minute before leaving.
Striker had been as impressed by the recording as Weeton had not. I talked to him for a few minutes, then asked, “Sure this won’t get you in any trouble? I know it may get you killed, but I mean any other trouble.”
“Nope, I made arrangements. With the captain.”
“Weeton might not be happy with your going over his head.”
He laughed, as though the thought pleased him.
Lucrezia met me at the front door and asked me into the empty living room. Then she stood in front of me, about a foot away, pushed her head forward a couple of inches, pooched her lips out in a perfect pucker—there really should be a better word for it—and said, “Shake, stranger.”
And if that strikes you as even vaguely sickening, you have led the wrong kind of life. You have been misled. You are malconditioned. You salivate to the ding-dong bell.
You have, at least, not seen and heard a “Shake, stranger,” in the presence of the pucker—there really should be a better word for it—of luscious Lucrezia Brizante.
I shook.
Back at Mountain Shadows, I had a thick, blood-rare steak with all the trimmings in the main dining room. I even requested a table overlooking the pool—despite the fact that the drabness of sky I’d noted at dawn had become dark grays and near blacks almost ominous—for it had struck me that these might be the last moments of calmness and peace I would enjoy for a while.
Kill Me Tomorrow Page 13
