Exceptional Clearance

by William Caunitz

  TWENTY-NINE

  Morty Hymowitz arrived at the Versailles Room after ten. He slipped the headwaiter a palmed ten and followed him to a table near the dance floor.

  Scanning the crowd, he decided that it was the usual Friday-night mix of assholes, tourists, and cheaters. He called over the waiter and ordered a VO whiskey in a pony glass. Hawthorn drank white wine; Vinny hated it. It tasted like horse piss to him, but it was an essential prop when he played his midtown show-business role.

  A piano player crooned old Gershwin melodies, while the Latin trio that also played on weekends stood by ready to play the next set.

  Vinny was sipping his drink when he spotted the woman in the black velvet slacks and bolero jacket standing alone near the entrance, watching the man at the ivories. She had black hair, a dark, beautiful face, and a truly great ass. Ogling her as he sipped his drink, he waited until the Latin trio was on, got up, edged his way over to her, and asked, “Would you like to dance?”

  She gave him a brief smile and looked around for somewhere to put her pocketbook; finding none, she shrugged and said, “I’m sorry.”

  He gallantly took her bag. “May I?”

  She released it to his care. He went over to the headwaiter and said, “Mind this for me, Charles.” Vinny walked back over to her and asked, “Do you like Latin dances?”

  “Very much.”

  “Good. So do I.” Taking her into his arms, he glided her around the dance floor in time to the samba beat. “I’m Vinny.”

  “My name is Adriene. You’re a great dancer, Vinny.”

  “Thank you,” he said, grinding his hips close to hers.

  The businessman with the carefully styled hair, standing at the bar, blew his nose and said into his handkerchief, “Bingo.”

  Hearing the transmission over his car radio, Vinda continued to stare out the windshield of the unmarked car. He was parked across the street from the hotel, sitting alone in the passenger seat. The thought of Adriene with the slimeball agent made his skin crawl. He was really annoyed at himself for allowing her to play the role she was playing now, but, he rationalized, cops do what they gotta do.

  The television anchorman told his viewers that the fear that had gripped the city was now spreading to suburban areas. The cameras showed tracking shots of a newswoman interviewing suburbanites in shopping malls.

  Worthington had just returned to his apartment from his rehearsal hall, where he had worked out for two hours. He was now in Valarie’s room, dressed in his sweatsuit, watching television.

  He looked over at the prie-dieu and said, “They’re all so incredibly stupid, Val.”

  He got up from the bed and left the room. Walking down the hall, he threw open the closet door. Reaching behind clothes, Worthington unfastened the hidden panel on the back wall. He dug out the square of wood, and leaned it up against the wall.

  He smiled as he looked in at his abundant supply of death. Reaching inside, he took out grayish bars of plastic explosives and a box of detonators and timers, and went back into his wife’s bedroom. Sitting down on the bed, he picked up the phone and dialed police headquarters.

  “Central to Special One, K.”

  “Special One, standing by,” Vinda transmitted.

  “Special One, Central has a ‘Dinny’O’ on land line insisting to talk to you. Says it’s urgent. Want us to pipe the call through to you, K?”

  “Affirmative, Central.”

  After a series of electronic beeps, Dinny’O’s brogue came through faintly to the police car. “You didn’t come alone this afternoon as I told you to.”

  He’s trying to con me, Vinda thought. “No one was with me.”

  “I saw other policemen there.”

  “If you did, they weren’t my guys. And another thing, pally, I don’t like being jerked around. If you want to surrender, good. But either way, you’re mine.”

  “Don’t you want to help me stop doing those awful things?”

  “If you give yourself up, it will be a lot easier on you. And you will find true peace. I promise you.”

  “You and your men won’t try to hurt me?”

  “No, we won’t.”

  A long silence formed a bridge between them. Finally the other voice said, “I don’t trust you. I want to come in, but I can’t believe you won’t hurt me.”

  “You’ll not be bothered, I promise you.”

  “Will you be in your office at eight o’clock Monday morning?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “And I want you to have all your men there with you. I don’t trust them not to be lying in ambush for me.”

  “They’ll be there.” Vinda was tempted to try something. What would happen if he addressed his caller by name? He dismissed the idea as quickly as it had come. Why let this lunatic know that his identity was no longer a great secret? And who the hell was he dealing with, anyhow, Worthington or Griffin? The voice was different from Worthington’s. He decided to play it safe.

  The man on the other end, his voice almost lost in a burst of interference, said abruptly, “I will telephone you Monday at precisely eight. It will be necessary for me to speak with each of your men. And don’t play games with me. If I’m satisfied that they are all with you and not out in the street lying an ambush for me, I’ll tell you where to come and meet me.”

  “Will it be someplace in the city?”

  “It will be near police headquarters. Do we have a deal?”

  “Yes.”

  Worthington slammed down the phone and rolled across the bed laughing, and gasped, “Oh, yes, Lieutenant, do we ever have a deal.” He sat up and studied the drawings he had traced of police headquarters. Then he unwrapped a bar of Semtex and began molding the plastic explosive into isosceles triangles.

  Hymowitz and Agueda dipped and swayed, pelvis to pelvis, hips rolling to the merengue beat. Agueda shimmied away, turned, and merengued back into his arms. “You’re a great dancer, Vinny.”

  “So are you. I love the perfume you’re wearing. What’s the name of it?”

  “Quartz.” She turned, shimmied back to him, noticed Marsella and Hagstrom dancing nearby. She winked at them.

  Hagstrom smiled back.

  Morty pressed against her; she felt his hardness, smiled at him, and thought, You scumbag. The quicker this thing plays, the quicker I’m rid of El Disgusto. She slithered back into his arms. “I’d like to leave.”

  “Me too.”

  A limousine double-parked in a line of other limousines pulled out and glided to a stop in front of them. Moose, wearing a chauffeur’s cap, dashed around the front of the car to open the door.

  When they were settled into the rear compartment, Hymowitz slid his hand onto her knee and said, “I have a place in the Village.”

  “I’d prefer my apartment. You’ll like it—I promise you.”

  As the limousine slid away from the curb, Marsella and Hagstrom dashed out of the club and rushed across the street to their waiting department auto.

  “It is now trick-or-treat time,” Vinda radioed, as both cars made a fast U-turn to follow the limo.

  “Ten-four,” Bosco radioed back. The Pizza Squad detectives and Sid Williams were parked across the street from Webster’s penthouse apartment. Amandola waved to Webster, who was standing in the lobby with the doorman. Webster acknowledged the signal and slipped the doorman a fifty-dollar bill, saying, “They’re on their way.”

  Seven minutes later the doorman rushed out of the lobby to open the limousine’s door. “Good evening, Miss Adriene.”

  “Good evening, Edward.”

  Stepping off the elevator into Webster’s penthouse apartment, Hymowitz walked into the living room and over to the plate-glass wall that looked out on the terrace. He briefly admired the view, then turned, leering at Agueda.

  She abruptly went into the bedroom. Following her inside, he came up behind her and pushed her down on the bed, throwing himself on top of her, his mouth seeking out her breasts as his hands g
roped between her legs.

  She bucked him off and leaped up from the bed, saying, “I’ll be right back.” She went into the bathroom and locked the door. She undressed, carefully hanging her clothes on a hanger. Reaching behind herself, she unfastened her bra. Looking at her underpants, she decided there was no way she was taking them off.

  She picked up the nightgown from the top of the vanity and slid it over her head. It felt heavy and uncomfortable, but looked sheer and sexy. The magic of Hollywood, she thought, going over to the towel niche. Reaching under the stack, Agueda slid out the portable radio she had placed there earlier. Making sure the volume control was on low, she switched it on, and pressed the transmit button three times.

  The rest of the anxious cast were waiting in the lobby when the three squelches sounded over Vinda’s portable radio. He looked grimly at Hagstrom and said, “She’s going in.”

  Bosco and Amandola, along with Sid Williams, piled into the waiting elevator.

  Aware of her racing heart, Agueda opened the bathroom door. Hymowitz was naked under the sheets, stroking himself. His eyes were wide with lust and his mouth agape. “I want to watch you play with your clit while I jerk off. We’ll come together,” he moaned.

  A regular Don Juan, she thought, padding over to the bed, praying that they’d arrive soon. He was stroking himself faster and faster, and he was panting.

  She silently prayed, Where are they?

  “Open your legs, I wanna see your pussy,” he ordered, tossing off his sheets.

  “How ya doin’, Vinny?” Bosco said, stepping into the room with Amandola and Williams lurking behind him.

  Vinny cowered up against the headboard, the thing in his hand wilting like a dying violet.

  Agueda looked over at the intruders, demanding, “Who the hell are you?”

  “We’re friends of Vinny’s,” Bosco said, scratching the side of his neck with the barrel of his gun. “We gotta have a business conversation with him, so why don’t you go into da toilet and powder your nose?”

  “How dare you force your way into my home!” Agueda said, standing up on cue and reaching for the telephone.

  “Heeey, Vinny, tell your lady friend she’s endangerin’ her health,” Amandola said.

  Glaring her defiance at them, she dialed. Amandola leveled his gun at her. “Put it down, lady,” Amandola warned.

  “Fuck you.”

  Amandola fired once. A bullet hole exploded in the black lace, blood spurted down over her chest. She reeled backward, knocking over the night table and slamming into the wall. She looked down at Vinny with an expression of shocked disbelief, her lips moving as if she were about to say something, but before she could get the words out, she crumpled to the floor.

  Marshall Hawthorn defecated.

  His nose turning up from the smell, Bosco sat down on the bed and carefully spread the sheets over Hymowitz’s stomach, covering the mess. “Tony No Chin heard you’ve been using his name for protection.”

  “No! I swear!” Hymowitz squirmed uncomfortably in the mess he’d made.

  “We got word you used it the other day to a police lieutenant in the Grill Room of the Four Seasons,” Amandola said.

  Bosco added, “The cop checked to see if you had the right to use Chin’s name.” Caressing the scared man’s face with his gun barrel, he added, “Chin got to wonderin’ how a two-bit piece of shit like you got to be the agent for a movie star.”

  “Please don’t hurt me,” Hymowitz pleaded.

  “Hurt you?” Bosco said. “The Chin don’t hurt his business partners.”

  “Business partners?” Hymowitz asked, bewildered.

  “Yeah,” Amandola said, “sort of a life insurance partnership.” He rammed the barrel into Hymowitz’s flabby stomach. “Now that we’re all friends, tell us what you got on the Merrill dame that got her to use you.”

  “Nothing. I swear.”

  Bosco leveled and cocked his gun at Hymowitz’s head. The agent shut his eyes and blurted, “A porn flick she made for me.”

  “You produced it?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I was going to distribute it. But that was when she landed that part in the soap. So I figured she might be on her way, and I held on to it, for myself, you know, if she ever got big.”

  “How many copies are there?” Amandola asked.

  Hymowitz began to tremble. “One. It’s in my apartment.”

  “Get cleaned up,” Amandola ordered. “We’re going to go get it.”

  Peeking over the side of the bed at the body, Hymowitz asked, “What about her?”

  “What about her?” Bosco said.

  Snow pelted Vinda as he walked into Jessica Merrill’s West Seventy-ninth Street town house the next morning. Once in the living room, he handed her the rumpled bag he’d been holding. “Is this what’s so important to get me up out of bed early on a Saturday?”

  “An old movie of yours,” he said, looking around the tastefully decorated room, “Beauty and the Beast.”

  She raised her eyebrows, grinned wearily, and said, “I assume you have been talking to my agent.” She brushed a tendril of hair from her forehead, and pried open the canister. Unwinding lengths of film up to the light, examining footage, she offered, “Bad lighting, bad directing, and bad acting.” She dropped the canister, watching as it rolled across the floor, unraveling. “You must have gone to a lot of trouble to wrest that away from Vinny.”

  “I thought you might like to have it. A present, from me to you.”

  “How generous,” she said, looking at him. “‘And what, pray tell, can I give you in return?’ the damsel asked blushingly.” She toyed with the gold chain around her neck as she glared at him.

  “Frank Griffin. Where is he?”

  Her brow wrinkled with contempt. “You went to a lot of trouble for nothing. I haven’t seen or heard from Frank in years.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn what you believe. Furthermore, let me tell you that that flick on the floor is valueless to you or to anyone else who might want to use it to blackmail me. I made that when I was a kid trying to claw my way up. My publicity people would have a field day with anyone who tried to hurt me with that. Young, starving actress, et cetera, et cetera. I’m sure you get the picture.”

  “Morty Hymowitz was blackmailing you with it.”

  “Wrong. Morty thought he was blackmailing me with it. He wasn’t. The truth is, the poor jerk is a good agent. His insecurity, which is caused by his justified lack of self-esteem, makes him an aggressive businessman. Besides, I only pay him five percent, while most other agents get ten. So you can pick up your movie and march out of here with it.”

  “I have reason to believe that Griffin is responsible for several homicides in the city.”

  “Nonsense! Frank was one of the kindest, gentlest men I’ve ever known.”

  “Why did you help Michael Worthington get his start in the movies?”

  “Please leave my home now.”

  “Griffin and Worthington are one and the same, aren’t they?”

  “Get out!”

  “Griffin had his appearance changed by a Soviet emigré doctor. He would have needed someone familiar with that community to make the connection for him. Your real name is Ramenki. Do you speak Russian, Miss Merrill?”

  “Leave my home immediately, or I’ll call my lawyers and have you arrested.”

  “Hindering prosecution is a serious crime.”

  “Get out!” She ran from the room. Rushing upstairs, she plunged into her bedroom and locked the door behind her.

  Wrapping herself in her arms, she leaned up against the wall and tried to stop shaking. She began retching. She cursed in Russian, sucked in a deep breath, and held it. The front door slammed, and she blew out her breath and ran over to the window.

  When she heard Vinda’s car start, she went over to the closet and took down her overnight bag. Going over to the dresser, she began throwing clothes into the
bag, saying, “I’m not going to live my life in someone else’s nightmare.”

  Michael Worthington folded Valarie’s dry cleaning over the shopping cart’s handlebar and pushed off down the aisle, selecting things off the shelf. Strolling around the corner, he pushed the cart over to the appetizer counter, and said hello to the clerk named Mary.

  “Morning, Mr. Worthington,” she said from the other side of the counter. “And how is Mrs. Worthington today?”

  “She’s pretty good today, Mary,” he said, scanning the contents of the display case, asking, “How is everything at home?”

  “Himself is still thinking about getting a job. He’s considering his options.” Mary looked around to make sure no one was nearby. Leaning over the counter, she whispered, “Detectives were in here the other day, asking a lot of questions about you and Mrs. Worthington.”

  THIRTY

  The Petrograd Restaurant, located in a one-story brick building on the corner of Coney Island Avenue and Neptune Avenue, had heavy, deep red drapes across its plate-glass windows.

  Police Officer Petrovich, from the Six-oh’s Samovar Squad, was pacing outside when Vinda drove up to keep their hastily arranged Saturday-night appointment. The policemen exchanged quick handshakes.

  Petrovich said, “I located the doctor who operated on the guy in the picture. His name is Turgenev. He’s willing to powwow for two large.”

  “Can we get the price down?”

  “He started at five.”

  Vinda shrugged with his hands. “You’ll have the money Monday, around midday. I’ve received approval for the disbursement, but didn’t know how much to draw.”

  Jerking his thumb at the restaurant, Petrovich said, “This joint is a hundred percent Russkie, so when we go in, stick close, and let me do most of the talking.”

  Petrovich led him into the restaurant’s narrow vestibule, where there was a short line. Two burly men were at the door, checking names off the reservations list. When the policemen reached them, Petrovich spoke in Russian to the men, and they both roared with laughter. One of them opened the door and shooed them inside.