Money Men

by Gerald Petievich

  A frail secretary showed them into a comfortably furnished office with a Stanford diploma on the wall. John Blair was on the phone, thick lips touching the mouthpiece. Blair was a young man with an abundance of what some would describe as baby fat: rosy cheeks, puffy neck, fraternity-house beer belly. He wore the latest gold-wire-frame spectacles. His hair was a styling-salon natural.

  "Gotta go now, hon. See you at five-thirty or so, depending on the freeway, ya know." He put down the receiver and pointed to two chairs.

  They sat down.

  "Well, well, Charlie and Jack, the old guard of the Treasury Department." His voice was youthful. "What can I do for you this fine day?"

  "I want a John Doe warrant for the guy who killed Rico de Fiore."

  "Have you found the killer?" he said. He doodled on a yellow pad.

  "We're starting a surveillance on a residence in Hollywood where we think he might show up. I want to have a warrant in hand when we take him just so there'll be no legal technicalities popping up later. I want to make sure there are no loopholes in this case."

  "I'm glad you came in, Charlie. I've been wanting to get together with you fellas on the prosecution angle ever since it happened. There is a problem, ya know." He stopped doodling.

  "No, I don't know," Carr said. "We watched this Ronnie or whoever he is walk into the motel room. We heard the shotgun. We went in the room seconds later and found Rico shot dead. If that doesn't mean a certain conviction for Ronnie when we catch him, I don't know anything about the law. Rico sure as hell didn't kill himself "

  Blair scratched his natural. It appeared stiff with hair spray. "No, that's not the problem. The problem is self-defense. It's a one-on-one situation, ya know."

  "How do you mean?" Kelly said.

  "If you arrest this Ronnie and he goes to trial, you know he can take the stand and say he drew his gun and fired in self-defense after the other man started to pull his gun. Rico was working undercover. He was acting the part of a criminal, you know? Don't forget that. All Ronnie will have to do is take the stand and admit that he is a seller of counterfeit money. He'll say that in the motel room this surly-looking Italian, whom he firmly believed to be a Mafia lieutenant, tried to steal his counterfeit money and he had to defend himself. Ya know? He might even say that Rico identified himself as a T-man and reached for his ankle gun but he didn't believe it and defended himself from a possible rip-off. The physical evidence shows that Rico's pants leg was up and thus he may have reached for his ankle gun. As you know, the defense is entitled to a copy of all the coroner's reports and everything; that's the law. They'll use whatever defense fits the facts the best. Ya know?"

  Carr and Kelly sat without speaking.

  Blair picked up an expensive-looking fountain pen and made ink dots on the yellow pad. When he spoke again his voice was softer.

  "We have to keep in mind that there isn't even a murder weapon. Although the coroner could testify that Rico was killed with shotgun pellets, we can't actually tie Ronnie to a murder weapon. Ya know? All you saw him carry into the room was an attaché case, and he obviously took the weapon with him when he escaped. The final problem with the case is that it will be your word against his. You will be open to a tough cross-examination as to how you recognized him as the person who walked into the room, excluding all other persons who may look like him; et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Ya know? This guy may even have a brother to bring into court that looks like him. Do you see what I'm getting at? The case is weak. I don't think we can get a conviction on murder or assault on a federal officer, and there is no other physical evidence of other crimes except the sample counterfeit bill he gave Rico. And that is inadmissible as evidence because Rico is...uh...not here to testify about it. Ya know?" He looked at his watch.

  "If we find the shotgun, what kind of a case will we have?" Carr said, looking at Kelly.

  "Not too good," Blair said flatly. "There is no way we can tie the shotgun to the crime. It's not like a pistol; ballistics doesn't do us any good with shotguns. Even if you find the shotgun, there's no way to prove it was the shotgun that killed Rico. Shotgun pellets are shotgun pellets. Ya know? It's too bad it wasn't a pistol. The case, as it stands, is almost non-prosecutable. This is a fact you will have to accept...I know how you guys feel, but that's it. Ya know?"

  "We'll try to dig up some more evidence through our surveillance." Carr stood up. So did Kelly.

  Blair rolled his fountain pen between his hands, making a clicking sound each time it hit his oversize college ring. "Ya know it's not that I wouldn't like to give you a warrant, but there's no use arresting somebody we can't take to trial and convict. Ya know?"

  They walked out of the room.

  "I'm glad you held back," Carr said to Kelly.

  "I'm not," Kelly said. "When I was in the police department years ago, we had a deputy district attorney like him. He refused to give my partner a complaint on a guy that slapped him in the face. The D.A. said it 'wasn't aggravated enough'; therefore it wasn't really a crime under the penal code. You know what my partner did? He slapped the D.A. in the face and knocked him clean out of his chair. You should have seen the uproar." Kelly laughed so loud the secretary put a finger in her ear so she could hear the phone.

  The elevator door opened.

  "What happened to your partner?" Carr said.

  "Six months without pay and lost a stripe. But he always said it was worth it to him."

  "A couple of years from now Blair will go into private practice and be thinking up phony defenses for his clients just like the ones he was telling us about."

  "How did he ever get into the U.S. attorney's office?" Kelly said.

  "Ever heard of Blair's Restaurants and Pastry Shops? Daddy Blair was invited to the inauguration."

  "Oh!"

  The elevator door opened.

  On the way to Hollywood, Kelly insisted they stop on Alvarado at Calhoun's Hot Dog stand. Carr placed the order while Kelly pulled napkins from a dispenser and stuffed them in his pockets.

  A short, fat black man wearing a sweat-stained chef's hat wrapped everything to go. He set canned Cokes with the food in a small cardboard box and shoved it across the counter to Carr.

  "Stakeout. Right?" said Calhoun.

  "You guessed it," Carr said. He tried to hand Calhoun money.

  The chef's rough-looking hands made a practiced "on the house" gesture. "That old Howard Dumbrowski...I bet he was a good man for stakeouts," he said.

  "He sure was." Carr nodded.

  Calhoun leaned on the counter with both arms. "Once, Howard Dumbrowski and me was sitting at that table behind you chewing the fat. It was late at night. Howard was on his way home and stopped for a coupla dogs. Hot damn if a lady don't get off a bus across the street and some six-foot-three mutha fucka snatches her purse and knocks her down. You could see she was hurt. Old Howard come off from the table like O. J. Simpson. He was across the street and had the mutha fucka by the collar before he got fifty feet. You could see the old lady had a busted arm-the bone was sticking out. I called an ambulance quick's I could." He smiled, showing a gold front tooth. "Course by the time it got here, I had to call another one for the purse snatcher. Howard was making these little screams with every punch. Had tears in his eyes. Like he was getting his nut or something. Beat that dirty mutha fucka up and down that sidewalk. AR types of inspectors and shit came around the next few days. I told 'em that mutha fucka attacked Howard first and Howard just defended hisself " He lowered his voice. "The way I seen it, the purse snatcher attacked Howard's fists with his head and stomach." The black man slapped a hand down on the counter and gave a high-pitched laugh that could be heard for half a block.

  ****

  NINETEEN

  Using one hand to shield his binoculars from the sunlight, Carr watched Kelly as he crept past the front door of Red Diamond's apartment. It was on the second level of an unkempt avocado-colored apartment complex that was a copy of ten others on the block.

&nb
sp; Somehow every apartment house in Los Angeles looked the same: stucco, carports, and Dempsey Dumpsters.

  Kelly got back in the driver's seat. "He's living there. His name is on the mailbox. I think he's home. I think I heard a radio on inside." He opened a pop can and used the liquid to wash down a hot dog, which he devoured in four bites. He licked his fingers one by one and leaned back in the seat.

  Carr continued to use the binoculars.

  "He should have given the guy a dollar and told him to go find a better piece of ass," Kelly announced.

  "Who?"

  "Howard. That's what he should have done when he walked in on his old lady. He should have just taken a dollar out of his wallet, given it to Joe the Grinder, and walked out, instead of blowing her away like he did."

  "You're right," Carr said. "But that's just the way Howard is. He couldn't help himself any more than Freddie Roth could hold back if he's near a printing press and somebody offers him ten points on the dollar. Same with Rico's murderer. He'll keep going until he's stopped..."

  "Imagine us sitting here talking about old Howard as if he's a criminal?" Kelly said. "If he could hear us, he'd knock our heads together like two coconuts."

  "He probably would," Carr said. He laughed.

  Kelly closed his eyes for a few minutes. "Listen," he said without looking at Carr. "I know I'm always the one to say the wrong thing at the right time, but there's something we should work out."

  "Shoot," Carr said.

  Kelly wiped his hand on his shirttail and tucked the shirt back in. "I see the whole thing like this. From what the mushhead U.S attorney said yesterday, it looks like once we find Ronnie, he is going to walk. If we arrest him, he goes to trial and beats the rap. He will have killed Rico for free. Blair is a hundred-percent right. The jury is going to be made up of a bunch of housewives who watch TV soap operas. When the judge instructs them on reasonable doubt, they are going to say, 'Gee whiz, there must be reasonable doubt because I can't imagine anyone being mean enough to blow somebody's head off.' I can see it now."

  "You may be right," Carr said.

  Nothing was said for a while.

  "You and I have been through a lot," Kelly said finally. He was looking straight ahead. "You can trust me if you think we should go all the way on this one."

  Carr put the binoculars down. "Ideas?" he said.

  "If we find him-I mean, if it's just you and I alone, with no one else around-I say it's our ball game right then and there. He resists and we cancel his ticket," Kelly said. "We both shoot."

  Carr put the binoculars to his eyes. He waited before speaking. "We have to be patient, Jack," he said. "We have to wait till everything is right." He put the binoculars on the dashboard. "And it's probably best if we don't talk too much about it. Eventually we may end up sitting on the lie box. It's better not to have discussed such things. You know what I mean."

  "Yeah, sure," Kelly said.

  When darkness fell, they parked closer to the apartment house, because of the lighting. Using the binoculars, Carr made out a soft flicker of light coming from the opening in a curtain.

  "He's watching TV," he said.

  "I wish he'd make a move. My ass is sore." Kelly popped open a soda. "Wouldn't it be great if the asshole would get in his car and go to a movie. We could just sit there and watch the movie, or, better yet, a restaurant..."

  "Dream on," Carr said.

  Clad only in boxer shorts, Red Diamond had been lounging on the fat, smelly sofa all day. His tiny apartment was filled with light and sound from a rabbit-eared portable television. Resting on a dinette table, it provided flickering illumination for the dark, bare-floored room and two plastic-covered chairs, an open suitcase, and a phone with a cord long enough to reach the bathroom.

  Red's bandaged hand throbbed with the waves of canned laughter emanating from the set.

  He crawled off the couch and stretched. It was time for stomach therapy. In the undersized kitchen he pulled open the refrigerator and took out a bottle of real, not imitation, ginger ale. He opened the bottle at the sink. Throwing his head back, he opened his mouth wide and poured fully half of the icy ginger ale down his throat. The half bottle of bubbles tingled and stung all the way to his sour, rumbling stomach. He quickly placed the bottle back in the refrigerator and put his hands on his hips to wait for the belch. It came moments later as a strident, head-down bark.

  The poison worry gas had been emitted. He was sure that if he had been able to get real ginger ale during the stretch in Terminal Island, his stomach problems could have been kept under control.

  He went back to the sofa and fluffed up a pillow. It was getting dark outside, but he did not feel that the day had been wasted. Alone, with nothing but the television, he had been able to relax, to think. Having had time to treat his body with ginger-ale therapy, he had not had a loose bowel movement all day.

  The television crackled with applause. A cuff-linked, effeminate game-show host held a housewife's hand and pointed to the stage set behind him. "You keep five hundred dollars or try for the wild-card prize in one of the boxes!" he quacked. "Take your choice of Prize One, Prize Two, or Prize Three!" Chewing her fingernails excitedly, the housewife jumped up and down. Her breasts were bouncy, youthful, her waist firm. Perhaps as firm as Mona's? For the fiftieth time he saw Mona in the front seat of the car, the look in her eye as she stabbed him. The hole in his hand throbbed again.

  "What will it be?" said the game-show man. "The money or one of the wild-card boxes? Five hundred dollars or a chance at gifts worth as much as ten thousand dollars."

  "I'll keep the five hundred dollars," squealed the housewife.

  She chomped on her knuckles. The box opened. "A new car!" screamed the announcer.

  "Dumb bitch," Red said to the television. He got up and turned it off. He knocked a dirty towel off a dinette chair, sat down, and flipped a spiral notebook that was on the table.

  He closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. Then he picked up a ball-point pen and wrote the following:

  RECOVERY OPERATION

  The need for cash flow is now imperative, but falling back to quick con game would be disastrous because of being known by the cops. Cannot trust Gabe-he is probably a snitch; much too friendly. Only one to trust at this point is Ronnie. He has proved himself under fire. Dio's deadline is up and it means that plans must be changed to meet the current needs. Dio is to me a barrier, a stone wall that is holding up all further success. He has shown himself to be what he always has been, a person lacking full understanding of people and situations. He is nothing more than a cheap gunsel who lucked out for a few scores and saved his money, like the peasant wop motherfucker that he is. To deal with Dio is a task requiring full commitment. Yes, an all-or-nothing is now upon me. I have survived before because of my mental speed and ability to decipher the codes of life. I picture myself at this moment as a guided missile fueled by the mental speed energy I have been able to develop using the nuclear resources of concentration. Dio's weakness is that, even in the Beverly Hills days, he accepted other people as stereotypes. He could never change an opinion of someone once it was made. His supposed mastery of power is a sham. I want to stick a burning cigar right into his eye and push it into his activating, rotten shit brain. He has challenged my energy by his failure to understand my mental speed. I must maintain control of the resources at my own command in order to return to the home plate of life. I have waited five years. I have been patient. I have not been remorseful. I have not been anything other than a gentleman who requests his seat at the table back. I am fifty-four years old and the little things mean more to me now. There is no question that I can handle the problem with Mona. Time is a healer. Dio, if he was a man instead of a phony rotten prick, could give me more time by just snapping his fingers-but he won't. I have never been afraid to face the music of life. It is time for a plateau decision.

  It took him almost an hour to write this. After completing it he took another ginger-ale-belch treatme
nt. Almost simultaneous with the emission of the worry gas, as if by the magic healing properties of ginger, he was aware of what he had to do. He picked the phone up off the floor and dialed. A woman answered.

  "Hello."

  "I wanna speak to Tony Dio. This is Red Diamond."

  A click. "Hello, Red, this is Tony. What can I do for you?"

  "I know tomorrow is the deadline, but something just came up and I wanted to check and see if I could get a slight extension. This is not a stall. I give you my word on that. It's just that I'm in the middle of a project that I have capital tied up in. Right now it would be so much easier if I could just have a little more time. That way I can pull off my caper without having to shortstop the whole thing right in the middle. I'm only asking for a few more weeks."

  "Are you telling me you don't have what you are supposed to have by tomorrow?"

  Red hesitated. He felt as though a faucet had been turned on in his intestines. "Oh, it's not that. Not at all. I have the full amount that I owe you. It's just that for the moment the money is tied up in something, and if I pull the money out right now to pay you, I'll just suffer a loss of possible profit and..."

  "I don't like to talk on the phone, Red. You know that. Tomorrow is your deadline. I will be open for business in my hotel suite tomorrow. Be there at 7:00 P.M. with the money. Bring me cash. If you aren't there, you will have visitors. Like I said, business is business. Points are points."

  "After all the fuckin' years I've known you... "

  "The story has been told, Red. School is out."

  Red's stomach roared. "Okay, okay, if that's the way it's got to be...I'll send a guy over with the money tomorrow."

  "I don't like strangers. Make sure you are with him. I don't open my door for any fucking strangers."

  "All right then. I'll bring the money over, but he'll be with me. I don't like to walk around alone with that much money."

  "I understand," Dio said. "See you tomorrow."