[Rat Pack 02] - Luck Be a Lady, Don't Die

by Robert J. Randisi

  I looked around. The El Cortez was suffering from what was going on down the street at the Fremont Theatre. When the movie started, though, all the people without tickets who were just trying to get a look at Frank and Dean and—if they were in their right minds— Angie Dickinson—would return to the casinos and the tables, and things would liven up. I needed more people in the building if I was going to get out.

  “Okay,” I said, sliding into a red leather booth, “talk to me.” Balducci slid in across from me. A tired-looking waitress appeared and we both ordered coffee.

  “That’s all?” she asked.

  “I’ll take a piece of pie. Apple,” I said.

  “Nothing for me,” Balducci said.

  “What a dump,” he said, as she left.

  The El Cortez might have been the oldest casino in Vegas and, as such, might have been showing some wear, but I didn’t agree it was a dump.

  “Look,” I said, “I’ve got a movie and a show to go to.”

  “Where’s Mary Clarke?”

  “What makes you think I know?”

  “I told you, I checked you out.”

  I stared at him, then leaned back. “Somebody gave you my name.”

  “You’re right. Lily did. And she told me you had Mary stashed away—with my money.”

  I frowned. That didn’t make sense to me. Why would Lily give up me and her sister . . . unless she was trying to hang us out to dry.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Lily stole the money from you, and now she’s convinced you that Mary and I have it?”

  “Well, she doesn’t have it,” he argued. “Somebody has to.”

  “Why me?”

  “Why not you?” he demanded. “Are you immune to money and a beautiful girl?”

  “Well, we know you’re not.”

  “Look,” he said, “why don’t I just blast you out of your shoes right now. I know where you live, I know where you work. I’ll find it!”

  “First,” I said, “you tellin’ me I’m not a hard guy may be right, but it’s like the pot callin’ the kettle black.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re not carryin’ a gun, Vito,” I said, “And another thing . . . your boys forgot to frisk me, and didn’t want to admit it.”

  “You’re lyin’.”

  “Try me.”

  He studied my face.

  “You’re trying to tell me you’re heeled?”

  “ ‘Heeled.’ ” I repeated. “The word doesn’t even sound right coming out of your mouth.”

  He stared at me, trying to find some giveaway—a “tell”—on my face. His face was turning red, either from embarrassment, or barely contained rage.

  “Look, neither of us has to be hard guys to get this done,” he said. “I have to get that money back where it belongs by the middle of the month or I’m dead.” He leaned forward. “Yeah, I ain’t a hard guy, but I’ve still got two guys who’ll kill you if I tell them to.”

  “You haven’t even got that.”

  “What?”

  “My guy followed us here,” I said. “He’s the real deal, Balducci. He’s probably already taken care of your guys and if I say the word he’ll break your legs off at the knees and shove’ em up your ass.”

  “Y—you’re bluffing.”

  “Hey,” I said, “this is my town, not yours. Go ahead and try me.” The waitress came with the coffee and my pie. I said thanks and she shuffled back to the counter. Meanwhile, Balducci was still trying to figure me out.

  “Goddamn women,” he hissed, softly.

  “I understand your pain,” I told him. “Women can be ...”

  “Bitches,” he said, with a lot of feeling, “goddamned bitches!”

  “Yeah, they can be,” I agreed. I cut into my pie and tasted it. Not as good as the Sands, but okay.

  I hoped I was reading him right and he was reading me wrong. He may have been a Mafia bookkeeper, but he was still just a bookkeeper—maybe even a CPA. But I knew CPAs because I was once one, and we—they—did not carry guns. But this one had gotten somebody to carry them for him. I didn’t know what he had promised those men, but even though I was bluffing my ass off, I hoped I was wrong. Maybe Jerry had followed us, and maybe he had already taken care of those two goons.

  “Look,” he said, “I’ll pay you a finder’s fee.”

  Finally, I saw a way out.

  “How much of a finder’s fee?”

  “Ten percent.”

  “Ten percent of ... what?” If I’d said, “A hundred grand,” then he would have known that I already knew.

  “A hundred grand.”

  I whistled, as if it was the first time I’d heard the amount.

  “So that’s ten thousand for me?”

  “Right.”

  “And you put the ninety back and nobody’s the wiser—and what about my ten?”

  “I’ll put that in, myself.”

  I wondered where he’d get that ten thousand.

  I gave it as much thought as it deserved, then shook my head.

  “Sorry,” I said, “can’t do it, Vito. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.”

  “Then you ain’t gonna live at all.” He waved his hand. I turned, hoping he was going to be disappointed, hoping that his boys had run into Jerry outside, but instead I was the one who was disappointed. Greasy and Boil came walking over, their hands inside their jackets on their guns.

  “Take him out into the desert and dump ’im.” He looked at me. “You coulda been rich, Eddie, but now you’re just dead.”

  “This doesn’t make you a mob guy, Vito,” I said. “You’re still just a bookkeeper.”

  “Get him out.”

  The two hoods flanked me. My legs were weak and I didn’t know if I was going to make it to my feet. Maybe if they had to drag me out we’d attract some attention. Or maybe I’d just lose my dignity before I lost my life.

  I was trying to decide what to do when I saw something that surprised me, especially in the El Cortez, away from the strip.

  Because when Sam Giancana was in Vegas, he usually stuck to the strip.

  Sixty-Four

  I GOT IT. It popped into place. The reason MoMo would even be in Vegas when Entratter wasn’t expecting him.

  “Holy crap,” I said to Balducci, “you stupid sonofabitch, you took MoMo’s money?”

  He turned in his chair, saw Giancana and four of his men approaching, and then turned back.

  “You can’t say nothin’,” he pleaded with me. “He’ll kill me!”

  I didn’t have time to say anything. Giancana and his men reached us. Greasy and Boil didn’t know what to do, but they did drop their hands from their guns. Smart move.

  As usual MoMo was wearing dark glasses, even at night. All five of them were wearing dark suits, white shirts and thin ties. They weren’t downtown for the premier. They were downtown for this.

  “Vito,” MoMo said. “How ya doin’?”

  “Mr. Giancana,” Balducci said, starting to get up, “What are you doin’ here?”

  “Sit, Vito.” Giancana put his hand on Balducci’s shoulder. He didn’t put any pressure, just laid it there, and the bookkeeper fell back into his chair.

  I realized as Giancana’s men flanked Balducci that one was Bats.

  The other three were new to me. Mikey’s broken fingers were probably still keeping him out of action.

  “Mr. Gianelli,” MoMo said to me, “nice to see you again, pal.”

  “MoMo,” I said.

  “You boys mind if I join ya?”

  “I don’t mind,” I said. “Do you mind, Vito?”

  Balducci looked at me like I was crazy.

  “Uh, no, no, I don’t mind. Have a seat, Sa—uh, Mr. Giancana.”

  “Thanks.” He turned and spoke to three of his men. “Boys, take these other fellas outside, will ya? Make sure they don’t hurt themselves?”

  “Sure thing, Mr. Giancana,” one of them said.

  “Mr. Ba
lducci—” Greasy said, but Vito had his own problems and looked away.

  Slickly, MoMo’s men disarmed the other two and walked them outside.

  Giancana sat, Bats remained standing. I looked at him and he nodded to me. For some reason, I found that encouraging. Suddenly, my legs did not feel as weak, the situation did not seem as hopeless. Now I just had to hope that Giancana didn’t think of a reason to have me taken out into the desert.

  “Vito,” Giancana said in response to Balducci’s question, “I think the question is, what are you doin’ in Vegas?”

  “Me? I was just, uh, takin’ some time off, Mr. Giancana.”

  “Chicago don’t know where you are,” MoMo said. “They were gettin’ worried.”

  “Ah, well, they got nothin’ to worry about, Mr. Giancana—”

  “Well, they seem to think they do,” Giancana said. “Seems some money’s come up missin’. They seem ta think you can help ’em find it.”

  “Money?”

  “A hundred thousand,” Giancana said. He looked at me. “That’s a lot of money, even in this town, ain’t it, Eddie?”

  “It sure is, Mr. Giancana.” I remembered what Jerry had told me about respect.

  Giancana looked at Balducci.

  “Think you can help find the money, Vito?”

  “I know I can, Mr. Giancana,” he said. “It was that bitch I hired to work for me. She took it.”

  “How could she get her hands on that much of our money, Vito?” Giancana asked, confirming my theory. Balducci had not only been stupid enough to steal from the Mafia, but from Sam Giancana—and then Lily and Mary had stolen it from him.

  “She, uh, she . . .”

  Giancana waved his hand in front of Balducci to stop him.

  “We can talk about it someplace else, Vito.” He looked at me again. “Don’t you got a show to go to, Eddie?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Bats put his hand on Vito Balducci’s shoulders.

  I went out the front and found Jerry waiting for me.

  “You called Giancana.”

  He nodded.

  “I grabbed a cab as soon as you pulled away and followed you all here. Then I called him.”

  “Why?”

  He came as close to pouting as he could without pushing out his lower lip.

  “I was mad at you.”

  “Mad at me? Why?”

  “You made me get outta the car,” he said. “I coulda took them two bums. They was nothin’.”

  “I embarrassed you in front of them?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “I saved your life,” I said, “or, at least, I was trying to.”

  “It ain’t your job ta save my life, it’s my job ta save yours.”

  “So now you’re saying you’re mad at me because I took your job?” He didn’t answer.

  “Well, now that MoMo’s got Balducci,” I said, “we still don’t know where Lily is.”

  “We know where Mary is,” he pointed out. “Wasn’t that the job Mr. S. wanted you to do?”

  “The job got muddled.”

  “So whatta we do now?”

  “You still mad?”

  “No.”

  “Good,” I said, “then we might as well go to the movies.”

  Sixty-Five

  WE ONLY GOT TO SEE half the movie, but the whole show afterward. We saw the actual heist—Frank as “Danny Ocean” and his crew taking down a bunch of casinos at one time—and then the aftermath, as everything went wrong. The ending was very clever and proved that, as usual, crime didn’t pay.

  Unless you were two beautiful sisters.

  The stage show went as it usually did, the guys having a great time and the audience loving it. When Jack Entratter saw that I had brought Jerry with me he didn’t look happy, but he didn’t say anything about it. He just hung with the showbiz types like Tony Bennett and Vic Damone. George Raft was there, too, and gave me a little head bow when he saw me.

  There was a party afterward and I took Jerry with me to that, too. He stared at all the stars, especially the women, like Juliet Prowse, Ruta Lee, and Shirley Maclaine. Producers were present, directors, even some studio heads. Henry Silva, Nick (Richard) Conte and Jerry Lester were off to one side, laughing and holding drinks. Juliet was hanging on Frank’s arm, while Frank kept looking over at me. He obviously wanted to get me aside to ask questions.

  Sammy Davis and Peter Lawford were standing together, chatting

  with a couple of honeys who looked like showgirls. I was looking around for Dean Martin when he quietly sidled up to me.

  “Hey, pally, how’s it goin’?” he asked.

  “Dean, just the man I was looking for. Have you met my friend Jerry?”

  “Hey, Jerry.” Dean shook the big man’s hand. Jerry looked starstruck. They had spoken on the phone but never met.

  “Frank wants to talk to you,” Dean said, “but he can’t shake Juliet. She’s hangin’ tight onto his arm.”

  “I noticed.”

  “Any progress?”

  “A lot,” I said. “We found—”

  “Good,” Dean said, “but tell Frank, not me. I’ll see if I can spring him from his lady.”

  “Okay.”

  I looked at Jerry, who was still staring after Dean as he went up to Frank.

  “Haven’t you met Dean before?”

  “No.”

  “But I thought, working for Frank—”

  “I don’t know a lot of show-business types, like you do, Mr. G. I’ve just done some stuff for Mr. S.”

  I saw Dean lean in and say something to Frank. Then some bodies got in the way and I lost them. Suddenly, a path cleared, but instead of seeing Frank and Dean I saw Detective Hargrove and his partner coming towards me and Jerry with two uniforms. Entratter saw them, too, and came rushing over to intercept them.

  “What now, Hargrove?”

  “I’m taking Gianelli and his friend downtown, Mr. Entratter.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m sick of having bodies turn up.”

  “Bodies? What body has turned up now?” Jack asked.

  “A girl this time.”

  “Blonde?” I asked, wondering if Mary had left her room at the Sands.

  “No, brunette,” Hargrove said. “Not the girl you’re looking for, but I still think you can help us.”

  “Why me and Jerry?”

  “Because this girl is the other one’s sister.”

  I almost blurted Lily’s name, but instead said, “And she’s dead?”

  “Murdered,” Hargrove said, “and you’re gonna help me find out who killed her.”

  “Detective, this is a party—” Jack started.

  “For these two,” Hargrove said, cutting him off, “the party is over.”

  Sixty-Six

  THEY TOOK US to see the body first and it was Lily. Somebody had shot her twice. After they showed her to us they took us downtown and put us in separate interview rooms.

  I sat in mine alone for about twenty minutes and then Hargrove and Gorman came in. All four walls were blank. No mirrors, no windows, just bile green walls.

  Hargrove sat across from me. Gorman leaned against the wall, as usual.

  “That girl is dead because of you,” Hargrove said.

  “How do you figure that?”

  “You could have told me about her, and her sister.”

  “How did you identify her as Mary Clarke’s sister?” I asked.

  “Her wallet. There was a picture of the two of them. They could just be friends, but the resemblance points more to them being related.” He shrugged. “Sisters.”

  I could have congratulated him, but that just would have made him mad. I didn’t want to antagonize him. I wanted this all to be over so I could go back to my Pit.

  “What do you know about the murder of Lily D’Angeli?” he demanded.

  “Nothing,” I said, truthfully. What did I know? Only that she was dead. I knew who had killed the two men—Dave Lewis
and one of the goons who had been sent to find her. And Jerry had killed the other bozo. I didn’t have any knowledge of who had killed Lily.

  Now the question was, did I offer what I knew about the dead men to Hargrove? Did I give Mary Clarke up? That depended on whether I believed her self-defense stories.

  “What if I told you big Jerry gave you up?” he asked.

  “You know I wouldn’t believe that.”

  “He’s pretty loyal, that big sonofabitch.” There was almost admiration in his tone.

  “Besides that, there’s nothing to give up.”

  “Look,” he said, “that girl is still on the run and her sister is dead. Whoever killed Lily has to still be after Mary.”

  That might’ve been true, if I hadn’t seen MoMo Giancana take Vito Balducci away. It had to be Balducci’s men who killed Lily. Maybe they’d found the money—the share she was carrying—and hadn’t told their boss. I wondered what had happened to the two of them? Had Giancana taken care of them, too?

  I was waiting for Hargrove’s next question when the door opened and a young uniformed cop stuck his head in.

  “Detective? Somebody out here wants to see you.”

  “Well, who is it?”

  “I think you better come out here and see.”

  Hargrove sighed, stood up and went out the door. Gorman stayed where he was.

  “How long till retirement?” I asked.

  “A month,” he said, “give or take.”

  That explained a lot.

  We waited in silence until Hargrove returned, with another man in tow.

  “Hey, Eddie,” Frank Sinatra said.

  “Frank.” I was surprised. “What are you doin’ here?”

  “Came to keep you out of trouble.”

  “Mr. Sinatra informs me that you were looking for Mary Clarke for him,” Hargrove said. “Is that true?”

  I looked at Frank, who nodded.

  “Yes.”

  “And you never knew her before.”

  “No.”

  “And everything you told me about going to her hotel room is true?”

  “Yes.”

  “And have you seen her since?”

  I looked at Frank and got another nod.

  “Yes.”