His face stiffened and he glared at me. The other detective asked quietly, “Is that all, Captain?”
Apoyan nodded without looking at him and the man left.
Dugan sat in a chair near the door.
Finally, Apoyan said, “I don’t need any of your insolence, Puma.”
“And I don’t need any of your official arrogance,” I answered. “I was pulled out of bed at a ridiculous hour and brought down here for no reason. The only assumption I can make is that you brought me here to question me. I’m waiting.”
“Maybe you’d rather wait in a cell,” he suggested softly.
“If it has a bed in it, I certainly would.”
His smile was cold. “Persecution — You hot-headed Italians and your persecution complexes — ”
“Huh!” I said. “And you Armenians who get a badge and turn into Turks — ”
His face drained. Even his lips seemed colorless. “Easy. You’re not that big, Puma. You watch your damned tongue!”
“And you yours,” I said. I looked at Marty. “Show me the cell. I’m ready.”
Marty yawned, stood up, and looked at the captain.
“Sit down,” Apoyan told him quietly. He looked at me for a few seconds. Then, “A little while back, you investigated the possibility of the Lopez-Mueller fight being fixed, didn’t you?”
“Not exactly. I investigated Gus Galbini’s possible tie-ups with people who could spread the money if the fight was fixed.”
“Who hired you to investigate that?”
I hesitated and said, “Mrs. Lopez.” I paused. “She pulled me off the case before I had learned much.” “Did you learn anything?”
I told him what I had learned, including the Bugsy Martin bit.
Interest came to his eyes and he looked at Dugan meaningfully. He asked me, “And why did she pull you off the case?”
“I don’t know. Possibly because of my arrogance. She didn’t like some of the things I told her.”
He leaned back in his chair and studied me thoughtfully. “Mary Loper, eh? That’s Lopez’ sister?”
I nodded.
“Does she live on the west side?”
I nodded. “Near Cheviot Hills. If you pick her up, Captain, I’d appreciate it if you don’t mention where you got her name.”
He nodded absent-mindedly. “And Mrs. Lopez was suspicious of Galbini?”
“That’s right. Though it was through Galbini she met her husband.”
He looked at Sergeant Dugan. “Pick her up. And send Preston in here to take Puma’s statement.”
Dugan went out and Apoyan looked back at me. “Ready to apologize?”
“If you are.”
“All right, all right! You know exactly the wrong thing to say, don’t you? You know how we feel about the Turks.”
“I’ve a cousin married to an Armenian; I ought to know. Now why couldn’t I have told Dugan all this in my apartment?”
He shrugged. He started to say something and Preston, a uniformed officer, came in.
Preston took my statement while Captain Apoyan went out to give the vultures of the press some tidbits. He came in again before we were finished.
Preston finished and went out. I stood up.
Captain Apoyan said, “Turn to the right when you go out, if you want to miss the reporters. Unless you need the publicity.”
“I don’t. Anything else, Captain?”
“Yes,” he said. “Mrs. Galbini asked me for the name of a first-rate investigator. I gave her your name.”
“Well, thank you! And why does she need one?”
“I have no idea. Unless she distrusts the Department efficiency or honesty. That couldn’t be possible, could it?”
“It’s possible,” I admitted, “but unfair. Los Angeles has one of the finest Police Departments in the country, hasn’t it?”
“You tell me,” he said. “Has it?” “Yes,” I said. “Good night, Captain.”
“Good night, Joe,” he said. “Thanks for dropping down.”
He was a cutie, that Apoyan. I went out and turned to the right, down a corridor that led to a back door. Another uniformed man was waiting on the parking lot there to take me home.
I was in bed again before four-thirty and slept until nine.
The murder had happened too late last night for my edition of the Los Angeles Times; the murderer had made a serious mistake in alienating the Times right from the start. I read the sport pages with my humble breakfast.
I finished my fifth egg at the same time as the account of last night’s fistic fiasco. The writer hadn’t thought much of the fight and even less of Terry Lopez. I had a feeling he didn’t rate Hans Mueller too highly, either, but that was an inference of mine and not stated in the article.
In the groggy hours of my awakening last night, I had neglected to ask Captain Apoyan who had steered him onto me and if they had any other reason to assume the fight was crooked.
It hadn’t looked crooked; it had looked like the triumph of conditioning over loose living. Perhaps, if Mrs. Galbini came in to see me this morning, she could enlighten me.
She came into the office around eleven, a stocky straw-blonde with a hard though attractive face. She appeared to be about twenty years younger than her late husband.
She sat in my customer’s chair calmly, with no evidence of recent mourning. She said, “Captain Apoyan recommended you.”
“I know, Mrs. Galbini. He told me he had, last night. What puzzled me was Captain Apoyan’s assumption the fight was fixed. Where could he have picked that up?”
“Gus bet on Mueller,” she said flatly, “and the police found out about it.”
I said nothing, startled.
“Maybe it was illegal,” she said. “Any bet on a fight is illegal. But it wasn’t crooked. Gus rode with that bedroom battler too damned long. Lopez cost Gus plenty of money and gave him plenty of grief. And Gus knew he was no match for the German. He figured he had a few dollars coming out of the bastard.”
I still said nothing, staring at this poised and realistic widow without weeds.
Her smile was brief and cool. “You think I should be in mourning?”
I shrugged.
“We weren’t that close,” she explained. “Gus took me out of a — well, out of a career that leads nowhere. I kept his house for him and he wasn’t tight with me. I didn’t ask him any questions and he didn’t make any demands. This much, though, I owe him. This, and the cremation.” She paused. “And there’ll still be a few dollars left.”
I tried to think of something to say but found nothing.
“What do you charge?” she asked me.
“A hundred a day, and expenses. It’s fair to warn you, though, that the police are better equipped and charge nothing.”
“They’ll be working on it anyway,” she said. “And you’ll probably run across some people who’d open up to you but not to the law.” She looked at me critically. “Especially women.”
“Thank you,” I said archly. “Let’s be frank — is it possible Gus could have been killed by a betrayed husband?”
“I doubt it,” she said. “He didn’t mess much with married women. A betrayed boy friend now — maybe.” She nodded. “Or somebody who bet on Lopez, bet heavy.”
“Do you know anybody like that?”
“No,” she said slowly, “but I know the man who handled Gus’s bet.” She paused. “Al Martino.”
The name was only dimly familiar to me. But it brought up the memory of another, Salvadore Peter Martino, alias Bugsy Martin, deceased.
I asked, “Any relation to Bugsy Martin?”
She nodded, “A brother. Why?”
“It makes it all so warm and together-ish,” I said. “Gus introduced Terry to his wife, Terry’s sister to Bugsy and now Bugsy’s brother spreads the money that Gus is going to win off the defeat of Bugsy’s girl friend’s brother. A real compact case, should be a cinch — to get nowhere.”
“At a hundred a day,”
she asked, “did you expect it to be easy?”
“No ma’am,” I said humbly. “Anything else you can tell me that might help?” She shook her head.
I asked, “Any idea where I might find Al Martino?” “None. You could look under rocks.” “Well, I’ll get right to work.”
“Fine,” she said. “How do you operate, with daily reports?”
I nodded. “Every day, neatly typed and mailed before I go home.” I smiled. “Fair enough?”
She smiled back, brazenly. “You could drop over and save the typing.”
In bad taste, I thought. Her husband not even ashes, yet. But I smiled and said, “That would be ten cents extra, for gas.”
She stood up and her face was blank once more. “I didn’t mean to be pushy. Carry on.” She nodded a goodbye and went out.
I was embarrassed. I had rebuffed her. She was a lot of woman and undoubtedly worth while and I had acted oafishly. Not out of any decent instincts, but only because I liked skinny girls.
As I told her, this case was all knotted up with family ties, so the logical first choice for questioning would be one of that cozy group. My urge was to head back for the Cheviot Hills domicile of Mary Loper.
Instead, I headed for Olympic Boulevard.
The bald, short, and usually jovial Barney Delamater was again in the corner office of his immense gym. He didn’t look too happy this morning, though.
He had a later edition of the Times on his desk. He looked up as I entered and tapped the paper. “Terrible thing,” he said.
I nodded and sat down in a chair near one of his files. “Remember last time I was in here?” He nodded. “So?”
“And after I left, Gus came in. And you two talked so earnestly about something — ”
“Hey,” he interrupted, scowling, “wait a minute! Who the hell do you think you are — Dick Tracy?”
“I’m better than Tracy,” I told him. “I’m bigger and I’m a little smarter. What did you two talk about, Barney?”
“About the weather,” he said. “How do I remember what we talked about? We sure as hell didn’t talk about knocking him off. What’s the pitch?”
“I know, and the police know, that Gus Galbini bet on Mueller. That would indicate the fight was fixed, wouldn’t it?”
Barney shook his head. “That would indicate Gus had eyes. Though it was a damn fool thing to do.”
A silence while we stared at each other. Finally, I said, “Barney, nothing happens in or around a boxing ring in this town that you don’t know about. I’ve been hired to find Gus Galbini’s murderer.”
“Good luck,” he said. His face showed nothing.
We stared some more. This wasn’t the genial extrovert of my last visit; this was a man clamming up.
“Scared?” I asked him.
“Of what?”
“I don’t know. You tell me.”
“I’m a businessman,” he said. “I’ve got a health studio that’s keeping me fat. Because I’m a sucker, I’ve also got this gym where the stumblebums can give each other lumps. I grew up in boxing and it was always full of mugs. But I never used to be scared, because the hoodlums weren’t organized in the old days. They didn’t own the towns and the labor unions and most of the entertainment racket. Why shouldn’t I be scared? Congress is.”
“I’m not,” I said.
“You’re too damned stupid to be scared,” he answered. “Joe, I don’t know who killed Gus Galbini. And I’ll tell you something else — I don’t want to know.”
“You don’t want to tell me anything, do you?”
He shrugged. “I’ll talk about horses, if you want. Baseball? The weather?”
I stood up. “Thanks a lot! I hope you’re not next, Barney.”
“So do I,” he said. “I’m expanding that health studio. I’m tearing out those rings and putting in bust developers. To hell with boxing and boxers; I’ve had it.”
“Horse manure,” I said. “You’ve been saying that for years.”
“I know it,” he said, “but I never sent out for reconstruction bids, before. So long, Joe. Don’t hurry back.”
“So long,” I said. “I’ll dance on your grave.”
I left him with that thought and went out, fuming.
It was lunchtime now and I was hungry. At a drive-in, while I ate and admired the girls in their tight pants, I thought back to the gym and the frightened Barney ‘Delamater.
His fear hadn’t necessarily meant he knew anything of value to my investigation. There are always rumors floating around the fight game and 90 per cent of them are nonsense. Barney may have heard a few and put together an entirely erroneous picture in his mind. That was a possibility.
There was still the possibility, though, that he did know something. He had always been solvent, a rarity in the business, and a number of managers and fighters had reason to feel indebted to him. And a number of gamblers.
Perhaps, later, Barney would loosen up a little. He had never been known as a gutless man.
From the drive-in, I went to the triplex on the fringe of Cheviot Hills. But there was one of those cardboard “will return” clocks on the door of Mary Loper and the hands informed me her expected hour of return would be six o’clock.
I had hoped she would be able to give me the address of Al Martino. Her absence sent me west, toward her brother’s wife. Weird case….
Bridget Gallegher Lopez was in shorts and T-shirt and her lightly freckled face didn’t brighten at the sight of me. She stood in the doorway and asked, “Now, what?”
“Now Galbini’s dead,” I answered, “and I have a new client and I’m sure you want to cooperate if it will help to find a killer.”
“I don’t know anything,” she said. “And if I did, I’d rather not talk with you about it.”
“We started off as such great friends,” I told her sadly. “Why are you so difficult, Mrs. Lopez?”
“You’d better go,” she said, “if you know what’s good for you. My husband is resting and he can get nasty if he’s disturbed.”
I smiled at her. “Bridget, he’s only a middleweight. I could crush him easily in either hand.”
She glared at me and started to close the door.
I said quickly, “You’re involved, you know. The police know you hired me to investigate Galbini. They questioned me about it.”
She was quiet for a moment, still staring, and then she said, “Come in, but keep your voice down.”
In the paneled living room, she said softly, “I couldn’t be involved. Do the police think Terry is?”
“Because of the bet, do you mean, the bet Gus made on Mueller?”
I scored with that. Her eyes widened with surprise and she said quickly, “That wasn’t in the paper.”
“I know a lot of things that aren’t in the paper, Mrs. Lopez. We both do, don’t we?”
She said nothing, looking uncertain.
“Your husband has a reputation for being hot-tempered,” I went on. “I’m sure he resented learning that Gus bet on Mueller. I suppose he’s been questioned all morning.”
“He was questioned for an hour,” she said. “And so was I.” Her chin went up. “And so was the high fashion model, Mary Loper.” Her eyes narrowed. “Are you working for her?”
I shook my head. “Is there anything you want to tell me that you didn’t tell the police?”
“I told them everything,” she said. “How about you?”
“I told them all I had to, to keep my license. Then one of the — principals in the case asked Captain Apoyan at the West Side Station to recommend a private investigator and he recommended me.” I smiled. “And here I am, back on the merry-go-round.”
“One of the principals? Which one?”
I said nothing.
She asked, “Why tell me that the police recommended you? Are you trying to impress me, or — to blackmail us?” Her voice was shrill.
“You know better than that. You’re getting hysterical, Mrs. Lopez. I’d bet
ter go.”
And then from my right, a voice said, “That’s right. And quick!”
I turned to see Terry Lopez standing there in the archway that led to the dining room. After his beating of last night, I was surprised he could stand.
“I’m on the way,” I told him, and really was.
But the bigmouth had to add, “Unless you’d like me to belt you.”
I turned back and smiled. “You couldn’t walk this far. And if you could, the Queensbury rules wouldn’t prevail. Don’t press your hundred-and-sixty-pound luck.”
He returned my smile. “I can walk that far.” He came over slowly to stand in front of me.
The hair began to bristle on my neck and I started to caution him once more, but never made it.
I didn’t see the punch — that’s my excuse. It came from nowhere and landed cleanly on the jaw. The shock was bearable, the pain minimal. What really flooded through me was shame.
I went down into the black pit knowing I’d been kayoed by a lousy, stinking middleweight….
chapter four
WHEN I CAME TO, ON THE LIVING ROOM CARPETING, HE wasn’t in sight. Mrs. Lopez was bathing my face with a wet towel.
“Where is he?” I mumbled. “Where’s the bastard hiding? This one didn’t count.” I pushed the towel aside.
She put a hand on my shoulder and pressed me down again. “Relax,” she said. “He went out. I warned you, Mr. Puma.”
“He could be in trouble,” I told her. “A fighter’s fists are considered a lethal weapon in California. He could be in a lot of trouble.”
“Protecting his home?” she asked me. “After you forced your way in here?”
I stared at her. “That’s a lie.”
She smiled. “And I’m the girl who can put it over. Get up slowly, now; your eyes are still glazed.”
I got up slowly, my knees weak. I stood up and tried not to sway and fingered my sore jaw. “Pretty good punch,” I admitted, “for a man with nothing else.”
Fire in the bright eyes, rigidity in the fine body.
“You love him,” I said. “I’m sorry for you.”
“Sit down,” she said. “You’re still weak; you’re trembling.”
The Hundred Dollar Girl Page 3