Fly Me to the Morgue

by Robert J. Randisi

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I don’t want anything to do with him anymore.’

  ‘And Phil?’

  ‘Him, either.’

  ‘What about Eric?’

  ‘Eric’s confused. He lets Phil use him.’

  ‘Do you try to help Eric?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘And you all gamble,’ I said. ‘You all play blackjack, right?’

  ‘So?’ she said. ‘It’s Vegas, right? Look, I have to go back in. I don’t have much more time. I have to . . .’

  ‘Ya have to what?’ Jerry asked her.

  ‘She has to move,’ I said. ‘To another casino. She has to play here for a certain amount of time, and then move, right, Adrienne?’

  She looked at her watch. This woman was so different from the other one I’d met, the first Adrienne.

  ‘Can I go?’ she asked.

  ‘Sure, Adrienne,’ I said. ‘Sure. Just tell us one thing. Where do we find Phil? We went to his office yesterday, but he ran away from us.’

  ‘That’s no surprise.’

  ‘What’s his home address?’

  ‘I told you yesterday.’

  ‘You told us his work address, but we never got around to his home address.’

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘When I give it to you can I go back in?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Sure, Adrienne, you can go back in.’

  ‘What was that all about?’ Jerry asked in the car. ‘That stuff about movin’ from casino to casino.’

  ‘She’s chasing the hot table,’ I said. ‘Tryin’ to find her luck. Some people will sit at one table for days, trying to beat it. Others go from table to table, waitin’ for their luck to change. Adrienne is one of those.’

  ‘That’s sick, ain’t it?’

  ‘Maybe it is. I’m not a psychiatrist, so I don’t know for sure. Some gamblers are just superstitious. Don’t you have any superstitions in your life? Like when you play the horses?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s because you’re too well adjusted, Jerry.’

  A well-adjusted leg breaker for the Mafia. Who knew?

  FIFTY-NINE

  Philip Arnold had a house on Palomino Lane, near Ranchero Drive. It had to be a house, an estate really, that he couldn’t afford, unless the whole Arnold family had more money than I knew about. And hadn’t mentioned it.

  No, it seemed to me all the trouble was stemming from the fact that they needed money. All of them. On the other hand, it looked like Vince DeStefano had all the money he needed. But that was the problem with money. The more you had the more you wanted, the more you wanted the more you needed. I learned that from dealing with gamblers for so many years.

  We stopped at the front gate.

  ‘He’s gonna hafta buzz us in,’ Jerry said. ‘Since he ran from us yesterday, I don’t think he’s gonna do that. Especially if he’s holed up here.’

  ‘Let’s park away from the gate and look for a way in.’

  He backed the Caddy up. We parked under a tree a few hundred feet along the road. Then we got out and began to walk the wall, looking for a likely place to climb over.

  ‘Wait,’ Jerry said after we’d walked a while. ‘I can boost you up here, and then climb.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘The wall’s crumbling here,’ he said, pointing. ‘I can get a foothold.’

  ‘OK, let’s try it.’

  He not only boosted me up, but when I put my foot in his cupped hands he almost tossed me over.

  I laid flat on top of the wall and extended my hand.

  ‘I’ll pull you down,’ he said. ‘I got it, Mr G. Go ahead.’

  The wall was seven or eight feet high, but by hanging from my hands first I only had to drop a foot or two. I waited and soon Jerry appeared at the top. When he lowered himself he only had to drop inches.

  ‘Any dogs?’ he asked.

  ‘I haven’t heard any.’

  ‘I hate dogs.’

  ‘How can you hate dogs?’

  ‘When you been chased and got by as many junkyard dogs as I have, it’s real easy.’

  ‘Well, like I said, I don’t hear any. Come on. Let’s get to the house.’

  As we trotted to the house he asked, ‘Think you can get the truth out of him this time?’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I think you can.’

  When we got to the house it was huge, lots of stucco and stone with many windows and stairways.

  ‘This guy’s got more money than we thought,’ Jerry said.

  ‘Or not as much as he wants people to think,’ I said. ‘Front door?’

  ‘No,’ Jerry said. ‘Something with lots of glass.’

  ‘French doors.’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘This way.’

  We went up one of the stone stairways, which led to a path. We followed that around until we found a large swimming pool. That’s where we found a pair of French doors.

  ‘There you go,’ I said. ‘You gonna pick the lock?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, and put his elbow through the glass. ‘There ya go.’

  He reached in, unlocked the door and we walked in.

  ‘Arnold!’ I shouted. ‘Philip, it’s Eddie Gianelli.’ I looked at Jerry. ‘Find the front door and stay there so he can’t run out.’

  ‘OK.’ He took out his .45. ‘Here.’

  ‘No, you take it,’ I said. ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Be careful.’

  I nodded, and we split up.

  When we had gotten to Philip’s office I had half expected to find him dead. Even I was getting paranoid about me and Jerry finding bodies together.

  But this time I was expecting to find him worked over. I actually would have preferred that.

  I checked several rooms before I found an office, and that’s where he was. He was seated behind a huge cherry wood desk. His head was cocked to one side and there was a blood trail from the left corner of his mouth. I checked for a pulse and didn’t find any. In fact, his skin felt cold. Jerry would know better than me, but I thought he’d been dead since yesterday. Maybe when he ran from us at his office he’d come straight back here and battened down the hatches.

  Only not hard enough.

  SIXTY

  I found Jerry by the front door and led him back to the office. He studied the body for a moment, touched the skin, felt for a pulse, then straightened.

  ‘He’s been dead since yesterday,’ he said. ‘Maybe last night.’

  ‘What killed him?’

  Jerry looked again.

  ‘I don’t wanna move him or touch him,’ he said. ‘I see a little blood on his chest. Can’t tell if he was stabbed or shot.’

  ‘A shot might’ve been heard.’

  ‘Depends on what caliber,’ Jerry said. ‘Depends on what time of day, who was home, what kind of neighbors he has—’

  ‘I get it,’ I said. ‘OK, now we gotta figure out what to do. Too many people know we were lookin’ for him. Eric, Adrienne, DeStefano. If we don’t call the cops one of them will.’

  ‘Not DeStefano.’

  ‘No, maybe even him, if he’s tryin’ to play the straight citizen here in Vegas. If we don’t call the cops – and I mean Hargrove – he’ll come lookn’ for us.’

  ‘If we do call him he’ll grill us, anyway.’

  ‘But at least we’ll have the fact that we called him on our side.’

  ‘You could leave and I could call him,’ Jerry suggested.

  ‘No, that would only work the other way around,’ I said. ‘Remember, me brains, you brawn. You leave and I’ll call them.’

  He walked away from the desk and came to stand next to me.

  ‘We might as well stick together, Mr G.,’ he said. ‘Whichever one of us stays, they’ll come lookin’ for the other one, anyway.’

  ‘We got another problem, though.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘We broke in,’ I said. ‘I don’t think Hargrove will let that go. It’ll give hi
m somethin’ to throw us in a cell for.’

  ‘I didn’t think of that.’

  ‘OK, so a bunch of people knew we were looking for Philip, but we could always say we got here, the gate was locked, and we couldn’t get in.’

  ‘So we leave him for somebody else to find?’ Jerry asked. ‘Or do we make an anonymous call?’

  ‘I vote for the anonymous call,’ I said, ‘but after we take a look around.’

  ‘Make sure you don’t leave no prints, Mr G.,’ he reminded me.

  ‘What can we do about the wall?’

  ‘They ain’t gonna fingerprint the whole wall,’ he said. ‘We just gotta worry about the French doors and anything we touch from now on.’

  ‘Gotcha,’ I said. ‘I’ll look around here, you take the upstairs.’

  ‘I’ll find the master bedroom,’ he said. ‘Probably won’t be anything else important up there.’

  ‘Let’s be as quick as we can, before somebody sees the car and makes a call.’

  ‘Right.’

  He left the office and I got started.

  It was hard to search the desk with a dead body seated at it. It was also difficult to rifle through drawers when you’re holding a handkerchief in your hand.

  I did the best I could, then moved on to the file cabinets. I kept thinking that if I had phony records and real records then I would keep the real ones at home. That was probably why I wasn’t a crook. I found a bank statement in a drawer that indicated Philip Arnold had a safety deposit box at a Las Vegas branch of City National Bank.

  I didn’t find anything interesting in the file cabinet. I figured anything that would help us was probably in that safety deposit box.

  I left the office after a few minutes and ran into Jerry coming back down.

  ‘Nothin’,’ he said.

  ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  We retraced our steps and wiped prints off the French doors. Let the cops think that whoever killed him broke the window to get in.

  We climbed the wall again to get to the car. I half expected to find police waiting for us when we dropped down off the wall.

  We scrambled into the car and got away from there.

  Along the way I told Jerry about finding the bank statement.

  ‘I’ll bet there’s somethin’ in that box that him and his brother’ve been killed over.’

  ‘Yeah, so how do we get to it?’

  ‘We don’t,’ Jerry said. ‘I ain’t never broke into a bank, Mr G. You know anybody?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘No bank robbers in my phone book,’ I said. ‘But his brother or sister can probably get in there after he dies.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Jerry said, ‘if they ain’t killed before that.’

  SIXTY-ONE

  Everything started and ended at the Sands.

  It was late afternoon when we got back there. We’d started out very early going to see Vince DeStefano, even though it felt like days ago to me.

  We had stopped along the way at a pay phone. I had disguised my voice and called in a disturbance report at Philip Arnold’s address. Even said I thought I’d heard breaking glass.

  We sat parked in the lot for a few minutes.

  ‘I hate finding bodies.’ I looked at my shaking hands.

  ‘I know how you feel, Mr G.,’ Jerry said. ‘Ain‘t my favorite thing, neither.’

  We sat quietly for a few moments.

  ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘I’d still like to talk to Adrienne some more,’ I said, ‘but think we need to spend some time around people.’

  ‘Alibis?’

  I nodded.

  ‘We’ll need an alibi for last night—’

  ‘We got alibis for last night, Mr G. We wuz at the Flamingo for Frank Junior’s Show, and then we went out with Mr S.’

  ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Jesus, that seems like days ago to me. OK, but we still need ’em for the rest of the afternoon. We don’t know when the cops will find him, or when Hargrove will get called in, but when he does he’ll come after us. That much I’m sure of; and he’ll try to place us here today.’

  ‘We can’t alibi each other,’ Jerry said. ‘Believe me, I know that never works.’

  ‘We’ve got some people we can ask,’ I said. ‘Let me work out the details. You go to the horse book and make sure you’re seen.’

  ‘Have you seen me, Mr G?’ he asked, spreading his hands.

  ‘Yeah, you’re right. Mount Rushmore would have more trouble bein’ seen.’

  We got out of the car and started toward the casino, but I put my hand on his arm.

  ‘Not the front door,’ I said. ‘We don’t want some valet or bell boy tellin’ the cops when we came walkin’ in.’

  ‘Good thinkin’.’

  We went behind the casino and entered that way. In fact, Jerry was able to veer off and go right to the horse book with a ‘See ya later.’

  ‘Stay there until I come for you,’ I said. ‘We don’t wanna talk to anybody until we have alibis for today.’

  He nodded and I went into the casino.

  I had a few choices for alibis. I could ask Bing, Frank, Dean or Jack Entratter. However, first I had to find out who was still around. Even if Frank had left, it would take the cops a while to check with him, because he’d be in Palm Springs.

  When I got to Jack’s office, like the day before, he wasn’t there. The girl looked at me.

  ‘Still trying to catch that slot granny at it,’ she said, with a shrug.

  ‘Got it,’ I said. ‘Thanks.’

  Probably the most civil exchange of words we’d ever had. We were practically dating.

  Jack saw me coming, but then frowned at the old lady.

  ‘Back today?’ I asked.

  ‘She’s been at it for days,’ he said. ‘I know it’s only nickels, but it’s the principal of the thing. I know she’s cheatin’.’

  ‘Well, I need to talk to you. It’s important.’

  ‘Where?’ he asked.

  ‘Someplace where it’s just the two of us.’

  ‘There’s no game in the VIP room,’ he said. ‘Let’s go there.’

  The Sands had a room in the back that was reserved for big money private games. This was where Jack Entratter treated his ‘whales’ to whatever kind of game they wanted.

  The silence in the room fell over us like a blanket. That was good. I had the feeling if he could hear the nickels striking the tray I’d lose him.

  I told him about finding Philip Arnold’s body. Told him how, when, where, and what we did. I’ll give him credit. He could have blown his top, but he listened intently.

  ‘So where’s Jerry?’

  ‘In the horse book.’

  ‘You both need alibis for today.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘You didn’t do nothin,’ he said, ‘but you need alibis. Well, you did break into the man’s house. That broken glass is gonna be blamed on the killer.’

  ‘Hopefully. We wiped away any fingerprints.’

  ‘All right,’ he said, scratching his head. ‘Who’d you have in mind? Me?’

  ‘Well, I work for you. I was thinkin’ maybe Frank or Dean.’

  ‘Frank left with Junior today,’ he said. ‘Dean’s leavin’ tomorrow.’

  ‘Bing?’

  ‘He can’t leave until the police tell him,’ he said, thoughtfully. ‘We need two people, one for you, one for Jerry.’

  ‘I could ask Dean.’

  ‘What about your P.I. buddy? That wouldn’t surprise anybody.’

  ‘I haven’t talked to him since yesterday when we split up. He’s been working the trainer’s death, but we could work somethin’ out, I guess.’

  ‘You and Jerry can’t alibi each other,’ he said. ‘Hargrove wouldn’t go for that.’

  ‘No, he wouldn’t.’

  ‘What about Mack Gray? You could talk to Dino about using Mack for Jerry.’

  ‘That’s good,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ he said,
‘they’d wanna know where they went, they’d expect people to remember two guys like them.’

  ‘They can say they stayed in and watched some movies, had some beers.’

  ‘Movies?’

  ‘Jerry likes them, and Mack’s been in some.’

  He thought a moment, then said, ‘OK. That’d take care of Jerry for last night. What about today?’

  ‘Horse book,’ I said. ‘Casino. He and I were in the Dunes earlier.’

  ‘OK, that’s good. Somebody there will remember seein’ him. Now how about you?’

  ‘I’ll use Dino or Danny, whoever it works better with.’

  ‘You need a girlfriend, Eddie,’ Jack said.

  ‘Yeah, Hargrove would buy that in a minute.’

  ‘Well,’ Jack said, ‘get busy tonight, maybe even work your pit. It’d be good if you were working when the cops came to talk to you.’

  ‘Yeah, OK,’ I said. ‘I’ve been gettin’ itchy to work, anyway.’

  ‘Or maybe you can help me catch this slot granny at her game,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll give it a try.’

  SIXTY-TWO

  I couldn’t see it.

  It looked to me like granny was just lucky. It was odd but she just kept hitting jackpots. I recommended we take her in the back and sweat it out of her.

  ‘That’s what we’d do to somebody we thought was cheatin’ at one of my tables, right?’ I asked him.

  ‘We can’t do that to an old lady, Eddie,’ Jack said. ‘Believe me, I thought about it already.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know what she’s doin’,’ I said. ‘I’ve gotta go.’

  ‘Where are you off to?’

  ‘I’m gonna drop in on Adrienne again and see if I can squeeze the truth out of her,’ I explained. ‘I’ve got more of a handle on her now that I know she’s a blackjack player.’

  ‘You takin’ Jerry with you?’

  ‘Not this time.’

  ‘OK, I’ll put him and Mack Gray together. Let them work out their song and dance.’

  As I starred from the room he said, ‘Work out your alibi first; and let me know!’

  I called Dino’s suite and Mack answered. I told him what we needed and he said if it was OK with Dino it was OK with him. He checked with his boss and got the OK. He said he’d be right down.

  I met him in the lobby and took him to the horse book. We figured he and Jerry would stay there a few hours, play some horses, have a few drinks. When the cops asked around in there, people would say yeah, they saw the two big guys in there playing horses. Maybe they’d be a little vague about the time.