“Just now. Mother leave yet?”
“This morning,” Sarge said.
“Praise be,” Trace said, extricating his hand from his father’s viselike grip. Trace, at six-foot-three, was two inches taller than his father, but the older man was broad and muscular. His hands looked like small canned hams. He had a thick pile of white hair and there was a faint road map of Irish bars imprinted lightly in the skin on his nose, but hidden mostly by his healthy tanned complexion.
Trace looked around the office and said, “I’m surprised.”
“About what?”
“I thought you’d have a waiting room filled with women with legs from here to here,” Trace said.
“That’s only in books,” Sarge said. “Truth is, women with legs from there to there don’t have problems. Least, not the kind that detectives can solve.” He went to a closet, removed a folding chair for his son, opened it, then brushed dust off it with a handkerchief. “Took this from the basement,” he said. “You’ll be the first one to use it. Want a drink?”
“No.”
“You sick?”
“No,” Trace said. “How long have you been here?”
“Just since Monday,” Sarge said.
“Any action yet? Any cases?”
“Not yet, but I’ve got all my old friends in the department keeping an eye out for me. They’ll be sending me stuff after a while. I printed business cards.”
He took one from his wallet and handed it to Trace, who read aloud, “Patrick Tracy, Private Investigator.” The card gave the office’s street address and telephone number.
“Good. Looks professional,” Trace said. “So your old cop friends are going to help?”
“Well, cops run into a lot of stuff where people can use p.i.s. Maybe.” When Trace sat in the folding chair alongside the desk, stretching his long legs, Sarge sat down too. “Only trouble with old friends is that…well, they’re old. A lot of them retired. A lot more are dead. There aren’t many guys working in squad rooms anymore that I remember or who remember me. Most of my friends are deputy chiefs or captains, just hanging around waiting to retire.”
“They can still help,” Trace said hopefully.
“They deal with papers now, not cases. They’re all freaking statisticians,” Sarge said. “Reading computer reports and stuff. No wonder nobody ever goes to jail in this town anymore.”
“What does Mother think of your office?”
“She hasn’t seen it,” Sarge said. “I told her it was in Harlem.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t want her here trying to decorate. I like it the way it is. Well, maybe a little bit better, but pretty much like this. Anyway, so I told her it was in Harlem. I knew she wouldn’t pester me that way.”
“She’s going to find out,” Trace said.
“I know. But this way, at least I got some peace and quiet until she does.”
“You’ve only been open since Monday. You’ll get some cases soon,” Trace said.
“I expect so. Anyway, I like this place. The rent’s only a hundred and fifty a month, the restaurant downstairs has a good bar and they send up food when I want it. So are you going to be my partner?”
“I don’t know yet, Sarge. I’ve got to think about it.”
“What’s to think about? You apply, take your test, get your license, you get to carry a gun, you can’t beat the hours.” He stood up and pulled back his jacket to show a large Police Special revolver inside a shoulder holster. “You know how good it feels to carry this gun again? Anyway, you can handle all the stuff in the West. After a while, when I get a reputation, I’ll be getting a lot of work all over. And I can handle the stuff in the East.”
“I know. But it’s a commitment. I don’t like commitments,” Trace said.
“I’ve noticed,” the white-haired man said dryly.
“I was an accountant and I didn’t like it, so I walked away. Then I was a degenerate gambler in Las Vegas, and when I got tired of it, I walked away. Now, I work for the insurance company when I feel like it, and when I stop feeling like it, I’ll walk away. I think if I get involved with you, I won’t be able to walk away. That scares me some. How do you walk away from your own father?”
“Same way you walked away from your ex-wife and two kids?” Sarge asked.
“You going to start on me too?” Trace said.
“Not me, pal,” Sarge said. “Anyway, I can’t browbeat you into it. But it’s something I always thought would be good. You and me together.”
“Give me a chance to think about it some more.”
“All right. Is Chico in town?”
“Yes.”
“Where are you staying?”
“We’re at the Plaza. With Mother out of town, why don’t you come up and we’ll have dinner later?”
“A drink anyway,” Sarge said.
They agreed to meet at five P.M. When Trace left, Sarge told him, “Hang on to that business card. It’s the only way you’ll get this phone number. It’s unlisted.”
“An office phone, unlisted?” Trace asked. “How come?”
“If I list it, your mother will find it out,” Sarge said.
“How’s Sarge?” Chico asked.
“Depressed. I’m not drinking and he’s depressed.”
“Why? Your mother’s out of town.”
“It’s more than my mother. It’s the agency. He opened up on Monday and he hasn’t gotten a case yet.”
“He’s just started, for crying out loud. What’s he expect?”
“Sure,” Trace said. “That’s logical, but it’s got to be scary anyway. He’s had this dream for years about opening up his own agency, and now his dream’s coming true and it might turn out to be a nightmare. I don’t like it. When your dreams die, sometimes you die along with them.”
“Is that another one of your big thoughts?” she said. “Should I say, ‘Gee whiz, that’s deep,’ and pretend that you’re really an intellectual?”
“No, it’s really the way I feel. Sarge is sixty-seven and he’s healthy as a horse—”
“He’d have to be, to live all these years with your mother,” Chico interrupted.
“But people can get old fast when bad things happen to them.”
“What are you going to do about it?” Chico asked.
“I don’t know,” Trace said.
“Yes, you do,” she said. And uncharacteristically, she kissed him.
They were supposed to meet Sarge at five P.M. in the Plaza’s Oak Room for cocktails. Trace took a leather shaving kit into the bathroom. From it, he took a small tape recorder, not much larger than a pack of cigarettes. Into it, he plugged a two-foot-long wire on whose other end was the replica of a small golden frog, an inch high. The frog figurine’s mouth was open, and the gap was covered by a thin golden mesh, behind which was a small powerful microphone. Trace inserted a cassette into the tape recorder, and taped it to his right side with long strips of surgical adhesive. When he finished dressing, he pulled the wire around through his shirt button and connected the frog figurine to it as a tie clip.
Through his shirt, he pressed the small tape device’s “record” button and said, “Lawrence Welk, with you, for New Year’s testing. And a vun, und a two, und a tree…” He stopped the tape, rewound it, then pressed the “play” button. He heard his test message repeated clearly. He turned off the recorder, put on his jacket, and went outside.
Chico was sitting naked in front of the bedroom mirror, putting on her makeup.
“Why don’t I go downstairs and meet Sarge?” Trace asked.
“What time is it?”
“Ten to five.”
“I’ll be ready,” she said.
And she was. It was one of the many nice things Trace liked about her: she was always ready on time. Putting on makeup took her five minutes when she was dawdling, sixty seconds when she was in a hurry, and the result of the two sequences was indistinguishable. She made up her mind what she was going to wear ev
en before she opened her closet, and then she wore it. No last-minute looks in the mirror and suddenly deciding that a dress that she had worn and looked wonderful in for three years suddenly was just “not right” for her.
They left the suite at three minutes to five and arrived at the same moment as Sarge at the lounge.
Sarge greeted Chico effusively, hugged her, then demanded a table “pronto.”
When the waiter seated them, Trace and his father ordered beers, and Chico, whose body could not metabolize alcohol, ordered Perrier water. “Make it two rounds right away,” Sarge told the waiter.
“No special Polish brew?” Chico asked Trace.
“No. I’ve given that stuff up. It was making me dumb.”
“Sure,” she said. “And why spend the money on that when plain water would work just as well?”
“If we play our cards right,” Sarge told her, “maybe we can get him liquored up, and you and I can go off cavorting.”
“I’m ready anytime,” Chico said “Let’s play kneesies.”
“Good idea,” Sarge said. “You know I’m a big private detective now. I carry a gun and everything. You can be my moll.”
“I didn’t know private detectives had molls,” she said.
“I’m breaking new ground,” Sarge said.
“Whenever you two are finished,” Trace said. He took the newspaper clipping from his inside pocket and handed it across to Sarge.
As he took it, Sarge asked Chico, “Don’t you think he ought to join up with me?”
“Why would you want him?” she asked.
“Just father and son, it’d be nice.”
“Well, if it’s true that private eyes are all deep thinkers, I don’t know,” she said. “Trace is about as deep as a rain slick.”
“I’ll teach him, though,” Sarge said. He looked toward the far side of the bar for a moment, wistfully, and said almost to himself, “Your mother said I was just throwing away good money. If I had to work, I should get a job in a bank somewhere as a guard.”
“That’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard,” Trace said. “Even from my mother.” He glanced at Chico and she shook her head slightly as they shared the same thought. His mother was a thoughtless, hardhearted, unloving emasculating kvetch.
“Read that clipping,” Trace told his father. “Come on, I don’t have all year.”
Sarge read the clipping quickly, then handed it back. “I saw this story,” he said. “I know the family. Armitage’s got a bad reputation. A bad guy with a bad temper.”
“Well, that’s what I’m working on. And I need your agency.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s going to be a lot of legwork in this,” Trace said. “And I don’t have any contacts in New York. I need you on this.”
“This one of your insurance cases?” Sarge asked.
“Yeah, we had the kid’s policy. How do you know the family?”
Sarge looked across the bar as he answered. “I know the kid’s mother, Martha, from a long time ago, when I was a cop in Brooklyn.” He turned back and looked down at his beer.
“Think she’d remember you?” Trace asked.
“I imagine so,” Sarge said. “I guess so.”
“Then I double need you. You’re an in to the family. You ever meet this guy?” He looked at the clipping. “Nick Armitage?”
“No. But I’ve heard of him.”
“The paper kind of hints that he might be a mob guy. Do you know anything about that?”
“I think he moves dope. He used to move a lot of it,” Sarge said. “But maybe he’s gone straight. I could find out.”
“How straight would he be, owning a night-club?”
“Not too,” Sarge said. “But I’d find out.”
“All I’ll pay you is a hundred a day plus reasonable expenses.”
“My usual fee is two hundred a day,” Sarge said.
“How the hell do you have a usual fee when you haven’t had a client yet?” Trace demanded.
“If you set your price cheap, people don’t appreciate the work you do. I thought that was one of the things I taught you when you were little.”
“Okay, okay. How about a family discount?”
“For you, a buck and a quarter a day. Nothing less.” Sarge nodded at Chico. “Unless she works with me. Then I’ll do it for nothing.”
“Nothing doing,” Trace said. “She’s on my team. I need her brains.”
“I’m not working with anybody,” Chico said. “I’ve come to New York to shop. Bloomie’s gets my brain and body and soul.”
“A hundred and a quarter a day,” Sarge said.
“You’ve got it,” Trace said. He nodded for a moment, then grumbled, “Maybe I will go into business with you. You’re a goddamn thief, and it might be my only way to get rich.”
5
Sarge turned down their invitation to join them for dinner.
“I’ll pass. I want to be home when your mother calls from Las Vegas. She worries if I’m not home.”
“When does she call?”
“Never know. Usually late. She forgets about the three-hour time thing.”
“Horseshit,” Trace said. “That woman forgets nothing. She calls that late just to wake you up and annoy you and bust your chops. I know that woman.”
“Afraid I do too,” Sarge said. “I think I’ll be home when she calls. In case she calls early.”
“Have it your own way. I’ll see you in the morning.”
He left them and Trace told Chico, “First thing we have to do is find excuses to keep Sarge out all night. Screw this pussy-whipped bullshit about being home in case my mother calls.”
“Don’t bet that hand too high,” Chico said.
“Why not?”
“How long’s she supposed to be gone for?”
“Eight days and seven nights,” Trace said. “You know, somebody ought to offer a special gambler’s package. Eight days and six nights. The last day you’re there, you’ve lost all your money and you can sleep in the gutter.”
“Mess around with her phone calls and she might come back early,” Chico warned. “She might get here before we leave.”
Trace thought about that for a moment, then nodded. He called out softly after Sarge’s departing figure, “Hurry home, Sarge. Hurry. Man the telephones. You’re the last best hope of civilization.”
Trace told Chico that she was much too beautifully turned out to waste, so he would take her someplace fancy for dinner. She was impressed until they got into a cab and Trace told the driver to take them to Chez Nick.
The cabbie grumbled about losing his place in line at the hotel and Trace understood why when he found out the restaurant was only six blocks from the hotel. The afternoon humidity had finally broken, and on the warm pleasant night, they could easily have walked, Chico pointed out to him.
“What? Walk with you? Down all these mean streets where violence dwells? Where muggers and white slavers and pimps and pornographers are just waiting to scoop you up and take you away from me. Not a chance, girl. I am your man, and to prove you’re a man, you may not live like one, but you have to be prepared to die like one.”
“What the hell does all that mean?” Chico asked.
“Listen to him, he’s right,” the cabbie said, hoping to earn a big tip.
“See?” Trace said trimphantly. “He recognizes a big thinker when he sees one. You know what they always say. You want to know anything in New York, ask a cabdriver. Or a private detective. Keep your door locked so nobody breaks into the cab if we stop.”
Trace gave the cabbie five dollars and told him to keep the change. Outside the restaurant, under the canopy that reached to the curbside, he told Chico, “It’s annoying, having this restaurant so close to the hotel. I could really have run up the expenses if it were far away.”
The tuxedoed maître d’ turned toward them from his station as they entered, and Trace jumped forward and shook his hand and greeted him effusively.
“Pierre, good to see you again. How’s the family, Pierre?”
“Very good, sir,” the man said chillfully. “I’m George.”
Trace snapped his fingers. “Of course. Pierre’s your twin brother. Give him my best. Do you have a table for me and the lady?”
The maître d’ made a pretense of checking his reservation list, and when he turned back, Trace shook his hand again and put a twenty-dollar bill into it.
“I think we can take care of you. I’ve forgotten your name, sir. I’m sorry.”
“Rascali,” Trace said. “Luigi Rascali.”
The maître d’ nodded. Trace noticed a set of double doors that led to a stairwell. The doors were marked simply “TO THE DANCE.” He thought if that was the disco entrance, the restaurant’s soundproofing system was wonderful because he heard no music at all where he was standing, except the unobtrusive playing of a piano in the far corner of the dining room.
George took them to a table in a corner of the room, and when they had been seated, Trace told Chico, “I like this place a lot.”
“Why? You haven’t been here three minutes yet, Mr. Rascali.”
“Because it’s not like New York restaurants. We’re sitting by ourselves. Usually in a New York restaurant, they jam you shoulder and jowl with other people and they’re always talking about the stock market. Or what’s in New York magazine. Who gives a shit? And then they always order smelly disgusting food. They’re sitting so close you have to smell it, and it’s awful but they wolf it down anyway, splattering juice everywhere. New Yorkers all eat like pigs. I think they give out stars on how many people a restaurant can jam into one room without any of them being comfortable.”
Chico leaned over and said softly, “You said it’s a Mafia place. Maybe that’s why. Maybe the Mafia doesn’t like people listening in on their conversations.”
“You kidding? That’s what they like best. That’s why they do all that ring-kissing and that phony yap-yap. ‘I am honored, Don Duck, that you have chosen to grace my humble establishment with the eminence of your august presence,’ and ‘It is a mark of the high esteem in which I hold you and your family that after many years, it is good to return to such a place of warmth and friendship,’ and they go on like that forever. They want everybody to hear them.”
When Elephants Forget (Trace 3) Page 3