AHMM, November 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Now he faced me across about four feet, skin more pale than usual, eyes popping out of his moon face. The guy I was supposed to have in court at ten o'clock sharp this coming morning had a three A.M. shadow that contrasted all the more starkly with his ashen skin. His green sharkskin suit looked slept in. His breath made me long for a pack of Sen-Sen or BlackJack. The room was frigid the way places in the desert get only with air-conditioning, yet his skin glistened with perspiration.

  "I hope I didn't wake you,” he said.

  "I fell asleep in front of the TV with Jack Paar, and you know it."

  If he'd had a tail, he'd have tucked it between his legs. “Sorry."

  "Yeah,” I said. Then again. “Yeah ... you wanted me, you got me. What's this all about?"

  "She's next door,” he said.

  "Who?"

  "My neighbor. She's next door. She's dead."

  I whistled low and soft. I'd been on retainer with the outfit for a little over four years. In that time I'd represented its interests in front of the Nevada Gaming Commission and at Las Vegas City Council meetings countless times. The fact that Howard Rappaport had tapped me to represent him personally just a year or so previously had initially seemed a testament to my upward mobility within the organization. Then Howard had explained that his real concern was his brother Eddie.

  In the thirteen months since Howard Rappaport set me the task of cleaning up after his older brother, I'd kept Eddie Rappaport out of jail, which was no mean feat, considering. I'd run up a mountain of legal fees and Howard had paid them all. I'd settled Eddie's bar tab, and I'd paid his bookies off, but I hadn't had any dealings with corpses. “Did you have anything to do with this?"

  He headed for his kitchen. “I need a drink."

  I caught up to him just as he opened one of his cabinets. I slammed it shut. He barely got his hand out of the way. “Did you have anything to do with your neighbor getting dead, Eddie?"

  He turned around, mouth open, his face a study in long-lost nerve. “I dunno."

  "I'm your lawyer,” I said. “What you tell me is privileged. If you had something to do with this, or even if you just know something and don't want to say, now is the time to tell me.” Eddie avoided my gaze for answer. I made a point of getting between him and his liquor. “Black out?"

  He nodded.

  I leaned against his kitchen counter, rubbing the back of my neck. “You're in a real spot."

  He looked over my shoulder at his cupboard. “I know. And me with the court thing coming up. Howard's gonna flip. What am I gonna do?"

  "Don't start that again,” I said. “Let me think a moment.” I took him by the elbow, led him back into the living room, pointed to his couch, and told him to grow roots there till I decided what could be done about his situation.

  Howard would want to know about this. The question was how much would he want to know, and how much of this would he just want me to handle. Couple that with the question of how much my own safety, to say nothing of my license to practice law in the state of Nevada, dictated I should know, and it shaped up to be one knotty problem.

  I paced while turning this over and over in my head. When I realized that I had been pacing, I stopped and looked over at Eddie. He sat there and fidgeted, his eyes on me. I sat in the armchair across from him. “How did she die?"

  "I don't know."

  "What do you know?"

  "You want everything?"

  "No,” I said, unable to keep the disgust out of my voice. “I don't want everything, but I'd probably better have it, if I'm gonna decide what to do next."

  "Okay.” That put him more at ease, and he leaned backward on the couch.

  "I came home from the Sands tonight about seven. Dropped a bundle on a pony I heard about over at Santa Anita, so I wasn't in a very good mood."

  "I'm sure Howard won't be either, once you put the touch on him again for walking around money."

  Eddie winced. “No doubt."

  He sat there looking down at his expensive Italian shoes.

  "Go on."

  "When I walked up my steps, she was standing in her doorway in this slinky little nothing, and a satin-type robe to boot. We said hello, and she asked me in for a drink."

  "She did this a lot?"

  He shook his head. “This is the first time I ever saw her full-on up close. Never said more than ‘hello’ as we passed each other going opposite ways, and even that was more like seeing her out of the corner of the eye."

  "And she just invited you in out of the blue."

  "Yeah, said she could use some company."

  "So you licked your lips and went right in."

  Eddie didn't say anything to that, just looked longingly past me at the cupboard where he kept his courage.

  "This woman have a name?"

  "Told me to call her Brenda."

  "Did she tell you anything else about herself?"

  He screwed up his face like he was thinking. “She told me she was from Georgia. Had this little accent and everything, which is funny."

  "Why is that funny?"

  "Because when she moved in last month, I saw her around, you know, like I said, to say hello and all that. So I asked the super about her, and he told me he didn't know much aside from the fact that she was fresh off the bus from Minneapolis."

  "And yet she had a Southern accent."

  "Yeah, funny, huh?"

  "Hilarious.” I decided it would be better to get him up and moving around, so I said, “Is she still next door?"

  "Yeah, I did just what you told me to. I ain't been back in there."

  I stood, pulled on a pair of gloves I'd brought from my car, and retrieved my hat. “Let's go take a look."

  He didn't want to go. I couldn't really say as I blamed him. Didn't matter what either of us wanted. There was no way I was going to talk to his brother, my boss, without making sure all the angles were covered. Howard paid me to be thorough.

  Eddie had left the door unlocked, so we just went in. The living room was tastefully appointed in lots of the pale pastel colors favored by people who thought they should decorate their interiors to mirror the desert exteriors.

  "Where is she?"

  "Bedroom."

  The glacial blast coming from the air conditioner had kept the smell down so far. Without it, out there in the Nevada Desert, she'd most likely have been pretty ripe. She was dressed in the short robe Eddie had described earlier, lying faceup, arms crossed and legs stretched out along her bed. I couldn't tell how long she'd been dead, but rigor had set in. I brushed her long blond hair away from her swollen face. She had a bluish tinge to her, and her mouth was open. I didn't see any blood.

  I checked the rest of the exposed portions of her body for puncture wounds of any sort and found nothing. An impulse I couldn't explain made me take another long look at her face.

  There was something in that bloated countenance, something about it, like I'd seen her before. Of course, in my line of work, with all of the people cycling in and out of Vegas, I'd felt that way a lot. So I didn't think too much of it.

  What I did think about was whether or not Eddie had offed her, or whether he could be made to look right for the part, regardless of his level of actual involvement. After all, whole political careers are made from nailing guys like Eddie in order to get to guys like Howard, and my client had a very important date coming up with a certain grand jury in just a few hours.

  So I began to make a close examination of “Brenda's” corpse: her robe, her naked body underneath it, her hair, her open mouth, beneath her crossed arms, and inside her clenched fists. I had to make sure that I'd taken the proper precautions before I made my next move.

  Prying her arms apart and her fingers open proved difficult. I didn't know much about rigor mortis, but as stiff as she was, this gal had to have been dead a while longer than Eddie's story made it sound.

  A couple of minutes of grunting and straining got her right hand open. Nothing. I started in on her left.
I had her pinkie and ring fingers pried loose when I heard and felt something drop out from between them. It rolled off the bed and landed with a metallic clatter on the Formica floor, then rattled around a bit before coming to a stop.

  I picked it up and examined it. A ring. I'd seen it before too. On Eddie Rappaport's left pinkie. I began to sweat. My hand shook as I folded the ring into my handkerchief and placed it in my jacket pocket.

  I closed the bedroom door and gave the rest of the place the once-over. I didn't mention what I'd found to Eddie, who followed me around the way a dog does when he knows you're about to feed him. The bathroom was clean and Spartan, lacking the usual feminine touches, except for some perfume. This Brenda had a fridge full of food, and the kitchen table still had the dinner dishes on it.

  "What did you touch in here?"

  "Well, my dishes, obviously."

  I turned toward him where he stood out in the living room. “What else?"

  He put on a thoughtful face. I was thankful that he'd had some time to sober up, otherwise this could have been a lot worse. “The phone when I called you. Doorknobs, kitchen table, end table out here."

  I moved into the living room and kept poking around, trying to cover how unsettled I was. My gloves made for swift going, as I didn't have to concern myself with fingerprints whenever I needed to touch anything. While I did this Eddie filled me in on what he remembered of the rest of the evening.

  According to him, the two of them had that first drink together, then another, and a third. Then she asked him to stay for dinner. By this time well on his way to dead-drunk and hoping to dine on something more than steak and potatoes, my boss's ne'er-do-well brother naturally agreed.

  I wasn't being very fair to Eddie, though. Even stone cold sober he probably wouldn't have smelled anything fishy about an attractive woman going from barely saying hello in passing to throwing herself at him in the course of a single evening.

  After dinner they moved to the couch. The last thing Eddie remembered was agreeing to an eighth (or was it a ninth?) drink between kisses. Some time later he woke in the dark, still on the couch. Wondering how long he'd been out, he started stumbling around looking for Brenda and calling her name. When he found her, he telephoned me.

  "Think very carefully on this next one, Eddie,” I said, as I looked around the living room for the woman's purse. “Were you ever in her bedroom before you found her in there dead?"

  He pondered that one for a moment, then shook his head. “No."

  I stopped looking long enough to ask him if he remembered whether this Brenda had a purse. He didn't recall her having one.

  "Why?"

  I spread my arms wide to take in the entire room. “Do you see a single photograph in this apartment?"

  He looked around him, as if noticing for the first time that there were framed prints of landscapes on the walls, but that was it. Not a photograph in sight.

  "I hadn't noticed."

  I went into the kitchen and got a hand towel. Walking back into the living room, I tossed it to him. “Get busy wiping down everything you touched. If you're not sure, wipe it down. Guess there's no more putting it off. I'm gonna take a walk and call Howard."

  He blanched. “Jesus. Does he have to know everything?"

  I shrugged. “That's the way I work, and you know it. Howard pays me, and that's that."

  "Oh, yeah, I know, I know, Murph.” He started talking fast again, like he had on the phone, and when I'd first walked into his apartment. “It's just that, well, ya see, did you know that Howard's my kid brother? I'm the oldest."

  I didn't have time for where I thought this was headed, so I went to leave. That's when he took hold of my arm and started to say something. I looked from his sweating face to my jacket sleeve and back to his face. He quickly let loose of his hold on me, but continued, “Okay, okay, take it easy. I'm just saying that it ain't right when a kid brother has to look out for the older one. It's supposed to be the other way around, ya know what I mean?"

  "Yeah, Eddie,” I said as I headed for the door. “I know what you mean."

  "I've never been to Howard's house. I wasn't invited to the wedding. Never even met his new wife. I know what I am, and I know what that makes me...” He trailed off.

  I didn't give him a chance to follow that train any further. “Just make sure you've got all of your prints taken care of before I get back."

  "How long will you be gone?"

  "I dunno. An hour. If I'm going to be longer, I'll call your place, so get your prints taken care of and get the hell out of here and wait for me to either come back or call. Get me?"

  He nodded rapidly, several times. “I get you."

  "One more thing, Eddie.” I turned and looked at him again as I opened the door. “No booze while I'm out."

  I thought he was going to argue with me. He took one look at my face and subsided. I wondered how plastered he'd be by the time I got done reporting in to Howard.

  "Cripes, what a mess,” I muttered as I descended the stairs.

  * * * *

  I pulled my ‘62 Continental into a filling station on the corner of Eastern and Desert Inn, and used the pay phone there to call Howard's house. His new wife answered on the third ring. I said hello and asked for her husband, referring to him as “Mr. Rappaport.” Howard and I stood on ceremony when others were around to witness it.

  "Who may I say is calling?” Sleep made her Chicago accent thicker.

  "Tell him it's Murphy."

  "Is this important? What time is it? He's not in bed. I'd have to find him...” I heard rustling on the other end of the line. “Is this important?” she said again.

  I assured her it was. She huffed and put the handset down. After a few moments, I faintly made out her calling for him.

  Eventually he came to the phone and without greeting me said, “What is it, Murphy?"

  "I can't sleep. Meet me for a drink?"

  He didn't hesitate. “Sure. The Four Queens okay with you?"

  "Twenty minutes?"

  "Done,” he said, and hung up.

  Because the Hoover boys had started tapping phones left and right since the big fuss at Apalachin a few years back, Howard and I had a system we used when we needed to see each other outside of the normal routine. If one of us suggested we meet at the Four Queens, we met at Caesar's. If the California, then we'd go to the Aladdin, and so on. We also agreed to double our intended elapsed time till we met, so when I said twenty minutes, that meant I'd be there in ten. We figured he'd have a permanent tail anyway, but it was fun messing with the Feds, regardless.

  The Strip flashed and winked and beckoned to me off in the distance down Desert Inn as I drove to Caesar's. It never ceased to amaze me what a difference the combination of black desert night, millions of lights, and all that wattage from the Hoover Dam made, because Las Vegas looked so small and ugly and shabby in the daytime. She used the night and all those bright lights like an over-age working girl uses a dimly lit cocktail lounge and a heavy coat of makeup to ply her trade.

  Howard liked Caesar's. We didn't do any of the regular business there, and Howard liked that too. Most of all, Howard liked the way the place was always hopping in the months since Sinatra took that angry walk across the street from the Sands and offered to move his act to Caesar's. Howard didn't really care to rub elbows with the Chairman and his pack, he just liked talking in places where the type of noise generated by their mere presence could cover our conversations.

  I found Howard at a table in the back of the lounge when I walked in. He had already ordered for both of us, and the drinks arrived when I did. Howard tipped the waitress and I knew we wouldn't see her at the table again unless he made eye contact and motioned her over. That was how he worked. I dropped my hat on the seat next to me as I sat down across from him.

  His hatchet face betrayed nothing as he said, “How bad?"

  "A mess,” I said.

  "An ongoing problem, or a new headache?"

&nbs
p; "It's your brother."

  The angular lines of his face changed position for the first time. “What now?"

  "I found this,” I said as I unwrapped Eddie's pinkie ring from my handkerchief, “grasped in the hand of a dead girl that Eddie spent the evening with.” I handed it to him.

  "Drunk?"

  I nodded. “Reeked of it when I got there just before three."

  "Can this be fixed without me knowing anything else?"

  "I don't know,” I said. “After all, this is your brother. And then there's his testimony with the grand jury..."

  "Okay, give it to me,” he said brusquely. I did.

  He sat impassively while I laid it out for him, facts only. Howard had an abiding aversion for knowing such particulars as names or locations. He thought that the less he knew about the “who” and the “how,” the easier it would be at a later date to convincingly deny that he knew anything about the “what,” the “when,” and the “where,” either.

  So I forewent giving the girl's name, and began with Eddie's telephone call, going on from there. I also mentioned that the body I'd found was in full rigor, which threw off the timetable of Eddie's recollection of events. I wrapped up with my leaving him there to get rid of his prints while I filled my boss in on the situation.

  When I had finished, Howard said, “Did you mention the ring to Eddie?"

  I shook my head.

  "Did he say anything about losing it?"

  I shook my head again.

  "Not even when you told him to give the place the once-over before leaving?"

  "No, he didn't talk about it at all."

  My boss sat staring at the ring for a few moments, rolling it back and forth from hand to hand. Eventually he pocketed it, and said, “It's a good thing I was home when you called."

  "And up,” I said coolly. I didn't ask why. If he wanted me to know, I'd know. Idle curiosity is not healthy in my line of work.

  "The people from L.A. and Philly,” he said. “You know these East Coast guys, they love doing this sort of thing at night. Ran late. We broke for dinner around three. I'd just gotten home when you called. In fact,” he looked at his watch, “I'm due back over at the Sahara in half an hour."