[Rat Pack 02] - Luck Be a Lady, Don't Die

by Robert J. Randisi

  “You don’t have an appointment—”

  “I need to talk to him right away,” I said. “It’s urgent.”

  “Well ... will he know what it’s about?”

  “Oh, he’ll know.”

  “Wait there, please.”

  He closed the door in our faces.

  “Want me to get us in?” Jerry asked.

  “How?”

  “The old boot.” He showed his size fourteen shoe.

  “I don’t think we’ll have to do that, Jerry,” I said. “On top of everything else we don’t want to damage hotel property.”

  “I just meant puttin’ my foot in the door next time he opens it.”

  “Oh, well, let’s play it by ear.”

  When the door opened again it was Frank himself, not George. “Come on in, Eddie,” he said. “Hey, Jerry, how are you?”

  “Good, Mr. S.”

  Frank closed the door and turned to face us, dressed as he had been before.

  “What’s goin’ on, Eddie?”

  “Plenty.” I told him that a man’s body had been found in Mary Clarke’s room, in the bathtub.

  “Who is he?”

  “We don’t know yet,” I said, “but the police are sure to come looking for me.”

  “Why?”

  “The house dick has to give them my name.”

  “We can’t avoid that?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “We can’t ... keep it from happening?”

  A look passed between Frank and Jerry and I stepped between them.

  “No, Frank,” I said, “I think we’re gonna have to deal with this.”

  “Whataya got in mind?”

  “I’ll talk to the cops and keep you out of it as long as I can,” I said.

  “What’re you gonna tell them?”

  “That I was looking for this girl for one of my high rollers.”

  “You gonna get away with that?”

  “Probably for a while,” I said. “It’ll give you time to come up with a story, get a lawyer ... whatever you have to do.”

  Frank frowned and thought it over.

  “I’m sorry, Frank,” I said, “I don’t think I can do anything else.”

  “It’s okay,” he said, waving his hand. “You do what you gotta do without getting’ yourself jammed up.”

  He looked at Jerry.

  “How much do you know?”

  “Only what Dino told me, Mr S.,” Jerry said. “I’m supposed to help Eddie.”

  “Well, watch his back,” Frank said. “Where there’s one dead body there might be more.”

  Neither one of us—Frank or me—said anything about the next one maybe being the girl.

  “Frank, I’ve got to talk to Jack, too.”

  “Entratter?” he asked, just to make sure we were talking about the same person.

  I nodded.

  “I tell you what,” he said. “I’ll call him right now, tell him maybe I got his man into trouble again.”

  “Okay,” I said, “that’ll help. I’ll go down there now. You’ll probably be done by the time I get to his office.”

  “Go.”

  He turned to open the door, then turned back.

  “Listen . . . you’re still gonna look for her, aren’t you? I mean, it’s pretty obvious she’s in trouble.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “I’m still going to look for her.”

  He nodded, shook my hand and let us out.

  * * *

  Jerry was quiet until we got into the elevator.

  “I was thinkin’—”

  “Don’t, Jerry.”

  “What?”

  “You’re not gonna strong-arm Dave Lewis.”

  “Why would I do that?” he asked. “Besides, your buddy Bardini is gonna give you up. So what good would it do for me to strong-arm the house dick?”

  “Sorry, I thought that was the message going back and forth between you and Frank.”

  “It was,” Jerry said, “but I wouldn’t do that without checking with you first, Mr. G.”

  “I appreciate that, Jerry. So what were you gonna say, then?”

  He seemed to have changed his mind, maybe because I’d insulted him.

  He shrugged and said, “I was just thinkin’ . . .”

  Seventeen

  I KNEW DETECTIVE SAM HARGROVE of the Las Vegas Police. It had been him and his partner, a colored man named Smith, I’d dealt with the first time I’d found a body.

  “Where’s your partner?” I asked as he entered Jack Entratter’s office.

  “It’s a bold new equal opportunity world,” he said. “He got promoted. This is my partner. Detective Les Gorman.”

  Gorman blinked at me with watery blue eyes, brushed back a lock of snow white hair that had fallen over his forehead. He looked about a foot from retirement age.

  By the time I’d gotten to Entratter’s office earlier, he and Frank had, indeed, finished talking. He’d asked me to fill him in, then told me that when the cops came looking for me I should see them in his office.

  “In fact,” he’d said, “they’ll probably come to me first, so I’ll arrange it.”

  “How can you be so sure they’ll come to you first?”

  He’d looked at me and said, “I’ll arrange it.”

  True to his word when the detectives wanted me they called on him first. He’d told me to stay in the casino where he could find me, and told me to lose Jerry.

  “We don’t want him talkin’ to the cops,” he’d said. Jerry had been arrested last time, and Entratter had gotten him out. As it turned out Hargrove would remember him.

  * * *

  “Well, Eddie,” Hargrove said, “it’s been six months since you found a body.”

  “I didn’t find this one.”

  “Oh, that’s right,” he said, “you didn’t look in the bathtub ... did you?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “You want to tell me what you were looking for?”

  “Mary Clarke,” I said. “Why else would I be in her room?”

  “I don’t know, you tell me.”

  Gorman stood off to one side, rocking back and forth, watching. “Your new partner doesn’t talk much.”

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “Just an observation.”

  “I talk when I’ve got something to say,” Gorman responded.

  “Which isn’t now,” Hargrove said, giving the man a pointed look. “Come on, Eddie, you’ve had enough time to think up a good story. Let’s hear it.”

  “I don’t have a story,” I said. “I only have the truth.”

  “Well,” Hargrove said, “that’ll be different.”

  I didn’t know if he was referring to me, or if it was just a general comment. I didn’t ask.

  Briefly, I told him that I had gone to the hotel looking for Mary Clarke because she had not been heard from since arriving in Las Vegas. I knew she had checked in, so I went to the house dick, Dave Lewis, and asked him to have a look.

  “And he invited you up with him?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And neither one of you touched anything?”

  I shrugged.

  “I don’t know. You mean because of fingerprints? I wasn’t trying to hide the fact that I was there. Dave must’ve touched the doorknob so we could get in.”

  “Never mind,” Hargrove said. “What’d you see when you were inside?”

  I told him what Dave Lewis and I had found and didn’t leave anything out. I didn’t have to. He hadn’t yet asked the question I was going to have to sidestep.

  “And you never thought to look in the bathtub?” Hargrove asked when I was done.

  “I didn’t look under the bed, either, Detective,” I said. “It just never occurred to me.”

  “Well, luckily it occurred to your buddy, Bardini. What was he doing there, by the way?”

  “He was just helping me out.”

  “You hired him?”

  I was about to
say no when I noticed Jack Entratter nodding his head slightly.

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  I didn’t know if either of the detectives had caught my boss’s head nod.

  “To help you find the girl?”

  “Right again.”

  I was tense, waiting for the big question.

  Hargrove turned and looked at Jack Entratter, who was seated behind his desk. Jack gave him nothing, keeping his face still, but he asked a question of his own, giving me a break.

  “Who’s the dead guy, Detective?”

  “We’re still trying to i.d. him,” Hargrove said. “He had nothing on him, not even a label on his jacket. I’d be grateful if somebody from here—you, Gianelli, whoever—would come down to the morgue and have a look at him, maybe take a shot at identifying him.”

  “We can do that,” Entratter said. “I’ll have somebody from security come down. How was he killed?”

  “Beaten to death with something,” Hargrove said.

  “I didn’t see any blood in the room,” I pointed out.

  “Is that supposed to be helpful?” he asked.

  I shrugged.

  “Whoever the killer was put him in the tub first, then did him there.”

  “Was he carrying?” Entratter asked.

  Hargrove looked at him.

  “He was wearing a holster,” he said. “It was empty. That was a good question.”

  Now Entratter shrugged. “It just came to me.”

  Hargrove nodded, then looked back at me.

  “Okay, Eddie,” he said, “why were you looking for this girl?”

  I moved my shoulders uncomfortably.

  “I was just helping out one of my high rollers.”

  “Married?”

  “Of course.”

  “Bringing the girl in for a little slap and tickle?” he asked. “Probably for more than that.”

  “Definitely more than that,” Hargrove said. “I need a name.”

  I looked at Entratter.

  “Detective, I’m sure you understand that we have to protect our whales.” Jack used the universal casino word for high rollers.

  “I’m investigating a murder here, Mr. Entratter,” Hargrove reminded him.

  “I can appreciate that.” I was surprised at how educated Jack sounded when he was talking to the cops. But I guess that was his strength as a casino general manager, the ability to adapt.

  “This girl’s family has a right to know what’s going on,” Hargrove said.

  “The girl isn’t the one who’s dead,” Jack Entratter reminded him.

  “Well then ... the dead man’s family has a right.”

  “And you don’t know who his family is, yet,” Entratter said. “Tell you what I’ll do. Let Eddie talk to our whale and we’ll see if we can’t get him to come to you on his own.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  Entratter shrugged his wide shoulders.

  “Then I suppose we won’t have any choice but to cooperate.” Hargrove studied Entratter for a few moments, then looked at me again.

  “I’m going to hold you to your word,” he said to Jack while still looking at me.

  “That’s fine, Detective.”

  Hargrove pointed a finger at me.

  “You skated six months ago, but I knew you were dirty then,” he said. “So that leads me to believe you’re dirty this time, too.”

  “What am I supposed to say to that?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all. But when I want you to talk, you will. I promise you that.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, either, so I kept quiet.

  “Come on, Les.”

  Hargrove headed for the door and his partner, Gorman, followed him out without a word. That left me and Entratter alone.

  “Take a seat.”

  I sat across from him.

  “I’m not givin’ them Frank, Eddie.”

  “How can you avoid it?”

  “You’re gonna fix this for me,” he said. “You and your buddies—Jerry and your P.I. friend.”

  “How, Jack?”

  “Find the girl.”

  “And if she’s dead?”

  “Find the killer.”

  “That’s asking a lot.”

  He leaned all the way back in his chair and regarded me for a moment, his hands folded in front of him. I didn’t like how calm he was. “How about if your job depended on it.”

  “What?” I shot forward in my chair. “You can’t be serious, Jack.”

  “Put yourself in my place, kid,” he said, reasonably. “Who would you rather lose, a pit boss named Eddie G.? Or Frank Sinatra?”

  “Damn it, Jack,” I said, sitting back in my chair miserably, “when you put it that way ...”

  Eighteen

  I FOUND JERRY ON THE CASINO FLOOR, watching a high stakes blackjack table near my pit. There were three players at the table and I knew them all as regulars. Two were men, one a woman. She was the best player of the three.

  “That old guy with the gray hair,” Jerry said, “he wins a lot.”

  “He has amazing luck.”

  “And the broad with the big tits?”

  “She plays well, but has no luck.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “She does everything right, plays by the rules, and still manages to just about break even.”

  “There’s rules?”

  “Unwritten rules,” I said.

  “And the guy?”

  “He takes chances, goes against the rules, but his luck holds and he makes money.”

  “And the third guy?”

  “He plays every hand,” I said. “Some he wins, some he doesn’t. Usually goes home a loser.”

  “You know all of ’em?”

  “Well,” I said. “They’re always here.”

  “You ever tap that broad?”

  “Jerry ...”

  “I’m just wonderin’ about them tits,” the big man said.

  “She’s married, has three kids and one grandchild.”

  His eyes went wide.

  “That broad’s a grandma?”

  “A damned good-looking one,” I said. “She comes here to play cards, not to play.”

  “Too bad,” he said. “So, what happened upstairs with the cops?”

  “You remember Detective Hargrove from last year? Took you in?”

  “I remember.”

  “He’s got this case.”

  “Does he know about me?”

  “No yet, but he’s after my ass.”

  “Is Mr. Entratter gonna cover it?”

  “Mr. Entratter is gonna hang my ass out to dry if it means keepin’ Frank clean.”

  He frowned.

  He took his eyes off grandma’s chest. “That ain’t right.”

  “Maybe not,” I said, “but it’s how the game is played out here. Come on.”

  “Where to?”

  “I’ve got to talk to both Dave Lewis and Danny, again.”

  “We takin’ the Caddy?” he asked, keeping up with me easily even though he was taking one stride to my two.

  “Yep,” I said. I took out the keys and tossed them in the air. He caught them.

  * * *

  First we stopped in the lobby so I could use a pay phone. There were two lines of people at the front desk, one checking in and one checking out. The check-out line was shorter. The Sands was one of the hottest spots on the strip, especially when one of the Rat Pack was performing there.

  I called Danny to see if he was in. He was and he agreed to meet us at the Golden Nugget, in Dave Lewis’ office.

  When we got there I called Dave from the lobby and he told us to come ahead. Danny was already seated in a chair in front of Dave’s desk when we arrived.

  “I’m sorry I got you guys into this,” I started.

  “Hey,” Dave said with a shrug, “we had to find that body some time.”

  “Like I said before,” Danny added, “your ass is the one on t
he line.”

  “You don’t know the half of it.”

  I told them both what Entratter had told me.

  “It ain’t fair,” Jerry said, echoing his original sentiment.

  “No, it ain’t,” Danny said, “but it doesn’t surprise me.”

  “Me, neither. I’d get the boot, too, if it meant keeping Tony Bennett here.”

  “Stuff that’s done in New York is a lot more honest,” Jerry said. “If somebody’s ass is on the line it’s for a good reason.”

  “And then you break it,” Dave Lewis said.

  Jerry gave him a hard look.

  “Yeah,” he said, “that’s my job, and I do it real good.”

  “I’ll bet you do,” Dave said. I didn’t know why he was poking at Jerry, but I didn’t want him to do it anymore.

  “Okay, forget all that,” I said. “Dave, when you talked to the cops did you tell them everything?”

  “Everything I knew.”

  “What about Jerry?’ I asked. “Did you tell them about Jerry?” Dave looked at the big man, smiled and asked, “Who’s Jerry?” The big guy took a step forward, as if insulted but I put my arm out to stop him.

  “He left you out of it,” I said.

  “He did?”

  I nodded, and he took a step back.

  “Danny?”

  “I never mentioned the big guy,” Danny said.

  “I told the cops I hired you.”

  “Okay, I’ll go along with that story.”

  “Does that mean you can keep stuff from them?”

  Danny shook his head. “I’m a P.I., not a lawyer. You want legal confidentiality you’ll have to hire a lawyer, and then I can work for him. What are you keeping from them, anyway?”

  “The name of the man who asked me to look for the girl.”

  “Oh.”

  “Who is it?” Dave asked.

  “You don’t need ta know,” Jerry told him.

  “Oh yeah? Well, maybe I suddenly remembered I should tell the cops about you.”

  “Dave,” I said, “come on ...”

  “Ah, forget it,” he said. “You’re right, I don’t need to know. Maybe you guys should just take the rest of this—whatever it is you’re doin’—outside.”

  “You’re right, Dave,” I said. “Thanks for your help, so far.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” He sat back in his chair and looked the other way. His feelings were probably hurt.