Murder at the Flamingo

by Rachel McMillan

  Luca stepped behind the counter and poured himself several fingers of whiskey. He held up a bottle. “Cicero? No? More for me, then.” He turned to Hamish. “Now, Hamish, it is obvious you and Reggie have been taking this rather seriously and avoiding every last thing I told you about not getting involved.”

  “But I am involved, Luca, because it’s you—it’s all you—the girl’s murder is you.”

  “You know I didn’t kill that girl.”

  Hamish nudged his glasses higher on his nose. “I know. But you were the indirect cause. At least my theory . . .”

  Luca drained his drink. Poured another. For the first time in the half-light of the club, Hamish saw the toll of the past weeks and the endless drafts of whiskey in the lines etched into Luca’s face, in the puffiness of his eyes. He was still impossibly handsome, but even Adonises weren’t immune to late nights and too much liquor. It made Luca seem human, and maybe that was just the drop of courage Hamish needed to move forward.

  “Why are you chuckling like that, Luca?”

  “Because you were smart enough to follow my trail and I was blind enough to think that you would never put the pieces of the puzzle together.” He crooked a finger under Hamish’s chin. “And perhaps I will pay for underestimating my cousin.”

  Hamish swatted Luca’s hand away. “You played us all. You played Fidget. You let those men at the Dragonfly strangle me.”

  “I didn’t let them do anything. I was sick that they hurt you.”

  “Please. You were never really in danger at all there, were you? That night. Suave was part of it all. You needed to keep Schultze and your driver from figuring out that you had far more power than you let on. You got in too deep. Like an addiction. Like someone who gambles or drinks too much. But I can help you.” Hamish nodded eagerly, convincing himself more than he assumed he convinced Luca. “Yes. I’ll figure it all out. Luca, we’ll do this. No one else has to know and . . .” Hamish stopped. When he spoke again, his voice had lowered. “You call me the same name as the city you stashed your old lawyer away in. Oh, I know that’s a by-the-way, it happened long before any of this, but did it ever make me feel stupid. To know that the answer was staring at me and I associated it with something affectionate.”

  Were Luca’s eyes glistening? “You are my conscience, Hamish. I could send Frank to Cicero. Somewhere safe. Unharmed. You think when directed I could order a man’s death? No matter what the cad Mark Suave ordered? I have spent the past year taking care of his wife. Providing for her.” Luca’s big black eyes were intense and Hamish almost wavered. Ironic: Luca ever inspiring loyalty—even his own. Even while Hamish’s own conscience flickered.

  “She knows,” Hamish said plainly.

  Luca nodded. “Of course she knows. Everything she needs to know.”

  “And she knows where he is.”

  Luca cursed.

  “Don’t ruin another life. I put it together and Florence needs him.”

  “Hamish, you don’t know what you’ve done.” Luca waved to nowhere. Hamish saw his cousin maintain his usual composure through an unexpected falter. “You think that by promising to reunite him with his wife you did something good.”

  “He said you played him.”

  “Of course I played him! Played him for his own good. He had a lucky break. You realize that if the wrong people got hold of him they might have disposed him! I let him think that it wasn’t safe. And it wasn’t.”

  “Because it was easy if you stashed him away. You connect the dots. You’re in the middle. And Schultze and Brian MacMillan and poor Johnny Wade thought that you were the path they needed to get to the man they needed. You were him.” His eyes moved toward Reggie at the bar, most likely in a conversation paralleling his own. Without the personal involvement.

  “People think I am too obsessed with clothes and baseball and nightclubs to take the time to run an operation.”

  “Does Ben Vasser know?” Hamish asked. “He’s part of this, isn’t he?”

  “I think he suspects the level of my involvement. That’s why he took me for questioning. That and to prove to his bosses that even I am not immune to suspicion. A bit of a show.”

  “Just give it up, Luca. Suave will have a marker on your head now. Go home to Toronto. Figure it out.”

  Luca shook his head, reached for the bottle and refilled his glass. “I just need to prove to Suave that I am someone to fear. That I am more powerful than he thinks I am. It’s unfortunate about Frank, but we’ll cross that bridge—”

  “Luca! Listen to yourself!” Hamish raised his voice and people turned to look. Luca flashed him a death glare, but Hamish didn’t stop. “You think you’re golden. You can change. You can give this up!”

  “I don’t want to!” Luca’s voice stirred the attention of patrons not already focused on the pair. “I want this life. I don’t expect someone like you to understand.”

  Hamish shook his head. “No. That’s not true! Luca! Think!” His conscience told him that this man—this stranger—was a criminal. He should pay and pay and pay for all that he did to steal the life of honest people. A liar. An instigator. Perhaps even an inadvertent reason that a woman was killed. But his heart saw Luca. Luca who took him to his first baseball game. Luca who saw him while his parents worried about him. Luca who made him feel invincible in large crowds at the Palais Royale.

  “I am above this. Above a man who would find me and threaten my secretary—yes, yes, Reggie told me. I felt sick, you know. But nothing can help that. Part and parcel of the trade.”

  “I have to help. I’m your cousin. I am your family.”

  “I am a criminal!” Hamish was surprised he said it so loudly. That he was owning up to it at all. “I am at the center of what you are trying to change.”

  “You have a conscience. You let Fulham go. You didn’t see through what they wanted you to do.”

  Luca shook his head. “Think, Cicero! Think! Why do you still need to believe this of me? Why do you still need me?”

  Hamish looked everywhere but at Luca. “I don’t need you anymore.” He saw Luca’s face darken. “I can be loyal to you only through my love for you. That won’t change. But I have to love myself enough to follow my gut. But, Luca, you can stop. You can change!”

  “People don’t change. Not that much.”

  “You can! You already know your first instinct is to do the right thing. Leave this behind.”

  “I’m not strong enough. There’s something about that power”—he balled his fist—“that people will fall over themselves to do your bidding. To impress you. Even when people just thought I was an access point to this mythical file.” He smiled ruefully. “You’ve got the brains, Cicero. And the goodness. But I’ve got a different kind of smarts. And a memory. A long, wonderful memory. And none of that DeLuca need to save the world that you seem to have inherited from your father.”

  “You saved me,” Hamish said, his voice cracking a little. “You always just treated me normally. Not like I was glass or would break if you pushed me.”

  Luca smiled. A full smile. Not one of the smiles used to pander to a crowd. A genuine smile. Then it stopped. The room quieted with a foreboding feeling: a curtain rustling, a door closing. A feeling that things might never be the same again.

  “You’re in over your head.” Hamish was thinking aloud. “I can help you. Yes. I’ll figure it all out. Luca, we’ll do this. No one else has to know. I can fix it.”

  “I thought they’d forget about him,” Luca said after a long silence. “Fulham. Why would they care if he was alive? They asked me to take care of it. Probably assumed I would have Phil find a way to dispose of him. I have a reputation, you know, of having everyone do everything I need. But I couldn’t do it. And I couldn’t hurt Fidget. But I couldn’t tell her either. Though she always suspected. The older I get, the more I believe an invisible line binds people together.” His eyes met Hamish’s. “No matter how they keep each other apart.”

  Hamish ran hi
s palm over his right arm. A shaking hand was surprisingly painful. Something none of the medical studies he sought at the Toronto library would ever tell him—that his hand tremor exercised muscles near his shoulder. And then he was aware that he was tripping over his sentences. That everyone could see. His right hand had a mind of its own. For a moment, he stopped and looked around. The band was still playing, but few people were dancing. Hamish and Luca were at the center of introspective glares. Full circle: eyes on him as they had been in the courtroom at the beginning of the summer. He could retreat. Or he could plow through, regardless of his hand shaking and his words snagging like a run in a sweater. Regardless of his breaths coming in frantic gasps, hiccupping his sentences and slowing them down. Why was the Hamish so confident and assured in the North End office but hours before betraying him now?

  “And then there’s Mary Finn.” Hamish barreled through in his shaky voice. “She’s just collateral. She was close to Schultze and was going around promising Johnny she could find a way to find the center of it all. Who was controlling everything!”

  “Are you sure you aren’t listening to too much of that serial Reggie loves? Winchester Malone or Molly or something . . .”

  “You would have heard something from where you were meeting Suave and his man.”

  “Arthur.” Luca attempted to sound casual. “Suave’s man.”

  “Luca, did you hear something? Did you hear a fight? An altercation?”

  “Stop playing detective. It doesn’t suit you.”

  “You know she was killed! You know she fell back on those stairs! Your stairs.”

  “I didn’t hear anything,” Luca said loudly. “I didn’t. I swear, Hamish. I only left my meeting with Suave and Arthur and found Schultze’s walking stick. I don’t know what made me pick it up. But I did. Maybe in case they cornered me. What good would it do? And there she was. You were in the basement. You know how loud the noise from upstairs gets.”

  “I know. But it wasn’t an accident.”

  “You’re going around in circles.”

  “I can fix it.” Hamish looked around and heat flamed his face. Hamish couldn’t even fix himself.

  “There’s a point, Cic . . .” Luca must have noticed the crowd’s attentiveness too. His posture had changed. “When you just step off a ledge and then you fall and you fall and you can’t seem to get a grip on anything. You can’t seem to find a way to pull yourself back up.” Luca gave a short laugh. “And I thought I could legitimize myself by making this an operation.” He looked around at the carousel of the Flamingo: people spinning in and out. A few couples still dancing, mesmerized by the band. Most far more attuned to the handsome club owner. “I really wanted it to work. But I am not ashamed to say that I was meant for something more. A different lifestyle. Can you imagine me lining up at a soup kitchen? I was meant for something remarkable.”

  “That’s what you said about me. My name—”

  “I don’t expect you to understand.”

  “I thought you had to have familial ties. To be involved in this type of . . .” Hamish waved his hand. “Crime.” They both knew what he meant.

  Luca reached out and straightened Hamish’s tie. “A long time ago my father made some connections in Chicago. Legacies last.”

  Hamish straightened. Legacies did last. Even the wrong ones.

  It was funny: at the beginning of the summer, Reggie was mortified that she had slapped Vaughan Vanderlaan. Nothing of that ilk had ever touched her traditionally safe life. Now she frequented a nightclub, used to the smoke and buzz of liquor around her. She watched Hamish, waiting for something—anything—to happen in his confrontation with Luca. From where she stood, she could see Hamish’s hand was shaking. She wanted to approach. Instead, her eyes followed Johnny Wade arriving, then spinning a glass in his hand as he settled behind the bar, winding the wine stem in and out of his fingers with flair.

  “Regina! You’re a regular here!” His smile really could stop clocks if women let it. “Popular socialite. You’re going to keep bringing the class here, aren’t you? You haven’t let me make you a Singapore sling yet. We just got pineapple juice. I’m going to try serving up a few more exotic drinks. Keep the summer going.”

  “Sounds tasty,” Reggie said distractedly, studying Johnny’s profile. She had never been close to a murderer before. “How’s your band?” She wanted to keep him talking.

  “I just need Mr. Valari to let me play here. But you’ll see. He’ll give me the shot. I will prove myself loyal to his cause.”

  “How loyal?” Reggie asked, tentatively sipping the drink he passed over to her. “Mmm.” She closed her eyes briefly. “Sweet.”

  His suddenly raised shoulders emulated Luca’s usual stance. His hands, shoved deep into his pockets, reminded her of how Luca circled the club, taking everything in stride. Luca, so calm and cool and collected.

  “You know I found Mary,” she said quietly after Johnny finished slinging a few more drinks for customers who tripped away from him as quickly as they had approached the bar a moment before.

  He pocketed the tip money and looked at her. “I told you. I am a little tired of hearing about it.”

  Reggie pursed her lips. Hamish and Luca were still in her sight line, deep in conversation, haloed by the spotlight each time it flashed in their direction. A conversation echoing her own. That invisible strand binding them gave her the confidence she needed to move ahead. She straightened her shoulders and threw her head back a bit, with a finesse she hoped made her look a little more like Loretta Young than a startled bird. “I hear Luca likes all different sorts of shows of loyalty.” She rimmed the nearly untouched drink with her fingernail the way she had seen it done in the movies once. Ginger Rogers or someone who exuded class. “You know, working for him I hear all sorts of things.”

  Reggie studied Johnny’s face as well as she could in the club light.

  “Oh.” He was noncommittal.

  “He talked about how Mary’s death, as unfortunate as it was, God rest her soul, brought about major dividends for the Flamingo.” She made up a few numbers. “The fiscal quarterly earnings”—she hoped it sounded legitimate—“were 45 percent more than anticipated.”

  Johnny rinsed out a glass. Hamish and Luca’s voices were rising, but Reggie trained herself to focus on the conversation at hand.

  “See, Hamish DeLuca and I are kind of doing an under-the-table favor for Luca. The police ruled it an accident, but Luca wants to properly thank the person who gave his club a running start. Not that he wished anyone dead. Just that collateral damage is often at the center of unanticipated gain.” Who was she and where was she pulling all of these lines from? Films? The sky? She remembered her first interview with Luca and how she thought she sounded ridiculously over the top. Johnny, however, seemed to be buying it. “That’s why I am talking to you.”

  Johnny turned from her to help a few customers, but kept looking over his shoulder in her direction even as he finagled the martini shaker.

  “It was an accident, sure. And then it was an opportunity.”

  Reggie choked on a small sip of her drink. A confession! To a murder! She was excited. Guilty for being excited. Traumatized too. And nervous. What should she do? No one else heard it. She looked around. Then back at Johnny Wade. Then swept over to where Luca and Hamish were talking . . . talking . . . talking. Drawing a crowd with their talking. Reggie willed him to look over so she could catch his eye. Then, miraculously, he and Luca fell apart a moment. Luca combing his long fingers through his hair; Hamish looking around in that unsure way of his. With the hand not holding her drink, she looped her arm behind her back and motioned to him.

  Hamish held up a finger. Luca was distracted. They were both heated. Hamish was a study in careful breathing.

  “I was just telling Johnny here,” Reggie said knowingly, “about the brand of loyalty Luca Valari so appreciates.” She glared in Luca’s direction. He was trying to patch up the scene he and Hamish had caused
. “Anything that would help promote his club.”

  “I had no idea Luca felt so strongly about that brand of loyalty,” Johnny finally said. “That . . . an accident . . . could turn into something. I mean, in the moment . . . I thought . . .”

  Reggie flashed Hamish a meaningful look. Hamish’s tired face lit.

  “You thought that Luca would appreciate an opportunity to bring attention to his club. More press,” Hamish said, cool as a cucumber. Reggie was impressed.

  “I didn’t know he was going to be the one who was questioned for it,” Johnny said. Then another patron required his attention and he was momentarily distracted. When he turned back to Hamish and Reggie, it was with a slight conspiratorial nod to them. “I would do anything for your cousin.” He directed the remark to Hamish. Every time Reggie and Hamish locked eyes, she sensed her friend was following her line of thought in a kind of unspoken code.

  “And so you pushed Mary Finn down a stairwell?” Hamish said easily. Surprisingly easily, Reggie thought. He had to have pushed through a barrier talking to Luca.

  “Mary and I had an altercation,” Johnny explained. “Schultze’s stick was there. I have a temper. I didn’t mean to push her down the stairs. I just had her and then let go and she went.”

  “Excuse me?” Luca appeared, stripped of his customary charm and not making eye contact with Hamish. Reggie studied the dynamic between them. If Hamish had been anyone else, Luca Valari would have had him ridden out on a rail. She supposed, at the very least, Luca’s avoidance was to his credit. “Hand me a whiskey, Johnny.”

  “Johnny was just confessing to Mary’s murder,” Reggie explained, wondering where her confidence was coming from and how she might bottle it and keep it for future occasions.

  “To prove I was loyal to you,” Johnny added casually. “I heard of a club in Chicago where a girl was murdered and it’s filled to the brim every night. I know who you are. I know your influence. Mary told me about it and I know you expect loyalty. Regina here confirmed it.”