“Toscanini is, you fucking meathead, wearing a dark jacket and gray trousers. The guy Sarnoff is meeting at the airport is a ringer.”
“A fake Maestro. Flying into Idlewild.”
“Exactly.”
“I don’t know what to say, Jack,” Toots said with some exasperation. “Up until now, you’ve always been a rational human being. No genius, maybe—”
“I’m telling you, he’s here. And Sidney Aaron got pushed out a window over this guy. Listen, do you have the Salt Lake shootout story yet?”
“What shootout?” Obviously he didn’t.
“At the Salt Lake airport. Two people gunned down. One of the dead was a lesbian Vegas cabbie named Kim West; she drove me, Toscanini, and Fritz Stern’s daughter to Salt Lake in Vaughn Monroe’s bus.”
“Hey, you didn’t tell me Vaughn Monroe was involved. Now it’s starting to make sense!”
“Schmuck, you don’t believe me, check the wire services!”
“Hang on.”
I waited. Barbara opened the door of the car to stretch those fabulous legs.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
“How good is your driving?”
“Good enough? Why?”
“Forget Chicago. We’re going straight to New York.”
She got out of the Mercury and walked over to the pay booth.
“Are you serious?” She looked back at the car and its celebrated passenger. “With him? It’s a two-day drive.”
“I don’t see an alternative. We can’t be out in the open anymore. Not till we get to New York.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re way ahead of us. It’s all over the papers that the old man had a mild heart attack and is flying into New York tomorrow night.”
Barbara put her fingers to her lips in shock. “Holy Christ. They’re out front with the phony one? They’re going to parade him in front of the press?”
“Meyer has to, because he knows we’re running around loose with the real one. Which means, I believe, that we’re all dead meat, unless we can sneak the genuine article in as speedily as possible.”
“Jack …” I had Toots Fellman in my ear once again and held up a hand to quiet Barbara.
“Anything?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Toots said. His voice was strained and I could hear him breathing. “Out of the UP bureau in Salt Lake.”
“Saying …”
“Saying two people were shot dead in the Salt Lake airport. The girl, like you said, out of Las Vegas, and a local businessman—”
“What?”
“Let me finish. A local businessman named Fred Brancati—”
“He was a gunsel!”
“Are you going to let me finish?” I had never heard Toots quite so exercised. “A local businessman named Fred Brancati, and Jack …” Toots’s voice quavered a bit. I heard a whistling sound over the line.
“Jack what?”
“According to this, you’re wanted for the murders.”
I took a slow, deep breath.
“Say that again.”
“You’re wanted—”
“For both murders?”
“Yes. The cabby and the businessman. ‘New York City private detective Jacob LeVine.’ Jesus Christ….”
I stared at the road. A police car raced past and I felt my stomach fold up like a first baseman’s glove. “I better call from another booth, Toots. I don’t want to stand here much longer.”
“Good idea. Call me in ten.”
I hung up and ran toward the car.
Barbara ran after me. “What’s going on, Jack? You don’t look so hot.”
“Nothing to worry about,” I assured her. “I’m just wanted for two murders.”
I drove carefully, filling Barbara in as best I could. She was shockingly calm about it.
“That’s Meyer, all the way,” she said. “Amazing the strings he can pull, particularly where his money can go a long way.”
“In Utah, it can go a very long way. There’s probably fifty cops in the whole goddamn state.”
I pulled the Mercury up to a pair of pay booths outside an all-night Rexall. I figured I could make my call, then go inside for some aspirin or a bottle of arsenic.
I slipped into a booth and dialed O; after a dozen rings, a grumpy operator got on and placed my collect call through to New York. Toots answered immediately. I rested my hand against the top of the phone and attempted to form some coherent thoughts.
“Okay, Toots, what’s going on is the following: I’m swimming in a shark tank with a bloody nose. And the sharks are named Lansky and Luciano.”
The two names together—like Ruth and Gehrig, Dempsey and Tunney, Procter and Gamble—stopped Toots cold. “Holy Christ on a stick,” was all he could muster.
“My sentiments exactly.”
“They offed Sidney Aaron?”
“And then they tried to plug me at the Salt Lake airport, but killed the cabby instead. I nailed the shooter and made it out to St. Louis.”
“And now you’ve got a target painted on your ass.”
“Obviously. They plant this story, make me the suspect, means any cop between here and New York can get in Meyer’s good graces by spraying my brains all over the road. I was originally going to drive to Chicago and then take the Limited.”
“Forget that.”
“I forgot it already.”
“What can I do for you, Jack?” Toots asked. “Just tell me.”
“When does the next edition go to bed?”
“In about an hour. You want to put something in?”
“Yeah. You running a Toscanini story, I presume?”
“Sure. Page three, on the bottom. It’s pretty much the same as the Telegram piece. We all got it from the wires.”
“And the wires got it direct from NBC?”
“I would imagine so. No one else is quoted.”
“Okay. I need you to run a sidebar.”
“Saying?”
“Saying that rumors persist that Toscanini’s heart attack was more severe than is being reported and that the Maestro may have to end his legendary association with the NBC Symphony.”
There was a pregnant pause before Toots started hollering. “Are you fucking kidding? You want me to run with that?”
“I do.”
“What’s my source?”
“Unnamed persons connected to the orchestra.”
“Not good enough; my editors are gonna insist on the source.”
“Tell them a person very close to Toscanini.”
“How close?”
I looked over at the car. “I’d say about twelve feet.”
“Jack, for the love of Christ …”
“It’s the truth. Listen, don’t shine me off—I’m about to hand you an unbelievable exclusive…. We’re talking about corporate evil at the highest levels.”
“Give me a hint.”
“Use your imagination and let it wander out to Las Vegas.”
There was a short beat. “NBC’s in bed with Lansky and Lucky?”
“You win dinner for two at the Automat.”
There was a two-second silence that seemed to weigh a million tons. “Swear on your father’s grave you’re not shitting me,” Toots said.
“I’ll swear on his grave and mine, because if you don’t help me out, I’m gonna be the catch of the day at some morgue between here and New York.”
“Okay, tell me again … slowly.” I could hear the mechanical whir of a sheet of paper being rolled into a typewriter. “He may be so sick that he can’t return to the orchestra? A source close to the Maestro himself told the News? That’s the gist?”
“Correct. That edition should hit the street about when?”
“Midnight. But first I have to call NBC to get a reaction, Jack; no way to avoid that.”
“That’s exactly what I want.”
“For them to know about this.”
“Absolutely. They’re going to go ape, but n
ot right away. It has to percolate up to the top floor. No way the workaday flacks are going to know what this is really about.”
“They’ll just issue a flat denial.”
“Which you’ll run with the story, I presume. So you’ve protected yourself.”
“And what good does it do you?”
“The higher-ups get wind of this and realize that I’ve figured out their game.”
“Which is?”
“You’ll love this. They want to get out of the Toscanini business—high cost and increasingly low return—while setting up this bogus Maestro in an ultra-hotsy-totsy Vegas hotel that Lansky and Lucky are going to build, with NBC as silent partners.”
“That’s what this is all about?” Now Toots wasn’t whispering anymore. “Holy shit.”
“That’s what this is all about, and that’s why my poor fiddler got hit. Now this story could only have leaked out from me, because obviously no one at NBC would spill this.”
“Puts you further in jeopardy.”
“No. It only accelerates their panic, because Meyer doesn’t know where I am.”
“What are you planning to do?”
“Drive straight to New York. I’ve got to get this out in the open as soon as possible. Should take, what, a day and a half if I push hard?”
“No chance. I did it once. It’s almost a thousand miles. That’s two days, unless you’re Flash Gordon.”
“What’s the fastest way?”
“There’s no fastest way. There’s slow and slower. But you play your cards right, you could get to, say, Indianapolis by three, four in the morning, sleep over, then bust your hump tomorrow.”
“How late you going to be working tonight?”
“I’m here till you get home, Jack. This is too big a story, plus I think I’m your only link to a kindlier universe.”
I was touched by his friendship, even given the selfish motive of exclusivity on this most incendiary of stories. “I don’t know what to say. Thank you, for openers.”
“That’s more than enough. Call me if you need anything.” He started to get off, then thought again. “Jack, I have one other question. Something that doesn’t figure.”
“What?”
“Toscanini’s family. He’s got a wife, couple kids. What the hell do they think is going on?”
“That disgruntled, homicidal fascists are after him, still pissed about his anti-Mussolini activities.”
“And that’s why they think he’s being kept out of circulation?”
“Exactly. And Meyer’s guys will explain to them that the heart attack is part of the same cover story, to keep the fascists away. The reality is, it’s all a holding action until they can get me out of the way and get the old man back to Vegas.”
“The double.”
“Correct. God knows what they do with the real one. Keep him in hiding till he croaks.”
There was an admiring beat before Toots said, “You think about it, it’s really a insidious, brilliant fucking plan.”
“I agree,” I told him. “They don’t call him Meyer Lansky for nothing.”
SIXTEEN
Barbara and I took turns behind the wheel for the next four and a half hours, until neither of us trusted ourselves to drive any farther. We were both punchy and more stressed than we wanted to admit. About an hour outside of Indianapolis, we stopped for the night at the Starlight Motor Hotel and booked two adjoining rooms. The night manager had a slight Castilian accent and identified himself as George Dobles.
“I am the owner of this motor hotel,” he said. “So any problem, you can come right to me. There is not a middleman.” Dobles had a thick Pancho Villa mustache and glossy black hair that reached the collar of his plaid shirt. His brown eyes glittered so merrily behind his horn-rimmed glasses that I suspected he had spent a significant part of the evening smoking reefer in his apartment. The door behind him in the motel office was shut tight. How a marijuana-loving Castilian had ended up in western Indiana might have made for a fascinating tale, but not at a quarter past three in the morning. All I wanted was to rest my bald head on a feather pillow.
Dobles opened the registration book and rotated it toward me. I signed in as Dr. and Mrs. Richard Abrams and registered the Maestro as Genaro Chusano, the name of my former janitor in Sunnyside. Dobles handed me the keys to rooms 14 and 15. They were attached to metal ovals with the room numbers engraved on them and didn’t weigh much more than a pair of bowling balls.
“Just down the end here, Dr. Abrams,” Dobles said with a soft smile that was either mocking or just plain wasted.
“Thanks,” I told him. “I’ll pull the car around.” I went back to the Mercury, started up the engine, and threw the car into reverse.
“That’s the night clerk?” Barbara whispered. Dobles had stepped outside and was watching us.
“Nope. That’s the owner himself. Wish the hell he’d go back inside.”
But he didn’t. I drove our rented car thirty or so feet to our assigned rooms, and Dobles never moved a muscle. When Barbara got out of the car, he took his glasses off and cleaned them, then put them on again and just leaned against the office door.
“Just go about your business,” I told Barbara. “Don’t look at him.” I handed her our room key. “Go to the room. I’ll get the old man up.”
Barbara walked over to room 14 and quickly opened the door. There wasn’t a soul around and traffic on Route 36 had thinned to the odd truck rattling its commercial way to points east or west. Call me provincial, but the world outside New York seemed like a very lonely place.
I watched Barbara enter the room and switch on some lights, then 1 turned and lightly tapped Maestro on the knee. He grunted and shifted in his seat. It took two more attempts before I roused him and finally pulled him from the Mercury, limb by ancient limb. He was obviously disoriented and looked and smelled like any other geezer.
“Lean on my right arm,” I whispered to him.
Toscanini just nodded and grasped my biceps for dear life. It was no act; the old guy had run out of gas. I fumbled with the key before opening the door to room 15. As I helped Toscanini inside, I saw that George Dobles still hadn’t moved an inch. I nodded politely in his direction before closing the door behind me; Dobles nodded back and then began to slowly scratch his nuts. This was just a delightful spot all the way around.
I got the old man into his clean, sparsely furnished room and asked him if there was anything he needed. He just waved his hand and smiled. “Boston Blackie, are you crazy in head? I am in here.” He pointed to the wall. “She is in there. You go now or Maestro goes!” He sat down on the bed and patted it. “Is soft, this bed. Maybe you will sink!”
“I just thought you might need some help.”
“I need nothing but to sleep. You lock the door, Boston Blackie, make sure nobody take me away.”
“Of course.”
“Bene. And tomorrow, signore, we stop and buy …” he tugged at the waistband of his billowing briefs. “Intima, sì?”
“Underwear. Of course. Socks. We’ll get you all fixed up.”
“Sì.” He nodded, yawned, pushed himself up off the bed, pointed to the door. “Go, idiota!” He smiled as I went to the door, waved a fist in the air in encouragement. I left Toscanini’s room and locked the door, turning the knob twice to make certain it was secure. Dobles remained poised against the door of his office. He had ignited a short but pungent cigar, which I could smell as intensely as if he was standing beside me. He threw me a short salute and I waved back. Nothing about this guy seemed kosher, but it was too late to change our lodgings, and I chalked up some of my paranoia to the lateness of the hour and the bloody events of the day.
Barbara had left the door to our room unlocked. When I let myself in, I could hear the water running. “That creep is still standing in front of the office,” I announced, then walked into the tiny bathroom. Barbara stood at the sink wearing only red silk panties and a toothpaste-covered smile; she rinsed her mo
uth and gazed curiously at our dual images in the mirror.
“Hey, there, sailor,” she said.
I came up behind her and gave her a hug; my arms encircled her warm firm breasts and she pushed out her chest so I could feel every velvety inch of them. We both watched ourselves in the mirror. Talk about an unlikely couple.
“I haven’t driven this much in one day since I was a pup,” I told her. “I’m exhausted.”
“How exhausted?” She pressed her exquisite bottom up against me and rotated it approximately fifteen degrees to the right and then back again. The results were immediate and obvious. “See? Not so pooped after all.” She turned to me and kissed me full on the lips, her fragrant Ipana breath tickling my nostrils, then ran the back of her hand lightly against my cheek and kissed me again, ever so lightly—almost a phantom kiss, the tip of her tongue barely brushing mine.
“How can you be so frisky?” I asked.
Her reply was to kiss me once more, hungrier this time, while managing to wriggle out of her panties in one wondrous motion. Her girlish smile had been replaced by a look of womanly urgency. She took my hand and led me silently into the bedroom, then lay back on the bed with her arms outstretched, her toes curled up, and a look in her eyes than could have brought down a government. Any government.
I got out of my clothes with a good deal less finesse than she had, hopping around on one foot, struggling to pull off shoes and socks like Harry Houdini strapped to the submerged propeller of an ocean liner.
“How do you get undressed so easily?” I whispered to her, after I had finally disrobed and lay across from her on the lumpy double bed.
“It’s a gift,” she whispered, rapidly nipping my face with small darting kisses, all the while running the backs of her long warm fingers beneath my surprised and grateful balls. “I’m so hot,” I think she said, although my power of hearing was rapidly disintegrating. Barbara rolled on top of me as easily as a jockey springing aboard a Derby winner, kissing my forehead, my lips, and my nipples in rapid succession. Kiss kiss kiss. She pulled her body down over mine, a kind of survey, grazing all of me with all of her, and then she pushed herself upward again, so that her breasts faced my wide eyes like a pair of beautiful twins. I nuzzled them, kissed them, sucked them ever so lightly, then not so lightly.
Tender Is LeVine: A Jack LeVine Mystery Page 24