And 47 Miles of Rope (Trace 2)

by Warren Murphy

  Trace let the conversation in the room sort of wash over him and in thirty seconds he had heard the phrase “sales quota” four times and decided to leave. He nodded to Richie, then wandered off in Chico’s direction.

  Compared to the bar room, the side room was almost empty. He saw Chico in a corner. Paolo Ferrara was leaning his arm against the wall on one side of her. His body blocked her escape on the other side. She was smiling, but Trace knew the smile well. It was the kind of tolerant mouth-wrinkle she gave to high-spending but personally obnoxious gamblers at her blackjack table downstairs. Polite enough so no one could complain; cold enough so no one could think they were going to win the dealer. Nobody did that. Not unless Chico wanted them to.

  Ferrara was being very continental. He had enough gold chains around his neck to get a sixteen-wheeler up Pikes Peak in a blizzard. He was flashing a lot of white teeth, in a very tan face, and when he glanced over and saw Trace, he didn’t even acknowledge him. No, Trace decided, he didn’t like Paolo Ferrara very much, and if the opportunity arose sometime during the evening, he might try explaining that to the young man.

  Trace looked around the rest of the room. He saw Felicia Fallaci. She was dressed in modish tight blue jeans and cowboy boots with a fancy embroidered silk shirt that was tightly tailored to display her bosom. She was talking to a man who had his back to Trace, and when she saw him, she nodded and winked. He winked back.

  Past the countess he saw why the room was less crowded than the other two rooms. Bob Swenson was sitting on the windowsill, and salesmen, until they were drunker, would just as soon stay out of the way of the president of the company. Later, fortified by demon rum, they would stop in to brag about their sales exploits, but it would do them no good because, by that time, Swenson would have been drinking all night, would care nothing about insurance, and would play drunk so that they would have to go away.

  He wasn’t playing drunk now. He was talking very earnestly to National Anthem. Trace waited but didn’t hear her squeal once. Swenson seemed very serious and she was very serious right back. He was a wonder to watch, Trace thought. Some people had to work to figure out the right things to say to different people, but Swenson did it on automatic pilot; instinctively, he seemed to know who wanted to be treated seriously and who wanted to be looked at like Hard-hearted Hannah, the Vamp of Savannah.

  National Anthem, Trace figured, would like very much to be treated like Sarah Bernhardt.

  Walter Marks was in the room too. He was sitting on a sofa in the corner, tied up in a tight conversation with Baron Hubbaker. Another sofa was given over to the Neddlemans, who sat side by side, each holding a drink, neither talking nor stirring, just staring straight ahead. Trace wondered if they walked side by side, in lockstep. They’d be a great team to bet on in a sack race.

  The countess had brought her entire retinue, except…There he was. Willie Parmenter was by himself in a corner of the room, looking out a window toward the Las Vegas Strip, nondescript and small in a dark-blue suit. Even as Trace noticed him, he heard Ferrara bellow, “Willie.”

  The small man almost trotted toward his employer, who did not take his eyes off Chico. Instead, he just held out his empty glass, a king not deigning to look at a commoner, and kept jawing at Chico. No, Trace didn’t like Ferrara at all.

  Parmenter took the glass and turned away, looking around the room. Was he embarrassed in case anyone had noticed his treatment at Ferrara’s hands? No. He was just looking to see if anyone else wanted a drink.

  Hubbaker waved to him and Parmenter nodded and approached.

  “Hello, Mr. Tracy,” he said.

  “Hello, Parmenter.” Trace couldn’t bring himself to call the man Willie. “If you ever want to hit that boss of yours, I’ll hold him while you do it.”

  Parmenter flashed a nervous little smile. His eyes looked lost behind the big lenses of his eyeglasses. “He’s really all right,” Parmenter said.

  “Sure,” Trace said. “So is rain, if you don’t have it every day.”

  Parmenter smiled again and walked toward the baron, with Trace following him.

  “Willie, if you please, would you freshen this?” the baron said politely.

  “Of course.”

  Marks held out his glass too. “Fill mine too,” he snapped. He was speaking without looking at Parmenter. “And last time you made it too sweet. Don’t make it too sweet this time, if you can manage that.”

  “Sorry,” Parmenter mumbled.

  Marks grunted. Trust Groucho, Trace thought, to be a bully when he thought he could get away with it. A tiny tyrant. Walter Marks, the midget king of Misanthrope.

  After Willie had walked away, Trace said, “I see you’re as pleasant to the help as you always are, Groucho.”

  Marks looked at him in disgust and turned back to the baron, who nodded at Tracy, smiled, and said to Marks, “But of course your man here is the expert on crime.”

  “He’s not my man,” Marks snapped.

  “Oh…” The baron seemed confused. “I thought you two worked for the same company.”

  “No,” Marks said. “I work for the company. Tracy here avoids working for the company. He just collects an inflated check from us once in a while.”

  “I was watching Mr. Tracy today,” the baron said. “He seems to know what he’s doing.” He looked up at Trace and said, “We were discussing Felicia’s jewel robbery.”

  “Come up with any new theories?”

  “Maybe all the good theories are taken,” Hub-baker said. “And of course we amateurs shouldn’t really interfere with professionals.”

  “Professional?” Marks said. “Tracy’s an accountant.”

  “No, no,” Trace said. “I’m a former accountant. I worked my way down through gambling degenerate and alcoholic until now I’ve reached the absolute bottom of the line. I draw checks from an insurance company.” He sat in an easy chair near the baron. “Anyway,” Trace said, “I thought your theory this afternoon was pretty good.”

  “You would,” Marks said. “It might give you something to work on.”

  “Are you having your period, Groucho? Why are you so cranky tonight?”

  “We’ll see,” Marks said. “We’ll see just how good you are. You’ve been lucky once in a while and you’ve got Mr. Swenson snowed, but I know what you are.”

  “At last. The metaphysical explanation to the big question. What am I?”

  “You’re a faker. You get lucky once in a while, but you don’t fool me. Now if you don’t mind, the baron and I were discussing the robbery and I wanted to hear his theory.”

  “Just amateur stuff, you understand,” Hubbaker said. Marks snorted. Trace nodded.

  “One of the questions that needs answering,” Hubbaker said, “has to be why didn’t Jarvis wait at the airport for Spiro to pick him up.”

  “My question exactly,” Trace said.

  “Suppose he met somebody at the airport. Somebody that he knew who offered to drive him back to the house. Then he tried to call Spiro and tell him not to pick him up, but Spiro had already left. So Jarvis said, ‘Oh, well,’ and left with this person he recognized, and then that person came into the house with Jarvis and he’s the one that looted the safe and killed him.” Hubbaker paused. “Just a theory, you understand.”

  Marks looked as proud as if his wife had just delivered a full-grown child, Trace thought.

  “Good theory,” Trace said.

  Hubbaker nodded. Marks had a what-else-would-you-expect look.

  “Only one thing wrong with it,” Trace said. “Maybe two.”

  “What’s that?” the baron asked.

  “Yeah. What’s wrong with it?” Marks said.

  “Jarvis rented a car at the airport. If he met somebody he knew who had a car, he would have driven in that person’s car. And if he met somebody who didn’t have a car, they’d probably have waited for Spiro to pick them up. Either way they wouldn’t have rented a car to drive into town. And why did Jarvis park on the
road and not in Felicia’s driveway? But it’s not a bad theory. It just needs a little work.”

  Marks looked as if he had swallowed a rat tailfirst, but Hubbaker merely shrugged. “That’s the blessing of being an amateur. We can postulate anything we want and we bear no responsibility if it doesn’t work out.”

  They were interrupted by Willie Parmenter returning with the drinks, napkins carefully wrapped around their bases. Hubbaker thanked him. Marks sipped his and grumbled, “It’s still too sweet.”

  Parmenter said, “Sorry. Should I have another one made?”

  “No. I’ll get my own the next time. I guess it’s the only way to get it right.”

  Parmenter walked away and Trace looked to the far corner of the room. Paolo Ferrara, a fresh drink in his hand now, still had Chico trapped, and her smile, thin to start with, was now as finely drawn as a line from a freshly sharpened pencil.

  Trace put his glass down on an end table and started to stroll over to her, but he was intercepted in midroom by the countess.

  “She’ll survive,” Felicia said, nodding toward Chico. “She could handle four like him before lunch.”

  Trace nodded but started to move away and Felicia caught him by the arm. “I couldn’t find that passport. It occurs to me that maybe the jewel thief stole it,” she said. “Passports are worth something on the black market or wherever you sell stolen stuff, aren’t they?”

  “So is cash,” Trace said. “But the thief didn’t take Jarvis’s wallet.”

  “I guess you’re right.”

  “And if I had a million dollars’ worth of jewelry stuffed in my pockets, I don’t think I’d stop for either a wallet or a passport,” Trace said. “Excuse me, Felicia. Something needs doing.”

  11

  Chico saw him coming and gave a tiny little shake “no” of her head. It was obviously not noticed by Ferrara, who kept oozing snake oil over her and who didn’t notice Trace, even when he stopped alongside them.

  “Hello, Miss Mangini,” Trace said.

  “Hello, Trace. Do you know Mr. Ferrara?”

  “We’ve met,” Trace said.

  “Not really a high point of my trip to America,” Ferrara said. He pointedly turned his back a little more on Trace, inviting him out of the corner conversation.

  Trace tapped him on the shoulder. “I think you’ve monopolized our hostess’s time long enough,” he said.

  “I think that’s for her to say,” Ferrara said.

  “She can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “She has a fatal weakness. She can’t tell bores to shove off.”

  “I can,” Ferrara said. “Shove off.”

  He turned away from Trace again and Trace picked up Ferrara’s drink, which the Italian had set down on a small end table. Slowly he began to pour a thin stream of the vodka over Ferrara’s jacket sleeve.

  It took a full second and a half of spilled highball before Ferrara realized something was happening. He turned, looked at Trace, and then at his wet sleeve.

  “You bastard,” he said, rubbing his sleeve. “I’m going to punch your face.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not the way it’s going to happen,” Trace said calmly.

  Ferrara swung anyway and Trace slid to the side and the punch moved harmlessly past his right ear. Trace grabbed the man’s right wrist in his own right hand, moved it down, and then twisted it up behind Ferrara’s back. He reached around in front of the man with his left hand and handed him his glass.

  “You forgot your drink.” He suggested strongly that Ferrara take it by forcing the right wrist up higher behind the man’s back. Ferrara took the glass in his left hand and Trace released him.

  “Go away now,” Trace said.

  Ferrara stood there momentarily, his back still toward Trace, then rubbed his sleeve again, bellowed “Willie,” and set off across the room to his hapless assistant. Trace looked around the room. No one had seemed to notice what had happened, except the countess, who smiled at him. Everybody else was still talking.

  “You’re really a vile-tempered thing,” Chico told him.

  “I think alcohol deprivation is ruining my ability to tolerate people. How are you?” Trace asked.

  “All right, until this guy. I mean, I figured I’d be fighting Swenson off, but Bob’s in love.”

  “He’s in love every day with somebody different,” Trace said. “You’re one of the few constants.”

  “Frozen out now, though,” she said. “I think National Anthem there has him by the nose.”

  “One of the most inappropriate figures of speech I ever heard,” Trace said.

  “She is something, though, isn’t she?” Chico said She was looking across the room at the porn actress. Trace turned to see National Anthem with her hands together, both of them held in Bob Swenson’s big hands. “Trace, if you decide to take a run at her, I’ll understand,” Chico said.

  “I’m sorry. I’m not her species,” Trace said.

  Chico giggled and said, “Come on, big boy. You can buy me a drink.”

  Trace knew that meant soda. Some Oriental gene, common among Japanese, had made it impossible for Chico to drink alcohol. Any liquor at all brought on a flushed face, a quickened pulse, and if the drink was strong enough, a pass-out.

  Trace got them both tonic waters so they could at least look like drinkers, and they stood in a corner of the bar room by themselves.

  “Remember you thought that Marks was up to something?” he said.

  “Yup. Congratulations by the way on not drinking.”

  “Don’t remind me. Anyway, Groucho’s waiting for me to fall on my face. There’s some big insurance detective in town to check out the jewel robbery.”

  “Do you know him?” she asked.

  “Nope. Nobody does. He’s a big mystery man. Wears a mask and a cloak when he works, I think.”

  “How’d you find out?”

  “Bob found out from one of his drunken cronies and told me.”

  Chico nodded. “That must be what Marks was talking about last night. Remember, I told you, he said something about enough rope to hang himself. He was talking about you. Oh, Trace, it’d be wonderful if you could figure this one out. What a kick in the ass for that surly little Munchkin.”

  “Did you see him abusing that other guy inside?” Trace asked.

  “What guy?”

  “Willie. Your boyfriend’s assistant.”

  “Yeah. I was watching. Don’t give a small person power,” Chico said.

  “Not a chance,” Trace said. “I gave you power and look what it’s gotten me. A sober, dull, ill-tempered miserable life.”

  “Speaking of which, here’s your mother. You’ll forgive me. I’m going forth to commit seppuku.”

  “And leave me to suffer through by myself? Not a chance. Stay alive.” He grabbed Chico’s arm and held her by his side.

  “Hello, Mother. You remember Michiko? The woman I live with?”

  “Devlin, I played the machines by the casino door just like you told me. I lost another ten dollars.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t your lucky day. Where’s Sarge?”

  “Maybe everything in this casino is crooked,” she said, finally looking at Chico. “You work here, Miss Manzano. Would you think so?’

  “Mangini’s the name,” Chico said. “Actually, I wouldn’t know. I deal blackjack and a lot of people win at blackjack. We don’t really think about slot-machine players because there’s a saying in casinos.”

  “Oh? What’s that saying?”

  “People who play slot machines are imbeciles,” Chico said. “Excuse me, Trace.” She walked away.

  “Really,” his mother said. “I don’t know how you can stand that woman.”

  “She makes good shrimp tempura. Where’s Sarge?”

  “He had a drink in his hand. He went out there, I think. I swear, he’s enough to make me crazy. Every time I turn around, he’s vanished.”

  “I can’t imagine why, Mother. Except ma
ybe he doesn’t like watching you lose your inheritance in the slot machines.”

  “What else would he do except get into trouble?” she said.

  “Walter Marks is inside,” Trace said. “He asked me if you were coming tonight. Why don’t you go say hello? He’s with a real baron.”

  “Oh. Well, of course.”

  Trace found his father sitting in the first room on a sofa, holding a glass of liquor in his outsized mitt, staring at the floor, looking glum.

  “I never saw anybody in Las Vegas look that forlorn,” Trace said.

  “It’s that woman,” his father said. “I never realized how comfortable my house is. Somehow, when we’re there, I tune her out. She goes to the bedroom, I go to the kitchen. She goes to the kitchen, I go to the cellar. She goes to sleep and I go to the saloon. Here, I can’t get out of her sight.”

  “You vanished long enough today to get to police headquarters,” Trace said.

  “Oh, you heard. Well, I just wanted to look around and see how they work. Nice fellow, that Rosado.” He looked at Trace for a moment as if measuring his reaction. “Don’t think he’s much of a detective, though.”

  “Why not?” Trace asked.

  “Not mean enough. He’s got the look of the kind of person who trusts people.”

  “Yeah, Sarge, that old demon trust. It’ll get you in trouble every time.”

  “It will if you’re a detective,” the old man said. “I never trusted anybody. Not partners, not superiors, not suspects, lawyers, prosecutors, anybody. Twenty-five years and I was never indicted.”

  Trace thought to himself that not having been indicted was a pretty small merit badge to wear for twenty-five years of policework.

  But instead, Trace said, “Listen. Suppose I got Mom a lover. What would you think about that? Some dancer or something. Maybe an acrobat.”

  “Well, for a couple of days I think it’d be wonderful. Get her off my back. I’d have to kill him, of course, before I left town.”