Chicago Boogie Woogie

by Gregory C. Randall

  “Well, I’m not sure; let me call her first. We respect the privacy of our residents.”

  Alfano leaned in next to Suarez and added, “I’m sure you do, but there is a chance that Miss Durant is injured, possibly dead. We need to find out. All on the QT, get it? And I’m sure you don’t want the police and the coroner wheeling their gurney through here in about an hour, leaving a mess and all. It would not be good for business. So, shall we?”

  The manager looked shocked. He did as told, knocked politely on Durant’s door; there was no response. Suarez firmly moved Mr. Grande to one side and banged with his fist. The pounding echoed up and down the hallway. A door across the hall opened about an inch.

  “Miss Durant is gone,” a small, high-pitched voice said through the crack. “She left an hour ago, all in a hurry. Passed me in the hallway, didn’t even say how do you do. Are you the police?”

  “Open up the apartment,” Suarez said to the manager.

  “Don’t you need a warrant or something?” Grande pleaded.

  “There may be an injured party inside, so open the door. If not, I will bust it open—and you will wait till hell freezes over for reimbursement from the city. What will it be?” Suarez took a few steps back and turned his shoulder toward the door.

  The manger hurriedly produced his keys and opened the door.

  “Wait here,” Alfano said to Mr. Grande before following Suarez into the suite. It was unoccupied. They did a cursory look around. An open bottle of bourbon sat on the kitchen counter along with a single glass that held a touch of brown liquor.

  “Where do you think she went?” Suarez said as he eyed the glass. Fingerprints covered its surface. He wrapped a thin towel around the glass and slipped it in his pocket.

  “I’ve got an idea. I need to make a call.”

  Alfano took out his wallet and looked at a card inside. He then picked up the phone. Nothing.

  “How do I make a phone call?” he yelled out to the manager.

  “Is it a local call?”

  “Look, just tell me. You don’t want Detective Suarez to ask you questions for the rest of the day at police headquarters.”

  “Double-click the cradle. Tell the switchboard the number you want; they will get you your party.”

  Alfano told the operator the number. It rang a few times; a male voice could be heard.

  “Good morning, sunshine. Alfano here. I need the address of Kitty Hill’s apartment.”

  “You could have asked me,” Suarez said behind him. “You did send me there on an errand involving a gun.”

  “I’m old and tired; I forgot. Sorry, David.” Alfano hung up.

  CHAPTER 26

  Suarez drove, they hit Santa Monica Boulevard again. Alfano was beginning to feel at home; he recognized landmarks and empty lots. They turned north onto Brockton, the one-story apartment complex on the left.

  “Take a lap around the block,” Alfano said. “Look for a yellow Packard ragtop.”

  Durant’s car was parallel-parked in the alley behind the building.

  “Good call, Alfano,” Suarez said.

  “You would have gotten here,” Alfano answered.

  “Maybe.”

  “Drop me here in the alley, then you go around to the front. Take the walkway that splits the complex, box her in. You’ve already met Candy; I don’t want to relive the pleasure.”

  “She did say you were a handsome guy, asked me if I knew your phone number. Want me to set you up? Could make for an interesting evening.”

  “You’re so thoughtful.”

  Alfano entered the two-building complex through the open gate of the rear entrance and studied the door of Kitty Hill’s apartment that faced the courtyard. He jacked his Colt and chambered a round. Obviously, Durant knew the back way in; she’d been here many times. Durant and Hill were in the porn business together; how far their other business dealings went, he had a few ideas, but nothing concrete. Hill was the financial and management side; Durant acquired the talent and handled production. They needed fresh faces, girls and boys who moved back and forth in the film industry. And they all needed a buck.

  The door to the apartment was closed but not shut tight; a finger-width gap ran down the doorframe. Using his left hand, he slowly pushed the door inward. Daylight streamed through the high windows at the back of the front room. Durant was on her hands and knees, scratching away at the floor. The grey rug had been pulled aside and lay crumpled against the wall. A small chrome revolver lay on the floor a foot from Durant’s right hand. Alfano watched her bang around on the floor with her fists, then she stopped and scratched with her nails at the floorboards.

  “Fuck, it was here. I know it’s here,” she mumbled.

  Durant paused, hooked her fingernails in a seam, and slowly pulled up the floorboards that covered the hidey-hole. She gasped, reached in, and waved her hand back and forth through the space. “Fuckers, shit.”

  “Looking for something, lover?” Alfano said.

  Durant flinched, then reached for the revolver.

  “Don’t, just don’t. It would be a waste to shoot you. I’d get nothing out of it. So just don’t, Miss Durant. Just crawl back a few feet, slowly stand, and put your back to the wall. Be careful, very careful.”

  Durant looked furious but did as ordered. Alfano crossed the space between the door and the desk. Without looking, he kicked the small revolver backward across the floor toward the door behind him.

  “Take a seat, Maxime. I have a few questions.” He pointed to a chair to her right.

  “You have no jurisdiction here, Alfano. Why don’t you go home to bum-fuck Illinois and play with the pigs and cows—you got nothing on me.” Durant hinted a smile, her eyes grew larger, her focus now behind him.

  Alfano felt the muzzle of a pistol at the back of his neck.

  “Is this the man you were expecting, dearie?” Candy Longacre said. She blew into Alfano’s ear. He grimaced.

  “He is a bit of a dreamboat, but shit, there’s dozens in this town, a dime a fucking dozen. What do you want me to do with him, Miss Durant? Shoot him?”

  Durant stiffened; a smile came over her face. There was nothing kitten-like about her now. She had the look a snake made before it struck. “That’s a brilliant idea, but right now I’d rather take the opportunity to . . . Candy!”

  Alfano heard the sickening thud of steel on bone. He heard, as well as felt, Candy Longacre’s body as she fell against him and collapsed to the floor.

  “Detective Suarez, I hope?”

  “And not a minute too soon,” Suarez said.

  Alfano kept his weapon on Durant as he heard handcuffs being snapped on Longacre. She moaned.

  “She’ll live,” Suarez said.

  Still pointing the pistol at Durant, Alfano nodded at the chair. She sat. He grabbed another chair and placed it directly in front of her.

  “That hole is an interesting place to put something. What were you looking for, Maxime?”

  “None of your fucking business,” the actress said.

  “Au contraire, it is my business and that of Detective Suarez as well. What were you looking for?”

  Durant’s glare was acerbic, cutting. Her acting skills were good; the hair on the back of Alfano’s neck rose like the hair on a dog’s back. She crossed her arms, which had the effect of pushing up and accentuating her breasts.

  “Look, Maxime, I want to go home to bum-fuck Illinois—get out of this sunny land of Sodom and Gomorrah. And my patience is gone, too, so I’ll start. You can fill in where you want. Okay?”

  “Fuck you,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “First of all, the gun, the movies, and the ledgers and notebook, and what looked like Kitty Hill’s diary that were in the hidey-hole are now in Detective Suarez’s possession. He tells me the movies are quite entertaining.” Alfano turned to the now awake Candy Longacre. “The reviews are that your bits, dearie, are overacted and exaggerated. Somebody recognized you from your silent films from at
least ten years ago.”

  Candy glowered at him but said nothing. Alfano turned back to Durant.

  “Detective Suarez is getting warrants for the bank and the safety deposit boxes listed inside the books. His people are good at figuring out the codes that you and Kitty used. You shouldn’t have used the bank directly across the street from the Beverly Wilshire; that made it too easy.”

  “I don’t know anything about any banks or boxes,” Durant said.

  “Please, of course you do. Detective Suarez tells me that you have a little money in your bank account yet live well beyond your means—living large, as they say. The porn industry is a cash-and-carry business; reminds me of Prohibition. Al Capone learned the hard way, and now you will, too. The IRS will want to look into all this. I’m sure the detective will pass on the information.”

  “I earned that money.”

  “I am certain you did—moving on. Adam Roberts and his boyfriend are dead. Detective Suarez tells me that what happened was made to look like an accident. He believes it was, in fact, murder. His cracker-jack coroner tells us there was a barbiturate residue in the drinks, so after having their drinks they may have accidentally fallen into the pool and drowned. Me? I’m going with their being rolled into the pool while unconscious, but the betting money is even on that. We found a fingerprint on a piece of broken glass that matches yours. I’m doubling down on you drugging them and rolling them into the pool.”

  “Why the hell would I do that?” Maxime said.

  “For the same reason people have been killing people since Cain and Abel,” Alfano said.

  “What?”

  “Money, and to shut them up because you killed Hines Melnik, and Roberts saw you do it. With Roberts dead, you would be in the clear. You could keep all the money.”

  “I didn’t kill Melnik. Melnik’s the one who tried to kill us. We went there to get paid; he owed us, all legal and all. He pulls this gun out of the safe—”

  Candy mumbled something.

  “One second, Maxime. What was that, Miss Longacre?” Alfano asked.

  “Maxime, you stupid bitch, keep your fucking mouth shut. They got nothing on you,” Candy screamed. “Don’t say shit.”

  “Good advice, Candy,” Alfano said. “Maxime, that’s the best advice you’ll get today. But, since you just admitted that you and Adam were there Thursday night, and Detective Suarez needs a perpetrator for the murder, and now that Adam is dead, my guess is he’s going to go with you.”

  “I insist,” Suarez said.

  “See, Maxime.”

  “What?” Suarez said, turning his head to the door.

  Alfano heard footsteps; he looked past Candy, still on the floor, to Suarez. A uniformed cop had arrived and handed the detective a note. Alfano waited.

  Suarez whistled. “This is all?” he asked the uniform.

  “They are still looking; Detective Loomis says they have three more banks to visit. May not finish until tomorrow.”

  “Thanks.” Suarez walked over to Alfano and showed him the writing.

  “Wow, interesting,” Alfano said, then looked up at Suarez. “This was in the safety deposit boxes?”

  “Yes, Detective, almost a quarter of a million dollars in fifties and hundreds; not new. It was like the money you’d find on the street, not in a bank.”

  “There’s more in the other banks, I’m sure. What do you know about this, Miss Durant?”

  Durant’s face was wet from perspiration. “Nothing. I don’t know nothing about any of that money,” she said.

  “Your boxes, your money.” Alfano thought for moment, then smiled. “Unless it wasn’t your money. Detective, do you know a John Roselli? He was called ‘Handsome Johnny’ in Chicago.”

  “Sure, he’s been here eight or ten years. High-profile Hollywood type, listed as the executive producer on a few films. There are rumors about connections to the mobs back East—your town, too—Capone and Frank Nitti. But Roselli has kept his nose clean here.”

  “Yeah, that’s where I knew him. I was with Miss Durant having dinner the other night at Musso’s and . . . what was the name?”

  “Musso and Frank Grill. Good prime rib.”

  “Right, so Saturday night Maxime introduces Roselli to me. I could tell they were more than friends. Well, I knew Handsome Johnny back in Chicago. He took off for Los Angeles during the Capone and the Outfit’s best days. Now, why would he do that? There was nothing out here on the Coast at the time, just oil and movies. The oil didn’t mean much to the Outfit, but LA had films, unions, cute girls, big budgets, entertainment, and things that go bump-bump in the night. All things that the mobs like.”

  Alfano was beginning to enjoy himself. He looked at Suarez and spoke to Durant.

  “Maxime, you were John Roselli’s bagman—I mean bagwoman—for the Chicago mob, weren’t you? The money from their operations in gambling, booze, prostitution, and films needed cleaning, a way to make it legit. And after Capone was convicted of tax evasion, they really needed it washed. You got the Chicago money from Roselli, passed it on to Melnik for his film interests—all his interests—and then made sure it came back to them through the ticket sales.”

  Alfano could practically feel Durant’s eyes burning a hole in his forehead.

  “Don’t say nothing, Maxie, don’t. He’s making up shit—aren’t you, you dumb fuck,” Candy said.

  “The way I see it,” Alfano said, “Thursday night you went to Melnik to extort him, make him pay to keep his mouth shut about what happened and to give you a bigger piece. He believed you were the one who shot Kitty—and Kitty Hill was in this up to her pretty little neck, too. When Melnik told you I was coming out here to LA, you believed that I was coming to arrest you for Kitty’s murder. Am I right?”

  “Melnik thought it was me,” Durant said in a low voice. “I was on my knees next to her. She was dying.”

  “Jesus, Maxie, shut the fuck up,” said Candy.

  Durant ignored her. “When Melnick came through the pass-through door, he found me with her. Blood was everywhere; he went nuts. The gun was a few feet away. He tried to grab it, I got it first, and pointed it at him. He stopped. ‘We need to clean this all up,’ he said. ‘I have a hundred thousand riding on the movie. I can’t have my star wrapped up in a murder.’ I told him I didn’t do it. I found her on the floor. He told me to get out. He said if it wasn’t me, then it had to be Adam who killed her. But I knew different—it was Hines.”

  “Sure you did. Then what happened?” Suarez said.

  “I was in a daze. I loved her,” Durant said so pitifully that Alfano almost believed her. “Hines took the gun and put it in his belt . . . locked the door,” she continued. “I saw him lock it. It was strange that the door was unlocked to begin with, I remember thinking that. I took one last look at Kitty and followed him back into his room. He told me to go to my room and change into clean clothes—mine were covered in her blood. He would clean up everything; he told me to meet him in the back stairway in fifteen minutes, bring my bloody clothes so we could dump them. I did what he said.”

  “Melnik told you that Roberts shot Kitty—how did he know?” Alfano said.

  “I don’t know. He just said it. She was dying when I found her. All she said was the name Ian. I don’t know who Ian is. Do you?”

  “You were at Melnik’s last Thursday night?” Suarez asked.

  “Yeah, you were right. We both were. It was money, a lot of money. We were owed for six months of work, things that Kitty arranged. He owed me for the vig on the drop—Adam didn’t know anything about that side venture. Melnik invited us over before we started on the picture, to have a clean slate, ‘even-up everything,’ he said. We went to his upstairs office. We talked, came to an agreement. He went to the wall safe. When he turned his back to us, he had the gun—it looked like the gun that killed Kitty. He was out of control. He pointed it at Adam and kept screaming, ‘I’ll kill you, you son of a bitch! I’ll kill you for killing Kitty.’ Adam denied it, said h
e didn’t know what Hines was talking about. Adam began backing away. That’s when I threw an ashtray at Hines. It was big. It hit Hines’s arm, and he dropped the gun. Adam pushed him away, grabbed the gun, and shot him in the chest. Twice, I think. Then we ran.”

  “Who took the money?” Suarez said.

  “Money? What money?” Durant protested.

  “The money in the safe,” Suarez said.

  “You said he was going to pay you for your work in the porn industry. That’s what it was for, right?” Alfano said.

  Durant looked again at Alfano. “We earned every fucking nickel. It was ours.”

  “Yeah, but there was a lot more money than Roberts ever expected, right?” Alfano said. “A lot more than what was owed the two of you. You knew what the money was; it was the mob’s money. You knew there were hundreds of thousands of dollars. What did you do? Tell Roberts that you’d make sure he’d get what was due him?”

  When Durant didn’t answer, Alfano continued. “He wanted half right then, and you panicked. So you and Roberts split the money, and both of you took off and left Melnik dead on the floor of his office. You made it look like a robbery?”

  Durant stared at him but said nothing.

  “So, Roberts killed Melnik,” Alfano said. “Is he the one that sent the photo of Kitty to Melnik? The one he stole from the coroner’s office in Chicago?”

  Durant grinned. “Maybe? I don’t know. Roberts took something from the desk as we left; it could have been it. Doesn’t make any fucking difference. I saw him put two bullets in the man’s chest. Said it served the asshole right for stiffing us. He laughed at his joke.”

  “Detective Suarez, how much money was in the safe in Roberts’s bedroom?”

  Durant’s eyes widened; her face reddened.

  “Someone failed to lock the tumbler,” Suarez said. “We were going to get a safecracker, but we got lucky. The safe was as empty as a banker’s heart. And there was a nice handprint on the top of the chair that sits directly under the safe; the safe was wiped, not the chair. The prints matched the ones on a piece of broken glass . . .”