Harry Lipkin, Private Eye

by Barry Fantoni

  But if the guy at the wheel didn’t want to talk to me I had to talk to him. It was the reason for the hundred-dollar bill in my billfold.

  I decided to give him one of those questions you have to answer. It wasn’t hard. It wasn’t, what is the ratio of a square root of the power of a minus ten multiplied by the angle of the circumference? Or, how can anyone eat chicken soup without matzo balls?

  It was this. “What’s your name, bud? First name, second name, and any you can think of in the middle.”

  It always works. I say always. Mostly. It worked then.

  His reply was soft-spoken. Evenly paced. Not exactly polite but not rude either.

  “Rufus. Rufus Davenport. They didn’t give me anything in the middle.”

  “Too bad,” I said. “A middle name adds class.”

  I watched his reflection in the driver’s rearview mirror. He used the tip of his index finger to push the peak of his cap an inch up his forehead. The ring on the finger was gold. Thick. Solid. Expensive. I kept it going.

  “Have you been driving for Mrs. Weinberger for long?”

  “I don’t keep a diary.”

  “A guess costs nothing.”

  “A year. Maybe more.”

  “And before?”

  His eyes were fixed on the highway. “Before this? I drove trucks. Coast to coast.”

  He left a silence. Wandered around in it. Then he gave me some answers I didn’t ask for.

  “When I got drafted they posted me to Alabama. They gave me a tank. ‘Drive that, black boy,’ they said. And I did. Straight through the commander’s office.”

  He laughed to himself and gently shook his head.

  “Two years in an army jail. You learn plenty.”

  I looked at his hands. They were big. The gold rings would glint from time to time as the sun hit them through the gaps in the palm trees along the highway.

  We slowed for lights.

  “You a cop?” he said.

  I took out my notebook.

  “Private.”

  “I figured it. You don’t look like a regular cop.”

  “I just look old,” I said.

  He almost laughed.

  “You got kids, Mr. Davenport?”

  “Three of each.” Pride crept in. “My eldest boy is seventeen. You never saw more beautiful girls.”

  I made a note. Six children. I wondered how much he took home. He was a step ahead of me.

  “This job pays well,” he said. “Better than most.”

  He turned and looked at me. Full in the face.

  “When I need extra, I fight. In a ring.”

  It didn’t surprise me.

  “Win many?” I asked. “It’s a tough game.”

  The chauffeur took one hand off the wheel and turned it into a fist. He held it up. Close to my nose. It was as big as a man’s skull.

  “The last guy I hit with this is still asleep … on a drip.”

  The lights let us go. There was traffic in front. Rufus Davenport rammed his toe on the gas pedal and we overtook a Nissan pickup full of melons and a German sports car full of a woman talking into a cell phone. Clear of traffic, we dropped back down to the limit along an open stretch of highway.

  “Mrs. Weinberger has been the victim of theft,” I said as we cruised. “She thinks it might be someone who works for her.”

  Rufus Davenport said some more nothing. Half a mile. He checked the rearview mirror again and swung the car off the highway onto a narrow road that rose sharply. The car’s Hydramatic transmission moved down the gears to take on the incline.

  “Mrs. Weinberger only tells me where she wants to go,” he said. “Everything else is her business. I don’t ask and she doesn’t say.”

  We drove up a narrow road and turned onto a winding slip road that was little more than a path and arrived at a pair of iron gates protecting a one-story mansion that was now clearly visible. The gates were slung between stout redbrick pillars and lions sat on the pillars. Stone lions. Lions with wild eyes and open mouths. Lions like they carved in the old China. Before they gave up carving lions for building washing machines and ten-for-a-dime T-shirts.

  Rufus Davenport took a gadget out of the glove compartment and pressed a button. The gates swung open and we rolled forward slowly into the drive.

  “I will need to talk to everyone at some time,” I said. “Nothing personal, you understand. It’s my job.”

  He nodded. “I’m here six days a week. But only the days.”

  “Nights?”

  He didn’t say. The silence said I shouldn’t ask.

  We pulled up to the door and I got out.

  I watched Rufus Davenport back Mrs. Weinberger’s spotless antique automobile professionally through the mouth of the Coral Gables garage. I heard the engine cut and a door slam. But I didn’t see the chauffeur leave. I guessed there must have been an exit in the far wall. The garage door closed automatically. A single clink of metal against metal in an otherwise silent and empty drive.

  I stood there thinking. Harry, I thought. You read Boxing News. You read it every week. You have read it since you were a kid. Cover to cover. Every page. The rankings. The title fights. The fights no one much cares about. Yet you never read the name Rufus Davenport. Not once.

  · FOUR ·

  Harry Arrives at Coral Gables

  I went to Mrs. Weinberger’s porch and gave the place the once-over. I looked in a flowerpot for discarded evidence. I checked for signs of false entry and examined the earth near the steps for fresh footprints. Standard procedure. Nothing so far. The double door was covered in gloss white paint and plenty of brass that looked like it saw a rag and polish once a day. And it smelled like it. Like the cutlery in the drawer of the cupboard in my bubba’s house when she’d been busy with the Brasso. The buzzer was set into the bricks next to a violet creeper.

  I thought about buzzers. A dick presses all kinds. Most chime. Ding-dong. That’s it. Ding-dong. Sometimes a buzzer plays a simple song. I once had a client who was a TV star. His buzzer played the program’s theme. It lasted five minutes. I pressed Mrs. Weinberger’s buzzer. Ding-dong.

  The butler who opened the door was Asian. Medium height. Medium build. Medium age. Dark hair. Dark eyes. Dark bow tie. I had him down as dark and medium. I introduced myself.

  “We have been expecting you, sir,” he said with a bow.

  He took me through the lobby and showed me into a long and high double room that led onto the poolside.

  The butler gestured toward a pale pink velvet sofa big enough to seat the front row of a jury.

  “Please take a seat, sir. I shall inform Mrs. Weinberger that you have arrived.”

  I did as he said.

  The pink velvet clashed with my tie. It was the bright yellow one covered with lucky red horseshoes. I eased myself onto a cushion and placed my Panama hat beside me. Then I took a look around.

  Jews play the violin. Discover streptomycin. Jews make the best suits and even better corned beef sandwiches. But interior design? What does a Jew do? He pays a fortune to someone with no taste to go to an auction.

  The floor was imported white Italian marble. It was covered with a mix of somber Sarouk Persian carpets and bright handwoven Mexican rugs. The mirrors were French. Louis XIV. Gold was everywhere. On candlesticks. On the frames around paintings. On clocks. Half the paintings were the kind you see people walking past in a modern art museum. The other half were by old Dutch masters. Windmills. Skaters. Taverns full of guys smoking pipes, drinking beer, and playing cards. The art collection was hung between the mirrors. One wall was covered by an eighteenth-century Flemish tapestry. Under it was a neoclassical Italian marquetry commode. It was the kind of thing Lucretia Borgia kept her poisons in. These days you don’t need poison to kill someone. You just feed them fast food for a month. More or less in the middle of the room was a white Steinway and a stool. Top-end Steinway. The sort Liberace smiled on beside the candelabra. The shut lid was a home for photos of the W
einberger family. A lot of them were of Mrs. Weinberger when she looked like Doris Day. But with dark hair. They were arranged around a tall vase filled with a dozen fresh-cut lilac gladioli.

  Added together the contents of the room were worth a couple of million bucks. And yet someone stole a pillbox worth a couple of hundred.

  There was the sound of heels on marble.

  Mrs. Weinberger came and stood in front of me. She was wearing a full-length pale blue cotton bathrobe. On her head was a pale green towel wrapped into a turban. Her peep-toe bedroom slippers were pale pink satin with pale pink pompoms. Pale shades and Mrs. Weinberger. The two went together. You didn’t need to be a detective to discover it.

  “I hope you haven’t been too bored waiting, Mr. Lipkin,” she said in a way that didn’t require an answer.

  There was a matching easy chair facing the sofa. Mrs. Weinberger sat and draped one leg over the other. Her robe slipped open a little. At her ankles. A painted toe peeped up at me.

  “I have arranged for you to talk to Maria to begin with,” she said. “Maria Lopez is my maid.”

  She took out a sheet of writing paper folded in two from a pocket in her robe and handed it over.

  “What you have there, Mr. Lipkin, is a list of the names of the five people who work for me. Including Maria. You can choose a time for yourself when it is most suitable to talk with the others. I will make it clear why you are here and that they are to cooperate fully. I want this whole dreadful business cleared up. And I want it done soon.”

  I gave the list a glance and placed it under my hat.

  “I’ll do what I can, and as soon as is possible,” I said.

  Mrs. Weinberger sighed. It sounded like a sigh of contentment. But then some people have a laugh that sounds like an attack of asthma. You can never be sure. She picked up the bone china bell from the occasional table beside her and made it tinkle.

  “Will Maria be with you long, Mr. Lipkin?” my client asked when the tinkling stopped.

  “It depends,” I said. “Some people tell lies more convincingly than others. Is there some kind of hurry?”

  Mrs. Weinberger nodded at the pool. “Not exactly. It is just that I swim at this time of day. Maria always helps me dry off.”

  She put the bell down.

  “Half an hour should be plenty,” I told her.

  Mrs. Weinberger stood up. “Maria is on her way. Can I get her to bring you a drink? Lemon tea, perhaps?”

  “A glass of water would be just fine,” I said. “I have to take my pill. Four-thirty. Every day. Heartburn.”

  Maria’s employer gave me a sweet, wholesome, sympathetic smile. The sort Doris Day invented.

  “I take mine before I go to bed,” she said.

  · FIVE ·

  Harry Meets the Maid

  Maria brought me a cut-glass tumbler of water with ice on a silver tray and put it on the coffee table. I took my pill and thanked her.

  Mrs. Weinberger’s maid was just over five foot in a crisp white top, a fresh starched apron, a short dark skirt, dark stockings, and flat shoes.

  “Take a seat, Miss Lopez,” I said.

  She sat across from me with her knees close together and her hands clasped tightly on her lap.

  “I am a private detective,” I explained. “My name is Harry Lipkin. I am going to ask you a few simple questions. Just routine. There is no need to worry. It is what detectives do.”

  “I know,” Maria Lopez said.

  Her voice was soft with plenty of Spanish accent still on show.

  “I watch detectives on TV. Columbo,” she went on. “He is my favorite. You know. He says, ‘Just one more thing.’ Goes out and comes back. ‘Just one more thing.’ He makes me laugh.”

  I smiled and took out my notebook and pencil.

  “Watch a lot of TV?” I asked. “This job must keep you pretty busy.”

  She got herself into a more relaxed pose.

  “You are right, Señor,” she said. “Here I am on duty all the time. But I watch TV a lot back home. It is how to learn talking English. With the TV.”

  “And where is home?” I asked.

  “La Paz.” She said the name the way people talk about a sacred shrine. “It is in Bolivia.”

  I smiled. “Was the last time I looked.”

  “You have been there?” she asked. I shook my head. “It is beautiful, Señor Lipkin. The mountains. Cold at the top. Ice and snow. On the land. On the earth and the fields. Hot like here. But better. The earth is rich. Everything grows good. Rich. Everything.” She could see it all.

  I left her looking for a moment. Then I asked.

  “Maria, how long have you worked for Mrs. Weinberger?”

  “Not for so long,” she said and relaxed some more. “My sister, Paquita, she was the maid to Mrs. Weinberger before me.”

  I made a note.

  “And what happened to Paquita?”

  “Nothing bad for Paquita,” Maria said. “It is because of my father.”

  I raised what had once been an eyebrow.

  “Your father?”

  “He is sick. Paquita, Señor, she has gone back to look after him.”

  “Sorry to hear it,” I said. “Is the sickness serious? Not that you need to tell me.”

  Maria fiddled with the edge of her skirt.

  “I don’t mind to tell, Señor,” she said. “He worked in a coal mine. One day the mine, it collapsed. My father was there ten days. No food. No water. Many died.”

  “But your father got out? And he got sick from being trapped? That it?”

  She nodded. “Sí, Señor. His lungs. His breathing. They are not good. He walks for a few minutes. He stands. And then he is fighting for life. Coughing. Holding his chest in pain.”

  She pulled the hem of her skirt to try to cover more of her knees. It’s the kind of little distraction people do when they are anxious. It’s the kind of thing detectives make a mental note of. And if I hadn’t been working I would have enjoyed the shape a lot more. They were pretty knees. Firm. Not too much flesh. Not too little. Perfect. Señorita Lopez was perfect all over but for a tiredness just about visible around her wide and deep-as-a-lake eyes.

  “When was that?” I asked. “The coal mine.”

  “Señor?”

  “When did it collapse?”

  She thought about it.

  “I don’t exactly remember. We were all so shocked and scared for my father. Two years. Maybe more.”

  I wrote down some of it.

  “Can you be specific?” I asked.

  The maid hesitated.

  “Is it important?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “The fact is miners who get killed when shafts collapse make the news. No matter where. Pittsburgh. Peking. La Paz. The more men who die, the bigger the story. I never saw or heard anything about a coal mine disaster in La Paz. How come?”

  Maria gave it some more thought before replying. I knew she would.

  “More men were injured than were killed. Just a few. Maybe that is why you never heard the story.”

  “That must be it,” I said.

  It was my turn to leave a little silence. Then I asked her.

  “Couldn’t your mother look after your father?”

  Maria made the sign of the cross. Just once. Across her heart.

  “My mother. She is dead. It happened when I was still only a little girl. Then my Aunt Rosa helped my father. But she is now also dead.”

  It sounded like a lot of dead close relatives for one so young and beautiful. But I didn’t say so. Instead I stood up and walked to the window. I could see Mrs. Weinberger in the pool doing her version of swimming. She was belly down on a floating recliner paddling with her hands. There was a straw beach hat covering her head. A backless one-piece and plenty of sunblock covered the rest. Only a steamship out of coal moved slower. I went and sat down again. I had work to do.

  “Doctors and drugs cost money,” I said.

  “A lot of money.”
r />   “And the mining company? Do they give you help?”

  Maria Lopez shook her head angrily. “They give us nothing but excuses. Nothing.”

  “So who pays the bills? You?”

  Her eyes looked into her lap.

  “I save,” she said. “And I send something home each month. It is all my father has to keep him alive. Paquita cannot work because my father needs her with him all the time.”

  I felt bad having to put her through my questions but that was the deal. It was my job. I spoke as kindly as I knew.

  “Is there no one else in your family, apart from you, your sister, and your father?” I asked her. “Brothers maybe? To lend a hand?”

  Maria nodded.

  “Manuel and Diego. They are older. So is Paquita. I am the youngest of the family. I will be nineteen in June.”

  “Your brothers. Are they here, in Miami?”

  “Both. Diego has a job. He works in a casino. In Sunny Isles Beach. The Four Aces.”

  “And can’t he help with the medicine and doctors?”

  “He is getting married next year. Weddings also cost money. And to buy a house. You must know, Señor. In the United States, everything,” her voice trailed off, “it all costs so much …”

  I wrote down Brother getting married so can’t help pay for sick Pappy and underlined it.

  “And Manuel?” I asked. “What’s stopping Manuel dropping into Western Union from time to time? Not planning to marry as well, is he?”

  There was a very long pause. I could have read a whole sentence by Proust. She didn’t want to answer. There was trouble in the air. You knew it. The brother was tsuris, trouble. I tried again. I did it gentle.

  “If there is something you’d rather not tell me,” I said, “I can’t make you. I am only a private cop, trying to find out who is stealing from Mrs. Weinberger. I promise, not a word will go further than this room.”

  It did the trick. She let it out.

  “Manuel. He is a good boy, Mr. Lipkin. He means well. But he is always in trouble. He is not like Diego. Quick to learn. Manuel only learns from bad men. The gangs. The men he hangs out with.”