Death Wore Gloves

by Ross H. Spencer

  Death Wore Gloves

  Ross H. Spencer

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 1987 by Ross H. Spencer

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places 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.

  For more information, email info@diversionbooks.com

  First Diversion Books edition March 2015

  ISBN: 978-1-62681-646-6

  Also by Ross H. Spencer

  Kirby’s Last Circus

  The Chance Purdue Series

  The Dada Caper

  The Reggis Arms Caper

  The Stranger City Caper

  The Abu Wahab Caper

  The Radish River Caper

  The Lacey Lockington Series

  The Fifth Script

  The Devereaux File

  The Fedorovich File

  Death Wore Gloves is dedicated to Bob Mason for all those days on Brockway Avenue in Youngstown, Ohio.

  And to Shirley Spencer for all those days on the streets in all those towns, and for all those dreams, most of them realized.

  Sir Kosherdill, whose name was known

  From here to there and back again,

  Did fall in love with maiden Joan,

  The ward of Baron Bagelben.

  They trysted in the leafy glen,

  They trysted on the sandy shore,

  Until the Baron Bagelben

  Announced that they would tryst no more.

  The Baron’s bearded face turned blue,

  He smote a table with his fist

  And roared, “You’ve better things to do

  Than tryst and tryst and tryst and tryst!”

  Fair maiden Joan sat down and wrote,

  Requesting succor in her plight,

  And, sealing it, dispatched her note

  To Kosherdill that very night.

  And thus it was Sir Kosherdill

  At dawn did mount his horse and ride

  Across the valley, up the hill,

  And then on down the other side,

  And through the flat-lands, soft and green,

  And through the woods, and when anon

  The Baron’s castle could be seen

  He spurred his mount to hurry on.

  He stopped his panting, lathered steed

  Before the castle’s massive gate.

  ’Twas time for fine, heroic deed,

  ’Twas time to challenge fickle fate,

  To beard the lion in his den,

  To rise to heights of honor bright,

  And Joan would have her freedom when

  The summer moon came up this night!

  By dint of courage, strength, and skill

  He scaled the wall and then came down

  Into the moat where Kosherdill

  Did quietly and quickly drown.

  And so was pointed up again

  An adage old yet ever new.

  You’ll hear it every now and then—

  “You win a few—you lose a few.”

  —Monroe D. Underwood

  1

  Thursday

  He’d been napping on his couch, and he’d been seriously tempted to let the telephone ring. Normally a pushover for temptations, serious or otherwise, he’s managed to resist this one and he’d answered the phone. Later, he’d consoled himself with the certain knowledge that there’d have been no way of avoiding the mess—if she’d missed him on Thursday she’d have called on Friday or Saturday, and he’d have responded exactly as he had on Thursday. His finances were under siege and for four hundred dollars he’d have gone over Niagara Falls in a busted orange crate, waving Old Glory and singing “America the Beautiful.”

  He tooled the rust-splotched, bald-tired, white Buick Regal out of a flaming orange sunset and into the soft gray shrouds of another Chicago twilight, boring east on Gunnison Avenue to where an enormous cerise and blue neon sign said Raponi’s Old Naples Spaghetti House. It was just one helluva sign, clearly readable for two city blocks. It said Italian Cuisine and Steaks & Chops and Parties Welcome and Italian Jukebox, and it had a tilted champagne glass that spewed little white bubbles and below the champagne glass it said Cocktail Lounge and Nick Raponi claimed that it cost two hundred dollars a month to keep it lit up. The last four letters of Cocktail sputtered fitfully, flickering on and off in the rapidly gathering October darkness. Tuthill Willow noticed things like that. He was a detective.

  There were two cars in the tidy yellow-striped parking lot—Nick Raponi’s brand new Chrysler New Yorker and Florence Gambrello’s antiquated bronze Mercury with its rear bumper caved in. Willow left his Buick, pausing momentarily to sniff the scent of distant burning leaves, wondering if they burned leaves in Heaven, and deciding that they did and that it was probably legal.

  Willow knew that Raponi’s would be virtually deserted because Thursday evenings at Raponi’s had been financial catastrophes for years, anticipated and accepted like April afternoons in Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium. Raponi’s was a decent establishment—dim, clean, orderly, and this may have been why Willow had never felt completely at ease there. He’d won his drinking spurs in places where the lights were bright, the jukeboxes loud, the barstools lopsided, the urinals busted, the toilet paper missing—joints where men cussed and spat on the floor and where the women who came in were lost or looking for a proposition, usually the latter. Raponi’s was genteel—its ceiling heavy beamed, spotless white stucco, its walls paneled, its floors carpeted, and there were potted rubber trees in every last nook and cranny. There was a twenty-five-foot black plastic bar with red leatherette barstools, and a fifty-seat dining area with a glass chandelier the size of a Victorian bathtub, skinny-legged wrought-iron tables with red cloths, candles in little red glass chimneys, and black Naugahyde swivel chairs. And barely within the entrance there was Florence Gambrello, Raponi’s steady waitress and occasional bouncer, slouched at a table, yawning, smoking, scratching a muscular thigh, and staring moodily into a red pond of unoccupied dining room tables. Willow paused, cranked up his best preoccupied facial expression, and attempted to brush by her, but Florence Gambrello had the reflexes of a young mongoose and she seized him by the tails of his sports jacket to haul him unceremoniously back to her table. She said, “So where’s the fucking five-alarm fire?”

  Willow’s smile was of the hand-in-the-cookie-jar variety. He jerked an urgent thumb over his shoulder in the general direction of the ailing neon sign. He said, “Uhh-h-h, I was in a hurry to tell Nick that your tail isn’t working just right.”

  Florence Gambrello nodded, staring at him with sultry Sicilian eyes. She ran the pink tip of her highly educated tongue across her full lower lip. She said, “Well, Tutto, any old time Florence’s tail ain’t working just right, you tell Florence, you don’t take it up with Nick Raponi, you got that?”

  “The neon sign, Flo—I’m talking about the neon sign out front.”

  Florence Gambrello reached behind him to squeeze his buttocks, one at a time. She said, “May God be with you tomorrow night, lover!”

  Willow grinned a ghastly grin.

  Florence said, “See me before you leave.” It was more command than request.

  Willow nodded and ambled to the west end of the bar where Nick Raponi stood, one foot up on the beer cooler, eyes glued to a television commercial�
��like he was witnessing the second coming of Marilyn Monroe, Willow thought. Raponi was a self-important, rotund, dapper little man with sleek black hair combed straight back, quick, beady dark eyes, an oversize nose, a Bert Reynolds mustache, a fat two-carat diamond ring, and a whole mess of syndicate connections, or so he’d told Willow more than once. On these occasions Willow had nodded appreciation of Raponi’s underworld affiliations, knowing that most Chicago Italians profess to have close Mafia ties and that very few of them would have recognized a genuine Mafioso if he’d been pissing on their shoes. Willow cleared his throat repeatedly until Raponi glanced in his direction. Raponi grimaced and pointed to the rear of the bar area. “Yeah, Tut, she’s back in one of the booths—stumbled in here maybe fifteen minutes ago. Said something about having an appointment with you.”

  Willow said, “She sounded half-paralyzed when she called.”

  “No change—she’s loaded to the gunnels. Took a vodka collins with her—haven’t laid eyes on her since.”

  Willow bought a bottle of Kennessy’s Light Lager and went back there. She was sitting in the shadows, perched sidesaddle on the edge of a booth bench, crossed legs protruding into the aisle, watching his approach with skeptical murky eyes. She said, “Missur Willur?”

  Willow nodded and sank onto the booth bench across from her. Over the years Willow had encountered his share of oddball clients, but this was his first contact with a drunken nun.

  2

  Thursday

  He mumbled, “Yes, you’re Rosetta?”

  “Thass right—Sissur Rosetta.” There was something vaguely familiar about her, even in the gloom of Raponi’s darkest booth, something about her nose and her mouth and the determined set of her jaw, but Willow didn’t pin it down until the following afternoon. She shook off the proffered cigarette. “Doan smoke, thanks juss same. Sorry am got ass you come all this way, but this place convenyunn—live juss up on Aussin Bullvarr.”

  Willow said, “No difficulty—I’ve been coming to Raponi’s for years.” He looked her over. She was pushing hell out of fifty, a heavy-busted, beetle-browed, coarse woman with crinkles at her eyes, gashlike furrows at the corners of her mouth, and an armor plating of pancake makeup that failed to hide her years. Her nun’s habit was badly rumpled; there was a smear of mustard on her left sleeve and smudges of ketchup on her black gloves. She’d been through the mill, probably several times, an aging nun out on a mild bender, and Willow saw nothing wrong with that—even nuns enjoy a few pops now and then, it was a sign of the times—you’ve come a long way, Sister.

  She was peering at him through slightly tinted, heavy-rimmed spectacles, her eyes dull, blinking, bloodshot. She said, “Missur Willur, am afray am got promlum—goddam big promlum.”

  Willow smiled. “Well, Sister, it won’t be with cold weather—finish that one and you’ll be good for sixty below.”

  Sister Rosetta raised an unsteady warning finger. “Now, doan you be no wiseass—one thing am can’t stann is wiseass!”

  Willow said, “Just kidding, Sister.”

  She leaned forward in the booth. “Am think mime niece is in some kine trubbul.”

  “Then you don’t have the problem—your niece has the problem.”

  She drew herself up haughtily, like a hen over a clutch of eggs. “My niece promlums mime premiums too also. You probly never have no kids, right?” When Willow shrugged she said, “Not bess you knowledge, anyway.” It was an acid tack-on but accurate in essence.

  Willow said, “Tell me about your niece, Sister Rosetta.”

  “Oh, gorjuss girl, simple gorjuss!” A tear wriggled through Sister Rosetta’s mascara like a gray cat squeezing through a black picket fence, etching a trail in her pancake makeup. “Mime sissur’s only child—mime sissur widow.”

  “Too bad.”

  “Not at all. Husbunn was bassard—real prick.”

  For a nun, Sister Rosetta had a way with words. Maybe the older ones got that way. Willow said, “About your niece, Sister.”

  She was studying him. “You no doubt male pig shauvnuss, am bet.”

  Willow shook his head. “Male Republican.”

  “Same diffurnce—piss on ole Ronull Raygun.”

  Willow scowled, wishing to Christ that the churches would stay the hell out of politics and get back to doing whatever they were supposed to be doing. He said, “Your niece, if you will, Sister Rosetta.”

  “Whabout mime niece?”

  “Right!”

  “Doan know.”

  “And that’s why you called me?”

  “Hey, you very clever fella, Missur Willur!”

  “Where is your niece?”

  “Gone.”

  “Well, that’s a beginning. Gone how—eloped with the mail man, kidnapped by gypsies, ran away with the circus—what?”

  “Beats shit outta me.”

  “She’s just gone?”

  “Gone as hell.”

  “What about her clothing?”

  “Oh, ekspensive—goddam near all Marshull Feels stuff!”

  “Uhh-h-h, what I meant was, did she take her clothing when she left?”

  “Most—leff few things.”

  “Why haven’t you tried Missing Persons?”

  “Whaffor? She not missing.”

  “She’s gone but she isn’t missing—let me consider that for just a moment.”

  “She’s call on phone but woan tell new address.”

  “Then she doesn’t want you to know where she is.”

  “By God, you surtnul excellnut detekuv!”

  “You fear for your niece’s safety?”

  “Ezzackly.” She tilted her glass and wiped out her drink. An ice cube tumbled into her lap and she brushed it to the floor. She said, “Slippery li’l bassard.”

  Willow sighed. “When did she leave?”

  “Couple month, mamey three—hey, you got ’nother screwdrafter?”

  “I believe that’s a vodka collins, Sister Rosetta.”

  “Thass okay.”

  Willow grabbed her glass and went to the bar, shaking his head. Raponi put down the telephone to mix the drink. He whispered, “Got Dom Palumbo on the horn—hotshot hitman outta Detroit—gonna be in town shortly—real big job.”

  “Friend of yours?”

  “Yeah, me and Dom go way back.”

  Willow returned to the booth with the vodka collins. Sister Rosetta jerked the straw, pitched it into the ashtray, and raised the glass to drink noisily. Willow said, “Did you and your niece have a falling out?”

  “Never harsh word.”

  “That’s nice—you lived with her, I assume.”

  “Juss temperarlily, sort of.”

  Willow nodded. That explained it. The old dragon was probably drunk around the calendar, and her niece had enjoyed as much of it as she could stand. He said, “When will you be returning to your duties at the convent, or the church, or the school, or wherever?”

  “Probly ’bout same time am get there.”

  Well, that took care of that—mind your own business, Willow. He said, “Could your niece have been involved with a man?”

  Sister Rosetta stifled a yawn with a black-gloved hand. “Oh, sure.”

  “Who is he?”

  “How hell am know whom is he? Hey, am here imform you mime sissur diddun raise no goddam lesbian!”

  “Your niece like men?”

  “Cows like corn?”

  “Perhaps she found a different type of man.”

  “Perhaps Genghis Khan belong Royal Order Mooses.”

  “Don’t waste the punchline, Sister Rosetta.”

  “Okay, ain’t no diffurn type.”

  “She’s tried them all?”

  “Ever damn one. Gladys doan let no moss grow unner her keester.”

  “‘Gladys,’ did you say?”

  “Yes, on amcounn thass her name—Gladys—Gladys Hornsby.”

  Willow was silent through a few heartbeats. “Has Gladys Hornsby ever been married?”

/>   “Why buy the bull when shit’s so cheap?”

  “Okay, so you want to know where she’s living. Why?”

  “Case ’mergency—she my niece, ain’t I?”

  “What about her mother?”

  “I give up—whabout her?”

  “Maybe Gladys is with her.”

  “Hope not—she dead.”

  “Gladys has a job?”

  “Model—good model—bess damn model whole city Chicago.”

  “Well, if she’s a model, finding her shouldn’t be difficult. What agency does she work out of?”

  “Doan got no more ajunn.”

  “She had one earlier?”

  “Fired him.”

  “For what reason?”

  “Ten percenn.”

  “Who was he?”

  “Brimstone or something—Ramdolph or could been Momroe.”

  “That’s Randolph Brimstone or Monroe Brimstone?”

  “Thass Ramdolph Street or Momroe Street—hey, how long you live Chicago?”

  Willow exhaled audibly. “What does Gladys model?”

  “Whatcha got? Any damn thing—bras, panties, swimsuits.”

  “Modeling is the extent of her activities?”

  Sister Rosetta stared at him. “Missur Willur, you got disgussingly filthy mine, but very prakkikul, am sure.”

  “I was speaking of acting—sometimes models dabble in acting.”

  Sister Rosetta shrugged. “Look, how much money locate mime niece?”

  “I get two hundred a day, four hundred minimum, and I absorb routine expenses. I’ll want the four in advance, a picture of Gladys Hornsby, and your address and telephone number. Can you handle that?” Two more Kennessy’s Light Lagers and there’d be less than thirty dollars standing between Willow and a train robbery—still he was hoping that she’d balk at the price.

  She didn’t blink. She fumbled her way into a black plastic purse the size of a basketball and produced a quarter-page tom from a Malibu Fashions catalogue. Willow studied a picture of a slender, smoky blue-eyed creature with short honey-blonde hair, a pensive faraway smile, pert full breasts, and a set of legs that would have kicked off a three-day shootout in a Jesuit monastery. She was almost wearing a two-hundred-dollar purple-on-black swimsuit that could have been stuffed into a thimble. Willow tucked the picture into his wallet along with four crisp one-hundred-dollar bills and a typewritten scrap of paper bearing Sister Rosetta’s address. He’d glanced at the paper and said, “No phone?”