[Rat Pack 02] - Luck Be a Lady, Don't Die Page 18

  “Aren’t you supposed to be at rehearsal?” I asked. He’d obviously come from there, since he was wearing his tux.

  “I rehearsed plenty. I’ve got it down pat. What the hell is up with Frank?” Dean asked, without rancor. He was obviously curious, and concerned.

  “Dean, how much did you know about Frank’s problem when you asked me to help him?”

  “Everything,” he said.

  “All of it?” I asked. “The girl, MoMo—”

  “Yeah, all of it,” he said. He looked around, then perched a hip on Marcia’s desk. “Frank’s problem is usually women. Ava—he’ll never let that one go—Juliet, and now this new one, Mary.”

  “Do you know about Lily, too?”

  Dean frowned. Apparently not, and he didn’t like not knowing.

  “Who’s Lily?”

  “Mary’s sister.”

  “Frank’s involved with her, too?”

  “I think it’s more complicated than that.”

  I went on to explain it all to Dean, laying everything out. I thought maybe he’d have a fresh perspective.

  He listened and when I finished he said, “You need to know some more about this other girl, the sister.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’d like to know who this boss is she’s been fucking, and then ripping off.”

  He pointed to the phone on Marcia’s desk and asked, “Can I use that?”

  “Sure,” I said. I doubted Marcia would ever clean it, again.

  He picked up the phone, dialed a bunch of numbers and then said, “Fred, it’s me. I need a quick check run on . . .” he snapped his fingers at me.

  “Lily D’Angeli,” I said. “Chicago.”

  He repeated the name.

  “I want to know where she lives, works, who she works for, everything. I’m at the Sands. Call me in my room, or at this number.” He read it off to whoever he was talking to and then hung up.

  I stared at him. I didn’t have the heart to tell him Danny was already working on it. Besides, maybe his guy would get the info first.

  “It might take a while. If I get the call in my suite I’ll find you.” He checked his watch. “I’ve got time before the show to take a nap.”

  “Will you be at the premier?” I asked.

  “I’ll be at the show after,” he said, standing up. “I don’t want to see the movie.”

  “Why not?”

  “We were a bunch of one-take-Charlies on that shoot,” he said. “Let’s just say it ain’t my best work and leave it at that.”

  He opened the door.

  “Dean?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Who was on the other end of the phone?”

  He studied me for a minute, then said, “Fred Otash.” The Hollywood P.I., I thought. “He’ll get the goods on this D’Angeli broad, and I’ll get it to you. Nobody has to know where it came from, though. Capicei”

  “Yeah, Dean.” I knew that much Italian. “I understand.”

  Fifty-Four

  WHEN I CAME BACK downstairs I went outside to question the valets, which I should have done in the first place. I used the photo I had of Mary, telling them to imagine her with brown hair.

  I’d left Marcia’s office with Dean before she returned. He took the elevator up, while I took it down.

  “Check in with me later,” he said. “Fred’s real good at this and I’m sure he’ll have something.”

  “Okay, Dean,” I said. “Thanks.”

  “Anything for Frank,” he said, shaking my hand, then added, “or for you, pally.”

  As his elevator doors closed I tried not to show how pleased the remark made me feel. Foolish, but pleased.

  None of the valets remembered Lily getting into a cab, or a car. I went back inside and found Jerry sitting in the lounge, laughing at Buddy Hackett. I stood there for a minute and watched the big guy. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him that happy before. I hated to bother him, so I went in search of a house phone instead and called Entratter’s office. He’d still be there for a couple of hours. He never left before five.

  “Where the hell have you been?” he demanded. “I’ve been tryin’ to find you.”

  Rather than try to explain what I’d been doing I gave him an answer that would satisfy him.

  “I was with Frank, and then Dean.”

  “Your girl picked up her Western Union money.”

  I was stunned.

  “She couldn’t have,” I said. “Why would she do that if her sister’s here?”

  “That ain’t for me to figure out, is it, kid?” he asked.

  “Did your man follow her?”

  “He did, why do you think I been tryin’ to find you? Here’s the address.”

  “Wait, wait...” I patted myself down, looking for something to write on. I had a pen, but the only slip of paper I had was that airline ticket stub. I smoothed it out and said, “Go.”

  He read off an address and I wrote it down.

  “Do you know where that is?” he asked.

  “I do.”

  “Good, cause I ain’t got a clue.” I wanted to say, that’s because you never leave the Sands, but I shut my mouth.

  “Get this done, Eddie,” he said. “The opening’s tonight.”

  “Premier. ”

  “What?”

  “It’s called a premier.”

  “I don’t give a crap what it’s called,” he said, “I don’t want it ruined. Got me?”

  “I gotcha. Jack.”

  I hung up and went to drag Jerry away from Buddy Hackett.

  * * *

  “That was funny,” Jerry said, from behind the wheel of my Caddy, “the way Buddy picked on you as soon as you came in.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “it was funny.”

  I didn’t like being the butt of the joke, but I did interrupt Buddy as I entered, taking some of the attention off him, so I guess I deserved it. Jerry thought it was hilarious.

  “Where we goin’?” he asked.

  “Drive along here a few more blocks, and then turn left.”

  “We just went past that Western Union office.”

  “I know,” I said. “The girl apparently picked up her money.”

  “I thought that was just a scam.”

  “So did I,” I said. “I guess we’re gonna find out for sure.”

  He took the turn I told him to and we started looking for the address Jack had given me. At one point Jerry started to chuckle but I didn’t bother asking him what he found so damn funny.

  “There it is.”

  This area of Vegas was run-down, to say the least. What we were pulling up in front of was a fleabag hotel.

  “She’s stayin’ here?” Jerry asked.

  “That’s what I was told.”

  We got out of the Caddy and entered the lobby of the hotel.

  “No vacancy,” the kid behind the desk said. “Can’t ya read?”

  “Believe it or not,” I said, “we don’t want a room.”

  “Whataya want?” The acne scars on his face were red, like freckles. And he had a couple of new pimples that were about to burst. “We’re looking for a girl.”

  “We don’t allow none of that here.”

  “Furthest thing from my mind,” I said. I took out the photo of Mary. “Either her, or somebody who looks like her, but with brown hair.”

  His eyes widened when he saw the photo, and then he quickly hid the fact that he’d recognized Mary Clarke.

  “What room?”

  “I didn’t say—”

  “Jerry.”

  Jerry’s hand shot out and he grabbed the guy by the front of his grimy t-shirt. When he pulled, the guy came halfway across the desk until his shirt tore.

  “What room?” Jerry asked.

  “F-fourteen,” the clerk stammered. “Third floor.”

  “When’s the last time you saw her?”

  “T-this mornin’. She w-went out.”

  “She come back?” Jerry asked.

  “Not yet
.”

  I touched Jerry on the arm and he let the kid go.

  “Be here when we come back down,” I told him.

  Jerry showed the kid his index finger and said, “Don’t make me come lookin’ for you.”

  “I—I’ll be here.”

  “And don’t call upstairs,” I said, eyeing the switchboard behind the desk.

  “I—I won’t.”

  The dump had an elevator, but it didn’t work, so we walked. I took the lead. When we got to three I was breathing hard. Jerry was fine. Jesus, I thought, two flights of stairs? I was going to have to get into some kind of shape.

  We walked down the hall to fourteen and Jerry pressed his ear to the door.

  “Nothin’,” he mouthed.

  I thought I should have gotten a key from the frightened clerk. Then I decided to try the doorknob and it turned.

  “That’s not good,” Jerry said, taking out his gun. “Me first, Mr. G.”

  I didn’t argue.

  I opened the door and Jerry went through the doorway with his gun extended. His bulk blocked my view as he stopped just inside. “Jerry?”

  “Step in carefully, Mr. G.,” he said.

  I was about to ask why when he stepped aside and I saw the blood.

  A lot of it.

  Fifty-Five

  WE'VE BEEN IN THIS SITUATION before,” Jerry said.

  “Too many damn times,” I answered.

  It was one room, with a bed and some furniture and no place to hide. There was blood on the bed, the floor and the walls, enough to suggest that a helluva fight had gone on and somebody had gotten seriously hurt.

  The room was empty.

  “Back out,” Jerry said, and we did. In the hall he holstered his gun.

  “I didn’t see any suitcases,” I said. “Did you?”

  “No.”

  “The clerk said she went out this morning and hasn’t come back.”

  “Maybe we better talk to him again.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “about a lot of things.”

  We went down the hall to the stairwell without running into anybody, and the only sounds we heard came from room nine, where a man and a woman and some bed springs were making a hell of a racket. . .

  When we got downstairs the clerk was gone.

  “I thought we scared him into waitin’,” Jerry said.

  “I think we scared him into running.”

  “So now what?”

  “We should call the cops.”

  “You know what’ll happen if we do that.”

  “You can leave, Jerry,” I said. “I’ll call Hargrove direct and—”

  “That man hates you, Mr. G.,” Jerry said, cutting me off. “It ain’t healthy the way he hates you—for you or for him.”

  I’d never given serious thought before to the possibility that someone might hate me—and hate me that much. It was unsettling.

  “I think one of them anonymous calls would be better,” Jerry said.

  “You don’t think he’ll know it’s me?”

  “Maybe,” he said, “but he can’t prove it.”

  No one else had seen us enter or—hopefully—leave. Then again, it would have been more accurate to say that we hadn’t seen anyone. Somebody could have cracked a door and spotted us in the hallway. That was a chance we’d have to take. Also, if the clerk reappeared he’d place us at the scene.

  “That clerk is still gonna be runnin’ tomorrow,” Jerry said, as if reading my mind. “We better get outta here and make the call.”

  We checked the front and made our way to the car without encountering any of the hotel’s other residents.

  “Jerry,” I said, “from the amount of blood in that room, could somebody be dead?”

  “It’s possible,” he said.

  “So where’s the body?” I asked. “How’d they get it out with nobody seeing them?”

  “We got in and out with nobody seeing us.”

  “Yeah, but we weren’t dragging a body.”

  We drove in silence for a while, then Jerry said, “Wanna stop at a pay phone?”

  “Guess that’d be best.”

  He waited until we were on Flamingo and then pulled over to the curb in front of a Terrible Herbst service station. I didn’t get out, because something had just occurred to me.

  “What is it?” Jerry asked.

  “The blood.”

  “What about it?”

  “There was none in the hall and none on the door,” I said.

  “None on the window, either.”

  I looked at him.

  “I noticed,” he said.

  “How’d they get the bloody body out?”

  “Wrapped it in somethin’.”

  “Maybe,” I said, “but maybe there was no body.”

  “Whataya mean?”

  “I mean a lot of blood splashed around to make it look like somebody was killed.”

  “Why?”

  “Maybe so we’ll stop looking.”

  “If the cops think somebody’s dead they’re gonna keep lookin’.”

  “Maybe,” I said, going on with my “maybes,” “whoever left the blood isn’t worried about the cops. Maybe they’re just worried about us.”

  “Or you,” he said. “Ain’t nobody worried about me.”

  “Okay, me,” I said. “The blood is to throw me off.”

  “But the money—”

  “Picking up the money at the Western Union office was just a ploy to get me to that hotel, so I’d see the blood. Maybe they figured I’d tell Frank the girl’s dead.”

  “Who’s they?”

  “That’s the question.”

  “Are we still gonna call the cops?”

  “Sure,” I said, “why not? Let them deal with the phony blood trail. It’ll keep them off our backs for a while.”

  “If it’s phony.”

  “Think about it,” I said. “You saw the room. If somebody was really dead would there be more blood? Or less?”

  “That depends on how they were killed,” he said. “If they was stabbed bad they’d bleed like a pig.”

  “That much?”

  “More,” he said. “If they was gut-shot they’d bleed to death.”

  “So, more blood.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Could you cut somebody, get a lot of blood and not kill them?”

  “Sure.”

  “I know these two women are up to something,” I said. “I feel it now. ”

  “There’s another question, though,” Jerry said.

  “What’s that?”

  “If nobody’s dead,” he said, “where’d they get all the blood?”

  Fifty-Six

  I CALLED THE COPS and then got back into the car.

  “Where to?” Jerry asked.

  “My place,” I said. “We’ve got to get dressed for the premier.”

  “We’re goin’?” he asked. “Both of us?”

  “Yeah, we’re goin’,” I said. “Maybe one or both of these broads will show up there.” I looked at him. “Besides, I haven’t had time to get myself a date, so you’re it, big guy.”

  “Just better buy me flowers,” he muttered, and pressed the accelerator.

  * * *

  When we arrived there was a woman sitting on my front steps. Her head was slumped down between her shoulders, and her face was covered. We couldn’t even see if she had brown hair or blonde.

  “Old girlfriend?” Jerry asked.

  “Unless I miss my guess,” I said, “that’s one of the sisters we’ve been looking for.”

  “Really?” he asked. “We’re lookin’ all over and we find her on your front porch? Ain’t that what they call irony?”

  I looked at Jerry and said, “You impress me every day.”

  He looked proud.

  We approached the girl, who looked up quickly, her eyes wild, her hair even wilder. I found myself looking into the face of Mary Clarke.

  “Mary?” I said.

  “Are you E
ddie Gianelli?” She stared at Jerry as she asked me the question.

  “That’s right.”

  “My sister, she ... she told me to come to you for help.”

  “I’ve been looking for you for days,” I said.

  She was still staring at Jerry, as if she expected him to sprout horns.

  “This is my friend Jerry,” I said. “He wants to help you, too.”

  Now she looked past us at the street.

  “Can we go inside?”

  “Of course.”

  I used my key to open the door and allowed her to go in first. Jerry brought up the rear, pulled the door shut tightly and checked out the window. He turned to look at me and shrugged.

  “If I could freshen up somewhere?” she asked. “I’ve been ... running.”

  “For quite a while, too,” I said. “Bathroom’s down the hall, on the right.”

  She had a purse with her. She held it tightly to her chest and went down the hall.

  “I’ll make some coffee,” Jerry said.

  “Good idea.”

  “Think you’re gonna get the whole story now?” he asked.

  “To tell you the truth, Jerry, I don’t think we’ll ever get the whole story.”

  He nodded sagely and went into the kitchen. I wondered if I should position myself outside the bathroom? Was there a chance that she’d beat it out the back door? If she had come to me for help, why would she?

  I remained in the living room and soon the bathroom door opened and she came back down the hall. She’d combed her hair, which looked presentable, if a little greasy; fixed her makeup. But her eyes still appeared brittle and she’d already chewed some of the fresh lipstick she’d applied.

  “Where’s ...”

  “Jerry? In the kitchen. He’s a homebody. Thought you could use some coffee.”

  “I could, actually.” She touched her hair with one hand and held her purse tightly with the other.

  “Mary, have you seen Lily?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know where she is now?”

  “No.”

  “Is she alive?”

  She hesitated, then said, “I don’t know. Can I sit down?”