The Big Kiss-Off of 1944: A Jack LeVine Mystery

by Andrew Bergman

  Eddie knocked twice on the outside door.

  “What’s that, the Republicans?”

  I nodded.

  “Since when were you interested in politics, Mr. LeVine?” He smiled knowingly. This was a very smart kid.

  “I’ve got nothing better to do.”

  “Uh huh. Hey, it worked fine. We helped him into the lobby and the cabbie said something to a bellboy. I slipped the bellboy a five and told him to get the guy and his briefcase up nice and safe.”

  “They ask any questions?”

  “Didn’t have a chance to. We dropped him off and blew.”

  “Perfect.”

  Eddie looked at me with question marks all over his kisser.

  “Mr. LeVine?”

  “You want to know about the briefcase?”

  “Boy, you’re smart. What was in it?”

  “Nothing much. Just twenty-five big ones.”

  He whistled. “Holy Mary. He try and buy you?”

  “You’re close.”

  “And you told him to get fucked.”

  “Kind of.”

  “So he got crazy in the head and tried to shoot you. You knocked the gun out of his hand, sapped him, and it was like taking candy from a baby, right Mr. LeVine?” Eddie was smiling like a fat pussycat belching feathers next to an empty canary cage. He had a right to.

  “Eddie, in about two weeks why don’t you come by and we’ll have a little talk. You shouldn’t be an elevator jock.”

  “That’s what I keep telling my old lady. She says I got plenty of time to be a big shot.”

  “Nobody’s got that much time.”

  “You’re right, Mr. LeVine. I think I got the nose to be a grade A dick.”

  “I think so too.”

  Eddie’s smile was so wide it practically hung off the sides of his face. “You mean that?”

  “I don’t kid around about the big things, jockey, only the little ones. Give me two weeks, then we’ll talk.”

  “I’ll knock the door down.”

  “You going to tell your mother?”

  “I guess so.” He was jiggling up and down on the balls of his feet.

  “What’s she going to say?”

  “Her?” He laughed. “She’s gonna hit the ceiling, but that’s all right. She’ll have to learn. My old man was a barber for twenty-five years and every year he talked about opening his own shop. When he died he was still third chair at Tony’s.”

  “He a good barber?”

  “I loved my father, Mr. LeVine. He was a great guy. But he was the worst fuckin’ barber in Brooklyn, no two ways about it.”

  We smiled at each other. It was nice to talk to a human being for a change.

  “I got to go before Vito has a fit. Thanks again for the twenty.”

  And he was out the door, leaving me with my problems. I called Kitty Seymour and moved a dinner date we had made up a couple of hours, then pulled a beer out of the office tub. I locked the outer door, took the phone off the hook, and lay down on the musty brown couch that gets used maybe a dozen times per year. Somebody faints; I need to do some deep thinking. It’s usually the former, but this afternoon required some high-grade cerebration.

  It was just past one when I began. By two I felt a little better about things, and at three I started to smile.

  At four o’clock I put the phone back on the hook and departed the office, feeling very good about myself.

  I had an idea and it was pure genius.

  If Thomas E. Dewey thought so, too, I had an even chance of living out the year.

  My dinner with Kitty would have been delightful, had I been able to keep my mind in the same room with my body.

  “Jack?” Kitty asked, looking a little puzzled.

  “Hmm?”

  “You’ve been holding that lobster tail in your hand for about five minutes.”

  “What am I supposed to do, eat it?”

  She laughed. “Sounds like the suppository joke. The man buys suppositories and comes back to the druggist to complain. ‘They don’t work at all,’ he says. The druggist’s a funny guy and he says, ‘What’ve you been doing, chewing them?’ The other guy has a sense of humor, too. ‘No,’ he says, ‘I’ve been shoving them up my ass.’”

  I liked that joke a lot and laughed enough to turn some heads in the restaurant, The Blue Marlin.

  “It’s not that funny, Jack. You must be under a little pressure these days.”

  She was the smartest woman who ever lived.

  “I just like suppository jokes. Always did.”

  “Still the chorus girl case?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “We’re back to ‘mmm-mmm.’ The case is why you have to be somewhere at nine-thirty?”

  “You’re murder tonight.”

  “You coming over afterward?”

  “If I can still walk.”

  “Jesus Christ. Jack?”

  “What?”

  “Be nimble.”

  HE WAS SMALLER than I had guessed: newspaper photos had led me to believe that Governor Thomas E. Dewey, the Republican candidate for president of nine hours, was about my height. I put him at around 5’9”. This Wednesday night he must have felt a lot taller. His cheeks were flushed, literally, with success, his mustache was very black and sleek and neatly trimmed; his eyes were bubbling with triumph.

  A Pinkerton had met me at the desk and ridden the elevator up to eighteen, then walked me to the door and disappeared. It was a little like the Waldorf set-up, except there was less officiousness and pomposity. The Waldorf aspired to class; the Sherry had it and didn’t have to keep shoving it in your face. There was no butler in 1807: Savage opened the door himself. He smiled.

  “Mr. LeVine, please come in.”

  Dewey was sitting in a corner of the living room, holding a half-filled brandy glass, looking radiant but composed. It was when he rose to greet me that I noticed the height differential.

  “Jack LeVine, I’d like you to meet the next president of the United States.”

  “Congratulations, governor,” I heard myself saying. “You must be a very proud man tonight.”

  “Not proud really. More awed.” His voice was incredibly mellow and resonant. I had heard Dewey on the radio but that instrument couldn’t capture the rich velvet of his tone. “I was telling Eli on the plane that I’ve never felt so humbled.”

  There wasn’t too much I could say to that, so I didn’t say anything. There was an awkward little silence which Savage filled, kind of.

  “You had no trouble getting here, I hope?”

  “Oh, no. Fine.”

  “They had your name at the desk then?” Dewey resonated.

  “Oh, yes.”

  I couldn’t quite convince myself that I was speaking with candidate Dewey and not with some stooge made up to look like him. When you come down to it, a nice chunk of the slam a public personality carries comes from his inaccessibility. You never see the guy. Carried all the way, the ultimate public figure is someone who you suspect may not exist at all. The Pope, for example, wouldn’t be quite so majestic if you ran into him at Bickford’s every Wednesday. Dewey wasn’t all the way up there, not yet, but he was getting pretty close.

  “Can I offer you a drink, LeVine?” asked Savage.

  “Scotch and soda would be fine.”

  “Scotch and soda it is.” He was Mr. Conviviality tonight. I didn’t quite trust it. A show for Dewey.

  “Let’s sit down, shall we?” said the candidate, pointing toward the living room.

  The room—drapes, rug, chairs, couch—was all cream and powder blue, with a nice discreet chandelier up on the ceiling. The white marble coffee table was covered with congratulatory telegrams and adorned by a simple vase that held about two dozen freshly cut long-stemmed roses.

  “You find it a bit warm in here?”

  “Not really, governor.”

  “Well, I do.” Dewey chuckled, each chuckle weighing in at about forty kilocycles. He went to the window and
opened it a bit wider, then stood looking out for a few seconds. This guy could be president. I didn’t really think he had a Chinaman’s chance, but sitting in the room with the guy, all I could think was White House. It’s a funny thing, but being physically close to a man of that stature somehow puts you on his side. I think it’s called seduction.

  “Look at that,” Dewey said.

  I got up and went to the window. He put his arm around my shoulder.

  “Can you see the hansom?”

  Down there was Central Park and a horse was clopping along the road pulling a hansom cab, its driver perched motionless in top hat and tails. The hansom passed under the street lamps. It was a warm and breezy night, and couples were promenading around the duck pond.

  “It’s like something out of The New Yorker, isn’t it, Jack?”

  I just shook my head, trying to come up with a zinger. “A hell of a town, governor.”

  Dewey looked me straight in the eye, very happy. “That’s right. It’s a hell of a town, isn’t it. God, how I love it.”

  Savage waltzed over and stuck a tall drink in my hand.

  “Some view, eh, LeVine?”

  “You know, Eli, standing here with Jack I just thought I couldn’t put up anywhere but this suite. After the election, I’ll only stay here.”

  “Will it be large enough, Tom?”

  “Goodness, I should hope so. Two bedrooms. Secret Service can have the suite next door.” He stopped and laughed. “Jack must think we’re pretty cocky.”

  I just smiled. “It’s nice to dream, I guess.” It wasn’t the smartest thing to say. Dewey’s smile wavered for a second, but revved back up to two hundred watts after he decided the remark was innocent.

  “It’s no dream, LeVine,” Savage said with an edge to his voice.

  “No, no, I know exactly what he meant, Eli. He’s right. We’ve got more important things to do than chatter about where President Dewey is going to stay.”

  The nominee returned to the couch and Savage took an easy chair. So did I. My palms were sweaty and the moisture level increased when Dewey gave me a long, searching look.

  “Eli tells me you think we’re making progress in this dreadful matter,” he finally said.

  “Some.”

  “Would you care to tell us where you think we stand at this moment? You know I’m an old prosecuter so don’t feel you have to pull any punches with me.”

  “Tom’s seen it all,” Savage said, taking a long swallow of his drink.

  I nodded respectfully. “The latest news I can report is that an agent of the blackmail group visited me this afternoon and offered twenty-five thousand cash if I got off the case. When I turned him down, he was kind enough to take a shot at me. Luckily I spun out of the way a second before he fired or he’d have had me. I managed to shake the gun loose and knock him out.”

  There was a brief silence. I heard people walking past the suite: a few ladies, a few gentlemen. They were laughing politely.

  “Well, that’s quite a story, Jack,” Dewey said. “Who do you think is pulling the strings in this operation? Eli seems to think the Syndicate might be involved. Sounds quite logical to me. As you know, I made it very hot for that crowd when I was in the D.A.’s office.”

  “It doesn’t wash with me,” I told him. “For one thing the mob doesn’t go around sending one man with twenty-five grand and no one to back him up. Those boys usually do things in twos and threes.”

  Dewey smiled.

  “I was testing you, Jack. It doesn’t wash with me either.”

  Then Dewey turned to a door in the rear and said, “Come on out, Paul.” The door opened and I wanted to get the hell out any way I could.

  “A friend of yours?” Savage said, as Detective Paul Shea, Homicide, sauntered out of a rear bedroom.

  “You gentlemen know each other?” asked the governor.

  “We met under unfavorable circumstances.” I stood up and shook hands with Shea, who kind of grunted. He was a red-haired fireplug of a man whose neck was measured in feet rather than inches. He had the blue eyes and stub nose of an Irishman, and the nicks and facial scars of a cop who al ways went for the fight. A couple of the teeth in his mouth were his. Paul Shea had risen in the police force on the sheer strength of his brains and muscle; he had as much Irish charm as a bagel.

  “Please sit down,” Savage said cheerily. “You look surprised, Jack.”

  “I guess I feel you don’t have too much faith in me.”

  “Oh really, LeVine.” Savage was taken aback by my anger. People weren’t supposed to get angry at him. “It wasn’t our intention to make you feel this way. Tom knows Detective Shea from his years in the D.A.’s office and called him up for a little assistance. Detective Shea raised a few questions and we thought it best to get you two together.”

  “The last time Shea and I got together I had double vision for a week.” Shea smiled. That was his sense of humor. “And why were you hiding him in the back?”

  “We weren’t hiding him at all, LeVine, but we did want the chance to talk with you alone for a while.”

  “Confidential-like.”

  “Calm down, LeVine,” Shea said, taking a chair. “I don’t know a thing. All I got are questions. A few things happened recently that didn’t take with me at all and I thought we could hash it over.” His voice was a flat monotone, which made him very effective in the back room. After a while the voice itself drove you nuts.

  “I know the way you hash things out, Shea. Where’s the hose?”

  “Be smart, shamus, you’re getting upset over nothing.”

  “I assure you we’re acting in good faith, LeVine,” Savage concurred in a soothing tone.

  “Story goes like this,” Shea began. “A guy named Fenton got croaked after unsuccessful brain surgery in a john at the Hotel Lava. This is maybe a week ago. You know the Lava, LeVine?”

  “I was bar mitzvahed there.”

  “I remember the affair well.” He went on. “I sniff around the Fenton murder and it checks out routine; a shakedown artist usually gets somebody mad. I wasn’t very interested in spending my time on the case, to tell you the truth.”

  “I love it when you tell me the truth.”

  “Please, gentlemen,” crooned Savage. Dewey was enjoying it. Like old times.

  “Stop throwing me the nasty, LeVine,” said Shea. “It ain’t funny.” He cleared his throat. “A couple of days after this they find a corpse named Rubine stuck in a drainage pipe up in Olive, New York.”

  “I know Olive,” Dewey contributed.

  “Yessir. Well, it’s this Rubine and it turns out he was in cahoots with Fenton. I went after the parley. Which is when I got yanked from the case. Suddenly nobody wants to know from nothing.”

  “They pulled you off the case, Paul?” asked the nominee.

  “I was told the Olive rub-out was a matter for the local law. When I called the sheriff up there, he told me they weren’t pursuing the case either.”

  “And those were the men who contacted Anne and me,” declared Savage, like he had solved the whole case. “LeVine, it sounds to me like political influence is being used to throw a monkey wrench into the police investigation of this matter.”

  “An incredible scandal,” said Dewey.

  I didn’t like where this was leading. Not at all.

  “Let me ask you something, Mr. Savage,” I finally rasped, after examining my shoes for about twenty seconds. “Do you want a police investigation of this case? I was under the impression that you wanted this matter handled without publicity. That’s why I was hired.”

  “That’s not the point, LeVine,” said Savage. “The point is why were the police pulled off those homicides?” He was dead right, of course, but I was damned if I was going to tell him so.

  “That’s the nub of it,” the candidate agreed.

  “We could sew things up pretty fast if we had half a chance.” Shea grabbed some brownie points.

  “Sure you could and the st
ory would be on the front page of the News every day for two weeks. If you folks want that, it’s yours.” I had to keep harping on the publicity bit or everything would get queered.

  “We don’t want that, of course,” said the banker.

  “But Jack,” Dewey said in the soft tones of a priest making a house call, “who pulled the police off the case?”

  “If I knew, I’d have the blackmail material. And that, gentlemen, is my only job in this case: to get that material back to Mr. Savage. That’s all of it. I’m not a cop or a judge, I’m a plain old shamus who can only do one thing at a time. I’ve got to recover something. Whether or not anybody gets caught, or is thrown in the cooler or off a cliff, is someone else’s business, not mine. Now I think I’ve got a way to keep everybody happy, get the materials back, and keep Mr. Savage in your campaign, governor. But I can’t do a thing if I have to play guessing games with Homicide. Sorry, Shea.”

  Shea grunted.

  “Sounds to me like you’re not too anxious to have the blackmailers named, LeVine. I smell a cover-up.” The son of a bitch.

  “Smell what you want. My job is to do something nice and quiet. This might be a juicy case for Homicide, you boys could all get your pictures in the paper. Poring over the evidence, wagging a finger at the suspect, showing your teeth for the photogs. I don’t give a damn about that. I want to get something back for Mr. Savage and I don’t want the News and the Mirror drooling all over the case. I’m hired by Savage to protect Savage’s interests. Period.”

  Shea wasn’t impressed, but Savage was and that was all that counted.

  “That’s the sticking point, Tom.”

  “Governor,” I said, “Shea’s right. I don’t care if the blackmailers are ‘caught’ in a conventional sense. I’m a professional who wants to have that material returned with no waves, no harm done.”

  “Gentlemen. LeVine’s a smart boy and a good shamus, but I’ve got to think he knows more than he’s telling.” Shea spelled it out in large type.