Then the doorman nodded, tipped his hat to her, and disappeared into a room across the mini-lobby marked storage just as I was approaching the front doors. She quickly let me in, whispered “Two A, one floor up,” and I left her in the foyer to deal with the doorman and the fool’s errand she’d sent him on.
I took the stairs and waited at the top of the landing. I could hear some muffled conversation between her and the doorman below, then maybe thirty seconds later, she emerged from the self-service elevator down the hall.
Bunny was a good-looking broad for her age—what, fortyfive? Fifty? One of those larger-than-life dames, the sort that went out with Mae West, Jean Harlow, and Jane Russell. She’d held up well, had all her curves and no apparent flab; whether she exercised or just drew decent genes, I had no idea. But she was the kind of older woman who could give a guy lessons, purple-streaked blonde bouffant and all.
I let her open the door, stepped inside while she closed it and flipped on the light switch. She started to say something, but I tapped my mouth with one forefinger and my ear with the other.
She returned the nod, motioning me to tag along.
Taking time out only to hang up her white fur coat in the front closet, she gave the apartment a professional systematic search, starting with the windows onto the street.
The pad was small, considering how important and wealthy a woman Bunny was, just a living room, bedroom, small kitchen, and bath; but she probably had other residences. This was one appointed in white with sleek, rounded, off-white furnishings that fit the art moderne look of the old building, though the carpet was a more current pink shag.
We wound up back in the living room.
“No bugs,” she said. “You’re sure a suspicious bastard.”
“I’m alive, aren’t I? How secure is your office?”
“I have it swept once a month,” she said, “and I don’t mean the rugs. The law can’t legally tap the phones, but it gets done anyway, and I’m not exactly in a business where I could lodge a complaint.”
“Understood. Guess the phone game I played was unnecessary.”
“No, with what’s been going on, there’s no sense taking chances. Now sit down and take a load off. Want a drink?”
I plopped onto a plump couch that proved as comfy as it looked. “Got a cold beer handy?”
“Coming right up.”
She hip-swayed out to the kitchen—no come-on, just the kind of natural gait that’s made the world go round since Eve was a rib.
I heard her pop a pair of cans in there, and she came back in, sat beside me and passed me a very cold Schlitz.
“That’s some smart cookie,” she said, “they got heading up the outfit that almost busted your ass.”
“Walter Crowley.”
“That’s the one.”
“Well, he wasn’t smart enough to hold onto me the first time around.” I sipped icy beer. Nectar of the gods. “Bastard may have had a lead that’ll take him to Gaita.”
Bunny studied me over the top of her beer can. “You do get around,” she told me.
“Think so?”
She nodded. “I heard the same thing. So we covered for her. Rounded up a trustworthy lookalike who filled in for her, and a good-size Cuban who could make it stick by admitting he was the guy caught rolling around in the dark with her.”
“One of my fellow employees at the Farango Car Wash?”
“No, but the big, not-so-dumb galoot works for the laundry that handles the Farango account. He told the cops—local and federal alike—that he wore those coveralls home, to put on while working on his car.”
“Put on is right.” I chuckled appreciatively. “Not a bad story.”
“Not bad at all. It all tied in. The cop even identified them, much to Crowley’s disgust and dismay.”
“Nice. Thanks.”
She laughed.
“What?” I asked.
“The cop? The one who identified our lookalike gal as Gaita? When he first saw our substitute, he asked if he could see her with her top down. Thought he might be able to identify her better.”
I almost snorted beer through my nose, laughing. “Guess you can’t blame a guy for trying.”
Her laughter subsided. “I just wish that’s all there was to it. I don’t like having a leak in this operation, and we’ve obviously sprung one. Think it came from someone on this end?”
“I hate to say it, doll, but I’m inclined to think so. I doubt it came from Luis Saladar’s side. I mean, this all went down too quickly. How far can you trust the girls at your place?”
Bunny took a slow sip of the beer and shrugged. “Who knows? How far you can you trust any girl on the game? I treat them good, better than good, and I don’t take on anybody who seems hinky to me...but every girl in that line of trade is damaged goods, Morg.”
“I know. It’s an old, sad, and very true story.”
She nodded. “Every one has something to hide, or something that might break them. They’re scared, most of them, or they wouldn’t be there in the first place. If Daddy wasn’t their first sexual experience, their uncle was, or some neighbor or school bully.”
“Yet I’ve known girls on the game who liked their work.”
“Some do. Some actually enjoy it, at least part of the time. But they all have come to a place in their lives where this is their best option for making for a living...and almost all of them are scared.”
“Who else knew that you were helping me? Who else could know about us taking Jaimie Halaquez on?”
Her frown made her years show, wrinkles coming out from hiding. “Nobody that I know of. Just Gaita and Tami, but then, some of the others had to sense something was up...and might have put the pieces together.” Her dark blues locked onto me. “What are you thinking, Morgan? I can see the wheels turning.”
I shrugged. “Just that Jaimie Halaquez was a regular patron of yours, Bunny. Sometimes girls on the game have special clients—sometimes they even marry them. Maybe one of your girls latched on to the son of a bitch.”
“Fuck,” she said, that single dirty word at odds with her quiet elegance, even if she was a whorehouse madam. “You were right the first time—Halaquez is a son of a bitch. He wasn’t exactly well liked, Morgan. The guy was a bastard, a real louse.”
“Still...girls have been known to fall for real louses.” I grinned at her. “I’ve even had a few fall for me.”
She didn’t grin back. “Not a louse like this one. He paid women to humiliate him, and then he took it out on them.”
“I heard that before. Maybe you could be more specific.”
She swallowed, seeming ill at ease—and Bunny was not the ill-at-ease type. “Morgan, Halaquez would want that...that sick submissive shit, whole nine yards. Handcuffs, chains, whips, ball gags—you know?”
“I know. Not my scene, but I know.”
“But after? After, he would beat the girl, like I told you. But on several occasions he...I know they’re prostitutes, Morgan, I have no illusion what I am or what they are...but he raped them. He goddamn raped them, Morgan.”
Nausea fought the beer in my stomach. “And how does a whore go to the cops with that complaint?”
Bunny’s tone was icy. “She doesn’t. She doesn’t.” She shuddered. “He could really rip a girl up, that bastard.”
“Which girl?”
“Well, he had a few favorites, but not many of my girls would put up with him, after the first time.”
I put a hand on her shoulder. “Keep it in mind, Bunny. Someone’s holding hands with a killer, and that someone could be the next one taken out of the game.”
She shook her head, and a purple tendril fought its way free from the bouffant. “What girl in her right mind would want to be with a sick sadistic rapist like Halaquez?”
“Maybe a girl whose first experience was having Daddy rape her. Maybe a girl who likes money. Don’t ask me, Bunny—find a shrink, or write Dear Abby. But it’s possible. Did you put the word out
about that Consummata dame?”
She made a dismissive gesture. “I placed a few calls. Nothing. It must just be a rumor.”
“Make more calls. If this woman is the queen of sadomasochism, like you and others in the know keep telling me, she’s right up Halaquez’s dirty alley.”
Bunny shot me an angry look and slammed the beer can on the glass coffee table nearby. “Damn it, Morgan! Since you showed up, there’s been nothing but trouble.”
“Hell, don’t look at me. I didn’t ask for it.”
“Maybe so, but it seems to grow where you go, like a sickness you’re carrying. Typhoid Morgan, that’s you!”
“Thanks a bunch.”
She sighed. Shook her head. “Take today. Today, I had to go down to the morgue and identify a body, and—”
I sat up. “Whose body?”
She tried waving it off. “Just a guy. Former client.”
“Just a guy? So why did the cops call you to make the I.D.?”
“He had an address book on him—six names in it, five untraceable, the other is lucky me. He’s been coming into the Mandor Club off and on for maybe three years. No trouble, just a customer the kids liked, and who wasn’t afraid to spend money. We knew him as Richard Best. Dick Best.” She laughed a little. “Some of the girls called him the Best Dick.”
“Why, was he hung like a horse?”
“Almost the opposite. He came to the Mandor to be pampered, and half the time, he never got around to the sex. He was no spring chicken—maybe sixty, sixty-five? He was looking for company, for pleasant female companionship. An ideal client for my girls, the polar opposite of Jaimie Halaquez.”
“What did he look like?”
“Oh, he was nothing special. Just a medium guy, medium height, average looking.”
“Hair color?”
“Brown.”
“Eye color?”
“Brown. He kind of reminded me of that old actor, William Powell? But not quite as handsome. Nice man, though. Real sweetheart.”
“How well did you know him, Bunny?”
She thought back, and her expression conveyed a fondness for her subject. “Well enough, I guess. We talked plenty of times. We’d sit in the bar and talk old times.”
“Why, had he known you before?”
“Well, if so, I didn’t remember him. But he remembered me and my husband, the old fox, from the days when we were in the papers regularly.” Her chin lifted, her eyes rolled back in remembering. “Used to tell me how much he admired my husband, and how he thought my better half had gotten framed into prison. Framed? Hell, the old fox worked good and damn hard to get behind bars. He deserved everything he got!”
“You’re preaching to the choir, Bunny,”
Her eyes were distant. “...not that I didn’t love the slick ol’ bastard, though.”
Time to get her back on track. “What was it that turned Richard Best into a corpse?”
“Broken neck. He got slugged with something. His cash, watch and ring were gone, and his place turned inside out. He lived in an apartment, nothing fancy. Lived there and died there.”
“Still, he must have had enough worth killing for.”
Bunny kicked her shoes off and put her feet up on the coffee table. “Morgan, anybody who has anything is worth killing for these days. That area where he lived—two robberies and a mugging in the past three months. Damn. World’s losing its moral compass, don’t you think?”
All whorehouse madams were philosophers.
I asked, “Ever have a regular patron turn up dead before, Bunny?”
She gave me sideways look laced with a tight smile. “Come on, Morgan. Anybody who makes a whorehouse a regular stop is some kind of target for somebody. I’ve seen familiar faces in the news one day and the obits the next.” Again she shuddered, and sipped beer. “It’s just that I don’t like to get called in to identify bodies.”
That tight little feeling was running up my spine again. I could sense it running across my shoulders and bunching up into my neck.
“I don’t like it, Bunny. With what we’ve been up to, having a stiff turn up for you to identify?...I don’t like it at all.”
“You think I do?”
I leaned back in the softness of the couch; it tried to soothe me, but it didn’t work. “Think you can find anything else out about this particular corpse—Richard Best?”
“Like how?” she asked suspiciously.
“Surely you have friends on the department.”
“Me and the fuzz don’t exactly socialize.”
“I didn’t ask if you socialized with them. You’re friendly with somebody or you wouldn’t be open for business. Somebody picks up a monthly envelope of green stuff. Or is it weekly?”
She reached for a package of Virginia Slims on the coffee table, selected one, lighted it up with a silver decorative lighter, and blew the smoke at the ceiling.
Reluctantly, she said, “Okay...so I know a few people.”
I gestured with an open hand. “You could show a sign of interest in the dead guy. I mean, they already know he was a client, so you go around and say ol’ Dick Best was a good, even beloved patron of the Mandor arts, much missed by all the girls. Then offer up a cheap burial if nobody claims the body.”
She smirked in quiet disgust. “Yeah? Then what?”
“Make a simple inquiry. I’d like to know what the autopsy report shows.”
“Damn it, Morgan! You...”
“Yes or no?”
Something in my voice stopped her, made her look at me closely a few seconds, then she said, “Okay, I’ve been a chump before.” She dragged on the cigarette again. Shook her head. “I don’t know why the hell I’m doing this.”
“I do,” I said.
“Really?”
“Sure. You’re a nosy old broad.”
This time her grin was quick and open. She looked me up and down with a friendly, salacious gaze. “I’m not that old, Morgan. I think I could still teach you a thing or two.”
“If I had the time, doll, I wouldn’t mind learning.”
Her forehead crinkled. “Time? Where the hell are you off to now?”
I got to my feet. “Why, a whorehouse, Bunny. Not just any whorehouse, either—an elegant place called the Mandor Club with a secret back entrance into a lovely doll’s private boudoir.”
“Gaita doesn’t come cheap,” she said. “Takes real dough to buy a night with her.”
I gave her my biggest grin. “Hell, kid—she offered it to me free the last time.”
She blinked at me in astonishment. “And, what? You’re going back for seconds?”
“Naw. I turned her down. I’m saving myself for you.”
She was still laughing when I closed the door on her.
I didn’t bother with the elevator. I took the stairs and paused at the bend by the landing. One corner of the building partially obscured the entryway, and if the doorman was standing in his area, I sure couldn’t see him.
At this hour, with nothing much to do, there was a good chance our man in uniform was sacked out somewhere, and I was ready to make an unhurried exit when I got that funny feeling up my back again, and held still.
The foyer was a mini-lobby that had been laid out like a blunt T, with a stairwell to either wing going up from the end of the arms, the self-service elevator in the middle facing the entry doors. When I had come in, the doorman had been sent to the storage closet at the other end, and at that time the overhead lights had been on. Now only my end was illuminated, and the other side was too deep in shadow to tell if anyone was there.
Somebody had a trap all set and waiting.
Very slowly, I edged back up the stairs to the next floor, walked the length of the corridor to the other wing, and went down the metal-and-tile stairs without making any sound at all. I snaked the .45 out, balanced it in my hand, held it under my arm to thumb the hammer back so no click would be audible, then crouched down in the shadows and stepped around the bend.
<
br /> He was there, all right, his back partially toward me, a dark silhouette with a long-barreled, silencer-tipped gun dangling from his hand. I only stood there a second, knowing he hadn’t heard me, but when I saw a tiny involuntary twitch, I knew he had felt me there like an animal would, and I took two quick steps forward as he spun, and I kicked the gun out of his hand.
The weapon made a metallic clunk on the floor, but didn’t discharge, as its owner reacted like a cat, flipping sideways in a roll, a sharp hiss spitting between his teeth. He either didn’t see the gun in my hand or didn’t expect me to have one, because his hand whipped inside his coat, came out with a blade and he uncoiled from the floor like a spring in a lunge toward my chest and I laid the .45 across his ear as I sidestepped and he twisted and went down with a funny whistling sound and lay there jerking a few times before he made a soft sigh and went limp.
I waited a moment, then flipped him over with my foot.
The knife meant for me was hilt-deep in his chest, his fingers still gripped in a deathlock around the handle.
It only took a second to locate the doorman.
He was huddled in the storage closet, an ugly red and blue welt across his forehead. He was alive, but unconscious, and was going to stay that way a few hours. He was in no particular need of first aid and I didn’t give him any.
Instead, I went back out into the foyer, listened intently, while the quiet hung over the place like a blanket. The whole thing had been almost noiseless anyway.
I checked the dead man.
There was no wallet on him and his clothes were nondescript enough to make label identification impossible. He had sixty dollars in bills in a side pocket, but had been professional enough not to carry change, keys or anything else that might rattle. I put him in his middle forties, but from his features I couldn’t tag his national origin. He had enough of a tan to have been in the area a while, and the one hand that still clutched the hilt of the knife was soft enough to indicate he didn’t do any manual labor. He might have been Latin, but I couldn’t be sure.
I’d thought this might be Halaquez himself, and was relieved it wasn’t—I wouldn’t have minded that evil bastard being dead, of course, but I really did hope to find the money he’d stolen from my Cuban friends first.
The Consummata Page 9
