When Elephants Forget (Trace 3)

by Warren Murphy

  “How do they get any business done, then?” Chico asked.

  “On the telephone, the way everybody else does. They come here at night and they talk all that crazy shit, and the next day they get on the phone and they call Louie McGurn-Gurn and they say, ‘Louie, go shoot Pasquale in the fucking head. Right. He owes me forty dollars and I’m tired of waiting for the cheap bastard. Plug him.’ That’s why they’re always getting arrested. The FBI has all their phones tapped, but they wouldn’t waste three cents tapping a joint like this. Nobody ever says anything that means anything.”

  “I didn’t know you were such a big expert on the Mafia.”

  “I know everything,” Trace said. “The real Mafia decisions, they’re made by some guy eating fried peppers out of a paper bag in a plumbing office somewhere. The stuff they do here at night is just for show. It’s to impress each other.”

  It was still early in the evening but most of the restaurant’s tables were filled. The room held about one hundred diners, Trace figured, but the walls were covered with heavy fabric and tapestries that muffled sound. Even the piano player at the far end of the room was unobtrusively muted. Most of the groups that were eating were four men, no women, and a lot of the men spent a lot of time glancing across the room at Chico.

  Trace was used to it, and whenever his eyes met theirs, he smiled a lot and shot his sleeves so that his cuff links showed.

  “I wish I had worn my nine-pound cuff links with the engraved map of Sicily,” he said. “That’d get us some respect around here.”

  The waiter seemed disappointed when Trace ordered only a beer and Chico Perrier water, and was crushed when Trace said he would pass on the wine list for now and they would just like to look at menus.

  As was normal, Chico seemed to order one of everything. Trace settled on a salad and a steak. He noticed a man in a tuxedo who was working the room like a politician, going from table to table, smiling, talking, shaking a lot of hands, then moving on.

  The man was average height, but even the well-cut tuxedo did not hide the fact that he was lumpily muscular. His neck was that of a football player and his chest was thick. His hair was black, streaked with gray; he was well-tanned, well-manicured, and his smile was so white his teeth looked as if they had been sandblasted to an almost inhuman level. Killer Dobermans wouldn’t mind having teeth like that, Trace thought.

  Trace picked at his salad while Chico polished off her spiedini appetizers, soaking up the anchovy sauce with a lump of bread the size of her fist. Then she attacked her salad. Halfway through hers, she saw Trace had not eaten the cherry tomatoes in his, was in fact nibbling his way around them, and she speared them quickly with her fork and put them into her own salad bowl.

  “I was saving them for last,” Trace said.

  “Too late. He who hesitates is lost,” Chico said. She quickly gulped down the tomatoes before he could argue about them. “Digestion is nine points of the law,” she said.

  Trace saw the husky man in the tuxedo reach the maître d’s station and engage George in quiet conversation, while looking at the seating chart and the reservation book. When he glanced in their direction, Trace looked down at his salad. A few minutes later, the man was standing in front of their table. Trace reached under his jacket and turned on his recorder.

  He waited for Trace to look up, then flashed a very wide white smile and said, “I don’t plan to interrupt your meal, Mr. Rascali. I just wanted to welcome you to Chez Nick. I’m Nick Armitage.”

  “Call me Luigi,” Trace said, and extended his hand. “This is Miss Mangini.”

  Chico looked up, nodded imperceptibly, and went back to her salad.

  “Your first time here?” Armitage asked.

  “Yes. A beautiful place. I am always pleased to be in such a beautiful place when I come in friendship,” Trace said.

  “It’s beautiful now that Miss Mangini’s in it,” Armitage said.

  Chico smiled. “Thank you.” She bent over her salad again.

  “Have you come far?” Armitage asked Trace.

  “It is never too far to come to spend an evening in warmth, among people to whom living is all.” Chico kneed him under the table, hard, and Trace added, “From Los Angeles. I was sorry to hear of your troubles.”

  “Troubles?” Armitage looked puzzled.

  “The tragedy in your family. I read about it.”

  “Oh. Yes, thank you. I appreciate your concern.” He nodded several times slightly, more to himself than to Trace.

  “A terrible thing,” Trace said.

  “Yes.” Armitage gripped the edge of the table with both hands.

  “And no knowledge of who committed this odious act,” Trace said.

  “None. But someday,” Armitage said. He smiled broadly again and said, “If there’s anything I can do for you, please let me know, Mr. Rascali.”

  “Thank you. We will. And it’s Luigi,” Trace said.

  “Luigi.”

  After he left, Trace told Chico, “Doesn’t seem too broken up.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “He looks to me like he’s on a very tight string, the kind that snaps. Please. No more of that Mafia dialogue nonsense. I almost choked.”

  “Okay. I wanted to show you how it was done, was all.”

  “And why’d you tell him we were from Los Angeles?”

  “Because Las Vegas is too small a town. If he got curious about us, he’d be on the phone in a flash, and twenty minutes later he’d know everything there is to know about us. Vegas, everybody knows everybody. It’s got the small-town syndrome.”

  Chico paused later, during their entrées, and said, “By the way, don’t think I haven’t noticed that you’re hardly smoking.”

  “I’m going to win that bet,” Trace said. “Five hundred smackers for no excessive smoking, drinking, sexing, and exercise every day.”

  “We’ll see. But if you want, you can smoke tonight. Start your new life tomorrow.”

  Trace immediately lighted a cigarette. He noticed Armitage talking to two men sitting at a small table in the far corner of the room, near the piano. The two men were young, apparently in their late twenties and each was wearing a dark-blue pin-striped suit. Both had wavy hair and acne-pocked coarse features. And both were big. Trace noticed one of them glance at him as Armitage was talking to them.

  Outside, walking back to their hotel in the pleasant summer evening, Trace asked, “How was the meal?”

  “Mock French. Average. How were the prices?”

  “Real French. Average freaking outrageous.”

  “That’s what you get for making believe you’re taking me to dinner when you’re really working,” she said. “I knew when I saw that silly frog tie clip you were wearing.”

  “Sorry about that. Thought I might as well get the lay of the land.”

  When they started into the Plaza Hotel, Trace glanced back and saw the two young men in the pin-striped suits standing on the corner watching them. They had followed him from the restaurant. He thought about it for a moment, then decided not to tell Chico. At least not until he knew why they were being followed.

  6

  Trace’s Log:

  Tape Recording Number One, Devlin Tracy in the matter of Tony Armitage murder, one A.M. Thursday, Plaza Hotel in my least favorite city in the world, the Big Wormy Apple.

  Although it’s better than usual. My mother’s out of town.

  Chico is sleeping in the other room and, dammit, I am going to have a cigarette, or maybe a lot of them. I’ll cut way down tomorrow, enough to win my bet.

  But I’ve figured out something really important. If you’re listening, Groucho, no, this doesn’t have anything to do with the Armitage case. I said important, really important.

  I’ve figured out why people always gain weight when they quit smoking. This is a breakthrough. Fatties around the world may someday thank me for this.

  See, it takes time to smoke a cigarette. You figure, fishing around in your pocket for
your smokes, then finding an ashtray and a match, and then lighting it, and flicking it, and stubbing it out, maybe it takes you like two minutes a cigarette that you’re really involved in the act of smoking.

  So what, you say? Hah! Just wait and listen. So I smoke, on my good days, maybe four and a half packs. Ninety cigarettes. You take two minutes a cigarette times ninety, and you’re talking about 180 minutes. Three hours.

  That’s three hours that you used to be occupied doing something and now you don’t have anything to do with that time. It’s enough time to take up a hobby or something, but most people who quit smoking don’t know this and don’t anticipate it. So they wind up with all this extra time, but they don’t really know they’ve got it and they’re bored and they don’t quite know why, so because they’re not doing one natural thing, like smoking, they just automatically start doing another natural thing, like eating. And then, whammo, fat, diabetes, heart disease, and ugliness.

  This is the way it works. I can tell you out of personal experience and pain, and I think all those organizations that try to tell you how to quit smoking ought to warn you about this. And whoever is listening to this tape, in case I’ve gone to my final reward, I want you to know that this is a gift to humankind. I don’t expect royalties or any financial consideration at all. Consider it a donation from one real sweet guy that everybody liked and respected, and if you don’t believe me, ask Walter Marks, who sent me to New York to get involved in this stupid case.

  So where are we? All right. I’m just into town and already I’ve been to see Nick Armitage. This is a fast start on a job and I hope Groucho is duly impressed.

  Armitage looks like a weight lifter and Sarge says he’s got a reputation as a bad guy, so I’m going to keep an eye out and not cross him. At least, not any worse than I already did. I don’t know why he sent his two bookend bodyguards to follow us from the restaurant. Maybe my name, Luigi Rascali, didn’t fool him. It was probably Chico’s fault. He probably looked at me and said, Sure, this guy’s Luigi Rascali, but there’s no way that little Oriental woman is named Miss Mangini. It’s all her fault.

  Everything’s her fault. Tomorrow, I’ve got to drink less, and smoke less, and exercise, and stay away from fast women. Well, at least I don’t have to do gourmet cooking. I’ve pretty well decided not to go into Pop’s detective agency with him. If I did, my mother would just find a lot of excuses to be on the telephone with me, busting my chops. It’ll be a miracle if Sarge can make the agency pay. It’s tough when you have to have an unlisted phone for your business to keep your wife out of your hair.

  Speaking of which, I hope Sarge got her telephone call tonight. I don’t want her nosing around my apartment in Vegas and finding out I’ve gone to New York, and then calling Bruno, the ex-wife, and letting her know that I’m here, because as sure as God made green, yellow, and red apples, she’ll be here, sniffing around, whining and complaining about something. I can’t take that.

  I’ve got to win this bet with Chico. Losing is just too horrible to contemplate. Having to call What’s-his-name and the girl. I can’t do that. No way can I do that. Never.

  Sarge says he knows the Armitage kid’s mother. Well, maybe he can find something out there I’m pretty proud of myself and I know Groucho will be too. I need a private detective agency to help on this case, and by hard long negotiations I got one to help us for a hundred and twenty-five a day. They wanted two hundred, but I got them down to one-twenty-five. I’m nothing if not economical.

  And that brings us to expenses. Hotel bill and the car I rented for tomorrow and so forth are on credit card. Counting tip, and twenty-dollar bribe to Pierre, the maitre d’ who thinks his name is George, Chez Nick cost me a hundred and forty. My usual one hundred and fifty expenses for the day for miscellaneous stuff. And one-twenty-five for the detective agency. That adds up to…let’s see, four hundred and fifteen dollars. I’m starting to like this case better already.

  Oh, by the way, there’s a tape in the master file. It’s my brief meeting with Nick Armitage at his restaurant tonight. I have a hunch I’ll be seeing him again. Good night to all of you from all of us here in Gotham. Devlin Tracy signing off.

  7

  Trace woke up to find Chico kneeling astride his body. She was naked and beautiful and he pulled her down to him and kissed her for a long time.

  “You come here often?” he asked.

  “That’s kind of up to you, isn’t it?” She rested her cheek on his shoulder. “It was nice of you to get a suite of rooms, really nice.”

  “Suites for the sweet,” he said. “Besides, Groucho’s paying for it. Money is no object.”

  “Until you try to collect,” she said.

  “Live dangerously.”

  “I will. I’m calling room service and having breakfast sent up. Do you know how long it’s been that I didn’t have to get up and make you coffee and a piece of toast and a quarter of an egg and watch you pick at it, then go inside and throw up?”

  “I haven’t been doing that since I stopped drinking. Almost stopped drinking.”

  “That’s why I almost stopped nagging you. You want breakfast in bed?”

  “I thought you were going to have food sent up?”

  “You have a lewd and lascivious turn of mind,” Chico said. “I was talking about room-service breakfast in bed.”

  “Is our bed big enough for your breakfast? Will we get a suckling pig and five thousand pancakes to fit on this mattress?”

  Chico was gone and on the telephone, and Trace went back to sleep. When he woke, he was covered by a food tray. Chico was eating from another tray while she sat on the edge of the bed. Crumbs flew into the air from her direction.

  With her mouth full, she said, “Eat. Eat. You’ve got to go to work today.”

  “Yeah. The Mysterious Case of the Richard Nixon Mask Murder. When I’m a big detective, it’ll be the one case that everybody remembers and talks about.”

  “Shouldn’t you solve it first?”

  “Oh, I’ll solve it,” Trace said. He nibbled at the corner of a piece of cold toast and decided, once and for all, that he didn’t like toast. Intellectually, he regarded this as a big breakthrough. All his life, he had been trying to eat toast because everybody was always putting it on his plate, starting with his mother, who always burned hers and then scraped the charcoal from it with the edge of a kitchen knife. And because everybody always put toast on his plate, he had always assumed that he liked it and should try to eat it. But now he had faced up to the truth. He hated toast. He liked a bite of Danish once in a while and sometimes a hard seeded roll with a lot of butter. But he hated toast.

  “From now on, hold the toast,” he told Chico, waiting for her to ask him why.

  “Sure,” she said cheerily, without argument. “More for me. Why was he wearing that Richard Nixon mask?”

  “I don’t know. You think it’s important?”

  “It would seem like it, wouldn’t it?” She was chewing away remorselessly at her food, as if she were a mouse and she had to tunnel her way through a mountain of food to get home by nightfall. “Was he wearing the mask when he got killed?”

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  “I guess they can tell those things when they do autopsies and stuff. If the murderer put the mask on him, then it means one thing.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Chico said. “Don’t interrupt, I’m thinking. If the murderer put the mask on him, it means a ritual, a joke, a warning, I don’t know. But if he was wearing the mask on his own when he got killed, then it means something else.”

  “What something else?” Trace asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know anything about this whole thing yet, except that stupid clipping you’re carrying around. Maybe he was wearing a disguise, maybe he was going to a masquerade party, what do I know? It just means something else if he put the mask on himself. I think.”

  “I guess that’s logical, s
o I guess I’ll have to find out, won’t I?”

  “Put your little mind to it.”

  “Big mind, please. I’m going to be a big detective someday. Maybe.” He took the tray off his body and set it on the end table. “Aren’t you done eating yet?” he asked.

  She had a faint smile on her lips. “Not quite yet.”

  “Stay away from me, you wild, disgusting beast,” he said. “I’ve got to exercise.”

  The telephone rang.

  “Saved by the bell,” Trace said.

  “You think so?” Chico said, and vanished under the covers.

  Sarge said, “What are you up to, Dev?”

  “Fighting off a kamikaze assault on my virtue,” Trace said. “Why?”

  “I thought you were coming down here to the office. Don’t fight, surrender. I would.”

  “Get out of there, you animal,” Trace yelled.

  “What?” Sarge asked.

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” Trace said. “What’s up?”

  Chico giggled, and Trace slapped the back of her head through the blanket.

  “I got to thinking last night about Martha,” Sarge said.

  “Martha?”

  “Martha Armitage. So I called her.”

  “What’d you do that for?” Trace asked.

  “I figured it would be all right. I thought, What the hell, her husband’s probably out working at the nightclub. If a man answers, I hang up.”

  “Okay, so?”

  “I told her that I was involved in looking into her son’s death. She seemed excited by that.”

  “She remember you?”

  “Yes. Anyway, she’s coming down here today.”

  “Here where?”

  “To my office, at one o’clock.”

  “Good. One o’clock. I’ll be there,” Trace said.

  “If he’s done,” Chico said, her voice muffled by the blanket.