The Way You Die Tonight

by Robert Randisi

  ‘OK,’ I said, ‘but leave it in the Caddy when we go into the deli. I don’t want Martin to notice it.’

  ‘I ain’t comfortable with that, but OK,’ he said. ‘If those two mugs come back, I can handle.’

  ‘They didn’t look armed to me,’ I said. ‘I guess they figured they didn’t need to be. But after going up against you, my guess is they won’t come back without guns.’

  ‘What happens if they try for you – for us – at the deli?’

  ‘I’m sure Detective Martin will have his gun on him.’

  ‘Hey, that’s right,’ he said. ‘OK, then. Did you have breakfast?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Me, neither.’

  I still had three hours before I had to meet Martin. I stood up. ‘I’m gonna clean up, stretch, see what kind of shape I’m in. If I don’t have to go to the hospital, I’ll buy you breakfast.’

  As I stood up, he stood with me, ready to catch me if I fell over.

  I didn’t.

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  Martin was already in a booth when we entered Grabstein’s. I was moving OK, if a little stiff, as I approached. Jerry had eaten a full breakfast, while I had gone with coffee and toast. We were both ready for some good deli.

  ‘You brought your friend,’ Martin said. ‘That have anything to do with how stiff you’re moving?’

  ‘It has everything to do with it.’ I sat across from him, lowering myself gingerly into the booth. I told him about the company I’d had that morning. ‘So you can see why I wouldn’t want to be walking around alone the rest of today.’

  ‘I do see,’ he agreed. ‘Did they say who sent them?’

  ‘They were gonna tell me after – if I was in any condition to hear them.’

  ‘Are you going to report this?’

  ‘Not until I find out who sent them,’ I said. ‘Until then, Jerry can sit over there and enjoy some deli. He’s never been here.’

  ‘OK,’ Martin said, ‘I’ll go along with that. He’s not heeled, is he?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘We figured you would be.’

  ‘Would I be disappointed if I searched him?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘but I’ll make him stand still for a frisk if you want.’

  Martin took only a second to make up his mind.

  ‘That’s fine. He can sit and enjoy.’

  ‘Thank you.’ I waved at Jerry, who nodded and sat in another booth, about twenty feet from us. From there he could see me, and keep an eye out the window. I knew that, across the street, was the building the lawyer, Kaminsky, had his office in. I thought I might stop in on him, after. I had an idea.

  The elderly waitress came over to take our order, acted like she knew Martin.

  ‘How are you, boychick?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m fine, Sima. Tell Manny I’ll have my usual.’

  ‘Of course.’ She looked at me, then, and raised her eyebrows. ‘You I don’t know so well.’

  ‘I’ve been here with Kaminsky.’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘Kaminsky’s friend. What will you have, Kaminsky’s friend?’

  ‘Pastrami on rye,’ I said.

  ‘Good choice.’

  She walked away and, before putting in our order, stopped at Jerry’s table. She was there for quite a while, and before long she was laughing. When she walked away she was still laughing and shaking her head.

  ‘OK,’ Detective Martin said, ‘so what’s on your mind, Eddie?’

  ‘You don’t like Hargrove any more than I do, right?’ I asked.

  He frowned and said, ‘He’s my partner.’

  ‘But that wasn’t your choice.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why is he so dead set on calling Helen’s death a suicide?’ I asked.

  Martin didn’t answer right away.

  ‘He isn’t, is he?’ I asked. ‘You guys are investigating it as a murder and he doesn’t want me and Jack Entratter to know it.’

  ‘Let’s suppose you’re right,’ Martin said, ‘and we are investigating it as a murder. Would you have anything that would be helpful to us?’

  ‘Is that what Hargrove wants?’ I asked. ‘He wants us to solve it for him? He’s been warning us off knowing that we’d go ahead?’

  ‘You guys may not like each other,’ Martin said, ‘but you know each other pretty well.’

  ‘Sonofabitch,’ I said.

  ‘What’ve you got, Eddie?’

  ‘Man,’ I said, ‘I would love to give you something and have you solve it right under his nose … and take all the credit.’

  ‘I can’t do that,’ Martin said. ‘He’s my partner. Whatever you give me, I’ll have to share.’

  ‘And tell him you got it from me?’ I asked. ‘I hate to give him that satisfaction.’

  Martin sat back and regarded me for a minute.

  ‘I don’t have to do that.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t have to tell him I got it from you,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell him I got it from a source. We each have our own sources.’

  ‘That’s good,’ I said. ‘That’s very good.’

  ‘It’s even better if you’ve got something,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe I’ve got something,’ I said, ‘and maybe I don’t know what to do with it.’

  ‘Could be I’ll make sense of it, then,’ he said. ‘Let me have it.’

  I wouldn’t have been there if I wasn’t willing to take a chance on him. If I gave him what we had and he told Hargrove, well, that was his choice.

  ‘OK,’ I said, ‘OK,’ and I started talking …

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  Our food came while I was talking, so I continued as we ate. When Sima came out with Jerry’s order she had three times as many plates as she did for us, but I couldn’t see what was on them.

  Martin was a good listener, which probably made him a good detective. It was just one of many ways he was different from his partner.

  ‘And you don’t think this kid, Joey, is on the lam now?’ he asked, when I was done.

  ‘I don’t think he did it,’ I said. ‘Why go on the lam?’

  ‘But you think he might have talked to Frankie D., given you guys up? And that’s why you got worked over this morning?’

  ‘It’s a possibility.’

  ‘You piss anybody else off?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘It doesn’t have anything to do with the murder.’ I looked at him. ‘Murder, right?’

  He signed and said, ‘Right.’

  ‘The key, right?’ I asked. ‘And the fact that she couldn’t have hanged herself without something to stand on.’

  ‘Do you know why Hargrove hates you?’ he asked.

  ‘There must be more than one reason,’ I said. ‘Because I work for the Sands, and the mob owns it, so he thinks I’m connected.’

  ‘That’s one reason,’ Martin said. ‘The other is that you seem to be a natural.’

  ‘Natural what?’

  ‘Detective. He struggles, and it seems to come easy to you.’

  ‘Nothing comes easy to me,’ I said. ‘I’m not a detective, Danny’s the detective. And a good one.’

  ‘Well, it must’ve rubbed off on you, then,’ he said. ‘There was also the fact of the two ligature marks on her neck.’

  ‘Two?’

  ‘Only one from the hanging.’

  ‘She was strangled first?’

  He nodded. ‘Somebody didn’t know that the two marks would be a dead giveaway – no pun intended.’

  We pushed our plates to the other end of the table until Sima came to refill our coffee cups.

  ‘So you managed to find a couple of suspects,’ Martin said, ‘but now you don’t think they did it. Why not?’

  ‘It’s all about where it happened,’ I said. ‘They couldn’t have gotten in and out of the Sands so easily.’

  ‘So you’re saying it’s an inside job.’

  ‘Gotta be.’

  Martin sat back and l
it a cigarette.

  ‘Come on,’ I said, ‘you guys must have been looking at employees this whole time.’

  ‘We have.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She got on the wrong side of some, but not enough for them to kill her.’

  ‘What about Walter Spires?’

  ‘He got fired.’

  ‘So? Haven’t you looked into ex-employees?’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘He was fired recently,’ I said. ‘He could’ve walked in and out with a lot of employees who didn’t know he was fired.’

  ‘We talked to him,’ Martin said. ‘He’s a wimp.’

  ‘That’s what Bardini said, but I haven’t talked to him myself.’

  ‘Maybe you should.’

  We sat in silence for a few minutes. I’d learned what I wanted to. They actually were working the case as a murder. Hargrove had lied to Entratter about calling it a suicide.

  ‘OK,’ Martin said, ‘I’m gonna tell you one more thing. And if Hargrove finds out, he’ll kill me.’

  ‘He won’t find out from me.’

  ‘The belt.’

  ‘The one she hung herself with?’

  He nodded.

  ‘It was too big.’

  ‘What do you mean, too big?’

  ‘It was too big for her,’ Martin said. ‘She wasn’t a big woman, and the belt was sizes too big for her. It wasn’t her belt.’

  ‘So … it was the killer’s.’

  Martin nodded.

  ‘Then the killer is a woman.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Martin said, ‘and maybe she had help, but a woman was definitely there.’

  ‘And you’ve checked all the female employees?’

  ‘Talked to all of them,’ he said. ‘No confessions, yet.’

  This confirmed what I had been thinking about the club, and the drugs. No connection.

  ‘Well,’ Martin said, ‘we’ve compared notes and haven’t come up with much, have we?’

  ‘Have we compared notes?’ I asked. ‘You haven’t told me much, beyond the belt.’

  ‘Frankly,’ Martin said, ‘that’s because we’ve got nothing but the belt.’

  ‘What about the drug angle?’ I asked. ‘You knew about that, right? I mean, you knew she was a member of the Happy Devil club?’

  He didn’t answer.

  ‘Why do I feel like I got the raw end of this deal?’ I asked.

  SIXTY-NINE

  Martin stood up and left. I thought I was going to get stuck with the bill, but Sima didn’t bring one. I stood up and moved to Jerry’s table and took my coffee cup with me.

  His table was covered with food – pastrami, knishes, lox, soup; I wondered if Jerry had sampled almost everything on the menu.

  ‘Hey, Mr G.,’ he said, ‘this place is pretty good. Not like a Brooklyn deli, but pretty good.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘So, what happened?’

  ‘We got took,’ I said. ‘Turns out we had more information than they do.’

  ‘What about the drugs?’

  ‘They didn’t have it,’ I said. ‘They didn’t even have the club.’

  ‘They got anythin’?’

  ‘They’ve mostly been checking out employees, and coming up empty.’ I told him about the belt.

  ‘Well, that’s something, but it sure sounds like we got fucked.’

  ‘At least we know they never really believed the suicide angle,’ I said. ‘But in the end that doesn’t help us much.’

  ‘So whatta we do now?’

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you’re gonna finish eating and I’m going to have some more coffee.’

  ‘I’m going to need a piece of cheesecake for dessert,’ he said. ‘You might as well have one, too. You know, to keep up your strength.’

  ‘Why not?’ I said.

  When we left the deli, Sima gave Jerry a big hug and told him to come back next time he was in town.

  ‘I might even be back this visit, before I go home,’ he told her.

  ‘Good. Mazel tov.’

  Out front I stared at the building across the street.

  ‘What’s up, Mr G.?’

  ‘That’s where Danny’s lawyer, Kaminsky, has his office,’ I said. ‘I was thinking about dropping in and seeing if I can catch him.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Kaminsky knows everybody,’ I said. ‘I thought I’d talk to him about Howard Hughes. See what he thinks about the man maybe sending a couple of knuckledusters after me.’

  ‘Well, why not?’ he asked. ‘After all, we’re here.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Let’s see if he’s in.’

  He was in.

  Kaminsky ran a one-man shop, didn’t even have a girl working for him. When we walked in we could see through to his office, and he was behind his desk.

  ‘Hey, Kaminsky,’ I called.

  He looked up, frowned, then brightened.

  ‘Boychicks!’ he yelled, ‘Come in, come in.’

  We walked into his office and he came around his desk to give us each a hug – a pretty powerful hug for a forty-five-year-old, five-foot-four Jewish lawyer.

  ‘Kaminsky is glad to see you,’ he said. ‘Sit, sit. What brings you here?’

  ‘Well, we were eating across the street and thought we’d drop in.’

  He seated himself behind his desk and said, ‘Nobody just drops in on Kaminsky unless they’ve got a problem. Come on, bubuluh, give.’

  ‘Kaminsky, how much do you know about Howard Hughes?’ I asked.

  ‘A lot,’ he said but he didn’t say how.

  I told him that Hughes had come to town and was looking to buy a casino.

  ‘Take one over, you mean.’

  ‘Exactly, and he wanted me to help him.’

  ‘And you refused.’

  ‘I did, yes.’

  ‘Good for you. I’ll bet he wasn’t happy.’

  ‘He was not, and that’s what I wanted to ask you,’ I said. ‘Would he send a couple of mugs to work me over to get me to change my mind?’

  ‘I thought you flinched when I hugged you,’ he said. ‘From what I know about Howard I would say no, he wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘Really?’ He was talking like he knew Howard Hughes really well.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘but now Maheu, that is the kind of thing he would do. He’s a snake.’

  ‘He’d take it upon himself to do that without the word from Hughes?’

  ‘Oh hell, yes,’ Kaminsky said. ‘He works for Howard, and does what he’s told, but he is not without initiative.’

  I looked at Jerry, who shrugged.

  ‘Well, OK,’ I said, ‘that’s what I was wondering.’

  ‘Well, you came to the right place for the answer.’ He spread his arms. ‘Kaminsky knows everybody, right?’

  ‘That’s what I told Jerry,’ I agreed. ‘Kaminsky knows everybody.’

  We got up to leave when the import of what we had just said hit me.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘Kaminsky, what do you know about a law firm called Denby & Sloane?’

  ‘Big business,’ he said. ‘If Howard Hughes was comin’ to town to buy, he’d need somebody local to work with. They’d be one of the firms he’d look into.’

  ‘That’s good to know,’ I said.

  ‘You want the name of some others?’ he asked.

  ‘Nope,’ I said, ‘Denby & Sloane will do. Where are their offices located?’

  Outside Jerry asked as we got into the Caddy, ‘So where we headed now?’

  ‘Denby & Sloane,’ I said. ‘The address Kaminsky gave us.’

  ‘The broad?’

  I nodded.

  ‘We’ve got some questions for Miss Emily Marcus, if that’s even her name.’

  SEVENTY

  The offices of Denby & Sloane were in a high-priced neighborhood, a long way off from where Kaminsky – by choice, mind you – had his offices. More and more I had to believe that Kaminsky kept his low rent location because it was acr
oss the street from his favorite deli.

  We had to stop in at a security desk in the lobby to announce ourself. That made getting in a problem, unless we came up with the right name to reference.

  The blue-suited security man with a name tag that said BELMONT stared at Jerry, but spoke to me. He looked like an ex-cop gone to seed.

  ‘Help ya?’

  I took out my business card – which I hardly ever used – and handed it to him.

  ‘Eddie Gianelli?’ he said. ‘The Sands Hotel and Casino?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Who are you here to see?’

  ‘Either Mr Denby or Mr Sloane.’

  ‘Denby & Sloane,’ he said to himself. He looked down at the phone, which had lots of lights on it, some lit, some dark. He found the one he wanted, picked up the handset and pressed the button.

  ‘Yeah, I got a Eddie Gianelli here from the Sands Hotel? He wants to see Mr Denby or Mr Sloane.’ He listened for a moment, then covered the mouthpiece and asked me, ‘What’s it about?’

  Here came the tricky part.

  ‘I’m here representing Frank Sinatra.’

  That made the guard raise his eyebrows. He didn’t know me from Adam, but he knew Frank’s name.

  ‘He says he represents Frank Sinatra. Yeah, OK.’ He hung up. ‘You can go up. Nineteenth floor. Somebody will meet you at the door. Here, put these on.’ He handed us each a visitor’s badge. He was still giving Jerry looks, but didn’t ask any questions about him.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said.

  As we walked to the elevator court Jerry said, ‘That was too easy.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  According to the directory Denby & Sloane occupied several floors in the building. We found the proper elevator – the one that went to floors fifteen thru twenty-four – and took it to nineteen. As the doors opened a smartly dressed young woman in high heels and a short skirt was standing there.

  ‘Are you Mr Gianelli?’ she asked. She was slightly breathless, and her eyes were bright. She looked past me at Jerry, then past him, probably hoping to see Frank.

  ‘That’s right.’

  When she didn’t see Frank she lost some of her brightness.

  ‘Follow me, please.’

  We followed her, which was a pleasant enough experience, but all-in-all I didn’t think she’d cut it at the Sands as a waitress on the floor. She walked us past many desks and offices, where a lot of activity was taking place. Obviously, Kaminsky was right, Denby & Sloane was big business.