Harry Lipkin, Private Eye

by Barry Fantoni

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2012 by Barry Fantoni

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in Great Britain by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Limited.

  www.doubleday.com

  DOUBLEDAY and the portrayal of an anchor with a dolphin are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Jacket design by Michael J. Windsor

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Fantoni, Barry.

  Harry Lipkin, private eye / Barry Fantoni. —1st ed.

  p. cm.

  1. Older men—Fiction. 2. Private investigators—Florida—Fiction. 3. Miami (Fla.)—Fiction. I. Title.

  PR6056.A59H37 2012

  823′.914—dc23

  2011043572

  eISBN: 978-0-385-53611-0

  First United States Edition

  v3.1

  For Maxie and The Nightingale

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  One: Harry Introduces Himself

  Two: Harry Meets His Client

  Three: Harry Meets the Chauffeur

  Four: Harry Arrives at Coral Gables

  Five: Harry Meets the Maid

  Six: Harry Meets the Butler

  Seven: Harry and Mr. Lee Walk to the Kitchen

  Eight: Harry Meets the Chef

  Nine: Harry Meets the Gardener

  Ten: Harry Gets a New Message

  Eleven: Harry Meets Eddie Berkowitz at His Gym

  Twelve: Harry Drives to the Four Aces Casino

  Thirteen: Harry Meets Diego Lopez

  Fourteen: Harry Gets Some More Messages

  Fifteen: Harry Meets Oscar Letto

  Sixteen: Harry Reports Back to Mrs. Weinberger

  Seventeen: Steve Threatens Harry

  Eighteen: Harry Has an Unexpected Visitor

  Nineteen: Lieutenant Voss Questions Harry

  Twenty: Harry Tracks Down an Old Friend

  Twenty-One: Harry Drives to the Mordecai Medical Center

  Twenty-Two: Harry and Rabbi Rifkin Talk

  Twenty-Three: Lieutenant Voss Returns with Some Unexpected News

  Twenty-Four: Harry Gets Busy at Home

  Twenty-Five: Harry Drives to Miami Beach

  Twenty-Six: Harry Meets Arlen Klein

  Twenty-Seven: Harry Makes Some Calls

  Twenty-Eight: Harry Sees Rufus Davenport aka Frank Dunlop in Action

  Twenty-Nine: Harry Plans to Tail Maria

  Thirty: Harry Tails Maria

  Thirty-One: Harry Discovers Maria’s Secret

  Thirty-Two: Harry Thinks It All Over

  Thirty-Three: Harry Prepares Mrs. Weinberger

  Thirty-Four: Harry Details His Plan over Supper

  Thirty-Five: Harry Waits in the Dark

  Thirty-Six: The Thief Strikes While Harry Sleeps

  Thirty-Seven: Harry Gets Ready

  Thirty-Eight: Dr. Glasser Arrives Unexpectedly

  Thirty-Nine: Harry Learns Mrs. Weinberger’s Secret

  Forty: Harry Goes Home and Types Out His Report

  About the Author

  · ONE ·

  Harry Introduces Himself

  Harry Lipkin. Eighty-seven. Eighty-eight next birthday. You think that’s old? My mother lived to be a hundred and three. So. Make a note. Send Harry Lipkin a card and a box of soft candy. Something he can chew easy. No nuts. I don’t digest nuts. Make yourself at home. Relax. You got some spare time? A little? I got plenty.

  When I first started in this business, I rented a place in the center of Miami. Two rooms and a closet. I had a hand-painted sign on the door. Big gold letters: Harry Lipkin. Private Investigator. Standard Rates. It was on the third floor of a block on Camilo Avenue and cost me forty bucks a month.

  Now I work from home. My card says 1909 Samuel Gompers Avenue, Warmheart, Florida. There’s also a zip code I can never remember. Since no one writes anymore it doesn’t bother me. My license I keep in the desk drawer, along with my .38, a box of slugs, my clothes brush, and a spare set of dentures. I might not be the best but I am certainly the oldest.

  These days I deal mostly with the sort of cases the cops don’t want. Cops want serial homicide. It makes them feel good when they catch someone. But how tough is it to catch a serial killer? You put his picture on TV. Nationwide. You wait. Ten days later a schoolteacher on her lunch break spots him. He’s walking out of a Baskin Robbins in a hick town somewhere in Montana. That’s him. The guy whose picture was on TV. Before you know it he’s surrounded by a million armed cops telling him to drop everything and freeze. And then they shoot him. Ninety-nine cents’ worth of vanilla, banana, and pistachio ice cream wasted.

  You want to know about my home? The place I leave for the grocery store. The place I come back to from the grocery store. I’ll tell you.

  Warmheart is an architectural folly. A mix of Flemish and Florida. It was put up by a homesick Belgian called Herman Van Dood. He built it to look just like the town he left behind when the Germans took over in 1914. The houses are single story but with slate roofs thirty feet high. The incline is sixty-five degrees. Everyone else in Miami has a flat roof. You can stand on it and watch the sun go down. On mine you’d need to be a mountaineer.

  Last month a hurricane took half the tiles off. Big heavy gray slate tiles. Van Dood imported them from Liège. They landed on the grass. They’re still there. Some busted into bits. Some are half buried in what used to be the lawn when I cared about lawns. The tiles don’t bother me either. But they bother the woman next door. Mrs. Feldman.

  “When you gonna get those tiles put back?” she yells. “You think this is Gaza? It looks like a bomb zone.”

  I tell Mrs. Feldman I don’t pay rent to climb ladders.

  So. Here I am. No family and no buddies. Issy. Joe. Angelo from Napoli. Big Mal. Little Mal. Manny. Ike. All gone. My oldest buddy died last Purim. Abe Schultz. Born the same year. Same street. Abe’s parents were Dutch Jews. Old man Schultz made cigars. They both had mustaches. His was a handlebar with waxed ends. Hers? Well. You couldn’t wax the ends. Abe was a dentist before he retired. He made the spare set I keep in the desk drawer. He only charged me for the materials. Abe was that kind of a mensch.

  People ask me. Clients. Usually clients. Clients with time on their hands. Were you ever married? I don’t mind. They can ask what they like. I charge by the day.

  I did try marriage. But it didn’t last. I married Nancy. She had long legs and soft lips. Nancy was twenty years old when we got married. Just twenty. Twenty-one when she walked out. I came home one night late from a stakeout and she was gone. No note. Nothing. Just an empty clothes closet and the faint smell of her ten-cent perfume.

  This office has a lot less space than the one I had before. So when I get a client I sit them in the yard. I got a little table and a couple of garden chairs. Plastic with cushions. Yellow. Bright yellow I can see easy. I picked them up in a garage sale. Three bucks and fifty cents. A table and two chairs. For another fifty cents the guy also threw in an umbrella.

  Like the suit? I wear it to meet new clients. Brooks Brothers. Seersucker. Classic. 1953. Single-breasted. Loose fit, so the front doesn’t go all baggy when I strap on my .38. Perfect for Miami in the summer. It is the same suit that I put on to meet Mrs. Norma Weinberger. Except there was no Mrs. Weinberger.

&nb
sp; · TWO ·

  Harry Meets His Client

  I didn’t hear the doorbell ring. But I heard the yard phone extension. It’s on the wall by my back door. I had it fixed so I didn’t have to leave the tiles and weeds every time someone wanted to talk to me down the wire.

  I picked up the handset and said my name.

  It was Mrs. Weinberger. She was here. She hadn’t forgotten or got lost. She was out front. Calling from her cell phone to say she had rung the bell she didn’t know how many times and was I deaf?

  I hung up without a reply and went and let her in.

  Once I could have made the yard to the front door in under fifteen seconds. These days I am a lot slower. I am a lot slower all round. Pole vaulting. Rock climbing. Doing the mambo. Slow.

  I arrived in just under four minutes and opened up.

  She was dressed in a pale green polka-dot sleeveless dress and her feet were squeezed into a pair of flat silver slingbacks. Her purse matched the shoes.

  The woman looked at me the way they do these days. A private investigator? At your age? A retired rabbi, maybe. But a flatfoot? You got to be kidding.

  “Mr. Lipkin?” she said.

  I nodded.

  The woman put the cell phone in her purse.

  “I am Mrs. Weinberger. I have an appointment.”

  I held out a hand. It waited. It got lonely. I took it back.

  “Please come in,” I said and led her out to the yard.

  We passed framed photos of me in the army. Me out of the army. Me and some buddies. Me on my own. The photos were there to cover the buck-a-roll wallpaper. Big flowers and leaves and damp coming through. When we got to the fresh air I pointed to the chair most in the shade.

  “Make yourself at home,” I said. “If you need a cushion, I can fetch one from the lounge.”

  My client replied that she didn’t need a cushion and sat down. I sat opposite.

  I guessed her age was somewhere in the mid-seventies. When a woman spends a lot of money to stay fifty for the rest of her life it is hard to tell. Dietrich looked better a week before she passed on than some of the kids today do at twenty.

  The woman across from me was edgy. The stiff way she was sitting. Like she was wishing she hadn’t come.

  A lot of clients find it tough to get started. They are embarrassed. Scared. Confused. They put up a front. It’s natural. A private dick gets used to it. You go along with it. If you don’t you can be there all day talking about everything else but why they are there.

  I smiled in a way that said take it easy. Relax. Old Harry will take care of whatever it is. I took a pencil from my jacket pocket. The notebook was on the table. I opened up to a fresh page.

  “You want to give me the story so far?” I asked.

  She was looking at the lawn.

  “Those the tiles?” she said with her eyes fixed on the heap. “Creepy crawlies get to living under tiles. Horrible things. They need tidying up.”

  “It’s on my list,” I said. “Now. How can I help?”

  She moved her shoulders. Not a shrug. Kind of a loosening up. Mrs. Weinberger had shoulders that were deep tanned. Soft looking. Ample. They were shoulders you grow fond of. She took a breath. Then let go. Some of it came out.

  “I am the widow of the late Isaac Weinberger. The most famous hat maker in the whole USA. Weinberger’s of New Jersey. The factory was just outside Newark. We lived in an apartment overlooking Central Park. He had a stroke and the doctors advised him to sell up and go somewhere warm. To take it easy. So he did. We have been here ten years. He passed away last July. The twentieth. One minute he was here, the next he was gone. No pain, thank God.”

  “Thank God.”

  There was a silence. She looked at the wedding ring on her finger. Then she looked at me.

  “We were not blessed with children, Mr. Lipkin.”

  Some sadness arrived. It hung around. Then it went.

  “Can I begin by asking your address,” I said. “For my report. I have to provide one. It is statutory.”

  “Our home is just outside Fort Lauderdale,” she said.

  I made a note.

  “It is very old,” she went on. “Spacious and very, very beautiful. We looked at hundreds before we decided on Coral Gables. It took months. Then when we walked up the hill and opened the gates it was love at first sight. Only then, it was called Bella Vista. We had it changed to Coral Gables because Coral Gables is where Mr. Weinberger and I spent our first night together here. I call it my dream home, Mr. Lipkin. So did Mr. Weinberger.”

  So far I was big on Weinberger history and short on why she had booked a visit. I decided to make it easy for the both of us. I’d ask her. But she beat me to it.

  “Mr. Lipkin,” she said. “I know what you are thinking. Why am I here?”

  I didn’t get a chance to reply.

  “Someone in my home is stealing from me. Someone I employ. Trust. Care for. Treat like one of the family.”

  A tear rolled down her cheek. I wrote the word “theft” on my pad and underlined it.

  “And what was it?” I asked. “The item that was stolen.”

  My client found a lace and linen handkerchief in her purse and wiped away the tear. “A pillbox.”

  I had expected to hear a hundred-carat diamond tiara at the very least. But a pillbox?

  “Can you describe it?” I asked.

  “What’s there to describe?”

  “Anything you can think of.”

  “It’s a pillbox. What else? Porcelain with a gold catch and hinges.”

  “Color?”

  “Turquoise.”

  “Fancy or plain?”

  “There’s a hand-painted rose on the lid.”

  “Is the box round or oblong?”

  “Heart shaped.”

  “And the value?”

  “Isaac gave it to me. It was for nothing special. Not my birthday, or our wedding anniversary. Just a gift.”

  “Was the name Limoges printed on the bottom?”

  “I think so.”

  I thought so too and wrote it down.

  “Since my pillbox was stolen, Mr. Lipkin,” she said, “I haven’t had a wink of sleep.”

  “You think maybe the thief is planning on stealing something else?”

  She shook her head. “My sleeping pills are in the box.”

  I said nothing. A plane flew overhead. One of hundreds that fly over Warmheart. Day and night. South to Miami International.

  “When did you notice the box had been stolen?” I said finally.

  “Last Friday. They were late delivering the challahs.”

  “And when was that?”

  “About eight-thirty in the evening,” she said. “I had just been watching a film on TV. It was with Rock Hudson and Doris Day. When I was younger, people used to tell me I looked just like her. But with dark hair. Doris Day, they would say. She’s you. With blond hair. Could be your twin. Personally, I thought I looked more like Lana Turner. But Lana Turner couldn’t sing like Doris Day, and I used to do quite a lot of singing. I sang at weddings mostly. They’d ask me, Norma, sing something. Sing Gershwin. Sing ‘The Man I Love.’ And who was I to say no?”

  I left it hanging without an answer for a few seconds. Then I said, “Do you have any idea how many people might be involved?”

  Norma Weinberger shook her head.

  “I have a butler. I have a cook. I have a gardener. I have a maid. And I have a chauffeur.”

  I counted them on my fingers. A handful.

  “Have you been to the police?”

  Mrs. Weinberger patted her permed hair. At the back. The way a lot of women do when they are put on the spot.

  “The police only come when you shoot someone,” she said. “And only then if you happen to be a film star or big on TV.”

  I made a note that the police had not been informed.

  “Mr. Lipkin,” she went on, “please understand. It isn’t the pillbox. It is the idea that I am employing
someone who thinks so little of me they would steal from me.”

  “And it has to be an employee?” I asked. “You are absolutely certain about that?”

  She nodded.

  “I rarely have guests. Only friends stop by. I live more or less a solitary life.”

  I wrote it all down but it didn’t add up. Who would go to the trouble of stealing a pillbox that cost a couple of hundred bucks at most from a woman worth millions? To find the answer might be worth me taking the case. That and my fifty a day plus expenses. I closed my notebook.

  “I will need to talk to all the people who work for you,” I told her. “Anytime that suits you is fine.”

  “I will send the chauffeur to pick you up at three,” she said. “Tomorrow afternoon.”

  Older women usually have problems when they put on lipstick. No matter what color or how much. They usually miss. But not Mrs. Weinberger. She was good. No smudge. No paint on the teeth. When Mrs. Weinberger pulled back her lips the paint went with them. All of it.

  Mrs. Weinberger opened her purse.

  “A retainer,” she said and handed me a crisp hundred-dollar bill. “Isaac believed in them and so do I.”

  · THREE ·

  Harry Meets the Chauffeur

  The chauffeur arrived at three on the dot. He drove a salmon pink 1964 Cadillac Eldorado convertible with whitewall tires and parked it tidily in the street. The man was big. Broad across the shoulders. Black skinned. He’d been given a lovat green uniform and a peaked cap. The jacket could have been a size bigger except they probably don’t come a size bigger.

  He opened the rear passenger door without a word and I climbed in. He said nothing when he closed the door. Mrs. Weinberger’s chauffeur had the look of a man who would never say much. Or anything.

  We drove north. On one side were tall yellow stucco walls fronting high-rent condominiums and hotels. On the other, sand and the Atlantic Ocean. Lots of sand. But no conversation. Half an hour on the road. Not a word. I tried forcing it every couple of miles. “Nice car.” Nothing. “Nice day.” Nothing. “Nice day to have a nice car.”