Evan Horne [02] Death of a Tenor Man

by Bill Moody

  “I’m all ears.”

  “Yeah, and nothing between them. Gallio’s clowns will be back, not here maybe, but you’ll be hearing from them or maybe Gallio himself. Unless Trask can put something together, Sonny Wells goes down as an unsolved murder by unknown assailants.”

  “You know better than that, Coop.”

  “No, I don’t, and neither do you. There’s no way to link Gallio to Wells’s death, at least not yet.”

  “What are you saying?” I expected much more opposition than this—pressure from Trask, caution from Coop.

  “Metro would love to nail Gallio, but he’s always been too slick,” Coop says. He glances toward the window. We can see Ace busy in the kitchen. “I’d keep your professor buddy out of this, okay? Gallio’s been into prostitution, pornography, loan-sharking, probably skimming and money laundering, some drugs, but he’s always managed to keep a legitimate front. It’s hard to get anything on him. He’s vulnerable somewhere, and you’ve obviously struck a nerve on something he doesn’t want brought up again.”

  I wonder if I should tell Coop I’m sitting on Pappy Dean’s confession. I decide to wait until I’ve talked with Louise Cody.

  “Trask thinks this Louise Cody is tied in with this some way, and since you’re the only one anybody feels like talking to, he’s willing to give you some leeway. Within certain limits,” Coop adds.

  “What kind of limits?”

  “For starters, you don’t go off on your own and do something stupid. You also keep me up to date on what’s going on, and I will advise you how to play things out.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Coop says. “And besides, you’ll have the advantage of a crack police detective to sift through and sort out information.”

  I can’t resist. “Who, you or Trask?”

  “Fuck you, Horne.”

  “Gentlemen, such language,” Natalie says. She joins us at the table. She’s fluff-dried her hair, and her skin glows in the late-afternoon sun. The bikini is gone, replaced by white shorts, T-shirt, and sandals.

  “Sorry, ma’am,” Coop says. “Sometimes us boys just get carried away.”

  Ace opens the patio door and comes out with a platter of steaks. “Let me get this grill fired up, and we’ll be eating soon. Coop, you want to give me a hand?”

  “Sure,” Coop says. He joins Ace at the barbecue, and they immediately get into a debate about charcoal versus Ace’s gas grill.

  “A cop and a professor,” I say to Natalie. “This should be good.”

  “Two cops. Don’t forget me,” Natalie says.

  “Not possible. Why don’t you help Ace with the salad? I’m going to try out the piano.”

  “It’s not too soon, is it?”

  “I’ll find out real quick.”

  “How did it go with Pappy?”

  “More complications,” I say, keeping my voice low. “I’ll tell you about it later. I’m seeing Louise tonight. Want to come?”

  “I wouldn’t miss it.”

  I go inside and sit down at Ace’s grand piano. I take off the bandage, flex my fingers, and gingerly touch the keys. It’s a little out of tune, but with my hand, it doesn’t matter much. There’s no shooting pain up my arm, but if I think about it, I can still feel Karl’s size-thirteen shoe on my hand. My fingers are stiff, and stretching even less than an octave is difficult. I run through a few scales, some arpeggios, miss more than a few notes, then try a couple of tunes—ballads only. Everything is stiff, but I’m optimistic. Another day’s rest, and I’ll be able to wow Brent Tyler and the folks at the mall.

  That’s all, though. If Wynton Marsalis, Branford Marsalis, or the whole Marsalis family calls tonight, I’ll have to pass.

  Taking Natalie with me is, I think, a good idea. If Louise Cody is nervous, maybe Natalie’s presence can calm her down, make her feel more comfortable. When I tell Coop we’re going to hear some jazz at Pogo’s, I don’t think he really believes me, but I get no argument.

  “Have a good time,” he says. “I’m going to educate old Ace here on the intricacies of country-and-western music.”

  “I didn’t know there were any,” Ace says, winking at me.

  “You’ve got a lot to learn, professor.”

  With steaks in our bellies, we leave Ace and Coop mellowing out over the last of the wine and head for the expressway in Ace’s Jeep. I fill Natalie in with a censored version of my earlier talk with Pappy Dean at the Moulin Rouge. I leave out his confession. She listens, attentively and doesn’t say anything for several minutes. When she finally speaks, it’s with caution.

  “You’re getting in awfully deep on this, Evan. How much are you going to tell Coop?”

  I keep my hands on the wheel, my eyes on the road. “Coop doesn’t have any jurisdiction up here. How much do I have to tell him?”

  “Enough to let him help. He didn’t have to come up himself for this extradition thing. He could have sent anyone. It’s really just a messenger job.”

  “Did he tell you that?”

  “He didn’t have to. He’s here because he’s worried about your involvement.”

  We lapse into silence again. Natalie is right, of course. I just feel like I’m so close to figuring things out I’m afraid if-I tell all, Trask will cut me out of the loop. Natalie doesn’t press, about this or anything so far. Maybe that’s why I like her so much.

  “Okay, if I feel like I’m over my head, I’ll let Coop know.”

  “Maybe you won’t have to” is her only reply.

  When we pull into Louise’s driveway, the door opens almost immediately. She must have been watching for us. The look on her face tells me how surprised she is to see Natalie, and for a few minutes I think it’s a bad idea. I introduce them and watch a rapport gradually build up as Louise offers us coffee on the patio. Natalie is picking up all the signals.

  “Maybe it would be better if I go,” she says.

  “No, no,” Louise says. She pats Natalie’s hand and smiles at me. “You stay right here.” Louise is casual tonight in jeans and a baggy top. After exhausting all the small talk, she glances at Natalie once, then turns to me.

  “Well, where do I begin?”

  “You could start with Lavonne, I guess.”

  Louise smiles and shakes her head. “Lord, I never thought I’d hear that name again. I guess you know it was one of Wardell’s tunes—at least, he recorded it. I guess I just thought it was a better stage name than Louise. What can I say. I was only seventeen.”

  “Tell me about the Moulin Rouge.”

  “Well, I guess you’ve read the journal.”

  “Of course, but I know there was more than that.”

  She nods and gives Natalie a smile. “He doesn’t miss much, does he?”

  “I’m just beginning to realize that,” Natalie says.

  “Yeah, there was a lot more. I was so young and so caught up in the show biz thing, I didn’t even realize what I was seeing sometimes.”

  “What do you mean?” I light a cigarette and nod yes to Natalie’s offer of more coffee. She takes our cups and disappears into the house. Louise seems to relax even more and leans back in her chair.

  “When that choreographer came to L.A. and auditioned girls—it was Wardell who told me about it—I just knew I had to be in that show. I was working in a little revue, knew all the jazz guys, and was head over heels in love with Wardell. That baby could play.”

  “And you knew Sonny Wells too, right?”

  “Yeah, poor Sonny. He never could straighten up. He worshiped Wardell, wanted to play like him.”

  “He must have been close. Pappy says he replaced Wardell for a while.”

  Louise looks at me sharply, then relaxes again. “Okay, you got me there too. I knew the minute you left the other night, I’d slipped and called him Pappy. How much did he tell you about—?”

  “Just about everything.”

  Louise shakes her head. “I guess it had to come out ev
entually. He was trying to protect me, I guess, but I don’t think he killed anybody, do you?”

  “No, I don’t think so either, but don’t worry, Louise, I’m not interested in that.”

  “I don’t know why I believe you,” she says, “but I do. Anyway, I got the job and they brought us to Las Vegas about two months before the Moulin Rouge opened. They had us staying in these nice little homes over on the west side, the Cadillac Arms, three or four girls to a house. There were twenty-seven of us. The band came in a week before opening night, and Wardell, that rascal, didn’t even tell me he was in the band. Wanted it to be a surprise. That’s why it was such a shock.” She stops and looks around at Natalie, who arrives with more coffee.

  “We only had two shows a night,” Louise says. “A dinner show at seven-thirty and a late one at three in the morning so we could get all the Strip business. And we got them, every night.”

  “What did you do between shows?”

  Louise shrugs. “Went back to the house, cooked, just a lot of girl things.” She and Natalie share a conspiratorial smile. “We never went on the Strip. We weren’t allowed to. It was right on our contract, but we didn’t care. We were having too much fun. Sometimes we hung out in the casino just to see all the celebrities. When we opened they had two nights of press coverage from all over the country. There was even a photo of us on the cover of Life magazine, all the dancers. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to be part of that show.” She pauses and looks at me sadly.

  “Then it all changed, the second night. Wardell was in bad shape then, but he made the rehearsals okay. After the dinner show, we went home as usual, cooked, relaxed, then got ready for the late show. When we got back to the club, I knew something was wrong. The talk backstage was that Wardell was missing.”

  “What about Teddy Hale, the dancer?”

  “Oh, he was there, knowing what he knew. They delayed the start of the show, but the audience was getting itchy, so finally we had to go on.” Louise looks away toward the light of the city. “I never saw anything so sad as that empty chair in the sax section where Wardell should have been when we came out for the first number. But no one expected what happened. None of the musicians knew where he was, and Teddy Hale wasn’t talking, but nobody seemed that worried.”

  I stub out my cigarette and stare out at the lights of Las Vegas. Miles missed some gigs too during his bad period, just didn’t show up.

  “Nobody would tell me anything,” Louise goes on. “I was just this little girl dancer, and nobody knew I had known Wardell before in L.A. He wanted to keep it that way.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I think he was trying to protect me or something. When we finally got the word that his... body had been found in the desert, and Teddy gave his story to the police, we were all in shock.”

  “Do you believe Teddy’s story, that Wardell died in his room and he panicked and took him out to the desert?”

  “I don’t know. I wanted to because the alternative meant somebody had killed him, and I didn’t want to think about that.” Louise stops and wipes a tear from her eye. “I don’t know, I guess it’s possible it happened the way Teddy said. He was scared, I guess. I know some of the musicians got on him for not telling the truth. Wardell was taken back to Los Angeles—he’s buried there, you know—and poor Sonny came up to replace him. Have they found out what happened to him?”

  “Not yet, but the police are working on it. Me too,” I add.

  “I’ll bet,” Louise says. “Well, after that, the show just went on as they say, but I started paying more attention to things, listening to the talk around the club.”

  “Like what?”

  “Every single night, the casino bosses cleaned out the cashier’s cage, took all the money out in bags. I saw them a couple of times myself. We started hearing that the club had never been planned to be so successful, but baby it was. Packed every night.”

  “You think there really was pressure from the Strip hotels?”

  “I just know we weren’t doing their business any good.”

  “What happened the night it closed?”

  “We did the dinner show and went home, and somebody called us, told us not to come back, the door was padlocked.”

  “Just like that.”

  “Just like that. We didn’t know what to do. The girls had come from all over the country, and we were just suddenly stranded here. We hung around for a couple of weeks, but it was clear the Moulin Rouge was over.”

  “Did everybody get paid?”

  “Oh yeah. We got paid, I know the band got paid, but we heard some of the waiters and other staff didn’t, and later I heard none of the bills were ever paid, food and beverage places. The three partners filed for bankruptcy, and that was it.”

  “Who were the three partners?”

  Louise stops and glances from me to Natalie and back again before going on. “Anthony Gallio’s brother was one, I’m sure of that.”

  Just the mention of Gallio’s name causes Natalie to shift in her chair, and even more so when I ask the next obvious question. “What’s your connection to Gallio?”

  Louise expels a deep breath. “I let myself be talked into serving on a committee for the renovation of the Moulin Rouge. I put them off for so long, but they thought it was funny I didn’t want to be in on it since I’d worked there. I don’t know what exactly, but Gallio has some real estate development deal going, and I think it includes the land where the Moulin Rouge is.”

  I still don’t see where this is going, or why Gallio could pressure Louise, or even what Wardell Gray’s death had to do with all of it. I tell Louise about seeing her with Gallio when Natalie, Ace and I had breakfast, but not about Gallio’s visit with Natalie and me at Spago. “It was from a distance, but you seemed really upset.”

  Louise is surprised. “I didn’t know you were there.”

  “Neither did Gallio.”

  “God, this is such a mess,” Louise says. “When I came back to Las Vegas and got into real estate, I met Gallio, not knowing about his brother. He was very nice, very charming, and tried to rekindle some old fires.”

  Louise pauses again and won’t look at either one of us. I glance at Natalie, and she cautions me with her eyes. Finally Louise looks up.

  “I told you I was very young, but there are some things I’m not very proud of. Anyway, he set me up with a development company after I got my broker’s license.”

  “And now he wants inside information about the Moulin Rouge property.”

  Louise nods. “I think he wants to buy it up, build something new. There aren’t many people interested in investing in the west side, not after the riots a few months ago, after the Rodney King verdict. It was only much later that I found out about Gallio’s brother and realized he was the same guy hanging around the Rouge, really coming on to me. He’d seen me with Wardell a couple of times, told me I could do better than a nigger sax player. Well, I brushed him off, but I got scared when I realized he was one of the partners.”

  “And that’s when Pappy got in the act?”

  “Yeah, he was like a big brother to me, said he’d take care of Gallio and all his brothers, you know, talking big, I don’t know what happened. All I know is I didn’t see him or Pappy around anymore.”

  Wardell Gray, Sonny Wells, Pappy Dean, Louise Cody, and Anthony Gallio, all tied up thirty-seven years ago in the same secret. And now it’s slowly but surely unraveling. There was still one other thing on my mind.

  “Why didn’t you write any of this stuff down in your diary?”

  “I did,” Louise says. “There’s another diary I kept, the real one.”

  Natalie and I both stare at her. “You kept two diaries?”

  “Crazy, huh? I had some wild notion I would write a book someday about the Moulin Rouge or at least something for Rachel, to show her what it was like then. I didn’t want all that bad stuff in it so”—Louise holds up her hands and shrugs—”I kept two diaries.”
>
  It’s suddenly so quiet I think I can hear the sound of cars on the expressway a couple of miles away. Two diaries. If the real one, as Louise calls it, is detailed enough, it could answer a lot of questions. If Anthony Gallio knows about it, he must be getting very nervous. “Louise, I need to see that other diary.”

  Louise slumps back in her chair. “Somebody else already has.”

  “Gallio?”

  “No, Rachel. That’s why she left.”

  Of course. Now it was starting to make sense. That would explain Rachel’s flight, anger toward her mother, and hostility to me.

  “And she thinks Wardell Gray was her father? Was that it?”

  Louise looks from me to Natalie and almost laughs. “Wardell? God no, she thinks Anthony Gallio is her father.”

  None of us speak again until Louise stands up. “Would you excuse me for a moment?” she says. She goes in the house, and Natalie and I are left to ponder her revelation in silence.

  When Louise comes back, she’s composed but quiet. I still have a couple of more questions though, which she seems to expect.

  “What did you tell Rachel about her father?”

  “I told you I’m not proud of some things I did. I was always going to tell her, but the right time never seemed to come. When she was old enough to ask, I told her he’d been killed in Korea. I know I should have told her the truth, but the longer it went on the less I knew how to approach it. And now she’s found out it was all a lie.”

  “I’ve got a lead on her now,” I say. “Let me see what I can do. Maybe I can bring her around.”

  Louise nods, but she doesn’t seem very optimistic. “She’s a very determined girl.”

  “Just like her mother, I bet,” Natalie says.

  That brings a smile to Louise. “Well, we better be going,” I say, getting to my feet. Louise walks us to the door. When we pass the wall with the photo of the Moulin Rouge band, this time she gives me time to study it.

  “That’s Sonny,” she says, pointing to one of the saxophone players. “And that big hulk on bass is Pappy Dean.”