The Monet Murders: A Mystery

by Terry Mort

  “Is this Tony a dangerous character?”

  “Do you have to ask? What’s more, he’s got a few guys around him that are worse. He’s kind of—what do you call it?—flamboyant. Most of these hoods don’t like publicity, but Tony’s not shy. The suckers all like him.”

  “Any idea how she likes the arrangement?”

  “Hard to say. My bouncer friend says she sort of drifts around the main salon when she’s not on duty. Looks kind of vacant. Could be drunk or high, or could be just stupid. Usually has a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other. No way to read her. But she is a looker. Prime. Now and then, I hear, she works as a shill.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a good-looking dame who sits at an empty gambling table to attract customers. Tony don’t like to see empty tables, so he scatters these girls around, knowing they’ll draw a crowd.”

  “What’s Tony look like?”

  “Short and fat with slicked-back hair. Has a diamond pinkie ring and wears ties the same color as his shirt. These wise guys all read the same fashion magazine. He’s nice and friendly to the suckers, but when he’s off duty he goes around with a ‘what’re you lookin at’ expression. You know that look.”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen it. Do these guys all live aboard the Lucky Lady?”

  “Yeah. He’s got plenty of muscle at his fingertips, if he needs them. You need that in a twenty-four-hour gambling joint. The rooms are pretty nice. Especially Tony’s suite.”

  “You’ve seen it?”

  “No. Just heard about it. ‘Course, they all come into town every couple of days or so. You’d go stir-crazy living out there all the time.”

  “So Catherine Moore has moved in.”

  “Or been moved in, more like it.”

  Which meant that anyone wanting to have an immediate and private word with Catherine Moore would have to do it on board the Lucky Lady. Good luck. It wasn’t my problem, though. My job had been to find her. Well, I’d found her. If Manny Stairs wanted to throw himself at her feet and risk the wrath of Tony the Snail, that was his business. He could take Perry’s water taxi out beyond the three-mile limit and use whatever charm he possessed to talk her back to shore. Tony the Snail might not like it, but I was reasonably sure Manny could organize enough muscle to even up the odds. He didn’t need my help. Which suited me just fine.

  Besides, I had other fish to fry.

  I went back to the Garden of Allah and called Manny Stairs’s office. I didn’t expect to find him there at nearly eight o’clock, but he picked up.

  “This is Bruno Feldspar,” I said. “I found Catherine Moore. She’s working on the Lucky Lady. Do you know it?”

  There was a pause.

  “Yeah, I know it. Everyone in town knows it.”

  He sounded disappointed, as if he had been hoping that the initial story had been wrong. It’s not an easy thing to know you’ve come in second place to a tray of cigars and cigarettes.

  “Okay,” he said, finally. “Let me think about next steps. Send me a bill.”

  And he hung up, not giving me time to tell him about Tony Scungilli. Well, he would find out soon enough.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Promptly at nine the next morning, I presented myself at the Hanging Gardens Apartments. I was a little worried that Rita might have had second thoughts, maybe figuring there was more money to be made, since I had agreed to the hundred bucks pretty readily. That might have been a mistake. But she was waiting poolside when I pulled up, and she waved happily and came out and jumped in the Packard. She was wearing the same cream-colored shorts, but had changed her top to a skimpy T-shirt that said “Hooray for Hollywood,” written in silver sequins. I took this as an ironic comment. It was also obvious that she didn’t consider bras to be standard equipment.

  “Nice car,” she said. “The private-dick business must be pretty good.”

  “I guess there’re worse ways to make a buck.”

  “You’re telling me.”

  We drove to the local branch of Wells Fargo. Rita stayed in the car while I went in and cashed a check. I gave her the five crisp twenties, which she inspected carefully for a moment as though they were some exotic plant.

  Then she gave me a radiant smile.

  “I appreciate this,” she said. “I hope you think the package is worth it.”

  There was a double entendre there, maybe, but I left it alone. “So do I. Where to now?”

  “The Greyhound bus station.”

  That figured.

  Rita shuddered when we pulled up to the parking lot.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked, more or less knowing.

  “This place gives me the creeps. I see myself coming here some day with one suitcase wrapped with clothesline and getting on a bus for Sioux City.”

  “You could still hit it big. You have the look.”

  She smiled what seemed to be a genuine smile. “That’s nice of you to say. Experience so far says something different. Maybe I’m no good in the sack. Not good enough, anyway.”

  “Hard to believe.”

  “Well, acting’s not easy. In the sack you have to feel it, you know? A lot of women can fake it, but I can’t. Not very well, anyway.”

  There was the hint of a challenge there somewhere.

  “Is that your home? Sioux City?”

  “No. But it might as well be. It’s somewhere up north. In the middle of nowhere. It’s like going back to nowhere from nothing, after having achieved exactly nothing except a few sessions with guys named Myron who promised nothing and delivered exactly that.”

  “Where’s your real home?”

  “Do you really care?”

  “Just making conversation, but, yes, I kind of do.”

  “Akron. That’s in Ohio.”

  “I knew that. I paid attention in geography class. Besides, I was born in Ohio too.”

  “Really? Whereabouts?”

  “A little farm town called Poland.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “You’re not alone. It’s outside of Youngstown.”

  “I’ve heard of that. Steel mills, foreigners, and mobsters.”

  “Pretty much.”

  I glanced over at her. She had a wonderful profile, top to bottom, and I could see why the various Myrons had made plays for her. And, let’s be honest, used her. And suddenly the urge to do a good deed came over me. It happens now and then.

  “I don’t want you to misunderstand me, but I know some people in the movie business. They might be willing to arrange a screen test for you.”

  She looked at me skeptically. “I’m surprised you’d use that moldy line. You look like you could get over just on merit. Fact is, up till now I was kind of interested.”

  “I appreciate that. But I already have a lady friend, and, as a matter of interest to you, I arranged a screen test for her that resulted in a three-year contract at five hundred a week.”

  She stared at me for a moment. “Are you serious?”

  “Yes. One of my clients is married to Isadore Welkin, the producer. We’re on good terms, and she arranged for my friend to have a test.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “And you’d make a call for me too?”

  “Sure. No guarantees, but no strings attached.”

  “Why?”

  “As a favor. After all, getting a test is a small thing if you know the right people. If you’re good, it’ll show up on the screen. If not, it’ll be the bus to Sioux Falls or wherever. Or the diner on Sepulveda. That’s all up to you. All I’m offering to do is make a phone call.”

  “Your real name’s not Myron, is it?”

  “No. And it’s not Bruno Feldspar, either, just between us.”

  “Who cares? How soon can you make the call?”

  “Just as soon as we pick up the package.”

  “Well, what are we waiting for?”

  I parked the Packard in a litter-strewn lot next to the bus stati
on. The litter included two drunks, whose attempts to panhandle us were so pathetically feeble that I gave each of them a quarter. For a moment, I wondered whether the hubcaps would still be there when we got back.

  The station was pretty empty except for a couple of sleeping soldiers, a guy in a cheap suit who looked like a Fuller Brush salesman complete with clip-on leather bow tie and sample case, and some Mexicans of doubtful citizenship. It was three generations of poverty sitting there, big-eyed, on their way to what they must have thought was a better deal, and one that most likely would not be. Is there a more depressing place than a Greyhound waiting room? What sort of life stories gather or drift through there? Aside from the occasional soldier or sailor getting home on the cheap for a few weeks’ leave, or maybe a high-school girl thrilled to be going anywhere away from home, everyone else is more or less broke, in all senses of the word, and the future not only doesn’t look bright, it looks unlikely. The journey itself involved unpleasant smells and discomfort and long spells between bathrooms, and at the end of it you were in Yuma or Oakland or any other crummy town that’s a stand-in for purgatory.

  Rita hustled over to the banks of gray metal lockers and quickly retrieved the cardboard tube.

  “Here you go,” she said, a little breathlessly. “Wanna open it here?”

  “I don’t think so.” I was burning with curiosity, but I didn’t want to open it just yet. I needed to be careful with the thing, assuming it was a painting worth six figures, maybe more. Not the sort of thing you want to do in a bus station. “Let’s get back to the car. I’ll take you home.”

  “Okay. I have a telephone in the apartment, just in case you want to make a call, or something. And I have some gin. And tonic.”

  “Kind of early, isn’t it?”

  “You know what they say—it’s five o’clock somewhere.”

  The “gin and tonic” seemed to be a pretty clear offer.

  “Why not?”

  Either way, I was still intending to call Ethel about her. A promise is a promise.

  When we got to her apartment, Rita went into the kitchen to mix a couple of drinks. On the way there, she looked back over her shoulder and gave me what’s known as a meaningful look. She couldn’t smolder like Myrtle, but she certainly smoldered above the average. Plus, she had a good sashay. Not for the first time, I wondered what those cream-colored shorts more or less concealed. Her backward glance seemed to indicate that I’d find out.

  But there was business to attend to first. I got out my penknife and very carefully removed the seal on the tube. I stuck two fingers into the tube and gently removed what certainly felt like a canvas. And so it proved.

  It was a painting of a vase full of flowers. To me, it looked like something a bored housewife could produce in an afternoon at the country-club art class. The flowers looked kind of blurred. But in the lower right hand corner was the word “Monet.” Put “Joe Schwartz” there instead, and you had something any canary would be proud to have on the bottom of his cage. Why that should be was an idea worth pondering at some point, but not now. For the present, I had either a hundred thousand bucks in my hand, or a worthless forgery. The question before the house was—which was it?

  There was another question before the house, too. A bigger question. But I didn’t want to think about that, just yet. I needed some time to think.

  I stayed for lunch, which consisted of three gin-and-tonics, along with several generous portions of Rita, who by the way was much better than advertised and more than expected. She easily delivered on the promise of those cream-colored shorts, and I hoped that her story about not being able to fake it was true. This was after I had called Ethel, who responded to my request with a sly sort of tone in her voice that suggested she knew I was sending her a new protégé. Well, that didn’t bother me. Ethel actually liked that sort of tomcat behavior. I guess it made her believe that she was still in the game, because deep down she must have known she wasn’t.

  Anyway, Ethel agreed to do me a favor and set up the test for Rita, which occasioned some ecstatic appreciation from my new friend, who wriggled out of her shorts and T-shirt and said thank you in a way that made me think those various Myrons must have had something wrong with them.

  After lunch, I drove back to the office with the precious, or worthless, painting rolled up in the tube and sitting on the passenger seat.

  When I got there, I took the painting out of the tube and very carefully pinned it up next to the Barbasol calendar. What better place to hide a priceless work of art than in plain sight? What better place to hang a forgery than next to a 1934 calendar showing a guy shaving and enjoying it? I guess he was a wealthy guy who didn’t try to use his razor blades more than once.

  Della had been there that morning and left me a note saying I should call Manny Stairs as soon as possible. “He sounded a little desperate,” the note said.

  Well, it was nothing to how he was going to feel when I gave him the news about Catherine and Tony the Snail. I have to admit that the thought made me smile a little.

  I dialed Manny’s private number. He picked up after the second ring.

  “This is Bruno Feldspar,” I said.

  “Ah. It’s about time. I left you a message three hours ago.”

  “I was having lunch.”

  “A three-hour lunch?” He didn’t sound pleased. “How was she?”

  “Michelin three stars.”

  “Is that all?”

  “That’s all they give.”

  “You spend three hours in the sack during lunch, maybe you should be a producer. You got the knack.”

  “I’ll think about it. What can I do for you?”

  “What I hired you for.”

  “I thought I’d done that. You wanted me to find her and I did. She’s on the Lucky Lady.”

  “All right. But I also told you there might be a second phase to the job.”

  Swell.

  “I want you to go out there and tell her I want her to come back. I’d do it myself, but there’s a problem.”

  “Which is?”

  “Everybody in this town goes out to those ships now and then. I can’t risk being seen there sweet-talking a cigarette girl. I’d get the horselaugh for sure.”

  This didn’t seem very plausible. I can’t imagine that anyone in the business would sneer at a big-time producer chatting up a beautiful dame, even if she was carrying a tray of cigarettes and cigars and wearing a smile that said, for all the world to see, “I may be a dimwit, but ain’t I gorgeous?”

  “Well, I’d like to help, but there’s a complication.”

  “Which is? I’ll double your fee.”

  “I appreciate that, but it isn’t a money complication. It seems that she’s taken up with a character called Tony Scungilli. Ever hear of him?”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line.

  “Yeah, I’ve heard of him. A minor hoodlum.” His contempt sounded genuine. Big-time Hollywood producers don’t get where they get by being timid. Manny might be diminutive, but he knew what power was and how to use it. Tony the Snail didn’t seem to scare him.

  “So, what’s the word? Just go out there and give her the message. Like I said, I’ll double the fee.”

  “What if she refuses?”

  “I’ll jump off that bridge when I come to it. But Ethel says you’re charming and persuasive, which in plain talk means you got a talent for bullshit, so I figure you make a good ambassador.”

  That was worth a smile. If there was anyone who needed persuading between me and Ethel, it was me. But as I’ve suggested, things have worked out well enough for all concerned, so I’m not complaining.

  Well, I thought, I guess it couldn’t hurt. At the very least I could go out there and see the shape of things, and if I saw an opportunity to talk to her in private, I’d do it. Most likely she’d give me a quick horselaugh, and that would be that. If I didn’t catch her alone, I’d try again another day. Manny would want discretion, and so wo
uld I, given the array of goombahs wandering the passageways and gambling rooms.

  “Would you consider offering her a screen test?”

  “I don’t want her in the business. I want her in the bedroom.”

  “I only ask because when I interviewed her friend at the insurance office, she told me Catherine was a little miffed that you never brought it up.”

  “Really?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  “That’s interesting. Maybe I made a mistake there. Well, you can mention it, but only as a last resort.” He paused as though coming to terms with something. “I’d much prefer she came back because she wanted to.”

  I don’t care how many mirrors you have in your house, none of them reflects what you see or even expect to see, most of the time. And there are different kinds of mirrors, different from the ones that steam up in the bathroom during showers. It made you think about a fundamental question—which was better, to be a five-foot-two producer from the Bronx pining for a goddess, or a marginally secure fella posing as a private detective? I liked my situation.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll give it the old college try.”

  “Good. There’s a bonus in it for you if it works. By the way, I thought you said you ain’t a college boy.”

  “I’m not, but I’ve read about it.”

  “I’m counting on you.”

  Maybe he didn’t know it, but he was leaning on a very thin reed. I’d give it my best, but I wasn’t going to stick my neck out. What’s more, I was armed with the discouraging knowledge that Catherine had decided Manny wasn’t simpatico. I didn’t think Manny needed to know about that. Not yet, anyway. And I supposed it was just possible that after a few days with Tony the Snail, her understanding of the real meaning of simpatico might have changed, maybe even in Manny’s favor. After all, if she found Tony to be similarly unappealing, that wouldn’t necessarily send her back into Manny’s size-28 arms.

  So, as usual, nothing was perfectly imperfect. At least I had the screen-test offer as a hole card. What Manny should do was obvious—he should lead with the offer, give her the test, and then string her along for a few months saying something might come up in the way of a movie role, and then sweeten the deal with some flashy jewelry that wasn’t made with zircons. Then maybe marry her. That plan had a chance of working. But Manny wanted her to come back because she realized she really loved him after all. Even a Hollywood producer’s ego has an Achilles heel. At least Manny’s did.