by Rod Reynolds
It went to a dial tone and then the operator answered. I hung up. I called his secretary’s line again.
‘Mr Kosoff’s—’
‘This is Charlie Yates calling on behalf of Benjamin Siegel. Please tell Mr Kosoff the matter is urgent.’ I felt a pang of disgust at myself – using Siegel’s name to open doors, as though I were a proud flunky.
‘I’m sorry, sir, but Mr Kosoff is not available to journalists. I can pass a message?’
I looked up at Lizzie, talking to one of the clerical girls and feigning enthusiasm for her end of a conversation about Cary Grant’s new flick.
‘Sir?’
I looked at the paper in front of me, Kosoff’s home address in Bel Air written underneath the telephone number I’d dialled. ‘Tell Mr Kosoff I’ll meet him at his office. What time will he be there until, please?’
‘Sir, that won’t be possible—’
‘What time, please?’
‘Mr Kosoff will be leaving in the next twenty minutes, he won’t be receiving anyone this evening—’
I rang off. I could doorstep him if I made it to his pad in Bel Air before he did. I signalled Lizzie to wind up her chat and made my way over to the door, Las Vegas looming ever larger in my mind.
*
Kosoff’s manse was hidden behind ten-foot hedgerows, a set of black iron gates across the driveway. It was as I’d hoped for – the best chance at getting an audience with him.
I parked two cars back from his place and checked my watch. Thirty-five minutes since the call to his secretary. Figure a half-hour for him to make it to Bel Air from the studio – if she’d been telling the truth about his movements. I climbed out and walked over to where I could peer up the drive, hoping his car wasn’t already there. There was a double garage attached to the right side of the property, a chance it was stashed away and he was already home and out of reach.
I went back to the car and slid in next to Lizzie, brooding on how long to play wait and see.
‘What are your thoughts?’ she said.
Kosoff. Las Vegas. Nancy Hill and Julie Desjardins slipping ever further away. ‘A mess.’
‘What Mr Acheson said is on your mind, isn’t it?’
I nodded, eyes forward, watching the quiet street.
‘Are you giving serious consideration to it? Las Vegas?’
I took a silent breath. ‘If I am?’
She twisted her fingers together. ‘I know you want to confront this, but you’d risk forcing his hand in ways I can’t bear to think about.’
‘I know.’
‘But you’re thinking about it anyway.’
I propped my elbow against the window and shielded my eyes against the glare of the streetlight. Hiding.
‘Charlie?’
‘Right now they hold all the cards, and I refuse to believe there’s no way to redress that.’
She put her hand on my forearm. ‘Don’t talk that way. Please. It sounds too much like you’re saying you’d rather go down fighting.’
‘That’s not how I meant to come off.’
‘I know. I’m just … I don’t see a way through this. I keep telling myself not to panic, but it’s becoming impossible to convince myself.’
I put my hand on hers. ‘I’ll never let them touch you. Never.’
‘I’m not just worried for me.’
A pair of headlamps cut through the night, rounding the corner at the end of the block and coming towards us. A Lincoln Town Car, the man behind the wheel in a driver’s hat and getup. I reached for my door latch.
The Lincoln slowed, turning in to stop at the gate. The driver climbed out and made to open up and I was already on my feet and darting towards the car. Kosoff was in the backseat, and I was at his window before the driver even noticed me. Kosoff looked up sharply when he saw me, and I pressed the photograph of him and the black woman to the glass. ‘We need to talk.’
‘Hey—’ The driver took a faltering step towards me, an older man, caught in two minds.
Kosoff looked at the image but his expression didn’t change. Then he cracked the window. ‘Who are you?’
The driver came over now, but Kosoff signalled for him to back off.
I took the photograph away. ‘I need a moment of your time. Is there somewhere we can talk?’
He held my stare a moment, then frowned. ‘Are you armed?’
‘What? No, I’m a reporter—’
‘Open your coat.’
Slowly, I flared my suit jacket.
‘Get in.’ He reached across to open the door on the other side.
The driver watched me go around the car, incredulous, his look how I felt. I pulled the door all the way open, lowered myself inside and closed it again. When I did, Kosoff raised a pistol.
I spun away, scrabbling for the door handle. ‘Wait—’
He grabbed my coat and wrenched me back. ‘Sit still, or this just might go off.’ He snatched the photograph from my fingers. ‘Where did you get this?’
I took a moment before turning back to him, shallow breaths to steady myself, hoping Lizzie couldn’t see the gun in his hand. The piece was tiny – like a starter’s pistol.
He was studying the photograph. ‘Benjamin Siegel wants fifty thousand dollars from you or this goes public. You have until Saturday.’
He glanced up as I said it and then looked at the image again, slight movements in his jaw as if he were chewing the skin inside his mouth. Then he dropped it on the seat between us. ‘She wasn’t even a good lay.’ He rested the revolver on his thigh, grasping it by the cylinder, on its side but still pointed in my direction. ‘Since when did Bugsy send men without heaters?’
‘It’s the truth. Use your eyes, I’m not about to waste time trying to convince you.’
He planted his fist on the photograph, creasing and warping it as he shifted his weight to lean closer. ‘Then you go back to him in your five-dollar suit and tell him he can kiss my ass. Word gets around, his troubles are an open secret.’
‘What troubles?’
‘The kind of trouble has him trying me with a waste of skin like you and a laughable threat like that. There’s not a rag in this town would Judas me.’ He took up the photograph and tore it, tore it again and again, tossed the pieces at my chest. ‘And what else is, you can tell him there won’t be anyone under an MGM contract showing up to launch his goddamn casino either. That bastard has a short memory. See who schleps to Nevada when there’s only George fucking Raft to pal around with.’
I brushed the shredded pieces off my lap. ‘Mr Kosoff, I don’t work for Ben Siegel. Believe me when I say I’m here under duress, so if you could elaborate on his troubles …’
He stared at me, rubbing the revolver up and down his leg like a nervous tick. ‘You have to be putting me on. Who are you?’
‘My name’s Yates, I’m a reporter.’
‘Twenty-two years I been making movies, and I never heard of you.’
‘I’ve been in New York City.’ Another lifetime now. ‘Please, if you’ve got something on Siegel, I’ll take it.’
He was silent a moment, the air in the car cool and still; the smell of seat leather and his hair lacquer. ‘There are more photographs?’
I nodded.
‘Siegel has them?’
I thought of Colt Tanner and the envelope – a complication I couldn’t admit to, still not convinced by the decision to keep silent on his behalf. ‘Moe Rosenberg. Siegel’s right—’
‘I know Moe, shit-heel that he is.’ He looked out of the front window, towards the house. ‘And your game is to play both sides against each other, is that it? For a cut, or for a story?’
I shook my head, watching the gun on his leg – back and forth, back and forth, betraying the cracks in his front. ‘The only thing I want is to get out from under Siegel’s boot.’ I followed his eye line, lights showing in the house at the top of the drive, got an inkling of what was worrying him – not public disgrace but private. ‘If you want to get at Siegel, we’re on the
same side here. You won’t find a better ally.’
‘Than some two-bit hack no one ever heard of? What paper are you with anyway?’
‘The Pacific Journal.’
He flicked his wrist, dismissing it. ‘I’d find better help at the dime store.’
‘Look, I have no intention of writing the story, but here’s a tip: this isn’t the first time they’ve run this gig and last time out, when the mark acted up, Siegel put a package in the man’s mailbox, addressed to his wife.’
He tore his eyes away from the house as I told the lie, realising he’d given himself away and confirming what I thought.
‘So my advice to you would be to whisk Mrs Kosoff away to Palm Springs or someplace first thing in the morning. Have someone monitor your mail while you’re gone. Hell, I’ll do it if you want.’
‘You got a nerve. Bringing my wife—’
‘You’re too smart for stage outrage and it’s a little late to be playing the devoted husband.’ I pointed to the ugly confetti on the floor. ‘I’m willing to help you out. All I want is information in return.’
He breathed out through his nose, taking his time. ‘Siegel owes markers all over town. He’s been squeezing loans out of every talent dumb enough to entertain him, knowing they’ll never have the stones to call them in.’
‘He’s a racketeer, that’s another racket. So what?’
‘So what, is the debts run to six figures according to what I hear – even allowing for the inevitable exaggeration – and he’s burning bridges left, right and centre on account of it. He’s gone to a lot of effort cultivating movie star types since he got out here, and now he’s throwing it all away for a hundred grand? It doesn’t take Einstein to see what’s going on.’
Siegel hustling movie stars and extorting studio bosses. A hotel-casino in the desert, construction in the home straight. His resources were considerable – hard even to estimate – but maybe this was an overreach even for him. ‘What do you hear about the casino?’
‘What he puts out there. That the Flamingo’s going to be the best hotel in the United States, that it’s going to put Las Vegas on the national map, blah blah blah. It’s the rebop Billy Wilkerson started up about before Bugsy muscled in on his stake. Except no one’s buying it because it’s sending him broke and it isn’t anywhere close to finished yet. He can go to hell if he thinks I’m about to toss my money into the pit. Son of a bitch.’
I reached for the door, setting myself to leave.
‘Slow down, we’re not through yet. How many more are there?’ He motioned to the remains of the photo.
‘I didn’t count. Ten or thereabouts.’
‘You have a set of the prints?’
‘That was all I had.’
‘Tell me the truth.’
‘That was all.’
‘I want the negatives.’ He was looking at the house again now, shaking his head, disbelieving. ‘I want every copy. I’ve never claimed to be a saint but she doesn’t deserve this.’
*
I drove us to a payphone and called Hector King at the Times again – this time getting one of the night shift, confirming he’d called it a day already. I talked the man into giving up King’s home number, then cut the call and re-dialled. I tapped the side of the kiosk double-time, watching Lizzie in the car, her eyes glinting in the dark. A moonless night, the stars smothered by the clouds.
‘King residence.’
‘Hector, it’s Charlie Yates.’
‘Charlie, you got my message.’
‘Yeah, thanks for following up.’
‘I don’t think it’s news you’ll want to hear.’
My chest went hollow. ‘Tell me.’
‘You see the story about the body they found?’
‘No.’
He sighed, reluctant. ‘A girl dumped on a stretch of waste ground, beaten and strangled according to the talk coming from the scene. County coroner’s report is expected in the next couple days, that’ll tell the tale.’
My chest collapsing, a memory rising – Texarkana, a cavalcade of police lights racing past me. ‘When?’
‘Yesterday. Tom Pence was out there trying to swing an interview with Senator McCarran when he picked up on it from the locals. A piece of luck, really—’ He stopped himself. ‘Sorry, poor choice of words.’
Dread filling me, memories I didn’t want, living it again. ‘Here, over here. We found another one.’ ‘Is it …?’
A pause, static on the line. I watched Lizzie watching me from the car, her eyes wide now, placing a pale hand on the dashboard. Sensing something was wrong.
‘I don’t know for sure, I don’t have all the facts. But the locals have named her as Diana Desjardins. The name … well, you see why I thought to call.’
‘Did Pence get a look at her?’
‘He said he thought she broadly matched the description you gave me …’
I kicked the kiosk – once, twice, hearing the car door thrown open, Lizzie bursting out and running across to me. Not sure I could take any more. Surprised to hear my own voice: ‘Where did they find her?’
‘Las Vegas, Nevada. As I say, it’s pure happenstance Tom was in town—’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
We had nothing to prepare us for the cold.
The temperature had plummeted as soon as we left the valley, and the mercury kept falling all through the night. I hadn’t noticed for a time, my hands locked on the wheel, eyes on the dead blacktop in front, driving into the darkness because it was the only thing left to do. As though I could still save her if I just got there fast enough. Denying my failure.
It was only when I saw Lizzie’s breath fogging right in front of me that I realised. She’d been huddled close, for warmth, refusing to issue a word of complaint, the cold severe enough to keep her awake through her exhaustion. After that, I’d found an all-night diner in Barstow and stopped long enough to load up on coffee.
We approached Las Vegas shortly after sunup. The morning sky in the desert was a brilliant white-blue, so vivid I could barely look. The La Madre Range in the distance glowed red and ochre, the light catching every crease and fold in the rock. Lizzie was taken with the beauty of it, pressing her face to the window, and I was grateful for the moment’s relief it granted from the wretched life she’d been dragged into on my account.
The road in took us past the construction site – a man-made oasis surrounded by barren desert. The sign said Flamingo Hotel, and it towered over a glass-fronted structure with an overhanging roof that took its inspiration from the architecture of Beverly Hills. I slowed some as we passed it by. Construction crews were arriving for the day, and I wondered if Siegel was there somewhere, overseeing the finishing touches. The thought of what had been done to facilitate its creation sickened me, making me think of an animal that devoured its own kind.
*
The route to the Clark County Sheriff’s Department carried us through downtown Las Vegas – a small grid of streets packed solid with drinking clubs, hotels and gambling halls – often all in the same building. Neon signs danced in a blitz of colour, lit even in the daytime. If I’d expected a western version of Hot Springs, I was off; this was bigger and bolder – Broadway without the class, pried out of Manhattan and laid down in the desert.
‘I can’t believe what I’m seeing,’ Lizzie said, her voice weary and fractured.
But the lightshow barely registered with me, my mind filled with thoughts of Desjardins – if it was her. Of how she could have ended up in this place and what had happened here. And of Nancy Hill, and whether the same fate had befallen her.
*
The Sheriff’s Department passed me around for twenty minutes, two different officers in brown uniforms and western hats coming out to tell me someone else would be along shortly. The situation eating at me: another small town, dust coating my trouser hems, and cops with hard eyes; a glance at Lizzie, wondering how many times I could put her through this.
Finally, the sheriff hims
elf came out to where I was waiting, and I took an involuntary half-step backwards, the look and feel of things too familiar by now. A tall man made taller by his white Stetson, I placed him somewhere in his middle fifties, grey hairs showing around his ears. He was lean more than slim and moved like an old athlete, with the build of a swimmer. He introduced himself as Robert Lang.
‘Charlie Yates. I’m here about the young woman was found dead a couple days back.’
‘What about her, Mr Yates?’
‘Have you managed to identify the woman in question?’
‘May I ask what your interest is, sir?’ He made a point to look over my shoulder at Lizzie, sitting behind me on a chair near the door.
‘I’m trying to trace two missing women and I’ve reason to suspect the lady in question may be one of them.’
‘You’re a private investigator?’
I shook my head. ‘A reporter. The family have tasked me to help find her.’
‘I see.’ He straightened his shirtfront. ‘Kindly tell me the name of the woman you’re looking for?’
‘Julie Desjardins. The woman you found went by Diana Desjardins, and she matches a description I gave to a colleague of mine.’
He looked around, signalled to the desk officer and then turned back to me. ‘Mr Yates, would you step over here with me?’
He led me to a side room with four chairs positioned around two sides of a bare wooden table. He shut the door and gestured for me to sit. I stayed on my feet.
‘Where’re you from, sir?’
‘Los Angeles.’
‘How long have you been in Las Vegas?’
‘I came in this morning, we just arrived.’
‘Overnight? Hell of a drive to make in this weather.’ He gestured to my clothes.
‘I only got the tip-off last night. I came right away.’
‘When was your last visit to Las Vegas?’
I narrowed my eyes. ‘Never. First time.’
‘What about to Clark County?’
‘Never. What is—’ I took a step back. ‘Wait a second, I had nothing to do with her murder.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘I don’t recall saying you did. What would compel you to say that?’