And then…
And then what?
She surely wasn’t going to rob him. She already had his three hundred dollars and Trace knew he didn’t give the impression of somebody who was carrying five million bucks around inside the toe of his shoe.
Murder him? Not unless she had killed Collins. Had Trace pried too far and too deep? Was this it for him? Would they harpoon his body out of San Francisco Bay in three days?
Maybe she was a white slaver? Maybe Trace was going to be drugged and stuck in the hold of a sheep ship then sent to Saudi Arabia where he’d have to spend the rest of his life making love to fat Arabian princesses. A concubine in a country without a decent drink in it.
Maybe he should run. Race for the door now and get out of there while he still could.
What would a real detective do?
He thought about it and decided a real detective would have another drink. And a ploy.
“That’s nice perfume you’re wearing,” he said cleverly. “Is that Evening in Byzantium?”
“I’m not wearing perfume,” she said, her back still turned.
“I would have sworn it was Evening in Byzantium,” Trace said sourly. What was it Chico had said? “Patachouli, cinnamon, lemon grass, a hint of something else.”
“What are you, a perfume expert?” she asked over her shoulder.
“I know something about it,” Trace said modestly.
“Well, I hate Evening in Byzantium. There’s a metallic high note there I can’t stand.”
What was this, Trace wondered. Everybody in the world knew everything about perfume except him. The only two smells he could distinguish from each other were Drano fumes and dog breath. Three. He could also tell the smell of dead bodies, corpses as ripe as his own would soon be if Mandy wasn’t stopped from stirring that poison into his drink.
Mandy suddenly turned from the bar, walked forward, stuck the glass into his hand, and said, “All right,” like a woman who had just made a decision. “Wait here a moment,” she said.
When she went out the door at the end of the room, Trace held the drink up to the light. There. There was something in it. Probably a fleck of poison. It looked like a brine shrimp. A big fleck of poison. What kind of fool did she think he was?
He walked to the bar and poured the drink down the sink. Then he rinsed the glass quickly, put fresh ice cubes and Scotch into it, and hurried back to his seat on the sofa. He was sipping the drink when Mandy returned.
She sat next to him on the couch.
“You were asking?” she said.
Trace nodded. “What Collins might have said about business or family.”
“Okay,” she said.
“Good drink, by the way,” he said and watched her eyes for a suspicious reaction.
“Same as the last. It’s hard to mess up Scotch and ice cubes,” she said.
“There’s a special metallic high note,” he said.
“That’s my ice-cube maker. I don’t think the maid washed all the soap out of the trays. I keep seeing these little flecks in the drinks. I had to mix three drinks for you before I got a clean one.”
“Oh,” Trace said. So much for murder and white slaving.
“Anyway, Collins never talked about his business except to say that he was a big rich real estate developer. He had lots of money all the time but that was just his way of trying to impress me.”
“Staying in character,” Trace said and Mandy nodded and sipped some of her drink.
“But he did talk about the family once in a while,” she said.
“Yes?”
“He said his wife, that’s Judith, was dull and uninteresting.”
“I guess you’ve heard that one before,” Trace said.
“He said that she was a beauty when he married her but then she let herself go. She didn’t use makeup any more; she was going to be an artist and she was making herself look artsy-fartsy with no makeup and letting her hair grow every which way and he didn’t even want to sleep with her anymore.”
“Did he say they ever fought about it?”
“He said they never fought about anything, that she was afraid to fight with him. She was stubborn, though, in her wimpy way. She wouldn’t do what he said, not even pluck her eyebrows. And then there was a Tammy. That’s his daughter.”
“Stepdaughter,” Trace said.
“He hated her,” Mandy said.
“How’s that?”
“He said she was a little tramp who was putting out for everybody. He said that he thought she went through his wallet all the time stealing money.”
“What kind of kid would she be if she didn’t try to steal money from her parents?” Trace asked. “Especially a tight-fisted one like him.”
“There was more to it than that,” Mandy said, as she put down her drink and placed her hand easily on Trace’s right thigh.
“How so?” Trace asked.
“He said she was a…well, the precise phrase was sleazy little bitch. He said that whenever the mother was out, little Tammy would lounge around the house with nothing on and try to put the make on him.”
“Did she ever get lucky, I wonder?” Trace said.
“Once,” Mandy said. “He said they spent an afternoon once playing around a little bit and then she tried to shake him down. She wanted him to lend her enough money to start a business and if he didn’t, she was going to tell her mother that he molested her.”
“He didn’t buy it?”
“No. And according to him, he told her that if she really needed money, she should go out and peddle it on the street.”
“Nice people,” Trace said. “Anything else?”
“That’s all I had,” Mandy said. She made light circles on Trace’s thigh with the palm of her hand.
“You mind my asking…” Trace said.
Mandy stirred her drink with her finger. “No. You’re going to ask how’d I suddenly remember all this stuff. I could diddle you around but I’m going to tell you the truth—I keep notes on my regulars. It’s better for business to know what worries them and be able to drop names into the conversation. They start thinking of you as a friend, someone they can talk to and that keeps them coming back. When I left the room, I went and looked in my notes. That’s what I had.”
“You told me all of it?” Trace said.
“Hey. In for a penny, in for a pound. If I were going to tell you anything at all—and I didn’t have to—why shouldn’t I tell you everything?”
“That makes sense,” Trace conceded.
She was still rubbing his leg and Trace wished that she would stop. He didn’t wish it a lot; it was just a little wish.
She leaned over and kissed his ear wetly. “You’ve still got twenty minutes,” she said softly. “Want to use it?”
“Yes. I mean no.” He wished he’d never met Chico Mangini and her telepathic guilt waves.
“It’s your loss,” she said.
“I’m sure it is,” Trace said. He drained the last of his Scotch.
“You’re one of the forty percent, aren’t you?” she asked as accusingly.
“Forty percent?”
“The forty percent gays in this town,” she said.
“If only,” Trace said. “If only.”
She looked at him and nodded her head. “Okay. For you, I’ll issue a raincheck. What happens with Collins?”
“First he was missing and now he’s dead. I just want to see if there was anything flukey about it before my insurance company pays off.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t help much,” Mandy said, “Collins was a regular but not like clockwork. And I didn’t write any note about cuff links. I’m not going to be involved, am I?”
“Not if I have anything to do with it,” Trace said.
“Thank you,” she said. “I may wind up owing you; I hope you come back to collect.”
Trace reached inside his jacket pocket and switched off the tape recorder, then said: “I just may take you up on that.”
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“You won’t be sorry,” Mandy Reese said.
The maid showed him out. When the apartment door had closed behind him, Trace turned on the tape recorder and then spoke toward the microphone on his necktie.
“Never,” he said. “Never could I entertain such a thought. Not I, who has the most wonderful woman in the world waiting for me back at my room. I am offended, madam, by such a suggestion and I now take my leave of you. Good-bye forever.”
He clicked the recorder off and entered the elevator, smiling smugly. Let Chico listen in on this tape. It’d be a lesson to her—Chico’s own custom-made seminar on the last honorable man in an ever-changing world.
Wonderful.
19
Trace was relieved to see the pink message note hanging out of the mailbox for his room. Rather than face Chico and her inevitable accusations, Trace was willing to call anyone—including Judith Collins.
“I’ve notified the police of my husband’s absence,” Mrs. Collins said.
“Good. What did they say?”
“Well, I talked to them only this morning, but they didn’t seem too hopeful. It seems a lot of men disappear every year. Honestly, Mr. Tracy, I don’t think they’re going to be much help. I’d appreciate it if you’d stay on the case. Of course, I’m prepared to pay you whatever your fee is.”
Trace ran through his priorities. First there was the convention, where he was doomed to endless samurai movies and having Mr. Nishimoto harass him about Bataan. Missing that would be no great loss. And if he socked Mrs. Collins for a fee and then collected a fee from Garrison Fidelity too, this case would be a double-dip. Not bad for a school-of-hard-knocks graduate.
And then there was the indisputable fact that Thomas Collins had been murdered and somebody out there was getting away with it. That offended his sense of neatness and order.
Trace sighed. Screw the fee. Find that baseball-bat-swinging bastard.
“Are you there, Mr. Tracy?”
“Yes. I’ll keep looking for your husband,” Trace said. “Don’t worry about the fee.”
“You’re very kind. Much too kind.”
“Tell that to the IRS when I ask them to send me donations,” he said.
“Have you learned anything?” she asked hopefully.
Trace had already decided not to tell her that her husband was as dead as a doornail until he could announce with a flourish, “And here’s the son of a bitch who killed him.” Presenting the mad batter might ease her pain a little whereas delivering just a corpse might send her over the edge. Trace didn’t want to be talking to a hysterical woman by phone, not when another hysterical woman was undoubtedly up in his room waiting for him to report in.
Trace said blandly, “I’ve run across a few things. Did your husband ever mention the Fontana Hotel in Las Vegas to you?”
She thought a moment. “No, I don’t think so,” she said. “Is it a casino thing?”
“Yes. There’s a casino.”
“Well, no, Thomas never mentioned any such place. We’re not gamblers, Mr. Tracy.”
“Do you know if your husband has a small black address book?” He was finding it difficult to keep talking about Collins in the present tense as if he were not moldering away in a barn.
“No. I never saw any address book. There’s the Rolodex in his office. Do you need a phone number? I could look it up.”
“No, thanks. Just one more thing. Did you ever see a butterfly necklace?”
“Er, I don’t think so. What’s it made of?”
“Oh, glass. Rhinestones maybe. I thought Thomas might have given it to you or your daughter.”
“It doesn’t ring a bell. Thomas doesn’t believe in spending money on frivolous things like jewelery.”
“No. That makes sense,” Trace said. He promised to get back to her as soon as anything turned up, then hung up the lobby phone. It was obvious that Mrs. Collins knew less about her husband than just about anyone else who’d ever been associated with the man.
And now to face Chico.
Well, what did she want from him anyway? It was only his oversized sense of honor that had kept him from shagging Mandy Reese right on her rented couch. It certainly wasn’t all the sexual satisfaction he’d been getting with Chico, who, because her mother was sleeping in the room next door, had put Trace on hold. A man had needs, didn’t she know that?
Yes, he told himself, she knew that. She also knew that one of a man’s biggest needs was to stay alive, so all in all he was glad that he’d said no to Mandy and that he had a tape recording to prove it.
Trace paused outside his room door, rehearsing the scene that was sure to come. Chico would be sitting at the table, reading a book. She would put down the book, drum her pointy little fingers on the table, and accuse him of philandering.
He would be hurt. She would be disbelieving.
And then he would play the tape recording for her and she would crumble to guilty powder in front of him.
He thought about it again. It sounded pretty good. It ought to play.
He found his key and unlocked the door. Chico was not at the table. Instead, she lay on the bed, a vision from an Art Deco print. Her eyes were painted like a China doll’s and her lips were red as candy apples. She was wearing a short red silk robe that showed off her long smooth legs, all the way down to some kind of feathered slippers on her feet.
She said nothing as he came into the room, only smiled at him as if she’d been waiting for him all her life.
“Before you start on me,” he said, “I didn’t do anything.”
“I know.” She pulled him close to her and as their lips met, the silk gown fell away.
“What about your mother?”
“She’s at the movies,” Chico said.
“It may end soon,” Trace said.
“A triple feature. Sixteen, seventeen, and eighteen Samurai.”
“Hooray for Horrywood,” Trace said.
Afterward, they lay in bed, smoking cigarettes. Chico smoked only after making love and Trace believed the same was true of millions of women. If he were a chemist, he’d create a birth-control ingredient that could be mixed with tobacco. Make love, smoke a cigarette, and don’t worry about a thing. And the upshot was that only totally confirmed nonsmokers would have unwanted children. That sociological side effect seemed fair too. Unwanted children for holier-than-thou adults. He decided that to mention it now would ruin the moment but he promised himself to look into it. This idea was a winner. Right up there with the Q-Tip and the Band-Aid.
Chico said, “What are you thinking about?”
“Oh, one man’s place in the cosmos, the role of each of us in the big scheme of things.”
“I thought you’d be thinking about Thomas Collins,” she said. “Are you going to hand it over to the cops?”
“Look at it this way,” Trace said. “If I tell the cops what I know now, my ass is in a sling for not reporting it all right away. But if I tell them all of it and who killed him, then I’m off the hook. I may even get a medal.”
“Or at least escape a jail sentence,” she said. “So you’re sticking with the case.”
“Why not? I hate samurai movies. By the way, I’d like you to do something for me.”
“Something else?” Chico said. “I thought I’d just brought out the whole arsenal.”
“Smut mind,” Trace said. “For your information, there are some of us who are not always obsessed with sex. Now back to the Collins case. Who do we know at the Fontana?”
“I know Anselmo real well.”
“Who’s he?” Trace asked.
“He’s floor boss most nights. He’s a good guy. You met him once.”
“Can you talk to him?”
“Yup.”
“Find out if he knows anything about Collins. I’ve heard he was a high-roller at the Fontana. See if we can get anything on how much he spent, how often he was there, things like that. Women, too, if any.”
“Sure,” Chico said.
She reached for the telephone, but Trace put his hand on hers.
“I’m still thinking,” he said. He rolled out of bed and said, “I’m going to do my log.” From the dresser drawer, he got the butterfly necklace.
“Why don’t you go downstairs and ask them if this is real?”
“It’s real,” Chico said.
“Can you smell diamonds too? I can understand Evening in Byzantium, but diamonds too?”
“Diamonds too. Sweetest smell in the world next to you,” she said.
20
Trace’s Log: Tape Number Two, six-thirty P.M. Wednesday, two more tapes in the master file, Devlin Tracy in the matter of Thomas Collins.
To know him was to hate him, I guess. It looks like Collins handed everyone he met a calling card and a very good reason to use his head for batting practice. Like Tammy, the stepdaughter. She says attempted rape. But what that snotty little bitch calls attempted rape Collins said was attempted seduction and blackmail. Make that actual seduction, not attempted. Who’d believe either one of them? They’re not exactly a family out of “Father Knows Best.”
I don’t know if it took a lot of power to bash in Collins’ head that way, but if it did that musclebound cretin Tammy’s shacked up with has got the stuff. And a motive since the two of them want to open a gym of their own. Them that sweat together, get together, I guess. Do they also blackmail together? Or go halfies on a murder/insurance policy package?
I don’t know. Maybe it’s just that I don’t like the boyfriend who was going to do a clean and jerk on me until Chico started feeling him up.
Clean and jerk. At least, he’s got the jerk part down right.
And then we’ve got Mandy Reese whom (Chico, if you’re listening, and I have tape recordings to back me up) I not only did not score with but I spurned. You hear me? Spurned.
I will not forget to put in my expenses to Groucho Marks on this one. At three hundred dollars an hour, talking to Mandy is a very expensive proposition. Make it four hundred, counting taxi fare and the wear and tear on my endocrine system.
Pigs Get Fat (Trace 4) Page 12
