“I can hardly wait,” I told him after a few seconds.
“Louie can't either,” came the response.
Mr. Dough, O'Meara and Bruttafaccia, and Louie. Some guys have all the luck; I'd be willing to share mine. I said good night to Dotty, who barely looked up from her book to mumble some words I didn't catch. Then I left. By the time I was halfway home I realized that I had forgotten my galoshes. With my luck there'd be a blizzard by tomorrow.
21
The next twenty-four hours got me nowhere. I went home, had a few snorts, fixed a peanut butter and tongue sandwich, and went to bed earlier than I had in years. Slept long but badly and refused to go to the office in the morning. Didn't want to face Dotty and her nonsense. Meanwhile I saw no light shining at the end of my dark tunnel, no solutions to my problems either with the coppers or the Llama. I paced back and forth in my apartment like a trapped rat. Then I went out to a neighborhood smoke shop, where I nearly bought a pack of Old Golds. I had quit smoking a few years ago when my wife—she wasn't my ex yet—said I was smelling up our place with my cigarettes and that either I give up my filthy habit or she'd leave me. Surprise. I quit and a month later she ordered me out. I probably would have gone back to the fags had I not heard a rumor that smoking could ruin your health and send you to an early appointment with the Grim Reaper. Don't know why I paid attention to that dumbass rumor started by one quack or another, but even today at the smoke shop I couldn't bring myself to ask for my former standbys. Sadie Plotz called in the early afternoon to ask whether the police's trail on the Llama was getting hot and if I wanted to come to her place this evening to discuss it. The trail might not be hot but Sadie sure was. Told her that the trail was cold and that I had a cold but would be in touch soon.
Maybe what was putting me on edge even more than the threats of the Llama and the police was the prospect of dinner at Polish Phil's and meeting Louie. Hell, I had no beef with perverts, but if that faggot Louie put just one of his pansy paws on me, if he lisped just once into my ear … Cut it out, I told myself. You'll go there, hear if Phil has any more news, and be polite to his boyfriend.
I dressed conservatively for the evening get-together: dark suit, white shirt, nearly-stainless red tie. Didn't want to inflame Louie unnecessarily or give him the wrong idea. I stopped at a liquor store on the way to the bus stop. Knowing that Phil was a big fan of anything and everything Polish, I splurged and bought a pint of Polish vodka, which the clerk swore was pure Polish despite its label that said, “distilled in Whippany, New Jersey.” Whippany or Warsaw, it didn't matter that much.
Phil lived in a fancy part of town, which befit someone who had cleaned up on the job. Never mind stocks or real estate or rich relatives. If you knew which side was up and where it was at, as a copper you could make a bundle. And Phil had. I wondered if his shady path and past had ever crossed with those of the Assburn and his two associates, the mick and the dago.
I gave the fancily clad doorman my name. He told me Mr. Mazurki was expecting me and to go right up to the top floor. The elevator man, wearing similar garb, greeted me effusively and hoisted me to the Polack's pad twenty-two floors above terra firma. I rang the buzzer, wondering whether Phil or his sweetie would answer.
“Hey, Dickie boy, it's swell to see you. Come on in. Let me show you around the joint,” he said as he pumped my hand until it hurt. “Louie's in the kitchen fixing chow but is almost finished.”
The “joint” contained a large living room, dining area, and two rooms, probably bedrooms, their doors closed. The furniture seemed prewar and comfortable. As I suspected, Phil was not big on decorations, but two stood out: a knight in shining armor, to which was Scotch-taped his old police badge, and an armadillo stuffed and mounted on the wall. I asked where he got the latter, and he said it was a gift from Dilly Farkas. (I hadn't been aware that he knew Dilly, but then Phil had made it his business to know a lot of people.). But the highlight of the apartment was a terrace that overlooked the river. Phil said that he liked sitting out there and thinking about all the bodies that were swimming with the fishes. He said that no matter how down he felt, that always cheered him up.
“Dinner's ready, fellows.”
Louie had a pleasing voice, I had to say, his laryngitis or cold having disappeared. But it would have sounded a helluva lot better coming from a dame.
“I hope you like it.”
Jumping Jehoshaphat, or whoever's jumping these days. The voice did belong to a dame. He was a she, and a real stunner at that.
“Dickie DeWitt, meet Louie Prima,” Phil said.
“Oh, Phil, I wish you would call me 'Louise'. You know that's my real name. And just because you think it's cute to give me the same name as that musician…”
“Yeah, I know, doll, but I like to introduce you as 'Louie' and catch the take on faces like Dickie's. Did you notice how when he saw you come out of the kitchen his jaw dropped almost to his dickey?”
Phil laughed like a hyena at his joke, Louie blushed, and I just kept staring at the best-looking woman I had seen since Jean Harlow's last movie.
We sat down to eat. Louie, or Louise, as she asked me to call her, sure knew how to fix a meal: steak, potatoes, brussels sprouts, cake and ice cream, coffee, the works. I was itching to know all about her and the Polack but figured this wasn't the time or place. So I asked innocent questions: Where are you from? What do you do? What do you like? Turns out she was from Chicago, visiting New York for an indefinite stay. She was cagey about what she did, noting vaguely that it had something to do with the arts. As for what she liked, she turned her big blue ones toward Phil and said, “He's what I like.” The Polack belched and beamed the brightest smile I've seen since Roosevelt turned Alf Landon into chopped liver.
After dinner Louise excused herself and said that she'd see to the dishes while we boys had our little boys' talk. I asked if she needed help bringing things into the kitchen, but she said that that was a woman's job. Louise was definitely my kind of woman.
Phil and I left the table, went into the living room, and settled into matching wing chairs. Phil asked what I wanted to drink. He poured me a Jack Daniel's and for himself some of the vodka I had brought. I took mine with ice, he took his neat. “Hey, this is real Polish vodka,” he said after a couple of sips. I was glad that “Whippany, New Jersey” was in very fine print.
“So, let's see what we've got,” he said. “First, I'm sure you heard the good news that you're off the hook for the killing of the chink.”
I figured that either my hearing had lost a few hundred decibels or Phil had spiked my Jack Daniel's. When I recovered my speech, I told him that I had heard no such thing and recounted the extortion demands that O'Meara and Bruttafaccia had made yesterday.
Phil frowned and began to crack his oversized knuckles. “You mean to say that the mick and the guinea tried to hit on you when they already knew that you were in the clear? I've seen some crooked cops in my day, but those two go to the top of the list. A slant-eye who was the cook in the restaurant witnessed the murder of the waiter and came in and told Assburn two nights ago. He claimed that a man with a thin mustache and funny accent had slipped poison into the waiter's chow mein while he, the cook, was watching. The man told him that he'd better keep his trap shut or he'd be sorry. I guess the cook's conscience got the better of him.” Phil downed some more of Whippany's finest. “And I guess Assburn told O'Meara and Bruttafaccia before they paid you a visit. I bet that he was in for a kickback if his pals were successful with you. I wouldn't mind sitting on my patio some nice evening and watching their bodies drift by.” Rumors had it over the years that at least a few of the bodies that floated by Phil's apartment had been compliments of Phil himself or some of his closest buddies. I never asked. He never told.
“I don't know how you found all this out, Phil, but it's a big load off my mind and shoulders.”
“I still got friends in the department, pal, and I'm real glad you're home free. Now if you need help with
those two mugs who're trying to hit you up…”
“Thanks, Phil, I think I can handle them, but what about the Black Llama? Anything happening on that front?”
Phil refreshed my drink and his. “Nothing definite yet, Dickie, but I've got feelers out and an idea or two. Soon. Soon.”
I could tell that the subject had reached a dead end. Phil would be in touch when and if matters began to gel. Meanwhile, it was getting late. We shmoozed a bit about old times and then I left, but not before thanking him and telling him to thank Louise for me. I had hoped to see Louise after she finished her work in the kitchen, but she had disappeared. I was disappointed, more so than I would have guessed. There was something about her that I couldn't let go of. Stop it, you ungrateful bastard, I told myself, she's the Polack's squeeze.
22
I slept well that night. True, the Llama was still lurking somewhere out there and eager to get me, but at least the two suits from the 13th Precinct and their boss would no longer be on my back. Half a loaf is better than none any day.
Even the weather had taken a nice turn. Seasonably cold but sunny and no hint of the white stuff. I walked to work, whistling a few catchy tunes that I had caught over the years. Life's no bowl of cherries, that's for sure, but it does have its days.
I bounded up a few flights of stairs and then walked up the rest of the way. The landlord still hadn't fixed my sign but that was a small matter for now. “Hi ya, cutie,” I said to Dotty as I entered the office. Trouble was she wasn't there. Did some guy get lucky with her last night or was she too engrossed in her latest Russian novel. Maybe they're still in bed together reading about Prince Mishegas. I'd sure like to be in the sack right now with a certain gorgeous woman who has a man's name, although I'd skip the book for something more to my taste. I felt a little ashamed that I was doing this with Phil's girl even if it was only in my mind. But not ashamed enough to stop.
A knock on the door disturbed my lewd thoughts and brought me back to the real world. I grabbed my gun and said come in. The saintly enforcers of law and order had once again darkened my door and my thoughts.
“Well, well, well,” I said. “If it isn't the bad news buffoons. What can I do for you fine upstanding gentlemen?”
“You can cut the crap, for one thing, and you can learn some respect for your betters for another. Ain't that right, Tony?”
The Canoli was too occupied with trying to hold an ice cream cone in one hand and rub some of it from his suit with the other to do more than make an animal-like noise.
The muscles around my jaw tightened. “Are you Alley Oops here for another try at shaking me down, even though you know I had nothing to do with the waiter's death?” The goons looked at one another. “Oh yeah,” I said, “word's out about how the cook came in and spilled the beans, or whatever a chink cook spills. Didn't think I'd find out, did you? You guys make me sick. Now get out of here and try breaking some other poor guy's balls.”
Expecting one or both of them to try some heavy-handed stuff with me, I yanked open my desk drawer and slipped on my brass knuckles. Imagine my surprise when O'Meara gave me a big smile.
“Ah, come on, Mr. DeWitt, you got us all wrong. We only came over to let you know that the cook was snuffed out last night. Someone didn't like his egg foo yung and slit his throat with a straight razor. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?”
My blood, which had been boiling, froze. My alibi had gone down the drain with the chink's blood. Back to square one, where the cops could claim that I wasn't the innocent I declared myself to be. Sure, it made no sense that I would have offed the guy who put me in the clear by saying someone else killed the waiter. But the city's finest always want to solve murders and they don't much care if they pin the rap on an innocent slob, especially if they have it in for the slob to begin with.
“Come on, O'Meara, why would I kill the guy who could establish my innocence? Does that make sense to you and the Canoli?”
O'Meara smirked and fixed his tie, smudging some recently acquired jam in the process. “We're just doing our job, buddy boy. We're not saying you did in one or both of the chinks, but we got to keep an open mind on the subject. Of course we could still try to put in a few good words for you with the Lieutenant, but that's up to you, if you get my point.”
I got his point, all right, and it was aimed directly at the cowhide wallet my ex had given me for my birthday a few centuries back. Now I had to worry about the coppers again. I told O'Meara and Bruttafaccia that I didn't need, didn't want, their good words with the Assburn, and that they should scram and let an honest private eye do an honest day's work. That brought some guffaws from the duo, but they did leave.
I was wondering whether Polish Phil had learned about this recent unpleasant turn of events, and I was thinking of calling him when the phone rang.
“Hello, Señor DeWitt,” the heavily accented voice said, “this is John Doe. You remember me from yesterday?”
Well at least some business is heading my way. “Sure thing, Mr. Dough. Say the word and I'm ready to get on the case and find out if your missus has been doing more than shooting for the corner pockets down at the pool hall.”
“No, Señor DeWitt, I do not have a señora, and if I did, I wouldn't let the puta go near a pool hall. What do you take me for, eh?”
Why is this jokester trying to pull my chain, I wondered. “I don't understand, Mr. Dough, why you came here yesterday or why you're calling me today if you don't want me to do a job for you.” I hadn't let my voice betray the fact that I wanted to have a go at his face and send him to his dentist for dentures, both upper and lower.
“Now pay attention, you stupid gringo. Look around your office. Anything missing?”
I took my time looking but didn't see anything unusual. “There's nothing missing as far as I can tell,” I told him, “and I don't cotton to being called names. Got me, spic?”
“Oh, I got you all right. Señor Gringo. And we got your little chiquita, too.”
I didn't know what “chiquita” meant, but I had a pretty good idea he was referring to the size of my you-know-what. I checked to be sure, but it was still there.
“Listen, taco head, mine is bigger than yours any day of the week, and so are my frijoles. Get what I mean?”
The palavering ceased. “Si, I get what you mean. Now you get what I mean, and get it right or you'll be a sorry hombre. We've got your secretary.”
I looked around the room once more to make sure that I had not overlooked Dotty or that she had not just come in and I had failed to see her. I was shocked. Why would anyone want her, I wondered. She's a babe, all right, but she can't type worth a fig and she drives you bananas with her fancy books. But what really shocks me is that she would quit without giving notice. If Dotty has anything going for her—besides a body that many a man would go to the electric chair for with a smile on his face—it was her loyalty. How could she do this to me?
“Listen,” I told the lowlife at the other end of the line, “you're a rat for stealing my secretary from me before she even had the decency to give two-weeks' notice. But she's a good girl, and I hope that you'll treat her right and pay her a decent wage.” In my heart I knew I'd miss Dotty and wished her all the best.
“Listen yourself, Señor Bird Brain, we have taken your secretary and we will kill her unless you do as you're told. Comprende?”
Wait a minute. Now it was becoming clear. Why those dirty bastards. They'd kidnapped my Dotty!
“You can't do this,” I shouted. “There's a law against kidnapping. Ever hear of the Lindbergh law, knucklehead? The chair's waiting for you unless you let her go right now.” I hoped that this would convince him. It didn't.
“We'll call you Monday at the same time, Señor Snoop, with our demands. Don't worry about the lovely señorita, at least not until then. And you have a very good day. Hasta mañana.” Click.
They say that the sure way to kayo an opponent is to hit him hard with the old left-right c
ombination. I felt as if Señor Dough and the police had walloped me with that lethal combination, and I was staggering. My knees were buckling, but I hadn't hit the canvas. At least not yet. I thought matters over. Then I called Phil and informed him of the dirty substance that had hit the fan.
“Take it easy, Dickie boy. I happen to know for a fact that Assburn and his henchmen can't pin anything on you even if the cook was killed. You see, a pal of mine heard the cook's story when he came in the station. He's not going to forget it either, not the way he feels about the Lieutenant and his goons.”
That was the good news.
“What about Dotty?”
That was the not-so-good news.
“I don't know, pal. I'm going to be frank with you. It doesn't sound good. But keep cool. You aren't going to know what the scumbags want until they contact you. It certainly sounds like this Mr. Doe is in cahoots with the Llama. I'd go to the bank on that one. Listen, I still got my feelers out, and maybe something will break later today. I'll call you soon as I hear anything. By the way, Louie said she really enjoyed meeting you. What a gal, don't you think?”
Yeah, what a gal. I'd be all smiles after hearing her compliment, but I was too concerned about the other gal, my Gal Friday. But the Polack was right: I couldn't do anything for now. And on that note I closed up shop and headed home. The only catchy ditty I could think of whistling en route was Irving Berlin's “What Do I Do?” Yeah, what do I do?
23
I dragged myself home, feeling like Max Schmeling must have felt when Joe Louis beat the living tar out of him during their rematch. I hadn't felt this bad since my wife, some years back, had said that her brother was out of work and would stay with us for a few weeks. (The lazy bastard stayed eight months. I was sorely tempted to put it to my wife that either he left or I would. In retrospect, I would have come out way ahead if I had.) Poor Dotty. My mind raced with thoughts of what the Llama and John Dough were doing to her right now—taunting her, molesting her, depriving her of her novels. I had to save her. Sure. But how? I don't believe in miracles, especially after having had my 30-to-1 longshot nag miss winning a big one by a nose at Aqueduct. And sitting on my slightly overweight butt wasn't going to save her either. What kind of gumshoe, I thought, drags his ass on his own case? So after a skimpy supper of Spam, canned hash, and sugar-coated peanuts, I got moving.
The Black Llama Caper Page 10