Die Laughing: 5 Comic Crime Novels

by Steve Brewer

  He took another pull from the bottle. Looked at me thoughtfully.

  “It’s getting to you, isn’t it,” he said. “You’re really cracking up, aren’t you?”

  I looked back at him. “Well, wouldn’t you?”

  “So Minton I.D.’d you as the murderer.”

  “He had to. It was his civic duty.”

  Sallingsworth grunted. “Yeah.” He took another drink. “All right,” he said. “I’ll give you all I’ve got, for all it’s worth. Minton’s a sleaze. He’s scum. He’s the type of private detective that gives us all a bad name. He cuts corners. He lies. He cheats. He fakes evidence. He rips off his own clients. He pads bills. He bills for summonses not served, surveillance not performed.”

  Sallingsworth took another pull, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I did a lot of business in this town before that slime showed up. He muscled me out of there. Undercut me. Bad-mouthed me. That was when he used to do his own work. Now he has operatives. He’s just a bookkeeper, he just skims off the top. He still cuts corners, chisels, cheats on fees.”

  He stopped, looked at me. “But you know all that, don’t you? Or if you don’t, it’s old news, and you don’t care. It’s not what you’re after. You just need something that’s gonna help you now.”

  He took another pull on the bottle. His eyes gleamed—craftily. “Well, there’s one thing. And I’ll bet you I’m the only guy who knows it. Because it goes way back, and not too many people knew it then. But when Minton first started out, he did a lot of different things, ’cause he was hustling, trying to get going. He had a lot of irons in the fire. God, I could tell you stories. But then you wouldn’t be interested.

  “Except for one thing.” Sallingsworth leaned back and cocked his head at me. “Now you have to remember, this was a long time ago. So maybe it helps you and maybe it don’t. But here it is.”

  He took a long pull on the bottle, and looked at me.

  “He used to work with Nubar.”

  32.

  I HAD ONE MORE person I didn’t mind leading the cops to. I mean, it wasn’t the best of all possible worlds, but it wasn’t a total disaster, either.

  Up to now I’d been pretty frustrated by having been barred from talking to any of the principles in this case. I mean Sallingsworth was a nice guy and all that, but he was peripheral at best. I sure as hell wanted to talk to somebody else.

  Of course, I still couldn’t talk to the person I wanted to talk to most. That, of course, being Barbara MacAullif Dunleavy. So I had to settle for second best.

  I cruised by her apartment house. If Harold Dunleavy’s car had been parked outside I would have had to keep on going, but it wasn’t. I stopped my car and got out.

  I went up the steps and went inside. The foyer door was open, as it had been the time before. I went up the stairs, found the apartment and rang the bell.

  There was a long pause, then footsteps, and the door opened a crack. I could see half a face looking out at me.

  “M. Carson?” I said.

  I gave her my best steely-eyed gaze. I’m sure it looked ridiculous, and anyone who knew me would have been on the floor laughing.

  But M. Carson didn’t know me.

  “Yes,” she said uncertainly.

  “Homicide,” I said and pushed the door open.

  M. Carson fell back in alarm.

  I pushed by her and walked into the living room.

  She closed the front door and trailed in behind me. She looked utterly dazed.

  M. Carson was dressed in a negligee with a flimsy robe thrown over it. I guess she’d been in bed, which she had every right to be. By then it was one in the morning. She looked good. Not in Barbara Dunleavy’s class, but good.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” I said, “but we’re cleaning up these two murders and we have to tie up all loose ends.”

  “How … How did you find me?” she asked.

  I smiled a cold, superior smile. Again, friends would have been amused.

  “I … I …” she began. “Won’t you sit down?”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  I sat in the easy chair.

  “Can I get you a drink?”

  “No. You sit down.”

  She sat on the couch opposite me.

  “You’re stalling for time,” I said, “wondering how bad this is. Well, on the one hand, it’s pretty bad. On the other hand, it’s not as bad as you think. If it was, you’d be on your way downtown.”

  She looked at me and bit her lip.

  “You still could wind up there,” I said. “You’re not a principal, so it’s up to you. This is your chance to come clean.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

  I shook my head.

  “That’s the wrong way to play it. I’ll tell you what I’m talking about so there’ll be no mistake. Then it’s up to you. If you want to go down swinging, that’s fine, but it don’t have to be that way.

  “All right, here it is. Minton killed Nubar. He also killed Steerwell. He set up a phony alibi of going to Vegas that’s as old as the hills. He went there all right, then had some private plane fly him back. We haven’t traced the plane yet, but we will.”

  Her eyes were wide. “What are you saying?”

  “I haven’t said anything yet, but I’m about to. This is the part you’re not going to like. See, it’s all about Tallman.”

  Her eyes flicked.

  “Yeah, that’s right, Tallman. See why this concerns you? Tallman isn’t mob connected. He’d like you to think he is, but that’s a bunch of bullshit. He was always a fast-talking confidence man, getting by on a shoe-shine and a smile. Tallman was in deep to Nubar. Real deep. It was the only way he could get off the ground and stay afloat. It was a secret. A big one. If anybody knew that, his whole empire would have collapsed. You knew it, but damn few people did.

  “But Minton knew. He made it his business to know. That’s how he’s always made his living. That’s the kind of creep he is. And as soon as he found out, he moved in. Not on Nubar, of course. He moved in on Tallman.

  “But Minton wasn’t your typical shakedown artist. There was nothing small-time about him. He didn’t want a few grand here, a few grand there. He wanted a piece of the action.

  “So he became a partner. A silent partner. That was O.K. with Tallman, because, frankly, he needed the help. And the thing he needed help with was Nubar.

  “Minton knew Nubar, and one thing he knew was, no one ever wriggles off Nubar’s hook. Even with the fantastic amounts Tallman’s Casino was pulling down, there was no way out. Nubar’s interest was back-breaking, as it always was. So what was the upshot? Tallman and Minton wound up busting their balls working their butts off for Nubar.

  “There was only one way out. Get rid of Nubar.

  “Tallman, for all his bluster, didn’t have the guts to do it, but not Minton. Minton was a cold-blooded son of a bitch. He set the thing up. He’d fly to Vegas, get a friendly pilot to fly him back, bump off Nubar and that would be that.

  “Then something happened to queer the pitch.

  “Steerwell.

  “Steerwell found out the connection between Tallman and Nubar. Steerwell wanted in. That didn’t suit Minton’s plans at all. So he decided to clear up Steerwell at the same time he took care of Nubar.

  “There was just one thing. There had to be a fall guy. And that’s where Harold Dunleavy comes into all this, and that’s why it involves you.”

  She sprang up from the couch.

  “No, no! It wasn’t like that at all!”

  I could have kissed her. I’d been going on and on, making up bullshit off the top of my head, just waiting for her to jump in and contradict me, and I was just about running out of steam. If she hadn’t come in then, I was very close to grinding to halt, in which case I probably would have just stood there like an asshole, like an actor who’s dried up and forgot his lines. I might have even broken down and started crying, which probably wo
uld have given the show away. So I was mighty glad she chimed in.

  “The hell it wasn’t,” I said. “You had Dunleavy all groomed to take the rap. Then the witnesses blew the identification and named the wrong man. That threw Minton for a loop. He didn’t dare name Dunleavy then. So he hopped on the bandwagon and named the other guy, too, figuring one fall guy’s as good as another. So Dunleavy escaped, no thanks to you. If everything had gone as planned, Dunleavy would have taken the rap, and Dunleavy would have gone down.”

  Her eyes were wide.

  “No, no, you can’t pin that on me. It was just a coincidence.”

  “I don’t believe in coincidence,” I said. I was pleased with myself. It was what MacAullif would have said.

  “You don’t understand. You’ve got it all wrong.”

  “Then why don’t you straighten me out?”

  “And if I do?”

  “We’re after the big fish here. If you cooperate, you’ll walk. If you don’t, there’s no guarantees.”

  She bit her lip.

  “O.K., listen. You have to believe me. I didn’t know anything about this. I didn’t know what they were planning. The murders, I mean. It was a shock to me. I didn’t even know Nubar was dead until I heard it on the radio.”

  “Go on.”

  “I tell you, I know nothing about the murders. You tell me Minton did it, well, I can believe that, it makes sense, but I know nothing about it.”

  “You know enough about it to tell me Dunleavy wasn’t groomed as a patsy.”

  “But he wasn’t. It was just coincidence.”

  “That Dunleavy hired Steerwell? I can’t buy that.”

  She shook her head. “No, no. That wasn’t coincidence. That was … Ah, hell!”

  “You’re not helping yourself any.”

  A tear rolled down her cheek. She brushed it away. Looked around. She looked like some trapped wild animal. I would have liked to have felt sorry for her, but I can’t say that I did.

  “Harold Dunleavy,” I said.

  She snuffled. “Yeah?”

  “You say he wasn’t patsy. Then what was he?”

  There was a box of tissues on the table by the end of the couch. She pulled a couple out and blew her nose. She sank back down on the couch.

  “It was all Tallman’s idea,” she said.

  “What’s Tallman to you?”

  She shot me a hard look. “What do you think?”

  I nodded. “Go on. What was all Tallman’s idea?”

  “The thing with Harold Dunleavy. You gotta understand about that. Harold Dunleavy had some debts. Big debts. He was in hock to Nubar. And Tallman was in hock to Nubar. That was the coincidence. It’s not really that much of a coincidence, either. In this town, if you have big debts, you’re in hock to Nubar.”

  She drew her legs up on the couch. Green as I am at this game, I recognized the action. She’d resigned herself to talking now, and she was getting expansive and settling in.

  “The thing about Harold Dunleavy is, he’s one of those little guys who like to talk big. He’s a stockbroker, you know that? I gather he’s not that important in his firm, but to hear him talk, you’d think he was the executive vice-president. He drives a flashy car he can’t afford that’s financed to the hilt. You must know the type.”

  I nodded. “But what’s this got to do with Tallman?”

  “Tallman’s much the same way, but on a larger scale. Everything I said about Dunleavy goes ten times for Tallman. But you know all that. You know Tallman was into Nubar and that whole story. At any rate, Harold met Ray, and—”

  “Who?”

  She flushed. “I’m sorry. Tallman. Ray Tallman.”

  She seemed embarrassed by the intimacy, and I figured she’d make a conscious effort to use Tallman’s last name from here on.

  She did.

  “Dunleavy met Tallman,” she said. “Not through Nubar. Through the casino. See, Harold’s a gambler. That’s how he got into all this trouble in the first place. He’s a bad gambler. A plunger. One of those guys who thinks he’s a high roller, but’s really a fish.

  “But he talks a good line, you know. And anyway, he got to talking to Tallman, and he’s coming off with this I’m-a-big-stockbroker bullshit. And he’s handing Tallman a line and kidding him along, and trying to get him to advance him some credit at the casino.

  “So Dunleavy’s mouthing off and telling Tallman, because he’s a stockbroker he has this connection in New York who is feeding him information about a couple of big corporate mergers that he’s gonna act on, and inside of twelve to eighteen months he’ll be rolling in dough. And Tallman, who is desperate for dough and needs some sort of big score to get out from under Nubar, is eating it up.

  “So Tallman’s trying to get Dunleavy to open up and let him in on this big thing. And Dunleavy’s just smiling and shaking his head, no way. That’s when Tallman told me to work on Dunleavy.”

  I looked at her. “So it was insider trading.”

  She looked at me. “What, are you nuts? Insider trading? What insider trading? There was no insider trading. There were no big corporate mergers. Dunleavy was just shooting off his mouth, like I said. I tried to tell Tallman that. He wouldn’t listen. He was after the big score.”

  “So what happened?”

  “What do you think happened? I made a play for Dunleavy, and he fell for me hard. But he wouldn’t tell me anything about this big insider score, which was natural enough, seeing as how there was nothing to tell.

  “I told this to Tallman. He wouldn’t listen. He said, ‘Bullshit, he’s holding out on you.’”

  She looked at me. “Tallman’s not very bright.”

  “I’ll buy that. Go on.”

  “Well, he wouldn’t give up. He says Dunleavy’s holding out on me because he thinks I’m working for him. For Tallman, I mean. I gotta relax him, make him feel good, make him think I’m on his side.”

  She stopped. Took a breath. Looked at me.

  “So he tells me to cheat for him.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m not. Look, I’m a blackjack dealer, and a good one. And I know how to stack a deck. I know how to cheat. Most of Tallman’s dealers do. ’Cause he’s desperate for money, see? And we have orders, if there’s chance of some guy making a big run on the bank, to knock him back, you know what I mean?

  “But this time Tallman tells me to cheat the other way. To cheat for Dunleavy.” She raised her eyebrows ironically. “Because of his big stock-trading score. So he says, ‘Cheat for him. Let him win money to pay back Nubar. Cheat for him big, just so it don’t go over ten thousand a night.’”

  “How could you do that?”

  “Easy. I worked it out with Dunleavy. I stacked the deck according to how many players there were at the table. The indicator was the last card dealt the previous time through the deck. Any time that came up as the last card dealt in a hand, it meant Dunleavy would win the next hand.”

  “What was to stop Dunleavy from breaking the bank?”

  “Two things. One, the indicator was only gonna come up right every five or six times through the deck. And then Tallman had me report exactly how much Dunleavy won. He’d pass the information on to Nubar, so Nubar’d be sure to take most of it and only leave him with a small stake, so he’d have to work his way up again. Of course, Dunleavy knew that Nubar had a spy in the casino. He just never knew it was me.”

  “And how did Dunleavy come to hire Steerwell? You say it wasn’t a set-up. Well, that’s the coincidence I don’t buy.”

  “It wasn’t a coincidence. And it wasn’t a set-up, either. At least, I don’t think it was. I’ll tell you how it happened. See, Dunleavy fell for me hard, of course.” She smiled. “That’s not being conceited. You throw a guy a girl and ten grand a night, and he’s gonna fall hard.

  “But the thing is, he was hooked bad. I didn’t want to encourage him, but I couldn’t discourage him, either. Not with Tallman egging me on. So anyway, Harold went o
verboard. Sold himself on the idea of dumping his wife and taking up with me. Except, what with me in the picture, Harold figured his wife’s lawyers would take him to the cleaners. He was pretty sure she had some outside interests and he wanted to get the goods on her, you know, so when the lawyers started haggling, it would be tit for tat. So he told me he was going to hire a private detective.

  “That’s when I went to Tallman and told him this thing was going too far, and it had to stop. I mean, I wasn’t going through a marriage ceremony with this guy. Believe me, I was really upset.

  “Tallman told me to calm down, it wouldn’t be that much longer, just kid the guy along.

  “Anyway, Tallman figured if Dunleavy wanted to hire a private detective, fine, let him do it. Only he didn’t like the idea of Harold taking anyone into his confidence, even on a small thing like that. And he wanted to keep tabs on him.

  “So he told me to send him to Minton.”

  My eyes widened. “So that’s why Dunleavy hired Steerwell.”

  “That’s right. And it wasn’t a set-up. At least, I don’t think it was. I don’t know anything about the murders. I didn’t know they were gonna happen, you see.”

  “But you knew after.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When you heard about the murders. You knew what had happened. You knew who’d done it.”

  She was shaking her head back and forth. “No, no. You have to believe me. I didn’t know. There was no way I could know. It makes sense now, when you tell me about it. Only—”

  “Only what?”

  “Well, you’re all wet about some of it.”

  “Oh, yeah? Like what?”

  “Like the bit about Minton being Tallman’s partner.”

  “He wasn’t?”

  “Hell, no. Why would Minton want to hook up with Tallman? The casino was in deep hock to Nubar. You don’t jump on a sinking ship. Minton was putting the bite on him, that’s all.”

  I frowned. “Wait a minute. That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “What?”

  “You said Tallman told you to send Dunleavy to Minton.”