Harry Lipkin, Private Eye

by Barry Fantoni

  The phone on his desk rang. Oscar Letto answered it.

  “On my way,” he said. “I put a worksheet out. Tell him to look at Sadie first.”

  He hung up. Then got to his feet. I did the same.

  “The vet is here to do his rounds,” Oscar said. “I got to go. Give me a day or two, Harry. I’ll ask the guys who operate the track. If an Asian is picking up a lot of cabbage on a regular basis, they are sure to know. As soon as I hear something I’ll call you.”

  On my way back to the Chevy rain began falling once more. And falling heavy. I thought about driving home and getting into something to keep me dry. A raincoat. A hat. Gumshoes. But home was a distance. Coral Gables was just around the corner. And besides, I owed Mrs. Weinberger another visit.

  · SIXTEEN ·

  Harry Reports Back to Mrs. Weinberger

  The rain had stopped by the time I got to the Weinberger property. The sky to the east was breaking up and streaks of blue were beginning to show between the drifting gray clouds. I took my toe off the gas and pulled by a row of fruit trees in bloom. The heavy rain had torn away most of the petals and the soggy path beneath was the pink and white of a strawberry milkshake. Steve would soon be busy with a broom.

  I checked the knot in my necktie and rang the bell and waited while Mr. Lee hotfooted it along the corridor. He opened the door and lifted an eyebrow.

  “I wasn’t aware that Mrs. Weinberger was expecting you,” he said.

  “She isn’t,” I told him. “I was passing and thought I’d drop by. There are a few more questions I need to ask.”

  He led me to the patio.

  “I will inform Mrs. Weinberger you are here,” the butler said. “May I get you some refreshment while you wait?”

  “Coffee,” I said. “Black. Strong. I need a lift. Up most of the night. Out early. Down at the track. Talking to Oscar Letto. One hell of a guy. Natty outfits. Fast nags. A onetime top jockey. He trains bloodstock. You must know him.”

  His expression did that thing again. It went dark. Like when a black cloud is blown across the sun. Then the cloud moved on.

  “Not a name I am familiar with,” he said and glided back into the house.

  I looked around for a seat.

  The pool was ready for the day. Someone had arranged the loungers and put up the umbrellas. They had swept away the rain and cleared away empty glasses from low tables. My guess was it would have been Maria. I eased into a comfortable pile of thick cushions. Under the warm sun my eyelids gradually lost control. I couldn’t blame them. They had been through a night without sleep. They had opened real early. And they were old eyelids. Sleep-hungry eyelids. I tried to keep them from closing. The more I tried to keep them open the more they forced themselves shut. Finally they dropped down over my eyes and sent me drifting pleasantly into the harmless land of noonday dreams. It was Mrs. Weinberger’s voice that opened them.

  “Good morning, Mr. Lipkin,” she said. “This is an unexpected but very pleasant surprise.”

  I sat up fast as I could and almost killed a yawn.

  “You looked so peaceful,” she continued. “I asked myself, wouldn’t it be kinder to let Mr. Lipkin snooze a little longer?”

  She was wearing slacks and a turquoise tunic with a drawstring tie. A ton of colored beads hung in rows round her neck and there were some more on her wrists. She was holding a wide-brimmed straw hat.

  “I don’t usually snooze this early,” I said. “The rain kept me awake. It came in through the place I once had tiles. You saw them on the lawn the day you hired me. You remember?”

  Her lips said yes but the rest of her said she didn’t. She looked at me. Blank. Then she looked at the stacked tray.

  “I see Maria has brought you some coffee,” she said. “Let me pour you a cup.”

  I let her.

  “I couldn’t sleep much either,” she confessed and handed me the java. “I kept thinking about my stolen brooch.”

  I took a sip and felt caffeine hit the dead spots. One or two came back to life.

  “I need some confidential information about the method you use to pay your staff,” I said and took out my notebook. “If you find it difficult talking over your financial arrangements I fully understand. But it will help me a lot if you can.”

  Mrs. Weinberger perched on the edge of the lounger facing me.

  “I just want this whole business over with, Mr. Lipkin. Feel free to ask me anything you want.”

  I made it as short and simple as I knew how.

  “From what I have picked up so far all your staff have ways of spending more than they earn,” I said. “The chef is raising money for Jews in Ethiopia. Maria has a sick father. Mr. Lee plays the ponies. Your gardener smokes grass as well as cutting it. And Rufus Davenport has too many kids. If a member of your staff banks a check it is a relatively simple matter to establish if they are in the black. If they are in the black there’s no big reason to steal as well as work.”

  The sun was high now. Hot. Noon. The hottest time of day. Norma Weinberger put on her sombrero. It suited her. Mexican women. Jewish women. Dark hair. Dark eyes.

  “I’ve never discussed their private lives with them,” she said. “They get paid on the last day of every month. If they worked for my neighbor Mrs. Silverman they’d get a lot less than they get here. I know that for a fact.”

  There was nothing on Norma Weinberger’s feet apart from varnish. On her toes. Magenta varnish. Fresh. I could smell the acetate. She looked down at her toes. They were drying nicely.

  “I need to know if you pay the butler and his pals by a check or with cash,” I said. “Please understand. It is important.”

  “I can’t see why, Mr. Lipkin,” she said. “As far as I am concerned they get paid. That is all that matters. What difference does it make how I pay them? A check or cash?”

  “Because the trail cash leaves is tougher to follow than a check’s,” I said.

  There was a short silence. Then I went into detail.

  “When I want information from a bank all I have to do is to look at a sheet of printed paper,” I told her. “But a pocket full of dimes takes time to trace. A lot of time. You use it meeting a lot of the right people. Sure. Sometimes you get lucky. Sometimes you can get as much information from a teller at the pari-mutuel as you can from a clerk behind the bulletproof glass in the First Bank of Florida. The longer it takes the more you pay me. And the greater the chance more of your stuff will get stolen. Farshtayn?”

  Apart from the one word of Yiddish she didn’t understand any of it. She didn’t have to. All my client needed to know was that Harry Lipkin was onto something. But I was still in the dark about how she paid the salaries. I gave it to her no frills.

  “Cash or check, Mrs. Weinberger? I want an answer. I need it to know what I am to do from here on.”

  Mrs. Weinberger took off her hat and fanned her face with the brim.

  “I pay cash for everything, Mr. Lipkin. I always have. I know that it is more common to use a credit card, or a check. But not me. With cash, I know where I am. I have a cash box for housekeeping. A cash box for personal expenses. A cash box for just about everything.”

  “And there is, I assume, one for paying the staff?”

  “As you say, Mr. Lipkin.”

  I drank what remained of the coffee and stood up. Mrs. Weinberger did likewise. In bare feet her head was level with the knot in my tie.

  “What you told me has been a big help,” I said. “Now I can plan my next move.”

  We were standing close. Closer than at any time before. I could smell her sunblock and the hint of perfume Elizabeth Arden put in the cherry wax she’d run so carefully over her lips.

  “I trust you, Mr. Lipkin,” she said. “Trust is a rare word for me to say.”

  I left a pause.

  “A rare word for me to hear, Mrs. Weinberger.”

  Her hand moved to mine. Close. Very close. But stopped short of touching.

  · SEVENTEEN ·
>
  Steve Threatens Harry

  Steve was by my Impala. He was holding a plastic sack and a spade. He waited until I had got into my seat. Then he bent down and talked through the open window.

  “I hear you been hard at work,” he said.

  His voice didn’t sound quite so Mr. Tambourine Man.

  “Only doing what I’ve been paid to,” I said.

  “Sticking your nose in where it don’t belong.”

  “Investigating a crime. It’s my business, remember?”

  “Snooping.”

  “You shovel up dead petals. I find thieves. Each to his own.”

  Steve stuck his face close to mine.

  “Snooping can get a guy into a lot of trouble,” he said. “The kind of trouble they got no cure for.”

  “Trouble,” I said and laughed at him. “Don’t tell me about trouble. Jews invented it. We’re still here. All thirteen million. And I am still here. Alive and kicking.”

  Steve ran a finger over the edge of his spade.

  “If you want to keep it that way,” he said, “take some advice from Steve. Ask your questions someplace else.”

  There is only one reply a private eye can give that kind of advice. It’s on page one of the manual How to Become a Successful Private Investigator.

  “And if I don’t?” I asked.

  He looked at the spade. Then he looked at me.

  “A grave takes no time to dig,” he said. “Soft earth. The kind you find in a wood where no one goes. A deep hole takes no time at all.”

  I let him think he’d put a scare in me. Just for the kick of it. Then I gave him the hardest look a man of my age can give and pitched a scare back.

  “You can’t threaten an eighty-seven-year-old with death,” I growled through my dentures. “Move me into a condo without an elevator. Maybe. Make me eat chicken soup without a bread roll. Certainly. But I got insurance. Not from Mutual of Omaha. I got it with me. In the glove compartment.”

  Steve watched as I opened the flap and searched through the bottles of pills. The out-of-town road maps. The machine I got for taking my blood pressure. The collection of big band jazz cassettes I play when there’s nothing on the radio. The packet of mints. The screwdriver with interchangeable heads. The eight-by-ten black-and-white head shot of a man I was paid to trace ten years ago. The empty ballpoint pen.

  “Stick around, Steve,” I said. “My insurance is right in back. From Smith and Wesson of Massachusetts. Under the truss I used before I had my hernia fixed.”

  I pulled out the snub nose .38. The same as I keep in my desk drawer. And I waved it at Steve.

  “There are six slugs in the chamber,” I said. “Fat and happy slugs. Waiting for a body to hole up in.”

  Steve stared at the muzzle pointing at his chest and dropped the spade.

  “Now beat it,” I said. “Old fingers get tired quick and this thing I’m pointing at your heart might just decide to go off.”

  Steve beat it. Fast. Fast as a man with a drug habit can.

  Then I put life in my Chevy and drove home.

  · EIGHTEEN ·

  Harry Has an Unexpected Visitor

  I had just turned off the Dixie Highway and was about fifteen minutes from Warmheart when I noticed the black Maserati Bellagio in my rearview mirror. When I slowed down it slowed down. When I picked up speed it picked up speed. There was too much of a gap between us for me to see the driver and even if the car had been right behind it would have made no difference. The windows were tinted.

  I reached home and pulled up beside the curb. As I did my tail accelerated and cut in front. Emergency brakes got pulled. Tires squealed. Engines got turned off. The passenger door swung open and a kid jumped out. He moved quickly. Without speaking he pulled me from my seat and rammed something hard into the base of my spine. Just under the spot where I get the ache in the morning. The ache that doctors can’t figure out.

  “Walk,” he said. “And don’t try nothing funny. From here I can’t miss. This heater in your lumber stack can blow a hole in you big enough to drive an elephant through.”

  I laughed. To myself. Just a little and not too long.

  “You’ve been watching too many late-night crime drama repeats,” I said. “Gangster talk.”

  “Save it, cop,” he snarled. “I’ll tell you when to cough.”

  We reached the door.

  “Open up, cop,” the kid ordered. “Make it snappy.”

  I took the keys carefully from my jacket pocket and opened the door.

  We went inside. Me first. The kid behind. Close enough behind to feel his breath on the back of my neck.

  “We need someplace we can talk,” he said. “You got someplace nice and quiet?”

  “I got an office,” I said.

  “Show me.”

  I showed him. Once inside he took the nose of his gun from my ninth vertebra and stepped back a pace.

  “Turn around, cop,” he said. “And no tricks.”

  I turned around without tricks. Tricks were for younger men. I looked him over.

  He was early twenties. Slender frame with a black suit and a black porkpie hat. His shirt was black and so was his tie. He wore expensive shades that had reflecting glass and his shoes looked handmade. They were black. I couldn’t see his socks but my guess was they weren’t chocolate and yellow diamond check. The pistol he was pointing at me was a Springfield Armory semiautomatic. Even a near miss would kill you.

  “I don’t know who you are or what you are doing here,” I said. “And I am not a cop. I was a cop. Sixty years ago. Now I work private.”

  The kid came close. “Once a cop, always a cop.”

  We were going around in circles.

  “Listen,” I said. “I have no powers of arrest. I am not paid by the good citizens of Miami to enforce the law. I am paid by private citizens to investigate minor offenses that cops can’t be bothered with. These kinds of offenses are usually the work of bad citizens. But not always. Some are made by just stupid citizens. There are some instances when a minor offense might lead to or involve crimes that require the police. Like if someone gets murdered or kidnapped. But normally I do my job and the police do theirs. We don’t mix unless we have to.”

  There was silence.

  While the kid tried to put together what I told him I moved cautiously to the window and looked at the view. A fatter and older version of the kid was sitting on the hood of the Maserati. He was casually smoking a cigarette and staring at the sky.

  “That’s just your story,” the kid said finally.

  I went to my desk and sat down.

  “You want to tell me what you want?” I said. “My guess is you have something on your mind. And me being a cop or not being a cop has nothing to do with it.”

  The kid took a corner of the desk and perched. He inched the brim of his hat up his forehead with the tip of his gun.

  “Steve,” he said.

  “Steve?” I said.

  “Steve,” he said.

  “Allen? McQueen? A lot of Steves.”

  The kid released the safety catch on the gun. The single click sounded loud as a small-town church clock chiming one.

  “Tattoos and a shovel,” the kid said. “Digs up weeds for a broad called Weinberger. Her man in the day. Our man nights.”

  “You got a garden?” I asked. “Must be one hell of a job trimming a shrub in the dark.”

  The kid flinched but let it go.

  “We supply goods. Luxury goods,” he drawled. “The kind of luxury goods you can’t buy over the counter. Most of our clients pay on the nail. We make them happy. They make us happy. But there are some who forget. Steve reminds them.”

  “And how does Steve do that exactly?” I said. “Stick a centipede down their shirt?”

  The kid used a finger to mime a blade cutting his cheek. And then his throat.

  “They remember,” he said.

  It was now beginning to make some kind of sense. The price of Steve’s habi
t was written off against his job as a part-time debt collector for the black mafia.

  Outside the sky was quickly clouding over. The storm that had spent the night over my roof was on its way back. And fast. Suddenly the sky was full of thunder. Rain began falling. Heavily.

  The kid looked at his gun. Then at me. Even under the reflecting glass of his shades I knew his eyes. Cold. Small. Hard. A killer’s eyes.

  I wondered what next. But not for long. There was a blast on the horn from the Maserati.

  “Gotta go, cop,” the kid said and slipped the gun into the holster inside his jacket. “Urgent business I got to take care of downtown.”

  “Pity,” I said. “I was about to boil a kettle.”

  “Keep it boiling, cop,” he said. “I’ll be back real soon.”

  The kid waved to the driver from the window that he was on his way and took off down the passage.

  I went to where the kid had been standing. I could only partly see the Maserati or the driver. But I could see the kid clearly. The room I use as an office extends up the front yard. When you look out the window you can see back down the yard to the porch as well as look out onto the street. I saw him open the front door and yell at the driver to get moving. I saw him slam the door back in the frame. Slam it hard. Much too hard. The walls each side of the door shook. The passage walls next to them shook. The whole house shook. The shaking dislodged the few tiles that were still in place. There was a row of about a dozen clinging to the ridge. One broke loose and began slipping down the sharp incline of the slippery rain-soaked beams. With each foot the tile picked up speed. Others followed. One after the other. Gray slate tiles that weigh just over a pound and a half with edges worn thin as a blade by the salt air from the Atlantic. Tiles traveling fast as a javelin is thrown fell from the roof onto the sodden yard. One after the other. Like axe heads. One fell exactly into the path where the kid was running. Neck high. Fast. Sharp. It sliced his head clean off. A kosher butcher’s cleaver couldn’t have done a neater job.