And 47 Miles of Rope (Trace 2)

by Warren Murphy

  “Tell the truth. The chest has something to do with it, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes. Actually, yes,” Trace said.

  “I hate you when you get fixated on other women’s bosoms. Here I am, working my little tits off for your insurance company and—”

  “No, thank you, that dog won’t hunt. You’re working your reasonably sized, nice, beautiful knockers off for two thousand dollars. And how do you figure I’m fixated on chests when you’re the one who’s always talking about them?”

  “You think I’d be doing this if it weren’t for you?” she asked.

  “For two thousand dollars? Sure.”

  “You’re hateful, Trace.”

  “Last night you told me I was lovable.”

  “Last night you were lovable. Now you’re the same hateful no-good that I’ve come to know and despise.”

  “Only a fool is loved by everyone.”

  “And what about somebody who’s loved by no one? What do you call him?” she snapped.

  “An insurance man, I guess,” said Trace. “And right on cue, here comes Walter Marks, sprightly of step, clear of eye.”

  “And empty of mind,” Chico mumbled, then turned her dazzling smile on Marks. “Good afternoon, sir,” she said.

  “Yes. Well, Tracy, what’s going on? I mean, it’s nice that you’re able to sit here on company time, drinking…I guess it’s nice that the two of you can do that, but I was wondering what gives with the Jarvis case.”

  “We’re getting close to a breakthrough,” Trace said.

  “Oh?”

  “I think it was a ritual killing. All the signs are there. The gloves on his hands. The blow to the skull with a blunt instrument. The overturned tree, the dirt scattered all over the living-room floor. Even the missing jewels and the ashtray. It has all the earmarks of another killing done by the Rustinayle Terrorist Society of Upper Egypt. Don’t confuse that with Lower Egypt. If you look at a map, you’ll see that Upper Egypt is at the bottom of Egypt and Lower Egypt is at the top. This is what we call in the trade a paradox.”

  “Don’t talk to me about Egypt,” Marks said. “What is this society?”

  “The Rustinayles. After the Thuggees in India, they were the most fearsome of all the groups. Lately, they’ve been financing their nefarious activities by jewel theft. But trust me, Groucho. I’ll bring those towel-heads to justice if it’s the last thing I do. It’ll be a great feather in our caps. Well, maybe a smaller feather for your cap.”

  “The Rustinayles, you say?”

  “None other,” Trace said.

  Marks nodded, then strolled away as if he had just remembered an appointment. Chico had been sitting with her back to them, and when she turned, Trace saw that she had a cocktail napkin stuffed into her mouth. She pulled it out and said, “You are a terrible person, Trace.”

  “We’ll see. If he goes right to a telephone, then we know he’s calling the fancy insurance detective to warn him to get right on the trail of those Egyptians “

  “The Rusty Nails. You re awful.’ she said.

  “Stay here.” Trace walked away and was back a minute later. “Groucho went right to a phone booth in the lobby. He knows who the insurance detective is.”

  “If the guy’s got any sense at all he’s going to know you’re jerking Marks around”

  “One never know, do one?”

  Chico finished her Coke and started to excuse herself when Marks returned.

  He tried to chuckle. “That was a good one, Trace. The Rusty Nails. Heh, heh. Sorry I had to run off like that. Now, tell me the truth. Any breaks in the case?”

  “Excuse me, you two,” Chico said. “I have to run.”

  Trace kissed her cheek. “Tell Sarge Boggle’s.” She nodded and smiled at Marks, who ignored her.

  Trace turned back to him. “I wasn’t kidding, Walter. You know I’m serious when I call you Walter.”

  “Come on. You can’t expect me to believe that nonsense.”

  “When I have the perpetrator incarcerated, you’ll see,” Trace said. “A great feat of detection. I’m thinking of having my brain registered with the police as a deadly weapon.”

  “Or another victim of alcohol abuse,” Marks snapped.

  “That too,” Trace said.

  “I don’t know,” Sarge said. “An awful lot of Italians in here for this to be a cop’s bar.”

  He was sitting with Trace at a table in a dark corner of Boggle’s, a cocktail lounge on Desert Inn Road, but far off the usual tourist paths that tended toward excess in both prices and air-conditioning.

  “I don’t see an Irishman in here, except us,” Sarge said. “All cops in Vegas are Italians?”

  “These aren’t really cops, Sarge.”

  “Mobsters, right? Gunsels? I could smell it when I came in. All that cheap cologne. Ten Nights on a Pepper Farm. A dollar a gallon. Why don’t we roust the joint?”

  “Because they haven’t really done anything wrong. And because most of them are friends of mine.”

  “I guess we’ll let it go, then,” Sarge said grudgingly.

  “So let me in on your big discovery today,” Trace said.

  “No job for amateurs, son,” Sarge said.

  A man sitting at the bar glanced in their direction. His eyes lingered a shade too long on Trace’s father, and Sarge started to rise to his feet, a scowl on his face. The man at the bar turned away and Sarge settled down, nodding in satisfaction. “Got to teach these people to keep in their places,” he said.

  “Today. The airport. What happened?”

  “Nobody at American Airlines remembered seeing Jarvis the other night. I talked to a couple of people who were working then and there’s a couple more to go. I’m going back tonight to talk to them.”

  “That’s the big revelation?”

  “I’m coming to it. You’ve got some good friends out there at the airport,” Sarge said. “That Sergeant Murray, the redheaded guy, he said he owes you.”

  “I did a favor for him once.”

  “More than just a favor, the way he told it. You kept his kid out of jail.”

  “They had the wrong kid. Just a mistake. What did Murray do?”

  “The two of us sneaked around checking lockers with a master key. No passport. Who do you have to know to get a drink around here?”

  “Just me,” Trace said. He waved to a cocktail waitress in a skirted sailor suit, who came quickly to their table.

  “Debbie, this is my father.”

  “What will you have, sir?” she asked.

  “Whatever he has,” Sarge said.

  “I’ll have Perrier water,” Trace said.

  “Hold it,” Sarge said. “I’ll have beer.”

  Sarge waited until she had left, then opened his big red notebook and brought out a photo of Jarvis, an enlargment of a typical but clear backyard snapshot. “I showed this around,” he said.

  “And?”

  “Your man Jarvis was quite a traveler,” Sarge said.

  Trace realized that his father was relishing this and was going to tell the story in his own good time. So, let him. He lit a cigarette and sat silently, waiting for Sarge to continue.

  “Yup, quite a traveler,” Sarge said.

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “I bet you didn’t. And I bet you didn’t know that for three weeks in a row before he got killed, he flew to New York every Thursday. Three weeks in a row.”

  “No, I didn’t know that either.”

  “I found a girl at the ticket counter. That’s her regular shift and she sold him his tickets. She recognized his picture. But you know what?” He stopped as Debbie approached. “Hold it until she goes. She might be on the earie, you know.”

  He waited as Debbie put down their drinks smiled, and left

  “You were saying,” Trace prompted.

  “The name ‘Jarvis’ didn’t ring any bell with this girl at the airport. She recognized the face from the picture but riot the name. So I had her dig out
the manifests from those flights. There was only one name on all three of them: Edward Stark. Mean anything to you?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither,” Sarge said, “but I’m going to check it out. So why’d he go to New York three Thursdays in a row and why’d he go under a different name?”

  “A girlfriend? Maybe he was in love? Business? I don’t know.”

  “Funny kind of business because the girl told me that he came back the same day. He’d go to New York and it was like he turned around and came right back the same day. Does that make any sense?”

  “Well, it rules out a girlfriend, unless Jarvis was into quickies. You got any ideas?”

  “I’m thinking about it,” Sarge said.

  “Sure as hell complicates things, doesn’t it?”

  “Life is complicated, son. The more you check things, the more you find out they’re complicated. Easy answers are almost always wrong in our line of work, I think that guy over there is staring at us.” He cracked his knuckles. It sounded like sticks breaking in the dark, quiet bar.

  Trace glanced at the bar, saw a man who was indeed staring at them, and waved to the man. “Don’t worry about him, Sarge. He’s my bookie.”

  “I thought we were going to have to fight our way out of here,” Sarge said.

  “No. Just pay the bill, the way we do in most places.”

  “So I didn’t get anything on the missing passport, but I think that’s a big lead about Jarvis flying to New York.”

  Trace nodded. “I’ll talk to the countess about it. That’s good work, Sarge.”

  “So how was your day? You learn anything?”

  “Just that those jewels aren’t on the street. Whoever lifted them hasn’t dumped them around here.”

  “You’re the one who told me this is a town of smart guys,” Sarge said. “A lot of people could have bought up that stuff and you’d never know.”

  “Somebody would know. That’s a lot of money and money always talks. Roberts hasn’t heard anything either.”

  “Who’s Roberts?”

  “The p.i. I told you about. He’s got lines out in the street, but he hasn’t heard anything either.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “I double-checked him, Sarge, with somebody I do believe. No sign of the jewels yet.”

  “When you going to question that countess?” Sarge asked.

  “I don’t know. Today I guess.”

  “I never questioned a countess before,” Sarge said wistfully.

  “Your life’s not over yet either,” Trace said. “I’ve got something else I want to talk to her about.”

  “Okay, I’ll leave it to you. I’m going back to the airport tonight. Check the late-night people, see if they saw Jarvis.”

  Trace looked at his watch. “Sounds good to me. I wonder how Mother is.”

  “You really know how to ruin an afternoon,” Sarge said. “She’s always fine, that woman.” Suddenly he asked, “You going to marry Chico?”

  “I don’t know. Probably not,” Trace said. “Why?”

  “Don’t,” Sarge said.

  “Not even if I love her?” Trace asked.

  “Especially then,” Sarge said. “You know, before we got married, your mother and I were friends, like you and Chico are. But then we got married, and I don’t know, somehow your mother put her friend’s head away and put on her wife’s head.”

  “She loves you, Pop. You know that.”

  “Sure. She loves me. Like a wife. But she doesn’t even like me. Not like a friend. Trust me, Devlin. Make a woman your wife make an enemy for life.”

  “I don’t know if Chico’s got a wife’s head to wear,” Trace said. “And I don’t have any husband’s head at all. I proved that already in my last marriage.”

  “If that’s true about Chico, don’t let her get away,” Sarge said.

  “Sarge, you know how she makes her living. Even despite that?”

  “Even despite anything,” Sarge said.

  “Felicia, this is Trace.”

  “Hello, darling. Where’s my money?’

  “I’m working on it Did Jarvis have a regular day off?”

  “Yes. He was off on Thursday.”

  “What did he do on his day off?”

  “I don’t know. We didn’t talk about it. Are you playing cherchez la femme? A jilted lover killed him? What’s going on?”

  “What if I told you that he flew to New York and back every Thursday?”

  “I’d say I’ll be damned.”

  “He did. Why do you think he did that?”

  “I don’t know. A girlfriend?”

  “He never stayed overnight,” Trace said. “Just flew in and out.”

  “Platonic,” she said. “Plato lives.”

  “Yeah, but I’m told he’s in retreat. Does the name ‘Edward Stark’ mean anything to you?”

  “No. Should it?”

  “That was the name he flew to New York under.”

  “Trace, I don’t know what it’s all about.” Then she laughed.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Jarvis was with me for years. I’ve learned more about him in the few weeks he’s been dead than I did in all those years.”

  “How long was Jarvis with you?” Trace asked.

  “Fifteen years. I met him in Italy right after I broke up with my husband, the count. I needed somebody and Jarvis needed work.”

  “You didn’t know anything about him when you hired him?”

  “I still don’t know anything about him,” Felicia said. “Jarvis never talked. He said he didn’t have a family, but I don’t know his home town or where he went to school or whatever. I didn’t even know that he had insurance, or that I was the beneficiary, until that insurance agent in town who wrote the policy called me. And now you’re telling me he’s hopping all over on airplanes. Why that name, Stark? Why Stark? Why New York?”

  “I don’t know. I wish I did,” Trace said.

  “So do I, if it’d get me my money from your company.”

  “I want to come out and look at Jarvis’ room. I forgot it the last time I was there,” Trace said.

  “Come tomorrow. I’ll get rid of everybody and we can roll around in the hay.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks. I’ll come tonight.”

  “Are you rejecting me again?” she asked.

  “No. I’m just trying to get you your money,” Trace said.

  “Come whenever you want,” she said. “Bring a check.”

  14

  Driving back to his condominium, Trace felt satisfied. He hadn’t seen his father looking so happy in a long time, and finding out that Jarvis made it a practice to fly to New York every week was a good beat. It had to mean something, and it didn’t bother him that right now he had no idea what it meant.

  He had always regarded figuring out a case as a bone-chew. Take the smallest dog, give him the biggest bone, and if you gave him time enough, he would chew his way through it. Trace had time, and if he kept nibbling and scratching, sooner or later the bone that was the Jarvis murder mystery would break. It had always worked that way before and he was sure it would again.

  So everything was going well and he felt reasonably good.

  Until he got back to his apartment.

  “Look at this place,” Chico said. She was waiting for him, inside the door, her hands on her hips, her black eyes flashing. He had never seen a real person express anger before by putting hands on hips. He had thought that was done only in cartoons and in movies.

  “What in the hell’s gone on here?” Trace asked.

  “What do you think’s gone on here?”

  “We were either burgled or we’ve been victimized by an interior decorator run amok.”

  He looked around the large living room. Their twin couches, which had formed a cozy conversational L in the middle of the floor, were now side by side against a wall. Coffee tables were placed squarely in front of them, so precisely centered that they might have
been moved by an engineer. They were also so close to the couches that no one could sit down without scraping a knee.

  Their lamps had been moved and now stood side by side in a far corner of the room where they illuminated each other. The formal dining table, which had been at one end of the long room, was now in the center of the floor. It might have been a viable idea, except that for anyone to sit at one side of the table they would have to move the cocktail tables that were behind their chairs. That, in turn, would mean that anyone sitting on the couch would have to get up.

  The apartment had been turned into a series of accidents waiting to happen. Chico pointed with a quivering finger toward a far wall.

  One of their paintings, a lithograph of an aged monk, numbered and signed by Ivan Le Lorraine Albright, the artist, had been removed from a wall In its place now hung some kind of white glazed lavabo, a make-believe pot holding make-believe water so that make-believe people could wash their make-believe hands.

  “What is that fucking thing?” Chico demanded

  “A lavabo. From the Latin. I will wash.”

  “Don’t give me any of your erudition bullshit. I’ve forgotten more Latin than you ever knew. I know it’s a goddamn lavabo, what I don’t know is what the hell it’s doing on our wall.”

  “Who did this?”

  “Three guesses,” she said.

  Trace had a sinking feeling in his stomach. “No, not her. Not that sweet old lady. She couldn’t have.”

  “She did. She left clues all over the place. Her cloven hoofmarks are all over my fucking kitchen. I want a knife, I’ve got to go searching for knives now. She didn’t like my knife drawer. You want a blender? I’ll tell you where the blender is. It’s in the back, under the sink, where only fucking E.T. can reach it. The glasses are now stacked by size. Small ones in front. This probably makes a lot of sense to that woman, except we use only the big glasses. You can’t get a big glass now without knocking over eight small ones.”

  “How’d she get in here?” Trace asked.

  “The way she does everything. She bullied her way past the concierge. Not only that, she got him to bring her up and open the door for her because she said she had misplaced her key. If you give that woman a key, Trace, you’ll find your clothes in the hall. And then she went cheerfully about her day’s activity, wrecking my fucking house. Look at this place. It looks like a religious mission in the goddamn Australian outback. Who could live like this?”