“You were had, Newcastle,” said Captain Sczciegel. “You couldn’t trust either one of your partners.”
4
“Gotta grab a quick lunch,” said Columbo as they left the hospital. “I know a place that serves great chili. Why don’t ya join me, Captain?”
“I’ve heard of the place,” said Sczciegel. “Which is why I think I’ll just grab a sandwich and take it to my desk. You go on. I’ll get a warrant for Johnny Visconti. Once we get him in and booked, you can take over the questioning.”
“Well, I—”
“Go on, Columbo. Have your chili. You can’t go out and make the collar. You don’t have your sidearm with you.”
Columbo grinned. “I’ll make a point of—”
“Sure you will. I’ll see you a little later.”
He drove to Burt’s and pulled into the little parking lot. And there she was: Adrienne Boswell, coming across the lot, handsome and elegant in a miniskirted iridescent blue dress, smiling broadly as her heels click-clicked on the asphalt.
“Columbo!”
“What a coincidence.”
“Coincidence, hell. I’ve been waiting in this parking lot for half an hour, on the chance you’d show up for your noontime chili and pool. You’re late.”
“Uh, a little. I had some business.”
“I need to talk with you. How about letting me drive us to a place where we can have a better lunch than this? I know nothing can match Burt’s chili, but I’d like a few minutes’ privacy.”
“Well, I don’t have an awful lot of time to spare.”
“I’ll bring you back within forty-five minutes.”
Once in her BMW, she told him something she considered nauseating. “You know what’s going on? There’s a market for anything that belonged to Regina, especially clothes, especially underwear, especially things she’d worn and had not yet had laundered. A pair of panties that smells of her sweat is worth five or six thousand dollars.”
“If anything like that’s bein’ sold, Johnny’s found himself a profitable little sideline,” said Columbo. “Or maybe Rita. That is… supposin’ the stuff is authentic.”
“Humanity never ceases to amaze me,” said Adrienne. “I guess that’s why I like my job.”
“It’s one of the reasons I like mine,” Columbo agreed. The place with a better lunch was a dimly lighted private club, where customers sat with a considerable degree of privacy in heavy oaken booths served by topless waitresses. Adrienne smiled slyly and said, “I sort of thought maybe you’d relax better in a place like this.”
Their waitress knew him. “Hey, Columbo,” she said. “Fancy seeing you here.” She was a tall, well-built young woman with red hair obviously made redder with dye. “Hiya, Aggie,” he said. “It’s been a long time.”
“You told me I’d learn a trade. How’s this for a trade?”
“It isn’t what I had in mind. But—”
Aggie grinned at Adrienne. “The lieutenant and I are old friends,” she explained. “He had me sent to Fontera. I did thirteen months.” She grinned at Columbo. “Good behavior.”
“You keep it that way, Aggie.”
“Right.”
When she had gone oflf to the bar for their drinks, Columbo shook his head. “In my line of work, you meet just about every kind.”
“Mine, too,” said Adrienne. “I recommend the hamburgers here. Big, thick, and juicy.”
“Sounds good.”
“I understand you’ve arrested Mickey Newcastle. Fact?”
“Who says?”
She smiled. “I’m a journalist, Columbo. I have sources, and I can’t disclose my sources.”
“I’d like it kept quiet until we get another guy in jail,” said Columbo.
“Johnny Visconti.”
“You know too much.”
“I’m like you, Columbo. The only way I can do my job is to scurry around, getting a fact here and a fact there, until it works into some kind of pattern.”
“I talk too much,” he said.
“Au contraire, mon ami, ” she said. “You don’t talk enough. Off the record, why did Johnny Discount kill Regina?”
“It comes back to the old man we tried to identify in Marino di Bardineto. Mickey says the old man wanted her killed and offered a lot of money to the guys who undertook to do it.”
“I have a suggestion for you,” said Adrienne. “There’s a lot of excitement in town, because of the Carlo Lucchese murders. That was a mob hit, pure and simple. Talk is, there’ll be a retaliatory hit. Or maybe that a retaliatory hit. The old man disappeared. He was almost certainly connected. Maybe—”
“I get ya,” said Columbo. “As if this case wasn’t complicated enough. If we could just figure out who the old man was—”
“I’ve got a present for you,” said Adrienne. She took a manila envelope from her shoulder bag and handed it to him.
Inside he found two photographs. One was of Regina getting off a small private jet. Behind her, scowling at the camera, was the old man. The second was an enlargement, blowing up the face of the old man as much as could be done from a small negative.
“Newspaper morgue files,” she said. “An AP photographer took that four years ago. Don’t ask me who the old man is, because I don’t know. But it’s picture enough to put up in post offices.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Notice how small he was. He wasn’t nearly as tall as Regina. But look how he carries himself. Cock of the walk.”
“He swam every day,” said Columbo. “Even when he was eighty years old, or whatever he was.”
“Short hair. Square face. Damn, he looks like somebody! I can’t place that face, but when this picture runs in fifty newspapers, I bet you somebody identifies him.”
“I wanta circulate it on the wire, to police departments,” said Columbo.
“Okay.”
“I thank ya for this, Adrienne.”
She nodded. “You see? I’m not such a bad type. You and I work well together, Columbo.”
He grinned. “Maybe I could get you a job with the police department.”
5
Johnny’s telephone rang. The caller was Marty, the guy who’d bought what he thought was Regina’s underwear.
“Hey, Johnny! You got any more of that stuff? I can sell as much as you can supply.”
Johnny pondered. He had decided to lam. When they found Mickey—and this time they’d sure find Mickey—they’d suspect him immediately. Well… If he was going to beat it out of town, he might as well sell Marty her real stuff.
“There’s no more of the soiled stuff, Marty. I can bring you some that’s been laundered.”
“Not worth near as much.”
“Okay. I’ll see what I can find. We’ll figure a price when you get a look at it. Wanta meet me in front of Grauman’s Chinese at four?”
“Right. Sure. Oh, say, Johnny. Uh… I don’t know how to ask this exactly, but Saturday night somebody blew away three guys with a .44 magnum. I don’t wanta know if— Well, you know what I don’t want to know. But I’d like to be sure you don’t have that cannon anymore.”
“You think I’m stupid?”
“No. No, I don’t. Deep-sixed, I bet. I needed the assurance. See ya at four.”
Johnny put down the telephone. Stupid. Yes, he’d been stupid. No, he hadn’t deep-sixed it. That Desert Eagle was the finest gun he’d ever seen. It was damned effective. Nobody would come looking for it. He wasn’t a suspect in the killing of Carlo and his flunkies. He didn’t have a motive—not one that the cops could find. Or the boys, either. Hell, even Dirty Harry hadn’t had a gun like this. And there was something about it that just wouldn’t let him get rid of it, even if that would have been the smart thing to do. When a man had something as good as that, he just couldn’t toss it off a pier.
He packed. He didn’t have much to take. The money. He had a nice hunk of money. Some clothes. And he stuffed two pillowcases with Regina’s underwear. His stuff fit in a two-
suiter bag and an overnight case. Everything fit in the Ferrari.
He backed out of the garage and started down the driveway, without a twinge of nostalgia for leaving the house. If he’d ever felt anything for the place, he’d lost those feelings long before the night he killed Regina.
The private guard sat in his car. Johnny blinked his lights at him. The guard waved and grinned.
Then— Two black-and-whites, lights flashing, screeched into the driveway. Four cops with guns drawn trotted toward the Ferrari.
Eighteen
1
Dressed in loose blue coveralls, wearing handcuffs attached to a belly chain, plus leg irons, Johnny sat dejected on a steel folding chair. He was not frightened by the trappings of arrest and imprisonment. He’d been strip-searched and shackled before, and it wasn’t so scary once you knew what to expect. He was not frightened, but he was worried. He had much to think through and no time to think. Lieutenant Columbo was coming to interrogate him, and he knew now that the lieutenant was no easy man to fool. He needed time to straighten some things out in his mind, and he wasn’t going to have time.
The big thing was, they were charging him with the murder of Regina. They couldn’t make that stick, he was confident. Their case had to do with discrepancies about the time w'hen this happened and that happened and what he’d said. They couldn’t hang a murder charge on that.
Which was what worried him. They wouldn’t have charged him if that was all they had. They must have something else.
Like, why had they arrested him as Giovanni Visconti? How’d they know? How’d they found out? What did they think the significance of it was?
Another thing. They’d found the Desert Eagle when they searched the Ferrari. But would they relate it to the deaths of Carlo and his two thugs? There was no reason for them to identify that .44 magnum as the gun that killed Carlo and Frank and Sal. Of course, if they did— So here they were. His tormentors.
Lieutenant Columbo was not as dumb as he looked. He’d shed that stupid-looking raincoat for once, and seeing his suit sort of explained why he always wore the raincoat. The gray suit didn’t fit him very well, and it needed pressing. And, his necktie. The narrow end hung out below the wide end. My God, how old did a man get before he learned to tie a necktie? Actually… Yeah. Suddenly Johnny understood. Columbo didn’t care. Or— His mind was fixed on other things.
The fat broad. Detective Martha Zimmer. She was still in the process of proving herself, Johnny judged. So she was thorough—methodical and thorough. She knew the book and went by it.
“This is Captain Sczciegel.” Columbo nodded at the tall, bald man in shirtsleeves. “He’s my boss.”
The fourth person was the stenographer. Johnny had agreed to talk with the detectives and let them make a record of what he said. The stenographer was pretty: a luscious little blond with beautiful hair. She looked at him thoughtfully, and Johnny sensed the electricity. He didn’t much care about the chains, which were only temporary anyway; but he sure wished she didn’t have to see him that way. He tried to return her signal, but she turned her eyes away… because of the .handcuffs, for sure, because of the handcuffs and belly chain and leg irons. Damn, he wished she didn’t have to see them!
“We’ll go on the record, miss,” said Sczciegel, nodding at the girl.
She began to work her Stenotype.
“You’ve been given your rights, Visconti, so you know you don’t have to talk with us. I looked over the inventory of what you were carrying when you were arrested, and obviously you’re not without money to hire a lawyer. You don’t have to talk with us until your lawyer arrives.”
Johnny smiled. “Captain Sczciegel,” he said in his best calm, rational voice, “I’ve got no problem about talking with you. This is all a mistake, and I know you’ll make it right as soon as you figure it out.”
He knew this was the way to handle the situation. If he were smooth and cooperative, they’d get the idea they had to act civilized, and civilized cops weakened their cases.
The stenographer was looking at him, putting his words on her tape. Johnny gave her a warm smile.
“Alright,” said Sczciegel. “This is Lieutenant Columbo’s case, so he’ll ask you the questions.”
2
Columbo sat on a steel chair like the one Johnny sat on, and he leaned forward, put an elbow on his knee, and cupped his chin in his hand. For a long moment he stared at Johnny with a look of half-amused skepticism.
Captain Sczciegel and Martha Zimmer sat on wooden chairs with writing arms. The stenographer sat on a folding chair. Her Stenotype machine stood on its own sturdy tripod.
“Mr. Visconti—”
“Can I ask one question?”
“Sure.”
“What makes you think I’m Giovanni Visconti?”
Columbo smiled. “Well, are you?”
“What makes you think I am?”
“Only that your fingerprints match the fingerprints of Giovanni Visconti, also known as Johnny Discount. The FBI made the match for us. The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification made it also.”
“So, okay. That’s my real name. Visconti. Regina knew it. I called myself Corleone because—” He smiled and shrugged. “You know. The book, the movie. Anyway, Corleone is the name of a town in Sicily. I could use it if I wanted to. Legally.”
“You’re not charged with illegal use of a name,” Sczciegel said dryly.
“Incidentally,” said Martha, “I think we ought to inform you that some other charges will be filed. Specifically, grand larceny. You were carrying about a quarter of a million dollars in cash, and—”
“That’s mine,” Johnny interrupted curtly. “I didn’t steal a penny of it.” He turned and spoke to Columbo. “We’ve already gone over the fact that Regina gave me cash. I lived in her house and didn’t spend much. That’s what I saved over six years.”
“Well, you were carrying something else you didn’t save and was definitely not yours.” Martha picked up her statement. “A collection of women’s underwear and some other items of clothing. Ordinarily, a bunch of used clothes wouldn’t make grand larceny, but it seems there’s a market for Regina memorabilia, which makes that property worth a lot of money.”
“I took some souvenirs,” Johnny confessed weakly.
“I think you stole something else.” Columbo shifted and sat erect. “Off the old man. That wristwatch, the Vacheron Constantin watch. When I met the old man, he was wearin’ a watch. I couldn’t say it was that one. But you weren’t wearing one. Shortly after, you are wearing that valuable watch.”
“I’ve had it for years.”
“Yeah? Well, let me look at your wrists. And I’m gonna ask Captain Sczciegel to push his watch back a little and let us look at his wrist. See? His arm’s tanned. But he’s got a white stripe around his left wrist, where the sun doesn’t reach because the watch blocks it. If you’d been wearing that watch for years, you’d have a white stripe.”
“Except for one little thing. Lieutenant. When I went swimming in the pool or went to the beach, I didn’t wear the watch.”
Columbo shrugged. “Got a point,” he conceded. “But it won’t wash. Vacheron Constantin is a very expensive and very unusual watch. When we check the serial numbers with the company, we can probably trace it.”
3
A uniformed officer rapped on the door of the interrogation room and signaled to Columbo through the glass. Columbo got up and went out.
“Lieutenant McCloskey would like to see you, sir.”
“Where is he?”
“Just down the hall. He thought you wouldn’t want your suspect to see him.”
“Sharp thinkin’,” said Columbo. He walked down the hall a few paces. McCloskey was waiting in another interrogation room. “Hiya, Bert.”
“Hey, Columbo! Whatcha doin’? Closing up the Regina case?”
“Maybe. And maybe you can help me. And maybe I can help you.”
“There you go,” said McCloskey.
/>
“Okay. When we arrested Giovanni Visconti, also known as Johnny Discount, also known as Johnny Corleone, he had in his car a .44 magnum Desert Eagle automatic. I understand the Lucchese murders were done with that kind of a gun. It’s a long shot, but I’d appreciate it if you’d pick up that .44 and do a ballistics test. It sure would be interestin’ if my guy killed Lucchese.”
“You got it.”
“Quick as possible, okay?”
“I’ll do it right now,” said Bert McCloskey.
4
“Sorry about that,” said Columbo as he sat down again facing Johnny Visconti.
Johnny was feeling aggressive. “You got no murder case against me,” he said.
“I wouldn’t say that, Mr. Visconti. You see, I got a surprise for you. In spite of your best efforts, you didn’t manage to get rid of Mickey Newcastle. He’s alive, he’s in a detox program, and he’s signed a confession.” Johnny failed to conceal his surprise, but quickly he recovered his equanimity and smiled. “Okay, I figured you thought you had something.” He grinned and shook his head. “But tell me something, Lieutenant… Captain. Do you guys really think a jury will convict a man of murder on the word of a down-the-drain ? Hell! Mickey Newcastle would confess he killed his grandmother, for a fix. Let me see. You picked him up because he was in possession of a big stash. Instead of sending him straight to jail, where you’d send any other junkie with a big supply, you put him in detox. You did him a favor. He did you one. C’mon!”
“He confessed to details he couldn’t have known if—” Sczciegel began to say, until he was interrupted.
“I tell you what,” Johnny interrupted. “Go back and check your hospital and police records for Thursday night. You’ll find a guy was shot in the leg during a mugging. His girlfriend was with him. Put Mickey in a lineup and let those two see him. How good a witness is he gonna be, fellas?”
Columbo: The Hoffa Connection Page 20