Pigs Get Fat (Trace 4)

by Warren Murphy

  “He says his friend is with us now,” Chico translated for Trace. “And the name of this hero of Japan is…”

  Mr. Nishimoto shouted, “Dev-u-rin Tlacy.”

  Everyone in the room jumped to their feet and bowed in Trace’s direction.

  Mrs. Mangini’s eyes filled with tears. “I never know you fight on our side in war,” she said proudly.

  Trace forced a smile. “I hardly remembered it myself.” He whispered to Chico, “The guy’s nuts. I never even saw Bataan.”

  “That doesn’t matter,” Chico said, a broad smile fixed on her face as if with fiberglass. “Just stand up and bow and we’ll get out of here before anyone asks you questions about it.”

  Trace rose to great applause. Two men brought Mr. Nishimoto a bouquet of roses, which he carried down the aisle and presented to Chico’s mother. Then he bowed to Trace, and Trace rose again and bowed back.

  “Bataan,” Trace said.

  “Bataan,” Mr. Nishimoto answered with hoarse pride.

  Trace leaned over to Chico. “That meant sayonara, baby.”

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  “What about your mother?”

  Chico glanced at Emmie, who was staring up at Mr. Nishimoto adoringly.

  “I don’t think she’ll miss us,” Chico said. She rose, and with Trace, they backed from the room, bowing all the way.

  Outside, Chico started to laugh hysterically.

  Trace said, “It’s okay for you to laugh, but if the House Committee on Un-American Activities gets hold of this, I’m done for.”

  “Come on, war hero. I’ll buy you a drink,” she said.

  “So he’s the richest guy around,” Trace said as they sat in a dark corner of the cocktail lounge. “Who would have believed it?”

  “And he’s nuts about my mother.”

  “That’s not so surprising,” Trace said. “She’s beautiful and smart and doesn’t talk much funnier than you do, and if I didn’t know it’d break your heart, I’d take a run at her myself.”

  “She wouldn’t have you. She also has better taste than I do.”

  “I wonder what Nishimoto does for a living?” Trace said.

  “That Heckle and Jeckle pair of emcees said that he was one of the biggest real-estate developers on the West Coast,” Chico said.

  “Bingo,” Trace said.

  “Repeat please.”

  “I was talking to Sarge. I’ve got this idea that maybe Collins and Rose are in a little financial bind, and Sarge said the best way to find out is to ask a competitor.”

  “Your father’s a wise man,” Chico said.

  “He breeds true too,” Trace said. “Anyway, I wonder if Mr. Nishimoto could find out if Collins and Rose were on the skids.”

  “Why not ask him? Here he comes.”

  Trace turned and saw Nishimoto and Chico’s mother enter the cocktail lounge. They moved to a far corner and sat side by side on one of the banquettes. Trace smiled because they looked so formal and ill-at-ease that a chaperone wouldn’t have been out of place in the picture.

  “Naaah, he’ll think I want to buy property on Bataan.” Trace said. “He and I have trouble communicating.”

  “You stay right here. Order me another Perrier,” Chico said. “I have to apologize to him anyway.”

  She left Trace, sat down at her mother’s table, and was soon in earnest conversation with Mr. Nishimoto. Finally he nodded and snapped his fingers and the waitress, who had seemed to find no trouble at all in ignoring Trace’s frantic attempts to order a drink, instantly appeared at the side of the elderly Japanese man.

  He barked a command at her and she set off on a dead run, returning with a telephone that she plugged into a jack in the wall.

  Nishimoto spoke on the telephone for five minutes, then hung up and leaned forward and spoke very softly to Chico. She listened, nodding often, then rose, folded her hands in front of her, and bowed slightly to him.

  She came back and told Trace, “Your hunch was right. The word is out that Collins and Rose are having deep financial problems.”

  “Any cause or just the usual business nonsense?” Trace asked.

  “That’s where your hunch was really right. There are rumors that Collins was dipping into the company treasury.”

  Trace looked up to see Mr. Nishimoto watching him. When their eyes met, Mr. Nishimoto smiled, raised his glass, and shouted “Baatan” across the room.

  Trace smiled back and said to Chico, “Let’s get out of here.”

  23

  Trace’s Log: Two A.M., Thursday, and Chico has just gone back to her room. Women are nuts. First she wouldn’t sleep with me because she’s afraid of what her mother will think, and now I think she’s getting off because her mother is having a romance with Mr. Nishimoto. But she still wants to be back in her own bed before her mother comes in for the night.

  Hah, it’ll serve her right if her mother doesn’t come home at all. Let her chew on that one for a while.

  Anyway, this is Tape Three, and how do you like that one, Groucho, two tapes in the same day? And you think I’m a degenerate who doesn’t do any work at all. What a small shallow man you are to so totally misread another’s character.

  So here are the news headlines since I made that last tape.

  One: the diamond necklace is real.

  Two: Collins bought it in Las Vegas two weeks ago just before he dropped twenty-five thousand at the blackjack tables.

  Three: my dear old friend, Mr. Nishimoto, checked with some of his Tong warriors and found out that Collins and Rose might be in financial trouble and that Collins might have been dipping into the company treasury.

  Four: embezzlement is as good a reason for murder as any.

  Five: I don’t know why I bother to talk to you, Groucho, now that I have been the guest of honor at a Japanese convention. Just naturally gracious, I guess.

  Six: I don’t know what I’m going to do with this case. This convention will be packing up its sampans pretty soon and I have this terrible urge to mail the diamond necklace to Mrs. Collins anonymously, dummy up, say I didn’t find out anything, and go home and let nature take its course.

  Seven: but that means some murderer may just get away with it, and while I suspect Thomas Collins is—was a certifiable shit, somebody ought to go to jail for killing him. This is what comes from being the son of a cop.

  Eight: decisions, decisions. One thing you can count on, Walter Marks. I will do the noble thing. Just as I always do.

  Nine: this is the hero of Bataan, signing off.

  24

  Trace was having coffee when his name was paged on the hotel’s loudspeaker. He left the coffee and went out to the lobby to find a telephone.

  He found both a phone and Chico, who had come out of one of the convention’s conference rooms when she heard his name called.

  “I wonder who,” he said.

  “Probably somebody from the Bataan Death March. Wants to blow you away,” she said.

  “Don’t be funny in the morning. I don’t like funny in the morning and I don’t like pluck. Those are two things I really don’t like in the morning.”

  “Go pluck yourself,” Chico said.

  He had the telephone call transferred to the phone booth. It was Mrs. Collins.

  “Mr. Tracy, the police have found Thomas. He’s dead.”

  “Don’t mention my name to them,” Trace said.

  “What?” she said.

  “Never mind. I’m sorry about your husband.”

  “Thank you. They called last night. Oh, Mr. Tracy, he was murdered, they said.”

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to find him earlier,” Trace said. “Do the police have any idea who did it?”

  “They didn’t say,” Judith Collins said.

  “Well, I’m really sorry.”

  “The police want to talk to you.”

  “What? Why me?”

  “I mentioned to them last night that you were looking for Thomas. They want
to talk to you.”

  “I’m leaving San Francisco real soon. I don’t have time to talk to them.”

  “I really think they want to talk to you, Mr. Tracy,” she said ominously.

  “This is what happens when you try to do somebody a favor,” Trace whined. “Why didn’t they call me themselves if they want to talk to me?”

  “I told them I’d speak to you this morning. I guess if you don’t go to see them, then they’ll send someone to interview you.”

  Trace talked to the woman for a few more minutes, then hung up. When he stepped out of the phone booth, Chico, who had been eavesdropping, said, “Slowly the net is tightening around you, you accomplice after the fact. You should have called the police when I told you to.”

  “Another thing I don’t like in the morning is I-told-you-so,” he said.

  Following Judith Collins’ directions, they found the sheriff’s office near the town of Nicasio. Trace saw Mrs. Collins’ beat-up old Plymouth Duster parked outside the building and pulled in alongside it.

  Inside the door was an enormously fat policeman with a nametag reading COLES pinned to his pocket. He was very bald and his forehead wrinkled as he looked at them questioningly.

  “I understand you found the body of a Thomas Collins. I’m Devlin Tracy with the Garrison Fidelity Insurance Company. We have a policy on the deceased.”

  The officer nodded and looked at Chico.

  “I’m just along for the ride,” Chico said. “I used to be a friend of his,” she said, pointing to Trace.

  “You know, little lady, I met a girl once in Korea during the war. Beautiful little thing. Could have been your twin.”

  “She’s not Korean,” Trace said.

  “Her name was Chang Shi,” the officer said.

  “No relation,” Trace said.

  “Is your name Chang too?” the policeman asked Chico.

  “No. It’s Mangini. Michiko Mangini.”

  “Would you mind if I called you Chang Shi?”

  “Of course not. Would you mind if I called you Telly Savalas?” she said.

  The smile on the fat police officer’s face vanished. Suddenly he was all business.

  “You’ll want to talk to Dick Carey. He’s the deputy handling the case. In the back,” he said without warmth, jerking his finger over his shoulder.

  The door to the office of Deputy Sheriff Carey was open and Trace saw Mrs. Collins sitting in a chair, facing the officer, who was a tall man with a creased, weather-burned face and thick black hair. He saw Trace in the doorway and said, “Can I help you, sir?”

  “Name’s Tracy, Sheriff.”

  Judith Collins turned around. “That’s Mr. Tracy from the insurance company. I told you about him.”

  “All right,” he said pleasantly. “Come on in, Tracy.”

  “This is my friend Miss Mangini,” Trace said.

  “Sit down, both of you,” Carey said.

  “It was really Thomas,” Judith Collins told Trace. “They took me to the morgue and it was really Thomas. He’s dead.”

  “I’m really sorry,” Trace said.

  “Who would kill Thomas like that?” his wife asked. “He didn’t have an enemy in the world.”

  Trace and Chico exchanged glances. If ever a man didn’t fit that description, it was Thomas Collins.

  Sheriff Carey saw the glance and folded his arms in front of him.

  “There was a Little League baseball bat found nearby. The blood on it matches Collins’,” he said.

  “Fingerprints?” Trace asked.

  Carey shook his head. “You don’t mind my asking, Mr. Tracy, but just what have you been doing here?”

  “Mrs. Collins asked me to look for her husband. I was trying to find him. Did you find his car?”

  “They didn’t find his car,” Judith Collins said. “Now, why wasn’t his car at the farm?”

  Trace looked at Carey, but the policeman was impassive.

  Suddenly Judith Collins began to weep. Tears streamed down her face. Her shoulders heaved.

  Chico went and put her arm around the woman and looked at the deputy sheriff.

  “I’m done with Mrs. Collins,” he said apologetically.

  “I’ll take her outside, then,” Chico said. “Trace, I’ll wait for you.”

  Trace nodded, and as the two women left the room, Carey asked him, “Is it customary for an insurance detective like you to be involved in something like this?”

  “I was looking for Collins as a favor for a friend. I didn’t know him or his wife before,” Trace said.

  “The body’s been lying around for a week. Maybe you should find some other line of work.”

  “How’d you find the body?” Trace said, trying to ignore the insult. He reached into his pocket for his pack of cigarettes. His hand touched the diamond necklace that he had found in Collins’ hand.

  “A little farm near here. Somebody was driving by and the barn door was open. He looked in, saw the body, and called us.”

  “When was that?”

  “Last evening,” Carey said.

  “Who was driving by and saw the barn door open?”

  “Anonymous. Called us with the tip and hung up. Didn’t give a name. What did you find out in your week of looking around?”

  Trace took a deep breath. It was now or never, and Deputy Sheriff Carey seemed like a nice reasonable sort of guy for a policeman.

  “I found the body three days ago,” Trace finally said.

  Carey’s eyebrows raised in what Trace hoped was pleasant surprise.

  “The farm belonged to Collins. Did you know that?” Trace asked.

  Carey nodded. “Real-estate records show it. Tell me about finding the body.”

  “And this too,” Trace said. He reached into his pocket and put the diamond necklace on the desk. “It was on the body.”

  Carey looked at it for a long time and said, “You’ve been very busy, Mr. Tracy. Why don’t you tell me all about it?”

  Trace did. All of it, from beginning to end. The only thing he left out was that Chico had been with him at the farm. When he was done, he took another deep breath and sat back in his chair. It felt good to purge the soul.

  Carey was nodding and smiling. “Tell me, Mr. Tracy, why did you do all these things?”

  “I wanted to make sure some killer didn’t get away,” Trace said.

  “It might have helped if you had given us this information and this necklace sooner,” Carey said mildly.

  “I was going to, but I had a dinner to go to.”

  “A dinner?”

  “In San Francisco. At a convention. I was the guest of honor. I’m a war hero.”

  “Mr. Tracy, I’m mightily impressed. So much so that I want you to be the guest of honor around here for a while too.” His voice suddenly turned ice-cold. “Stand up, please.”

  Trace did, and Carey came around the desk. “Please put your hands behind you.”

  When Trace complied, Carey put handcuffs on them, then patted Trace down, looking for a weapon.

  “What are you doing?” Trace said.

  “I’m arresting you.”

  “I thought we were both reasonable men,” Trace said.

  “No. I’m a reasonable man. At the very least you’re a sneak thief and maybe even a murderer.”

  “I was only trying to help,” Trace said. “Come on. You can’t be serious.”

  “I’m a very serious man, Mr. Tracy. Serious and reasonable,” the deputy sheriff said. “I’ve got high blood pressure and I’m very careful to keep my bad temper in check so I don’t have a stroke. Otherwise, I’d just twist your fucking head off your fucking neck.” He was starting to shout. “Trying to help? I need your fucking help like I need fucking hemorrhoids.”

  “Watch the blood pressure,” Trace said.

  “Trace, are you almost done? Oooops.” It was Chico’s voice.

  Trace turned and saw her in the doorway. He shook his head imperceptibly, cautioning her to silence.
>
  “What’s going on?” she said.

  “I’m booking your friend for obstruction of justice,” Carey said.

  “For what?”

  “For withholding evidence. He found the body and he found a necklace and he never reported either.”

  “How do you know he did that?” Chico asked.

  “He just told me,” Carey said.

  “Doesn’t that sound like reporting it to the police? It does to me,” Chico said.

  “That’s a wonderful point,” Carey said. His voice was again calm and under control. “I’m sure it will make a great impression on the jury during his trial.” He bellowed into the intercom, “Coles, get in here.”

  The fat balding officer arrived and Carey said, “Escort our friend here to a cell. He’s staying with us awhile.”

  “And Chang Shi?” the bald officer said, nodding to Chico.

  “Is that your name? Chang Shi?” Carey asked her.

  Chico shook her head.

  “She’s free to go,” Carey said. “Just put him in a cell.”

  As Trace was being led to the door, he started babbling to Chico. “Quick. Get Melvin Belli. Roy Cohn. William Kunstler. I’m sure some of my rights were violated. Call Swenson. Call my father. See if there’s a parish priest around. I’ll take a rabbi. Get me out of here. I’m innocent, I tell you. Innocent.”

  “Trace, you always overact,” Chico said. “Underplay. Underplay. Dustin Hoffman, not Al Pacino.”

  “I don’t want a review, I want a reprieve,” Trace said.

  “Come along you,” Coles said, and led Trace by the arm out the office door.

  “I’m allowed a phone call,” Trace said.

  “Who do you want to call?” Carey asked.

  “Amnesty International,” Trace said. “Chico, get right on it.”

  Then he was on his way down a long flight of stairs.

  At the bottom, the bald officer unlocked a heavy fire door with a key from a ring on his belt. He pushed Trace through and down a narrow corridor. There were four cells on each side of the corridor, stark cells with thick iron bars and little cots with scrawny brown blankets thrown over them.

  “You have a preference?” Coles asked. “Any one of the eight is yours.”