Night Lady

by William Campbell Gault

  It had been too pleasant a day to cap with a visit to Arnold Giampolo but it was too early for me to waste the rest of the day in front of a TV set. I drove over to Venice, to a stoolie I knew.

  He had been a part of the Bugsy Siegel mob out here until the local law had broken up that combine. He still had a ready ear and a fairly sharp nose when he wasn’t sodden with grape, and there was a possibility I could pick up an item or two if he was home.

  I bought a bottle of fifty-nine-cent muscatel in a liquor store on the way.

  He lived in a lean-to rooming house run by a retired prostitute on a back lot off one of the discarded canals. His name was Snip Caster and he was in his room tonight, playing gin rummy with his landlady.

  This retired lady of the evening was about sixty now, ornery, bony and rheumatic. She wasn’t happy to see me.

  “It was our night, Snip,” she said. “What’s this wino doing here?”

  “He’s no wino,” Snip informed her. “The grape’s for me. Right, Joe.”

  “Right,” I said cheerfully. “And I won’t be long, Aggie.”

  She sniffed. “You’d better not be. I save my Sundays for Snip. He’s getting a break.” She went out grumbling under her breath.

  In his palmier days, Snip had been a glib, brazen and slippery small man. He was now none of these things except small. He was furtive, apologetic, and he lived in the sweet-sour stink of the wino. But his brain had not completely degenerated yet; he had the instinct to pick up any available dollar.

  I put the wine on his bureau and asked, “Like to make a few bucks?”

  “Always, Joe.”

  “I know you used to hang around with the wrestlers when Bugsy was operating and I thought you might know something about the operation.”

  “It’s big,” he said. “It’s bigger than the law thinks.”

  I nodded. “And who’s the biggest man in it?”

  “Devine, I suppose. You know, the guy put up the reward for that kill over on Dune Street.”

  “He’s not in the management end, is he? He’s a performer.”

  “He could have a piece of the top, too. I may be way off on that, but it’s a thing I think I heard once.”

  “Could you find out more, maybe?”

  Snip shrugged. “I could try. I ain’t got the contacts I used to have, you know.”

  “And another man,” I went on, “the guy who runs the hamburger stand next to Muscle Beach — Hansen.”

  “I washed dishes for him a couple times,” Snip said. “A stiff from nothing. Good buddy of the guy got bumped, though. They used to play chess for hours right there on the counter.”

  “Thanks, Snip. Ten bucks if you find out something really helpful.”

  “Five in advance, maybe?” he asked meekly. “I owe Aggie three.”

  I gave him five. I thought of some of the theatrical blondes he had squired when he was a lip for the mob, and it seemed sad to me he should wind up in this dingy room with Aggie. It was probably the finest kind of justice, but did any man deserve this?

  Patches of fog were drifting in from the ocean as I went out into the subdued revelry of Sunday night on the Speedway. There was a smell of salt air and wine on the slight breeze.

  It wasn’t on my way home, but I drove past Einar’s and saw he was closed and I continued toward Dune Street. There was a light in Sheila Gallegan’s apartment and a new Chev sedan parked on the lot. I had a flashlight in the car and a doubtful remembrance of seeing the Chev somewhere before tonight.

  His registration, strapped to the steering column, identified the Chev as Einar Hansen’s.

  Aggie and Snip, Einar and Sheila, Greg and Deborah; everybody was paired up for the evening. Joe Puma drove home alone.

  And who should be waiting for me in his big fat Cad convertible but my first client in this business, the beautiful Adonis Devine? He was parked in front of my apartment building.

  “Been waiting long?” I asked.

  “An hour,” he said. “I’d have waited until you got here, no matter how long. It’s important I talk to you.”

  “Financially important?” I guessed.

  He looked at me belligerently. “Right. Is that beneath your notice?”

  “Hell, no. Come on up.”

  We went up the steps quietly to my modest dump and I asked him, “Beer, booze, coffee?”

  He shook his head and sat in the worn tapestry upholstered chair, staring at the dull wall opposite him.

  “Going to withdraw the reward offer?” I asked.

  He glanced at me, startled. “Why did you say that?”

  “Oh, it shapes up that way. You’re at a financial level now where you can no longer afford to be a man’s friend.”

  “You’re lippy,” he said. “What makes you so sarcastic?”

  “My cynicism. You made this big three grand gesture because you were a friend of Duncan Guest’s. He had almost made you what you are. And then the smart boys in your dodge pointed out to you that wrestling couldn’t stand too much investigation and what you were doing was cutting your own throat. Because if wrestling dies, what are you? I’ll tell you — you’re Clarence Kutchenreuter, just another refugee from the corn belt.”

  “Take it easy,” he said harshly.

  “Take it easy, hell. You don’t scare me any more than you scared Mike Petalious. And he doesn’t scare me, either, and the guys who are pulling his strings don’t scare me. I’m not rich, you see; I’ve got nothing to lose.”

  “You got plenty to lose,” he said. “You’ve got your teeth and your health.”

  “And you had a friend,” I said. “Duncan Guest. Remember him?”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Sure. The question is — are you?”

  He didn’t answer, glaring at me.

  I said, “I asked a lot of people who the biggest man in the wrestling racket is, and they told me Devine. And I heard it was bigger than that; he even had a piece of the top. True?”

  “Not yet, it isn’t. Who do we hurt? We bill them as exhibitions. That could be anything. A juggling act, a dog act, a crooner. So some of the cruds think it’s on the level. Are they hurt? They’re soft in the head, sure, but cleaning up wrestling isn’t going to make ‘em any brighter. Cruds we will always have.”

  “And wrestling, too,” I said. “The police simply aren’t interested in disturbing any racket as peaceful as the wrestling farce. I’m working with them to find a killer, not ruin TV’s number one attraction.”

  “And if it was a Syndicate kill?”

  “Somebody will go to jail or the gas chamber,” I answered, “and all the smart guys in your line will froth at the mouth publicly and say it is a good thing and what we need is a new look in wrestling and the cruds will get a new look, run by the same old operators. Now, who conned you into thinking I should quit investigating for the good of wrestling?”

  He stared at me. “You’re sure mouthy. You’re as mouthy as Duncan was.”

  “Who sent you, Adonis?” I persisted. “Or are you the top?”

  “I’m not the top. Never mind who sent me. Maybe nobody. Maybe I can think for myself a little and see where the wind’s blowing.”

  “Maybe the moon’s Roquefort, too. All right, withdraw your reward. I’m getting paid and I’m continuing to work. Withdraw your reward and be a villain to the cruds. The gate will be the same; they’ll come to see you get beat. But you got the looks for a hero, and they maybe won’t be able to make the mental adjustment.”

  “Jesus, you are cynical, aren’t you?”

  “Not quite enough,” I said, “and that keeps me poor. That’s why I haven’t got a Cad convertible.”

  He stood up. “I’ll talk to you again, okay? I’ll keep the reward going for a while.”

  “It’s great publicity,” I said. “It makes your hero image bigger than ever.”

  He stood there, feet well spread, muscular body well balanced, studying me thoughtfully. “I ought to try you out for size. Nobody
talks to me the way you do.”

  “Clarence,” I said, “be your age. You’re not playing in a jock-strap western now, where the blond always wins. This is the cruel, cruel world and you were brought this far by a smart friend, now dead. You would be making a serious mistake, tangling with me.”

  “Maybe some day I will,” he said quietly. “And maybe find out what I’m beginning to suspect — you’re all mouth.”

  “It’s only one of my weapons,” I informed him. “Goodnight, Adonis.”

  He left without answering. He went out and I went to the kitchen to make some cocoa. And while I was out there, I scrambled some eggs. That guinea hen didn’t stick to the ribs.

  He hadn’t scared me. Muscle doesn’t scare me as much as brains. Muscle I got. Greg Harvest, there was a guy that scared me.

  EIGHT

  SUNDAY WENT AWAY, as it always does, and Monday came in colder and overcast, gray and smoggy. It murders my eyes, that smog, but it doesn’t keep the suckers from coming out in droves to golden sunny Southern California. Los Angeles is where they head for and that’s where they stay unless they can find a job somewhere else. Very few of them can find a job somewhere else. So they live in the smog and read about the snow back home and try to feel superior. It isn’t easy.

  The Times had sent the murder to one of the inner pages and that officially made it unimportant news. The front page had the important news: a forty-seven-year-old ingenue was getting a divorce from her fifth husband.

  About the murder there was nothing but print to fill space. The police were nowhere, just as Puma was. The sport pages carried last night’s wrestling bouts with a straight face, exactly as though they were straight sport news. Nobody had yet thought of transferring them to the entertainment pages. And Adonis had called me a cynic.

  The roller derby results were there, too, another sport turned into a farce by the bright boys. In the fall, the college football games would be reported as amateur contests between students. That was the most lamentable tragedy of all, a really great American sport gone to hell, degraded by the alumni and the sport writers.

  Bitter thoughts on a bleak day; what was any of it to me? I was getting paid and getting laid, eating well and still breathing the free air, tainted though it was. I was one million per cent better off than Duncan Guest. I was even better off than William Shakespeare. So far as I knew.

  I called Sergeant Macrae before I left the house and learned they had not tracked down the hoodlums in the Lincoln. Petalious had been released early yesterday morning after admitting nothing and making a number of derogatory remarks about Joseph Puma. And what, the Sergeant wanted to know, was new with me?

  “Nothing substantial. I had a talk with Devine last night. He was going to withdraw the reward, but I think I talked him out of it.”

  “You must have hopes.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of myself,” I lied. “But a reward like that brings out the informers, doesn’t it? It will help us all.”

  “It hasn’t brought ‘em out yet. Well, carry on, Puma.”

  I got to the office a little before ten and there was nothing of interest there. I phoned Arnold Giampolo.

  A woman answered the phone and I asked for Mr. Giampolo and she asked me my name and I gave it to her and she asked me to wait a minute, which I did.

  And then a man’s voice said, “This is Arnold Giampolo. Are you the Joe Puma who is a friend of Jack Ross?”

  Jack was one of my rich friends, my rich, honest friends. I said I was the same Joe Puma.

  “Investigator, aren’t you?” he asked.

  “Yes, Mr. Giampolo.”

  “And what did you want to see me about?”

  “About wrestling.”

  A pause. “You — ah — were thinking about going into wrestling, Mr. Puma?”

  “No. I was hoping to ask you some questions about it. I understand you control it out here.”

  A longer pause. “Your information is — unsound. Where did you get it?”

  “In the World Almanac, Mr. Giampolo. What difference does it make if it isn’t true?”

  “Insolent, too, are you? Jack didn’t tell me that.”

  I said wearily, “I guess I’m wasting your time, sir. Sorry to have troubled you.”

  “One moment,” he said. “Don’t be in a hurry. Nothing can be done right in a hurry. Seriously, I would be interested in learning who told you I was connected with wrestling.”

  “Duncan Guest did,” I lied, “the afternoon of the day he died.”

  This third pause was the longest of all. Then Giampolo said thoughtfully, “Perhaps you had better come to my house and we’ll talk about it. Do you know where I live?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “Guest gave me your address when he gave me your unlisted phone number.

  “I see,” he said quietly. “I see. I’ll be waiting here.”

  The lie I’d voiced about Duncan Guest could easily have been my wedge. It could also backfire if he questioned me too closely about it. My use of the name hadn’t scared him off and yet he must have read about Guest in the papers, even if he didn’t know him. It seemed logical to guess he knew him.

  The house was old and colonial, two stories of glistening white, with a mammoth pillared porch and red brick chimneys, right out of an MGM set for a deep south epic.

  The butler was an aged Negro, natch, and he led me to a circular, covered patio in the rear. Here, a fairly short, thick and broad man was sitting in wash slacks and T-shirt, looking out at his informal gardens. He had a tall drink on the table next to him.

  Arnold Giampolo, paisan, making like a colonel from Kentucky. There was a chair next to him, and he nodded toward it, and I took it. He didn’t offer his hand.

  He didn’t even look at me as he said, “I think you lied about Duncan Guest.”

  I said nothing.

  He glanced at me. “Didn’t you?” I shook my head.

  “Who sent you to Mike Petalious?”

  “Guest.”

  “Now I know you’re lying. Adonis told you about Mike. He admitted that to some friends of mine.”

  “Two friends in a Lincoln with stolen license plates?” I asked.

  “You shouldn’t have come here with lies,” he said.

  I kept my voice calm. “All right, paisan, well play a game called honesty. You tell me all your business and I’ll tell you all of mine.”

  He swung his chair around to face mine. He had a round face and short, gray hair and really impressive shoulders. He exuded an aura of power.

  “You’re not running down some poor hotel skipper, now, Puma. You’re playing with people you don’t impress.”

  “I usually am, Mr. Giampolo. And also with people who resent my nosing into their business. But you suggested I come up here; I didn’t force my way in. If you have something besides advice to give me, I’m waiting for it.”

  He studied me quietly. He sipped his drink and looked out at his colorful garden. His voice was almost amiable. “Wrestling is an entertainment medium. The sport in recent years has become profitable for all its participants, chiefly because it has been well promoted and well managed.” He sipped his drink again. ‘There was a certain trashy element in it that has been eliminated, and the sport has been kept clear of the violent and unsavory men who have invaded boxing and tried to invade the collegiate sports.”

  “It’s still crooked,” I said, “but that doesn’t concern me. Duncan Guest’s death is all I’m concerned with.”

  “I’m sure his death had nothing to do with wrestling.”

  “I’m not. And I’m not sure you’re sure. Wouldn’t you call those two hoodlums in the Lincoln violent men?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “You accuse me of lying,” I said, “and then give me a song and dance an idiot would gag on. You’re not talking to a Rotary luncheon, Mr. Giampolo. I came here for information.”

  “And I gave it to you. Those men you spoke of are also looking for Duncan Guest’s murd
erer. Wrestling can’t afford any murders, Mr. Puma. The two men you dislike may have acted improperly, but only because they were as concerned with the murder as you are. And they may have mistakenly assumed you were working to hide the killer, not find him.”

  I used a word I’d rather not put in print. It’s a product of the horse.

  He glared at me.

  I said, “If you’re so concerned with keeping wrestling clean, you’d turn those two men over to the police. The police are looking for them.”

  He was quiet a moment. “If they should — voluntarily surrender themselves to the police, would you transfer your quest to another line of investigation?”

  “I can’t promise anything like that. I have to go where my nose leads me. I hope it leads me back to them and I hope it leads me to them one at a time. That way, we can wind up even.”

  “Muscle,” he said. “All muscle and no brains. Ross was wrong about you.”

  I said nothing.

  “Do the police have my name?” he asked. “You’re working with the Los Angeles Police Department, aren’t you?”

  “I’m working with them but not for them. They won’t need to get your name from me unless you’re involved in the murder. I make it a rule never to antagonize wealthy people without reason.”

  “All right,” he said, “I’ll give you this much then, for your consideration. That hamburger stand proprietor, that Einar Hansen, could be the big key to your puzzle. He was very close to Duncan Guest.”

  “Do you know any more than that about him?”

  Giampolo shook his head. “But I’ve put together what I do know about the murder, and that’s the way it shapes up.”

  “Nothing else you want to tell me?” He shook his head.

  I stood up. “Well, thanks. Sorry if I was unduly belligerent.”

  He smiled slightly. “An inherited trait, no doubt. Some day, under kinder circumstances, you’ll have to come over for a real Italian dinner. I have the best Italian cook west of New York.”

  “I’ll look forward to it,” I said. “I can find my way out.”

  It had probably been a wasted trip. Except that I had learned he was a big man in the wrestling racket. His advice about Einar Hansen could be sound or could be an attempted red herring. He wasn’t a man motivated by anything beyond self-interest and lies were meaningless to him; he lived a lie.