The Wizard of Death

by Forrest, Richard;

  Pasquale took a step toward Murdock with raised fists. Rocco stepped between them, parried the blow, turned Pasquale around and propelled Murdock from the room. Pasquale shook himself as if to shake off obscene things and then turned toward Fizz and Wiff.

  “Now, let’s hear. Why in hell were you two breaking into hotel rooms with guns?”

  “We were going to waste the son of a bitch.”

  “Who?”

  “Rainbow,” Wiff said. “Fizz figured out where the room was. He killed Junior with his colors on.”

  “Who killed who?”

  “Rainbow killed Junior.”

  Pasquale turned to Rocco. “Obviously Rainbow wasn’t there, or we’d have these guys on homicide.”

  “Look at these pictures,” Rocco said as he handed Fizz several photographs they had taken from Bea’s collection. “In this first one there are three men. Do any of them look like Rainbow?”

  Fizz took the pictures and examined them carefully. He moved across the room to stand under a light and looked again.

  “Well?” Pasquale asked.

  “I’m not really sure. You know, I didn’t get a hell of a good look at him. Maybe it’s this guy in the center.”

  Lyon, Pat and Rocco moved quickly to peer over Fizz’s shoulder.

  “Good Christ!” Pasquale said. “That’s the governor.”

  “Well, I knew he looked familiar,” Fizz replied.

  “Could it be either of the other two men?” Lyon asked, knowing that Ted Mackay was to the right of the governor.

  “These guys have gray and white hair,” Fizz replied. “I did see that Rainbow had sort of brown hair.”

  “It could have been dyed,” Rocco pressed.

  “Maybe. I just can’t be sure.”

  “I’d put them in the high-risk category,” Rocco said as they drove in the Murphysville cruiser from the Hartford police station to the Arriwani Hotel. “I don’t know that I’d have posted their bond.”

  “I owe them something,” Lyon replied.

  “And I still owe you guys from last time,” Pasquale said. “I’ll try and get the charges reduced.”

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  The Arriwani Hotel was a long, narrow building stuffed between a new office building and an ancient theater that now showed X-rated movies. In its more affluent days it had probably housed vaudevillians playing the theater; now its clientele consisted of welfare recipients, pensioners, and gray-haired men and women wearing loose-fitting clothes and purposeless expressions. The room clerk had obviously been recruited from the last-named group.

  The clerk’s skin was pulled tight across his balding head, and his rheumy eyes looked at the entering men with a mixture of fear and distrust.

  “Your name’s Warren, right?” Pasquale asked.

  “I thought you were all through with me, Sergeant.”

  “These men want to ask you some questions. I expect you to cooperate with them fully.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The room that was broken into—who was it rented to?” Rocco asked.

  “There were two. A Mr. Jones rented them both and paid a month in advance.”

  “Come on, Warren,” Pasquale snapped. “Jones? You can do better than that.”

  “No law says I have to ask for identification. Jones he said, Jones I wrote down. He paid in advance and had two suitcases.”

  “Why two rooms?” Lyon asked.

  “Mr. Jones said he was expecting friends.”

  Rocco stepped closer to the desk and loomed over the clerk. Warren retreated until his back was against the mailbox slots. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “Did Mr. Jones’s friends arrive?”

  “Arrived. Stayed a few days and left.”

  “Who were they?”

  “I don’t know, just a couple of bimbos. Jones rented the rooms. I never did get their last names. Real lookers; you’d hardly know they was hustling.”

  “First names?”

  “Penny and Boots.”

  “Tell us about Jones.”

  “He came in about two weeks ago, rented the rooms and paid in advance, like I told you. He was hardly ever there; then, when the girls came, they had men friends. I figure he was pimpin’ for them.”

  “Did you see who they … entertained?”

  “No. Around here it don’t pay to look too close.”

  “Describe Jones.”

  “About late thirties, medium build, wore so-so clothes—just a guy.”

  “Could you identify him again?”

  “I don’t know. He wore sunglasses, the kind that go far around and have mirrors in them.”

  “Look at these.” Rocco spread the photographs on the desk. “Do any of these men look like Mr. Jones?”

  “They all look older than Jones. I’m not sure.”

  “Do you know anything more about the girls who came to the second room?” Lyon asked.

  “They was just bimbos, mister. Young, good-looking, they didn’t—wait a minute, there is one thing. When they first checked in they was ordinary enough, but one night I was on the second floor and their door was open a crack and I could see in. The room was filled with stuffed toys. You know, teddy bears, dolls, stuff like that. And the two dames had on little girls’ clothes. It was weird—they looked like they was twelve years old or something.”

  “Let’s see the rooms.”

  The two rooms Jones or Rainbow had rented were on the second floor on the street side of the building. The wood on both doors had been shattered when Fizz and Wiff had kicked them in, and at Rocco’s touch the doors yawned open.

  Lyon leaned against the doorway as the two police officers began to go through the first room. With precision and little wasted motion, they unspokenly divided the rooms between them and began their search. The rooms themselves were nondescript, grime and must matching the colorless decor.

  The first room had obviously been occupied by the women. Two hairpins were found on the floor, along with a lipstick, smudged pieces of tissue in the wastebasket, and a pair of panties in the otherwise empty bureau.

  More visible traces of the man remained in the second room. An open suitcase was on the bed, partly packed. A razor and shaving cream were still in the small bathroom; a chair had been overturned in the center of the floor.

  “Looks like he was in a hell of a hurry to leave,” Pasquale said.

  “Only one suitcase left,” Lyon said. “The clerk said he checked in with two.”

  “Oh-oh, lookee here,” Pasquale said as he took a picture off the wall separating the two rooms. With the picture removed, a one-way mirror was revealed in the wall. A window in the man’s room, a mirror in the women’s. Sawdust near the baseboard indicated that it had been recently installed.

  “A little voyeurism while the girls turned tricks,” Rocco said.

  Lyon knelt on the floor under the mirror. “Ten to doughnuts it’s more than that.” He felt along the dusty floor molding a moment, then went into the women’s room and did the same.

  “What do you have?” Rocco asked.

  “Freshly bored holes through the dividing wall.”

  “He wired the joint,” Pasquale said.

  Rocco rocked on his heels. “Extortion.”

  “Classic,” Pat replied. “The hookers set up next door, he gets his mark up here for a good time, pictures and sound of the whole party.”

  “Who?” Lyon asked.

  “Well, we’ve got a hell of a lead,” Pasquale said. “Two hookers, Penny and Boots—we’ll put a make on them. I’ve never heard of a hooker yet who hadn’t been pulled in half a dozen times. We’ll get the room clerk to go through the mug shots.”

  8

  Warren chuckled as he turned the heavy pages of pictures. “These aren’t mug shots. This is a gallery of the hotel’s guest list.”

  “Quit the comedy and keep looking,” Pasquale said and signaled to Rocco and Lyon to follow him back to his office. They sat in the small room holding
paper cups containing some sort of machine-made instant coffee. It was hot, and little else.

  “What about vice?” Rocco asked.

  “Lots of it,” Pasquale replied with a laugh. “No, seriously, we don’t have a vice squad anymore. Gave up busting queers two years ago, and if we had to check out the massage parlors we’d need twice as many men. We handle the real weirdos as part of each section’s general function.”

  “I thought the men on the beats might have come in contact with Penny or Boots.”

  “I put out the word at shift change a few minutes ago,” Pat said. “No luck.”

  “Not surprising,” Lyon said. “I don’t think Warren will turn up anything either.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “This Rainbow, if he is involved in a little dirty-picture extortion, isn’t about to use local talent for the job. Too risky.”

  “Imported stuff.”

  “I would think so,” Lyon replied.

  Warren knocked hesitatingly at the edge of the door. “I looked through the books you gave me, Sergeant. I know a lot of the girls, but didn’t see Penny or Boots.”

  “But you would recognize them?”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “All right, thank you very much for your time, and stay where we can find you.”

  “What about the rooms and the things in the room?” Lyon asked as Warren left.

  “Negative,” Pasquale replied. “Your Rainbow may have been in a hurry to leave, but not so much of a hurry that he didn’t wipe the place clean. No usable prints, and the things he left were items that could be purchased at any discount store.”

  “I think we should try the photographs of Mackay on the room clerk and the motorcyclist again,” Rocco said.

  “It bombed out,” Pasquale said. “Why bother?”

  “Suppose we touch up the photographs, have an artist color the hair brown as they both describe it, even brush in sunglasses, we might get a possible.”

  “It’s worth a try. We have somebody who can do it.”

  “I think we should find the local importer of talent,” Lyon said.

  “What?”

  “There must be someone in town who is the local importer of ladies of the night.”

  “Christ, Lyon,” Rocco said. “Ladies of the night? No one uses that anymore.”

  “Well? Who’s our importer?”

  “Big Nose,” Pasquale said.

  “Who?”

  “Big Nose Carrelli.”

  The Grecian Urn Massage Parlor was quite attractive if you didn’t look too closely and notice that the marble pillars of the reception room were papier mâché. It was located on the fifteenth floor of one of the newer office buildings, next to a stockbroker’s office. As Lyon stepped into the reception area, he noticed two things: the young woman behind the desk, with the deodorant-commercial face, wore a transparent toga, and the music piped over the stereo system was a Bach fugue.

  “May I help you, sir?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “Name?”

  “Lyon Wentworth.”

  “Only the first name.” She laboriously printed L-I-O-N on the first line of a receipt pad. “Would you like the regular massage at twenty-five dollars or the de luxe executive massage at thirty-five?”

  “I really didn’t come for a massage.”

  “Have you ever been to a massage parlor before?”

  “I once had a rubdown at the New York Athletic Club after a handball game.”

  “Are you for real?”

  “I’d like an appointment with Mr. Carrelli.”

  She gave Lyon an oblique look, picked up a pink phone and pressed an intercom button. “There’s a Mr. Wentworth here to see you, Mr. Carrelli.” She listened for a moment and then replaced the receiver. “Straight through that door and second door on your left.”

  Lyon followed her directions, wondering over the difference between the regular and the executive massage.

  Big Nose Carrelli was immersed in a sunken tub smoking an Egyptian cigarette in a chartreuse holder. His massive head with its large nose protruded from the colored bath bubbles that hid the bulk of his body.

  “Close the door and sit down, Mr. Wentworth.” He shifted his weight to get a better view of Lyon sitting on a straight chair. “Pasquale phoned and said you’d visit my establishment and asked me to give you my fullest cooperation.”

  “That’s very considerate of you.”

  “Not really. He said that if I didn’t, he’d bust the hell out of me and my place.”

  “He thought you could be helpful in locating some—some ladies for me.”

  “Do you like Proust, Mr. Wentworth?”

  “No. In all honesty, even though I taught literature for a number of years, I have to confess I never finished Remembrance of Things Past.”

  “Of course. I don’t believe anyone has except me, Mr. Proust, and the typesetter. Pity.”

  “I’m trying to locate two girls, Mr. Carelli. They’re in their twenties, not from Connecticut, and are called Boots and Penny. One’s a blonde and the other’s a redhead, if that’s any help.”

  “You understand, Mr. Wentworth, that in addition to running this establishment, I have occasion from time to time to act as an employment intermediary.”

  “So I’ve been informed.”

  “Recently there’s an extensive market for cooperative young ladies, go-go dancers, exotics, masseuses. The demand is often hard to fill.”

  “I’m sure it is.”

  “However, at Sergeant Pasquale’s urging, I will do my best to cooperate. Why do you want these particular young ladies?”

  “Let’s say that they have been highly recommended.”

  “We have many applicants, some with college education. I’m sure we can find two very satisfactory ladies.”

  “Not just anyone. I want Penny and Boots.”

  “Not uncommon appellations for my applicants. I’m not sure I can help you.”

  “These are specialists. They have a different thing, so to speak.”

  “That might narrow the possibilities. What is their area of entertainment?”

  “Stuffed animals and little-girl dresses.”

  “Personally repugnant, but that does narrow the field. It is truly a time of specialization.”

  “We’re not sure where they’re from. It could be Boston, Providence or New York.”

  “Not New York. The ladies from Fun City seem to think that Hartford is the end of the world. Vegas they’ll go to, Hartford never. Boston or Providence. I will make inquiries.”

  “I appreciate your aid, Mr. Carrelli.”

  “Any time. But you really should dip into Swann’s Way again. A gold mine, a veritable gold mine. I will call you.”

  Big Nose called him four hours later. “The items you are interested in can be found at the Penobscot Hotel in Providence.”

  “Thank you.”

  “My pleasure.”

  If the Arriwani Hotel in Hartford had been transported in its entirety to Providence, and had there been a bar on the first floor, Lyon would not have realized that he’d changed cities. The Penobscot Bar was entered from the hotel lobby through swinging leather doors.

  Although it was only four thirty in the afternoon, Lyon’s eyes had to adjust to the dim interior. The bartender’s elbows were propped on the bar as he leaned over in conspiratorial conversation with a woman in the corner.

  Lyon slid onto a backed stool and waited to be noticed. Finally the woman tapped the bartender on the arm, and he turned to scowl in Lyon’s direction. He moved along the duckboards in a painful shuffle.

  “Feet hurt?”

  “You know it. Bunions. What’ll you have?”

  “Sherry. Dry Sack if you have it.”

  “No sherry. I got some red on ice. It’s not bad if you drink it fast.”

  “That’ll do. I’m looking for some girls.”

  The bartender poured wine and shrugged his head toward the woman at the end of the
bar. “Want me to buy her a drink for you?”

  “I do if she’s Penny or Boots.”

  “They’re not here.”

  Lyon shoved a ten into the bartender’s shirt pocket. “They come highly recommended.”

  “Drink’s on the house. I might be able to reach them.” He shuffled painfully across the floor and dialed a phone hidden behind the Carstairs. After a whispered conversation he came back to Lyon.

  “They’ll be down.”

  The blonde sat on the stool next to Lyon and pressed her knees tightly against him.

  “You must be Penny?”

  “My fame precedes me. I’ll have a scotch and water.”

  “Where’s Boots?”

  “On her way. Takes her ages to get dressed. We usually don’t come out this early. You want a party?”

  “I thought perhaps we could all have dinner together.”

  “Dinner?”

  “You must eat sometime.”

  “What about the party? We do some interesting things.”

  “Party?”

  “It’s sixty for both of us. We show you a real good time.”

  “I just want to talk, to ask you a few questions.”

  “You some kind of weirdo?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Boots and I like to go together whenever we can. Sometimes we go solo, but we prefer it together. We do almost anything you want—no whips or that sort of thing.”

  “I wasn’t really dwelling in that area.”

  She gulped her drink, and another appeared before her. Lyon slid a bill across the bar.

  “You some kind of cop?”

  “No. I want to ask you about your recent visit to Hartford.”

  Penny pushed her drink back across the bar and stood up. “Uh-huh. No deal. It’s been nice talking with you.”

  She turned to go as Lyon grasped her arm. “Wait. A friend of mine in Hartford said you—you were terrific. He gave me a recommendation.”

  “Sixty for the two.”

  “All right,” Lyon said as he slid off the stool and followed her into the lobby of the hotel, wondering if he had sixty left.

  They lived on the sixth floor of the hotel. Boots, the redhead, dressed only in bikini panties and bra, stood before the bureau mirror working on her hair. She turned to smile as Lyon followed Penny into the room.

  “Hi, sweetie. Good deal—now I won’t have to get dressed the rest of the way. Or does he want the little-girl bit?”