Better Dead (38 page)

Here and there, mounted on the wall, were exotic items that while not overtly sexual added to the general air of depravity—a Burmese spirit mask, a Tachi sword, a large hand-carved opium pipe. The right half of the wall on the street end was mirrored, with glass shelving holding a virtual library of booze behind a glass-brick ebony-topped bar with a handful of stools—leopard-skin seats and chromium stems.

What the fuck was this place?

It screamed high-end brothel, but wasn't set up to handle more than a john or two at most.

A door led to a bedroom, which was all but filled by a double bed with black silk sheets and a contemporary bookcase—headboard filled not with volumes but small pornographic Indian and Oriental statuettes of women demonstrating their acrobatic abilities and their potential to add new pages to the
Kama Sutra
.

Using Pastore's handkerchief (which was apparently mine now), I checked the nightstand drawers: more Trojans than had fought over Helen. Also various lubricants and tissues. The drawer below that offered handcuffs, a black blindfold, a black whip, a leather collar, leather ankle restraints, and a red ball gag.

On the wall facing the bed, over a low-slung dresser with a row of liquor bottles, was a big picture window of a mirror. Always a good whorehouse prop—many a man likes to see himself having his way with a beautiful naked woman.

And I bet any men on the other side of that mirror also liked to watch.…

A so-called two-way mirror is really just glass treated to be partly reflective and partly transparent—a brightly illuminated room on one side can be viewed on the other by watchers in the dark. That meant the johns lured here would be getting precious little mood lighting. Maybe their wives only liked it with the lights off and this made for a nice, bright change of pace.…

In the bathroom off the bedroom, a closet's fake rear wall was a door that easily nudged open onto a smallish room—with thick carpet on the floors, walls, and ceiling—that was set up to observe the bedroom I'd just examined and an identical one in the adjacent 2A. RCA reel-to-reel recorders were on the carpeted floor near each big window, by stacked tape boxes; and a pair of Kodak 16mm movie cameras were positioned facing in opposite directions to capture both rooms through their respective “mirrors.”

Otherwise, this control booth was strictly Spartan—first Trojans, now Spartans—with decorations limited to thumbtacked black-and-white photographs on the carpeted walls of couples in those identical bedrooms doing what came naturally, and sometimes unnaturally. Four straight-backed wooden chairs were available for views on the proceedings. The only creature comfort was a small refrigerator stocked with bottles of beer. I wondered how often the DeMilles here had sneaked back into a bathroom to take a leak while a call girl and her john were covering the pissing sound with bed springs.

Okay. So a call girl helped get the goods on somebody in this setup—a politician? A Soviet spy who needed turning? Could be anything or anybody of that sort. And right now I didn't really give a damn.

What mattered was that two men were in that adjacent apartment, and Bettie was in there with them, as their unwilling guest. That was my guess, anyway—and I was counting on being right, because I had nowhere else to look.

But they, and for that matter she, were not in either bedroom that the two-way mirrors revealed.

A small knob in the carpeted wall opened the hidden door that let me into the bathroom off the 2A bedroom, which was identical to 2B's—booze bottles lined up like soldiers on a dresser just in front of the mirror, a bed with its own black silk sheets and collection of obscene statuettes, and nightstand drawers again filled with rubbers and bondage gear.

The door here onto 2A's living room was slightly ajar, making the conversation of the two men audible. So was the music—sounded like the radio to me, Tony Bennett doing “Stranger in Paradise.”

Nine-millimeter in hand, barrel up, I leaned ever so gently against the door and took advantage of the two-inch view it provided.

Not surprisingly, I was looking into another gaudy sexed-up living room with framed French posters and nude lamps and heart-shaped pillows. But this layout had something the other one didn't …

 … the one and only Queen of the Pinups, Bettie Page in the flesh, in black bra and panties with garter belt and sheer black stockings and leather high-heel boots, rope-tied at the ankles and wrists and elbows and above and below her breasts into a red vinyl open-arm armchair.

All that separated this from an Irving Klaw photo shoot was the lack of a ball gag, but then they hadn't needed to gag her at all, at least not yet—she appeared dazed, groggy, the sky-blue eyes open but unfocused, her head lolling slightly, the black shoulder-brushing pageboy moving as if in slow motion.

The bastards had drugged her—had they used that same LSD-25 junk? The stuff at Deep Creek Lake that had started the chain of events that led to Frank Olson's exit out a thirteenth-floor window?

They were talking, over Tony Bennett's vocals, and one male voice, mid-register, said, “If we
do
that, you know what that means.”

A raspy, lower-register male voice responded: “We're over the fuckin' line
already,
Johnny boy.”

“Sid wouldn't like it.” The voice on the phone from Bettie's. “He's
already
put out with us.”

Bettie's eyelashes were fluttering like loopy butterflies as she gently rocked in the chair, apparently hearing none of it.

“What!” the raspy voice came back derisively. “You think the mad doc'll
really
give the bimbo back to Heller? And, what, let them two go skippin' off like Jack and Jill up the hill? Not before breakin' their fuckin'
crowns
he won't.”

“Who can say? Not our call.”

The voice on the phone walked past their woozy captive, who still showed no sign of any awareness. He headed toward what I figured was the apartment's bar setup, which should be over to my left, giving me a good look at him.

“Him” being John Martin, the security man at the Statler, still in his damn blue blazer with the hotel's crest, though his tie was off and the jacket hung open so that the .45 Colt stuffed in his waistband could be easily accessed.

I
knew
I'd seen that sharp-featured punk somewhere!

He'd been one of the CIA bunch who'd rushed into the Morton Street art gallery when the shit hit the fan. Not the blond guy in charge who I mostly dealt with, but the one who knelt over Natalie Ash's body, checking for signs of life that weren't there to be found.

Martin called from the bar, “Can I get you anything, Vince?”

And Vince, the raspy-voice guy, stepped past Bettie and into my line of vision …

 …
and him I'd seen before, too!

He was big and bullnecked with neatly slicked-back black hair and scar tissue over one eye that gave it a distinctive droop. In a white shirt with no tie, collar open, sleeves rolled to his elbows, and a pair of dark trousers, he clutched in his right fist a .38 Smith & Wesson that was probably the same gun I'd taken off him months ago at the Waldorf.

Vince had been the spokesman of the pair of thugs that Frank Costello had sent to my Waldorf suite at Roy Cohn's bidding, once upon a time. But what the hell could he be doing here? How could the CIA be in bed with the mob? What lunacy was this?

“What you can
get
me,” Vince said, and his thick moist upper lip pulled back over big yellowish tobacco-stained teeth, “is some of them bedroom gimmicks—handcuffs and whips and shit. Come on, Johnny boy, it's been a rough night! Why not reward ourselves with a little fun?”

The Statler security man stepped back into view, a tumbler of amber liquid in his right hand, his back mostly to me.

“No,” he said firmly. “We're already in Dutch with Sid. We play this straight. Anyway, hell—I'm not
about
to force myself on some helpless girl.”

Revolver at his side, the thug stood near Bettie, who was still out of it, head hanging a little, eyes showing as much expression as golf balls.

“I mean, Johnny boy,
look
at what she had on under that dress,” he rasped, waving the .38 at her, his mouth wet. “
This
ain't some innocent kid! She's beggin' for it! She's one sweet piece of ass and I mean to tear some off for myself.”

I went in and he looked at me and I shot him in the head.

Bettie jerked a little, probably mostly at the ring of the gunshot, which slightly preceded the
glop
of brains and bone and blood splattering onto the glass of a framed Toulouse-Lautrec, where the stuff slid and streaked and dripped like lumpy cake batter.

The Statler kid dropped his drink and goggled at me but put his hands up, facing me now. He looked very young and very pale.

“Fuck,” he said. “Heller.”

Bettie raised her head a little, frowning like she was trying to make out an impossible eye chart.

“I knew I'd seen you,” I said. “Are you going to make me kill you, kid? Not that I'd lose sleep.”

Tony Bennett had passed the musical ball to Johnnie Ray, who was doing “Cry.”

Our
“Johnnie” swallowed. His lower lip was quivering. Maybe he'd cry, too. “Just take her and go, will you? I was against this anyway.”

I grinned at him. “Well, that's nice to hear. But what about this dead hoodlum? Nice company you keep, John.”

He was keeping those hands up nice and high. “Things got away from us tonight. Just spun out of control. You have to believe that.”

“Oh, I believe it. I wasn't thinking everything had gone strictly to plan. Is Gottlieb coming?”

He swallowed thickly. “Who?”

I kept the nine-millimeter trained on him. “That's the ‘Sid' you and the dead asshole were discussing.”

Martin sucked in air, visibly trembling now. “I … I think Sid'll be along sometime. But maybe not till morning.”

“This
is
morning, John.”

He worked up the sickliest smile I ever saw. “Why don't you let me untie the girl, and you just take her. Just take her out of here. You said it before…”

He nodded toward Vince, who was on his back staring at the ceiling, mouth open, the yawn of a man permanently asleep.

“… this is just a dead hoodlum. He'll be disposed of. Like you never did a thing here. But you do something to
me
, and that won't be so easy for the Agency to forgive.”

“Oh, and I would
so
like the Agency's forgiveness. They seem to be so very understanding.”

He ignored the sarcasm, bobbing his head toward Bettie, his expression hopeful. “So … should I? Untie her?”

“What did you give her? That LSD-25 crap?”

He shook his head. “No. Just a sedative to keep her quiet. She'll be fine. I swear!”

“Untie her then.”

He nodded, swallowed again, and went over and knelt and undid the ropes that bound her ankles to the chair. She looked down at him, puzzled, as if she'd never seen a dog so big. He rose and, as he seemed about to begin work on untying her left wrist, he bolted around behind her and then the big automatic was in his hand.

And its snout in her neck.

The beauty in black lingerie raised her eyebrows as if she'd nodded off in class and the teacher had just called her name.

“All right, you son of a bitch,” Martin said, a new edge in his voice, a nasty smile going, eyes tight and menacing. He suddenly didn't seem so young. “You just back your ass on out of here. Later, I may let her go, if Dr. Gottlieb approves it. If I were you, I'd head to your hotel—the Waldorf, isn't it?—and wait until someone contacts you. Personally, I don't think any harm will come to either you or the girl here. But it's not my place to decide.”

She was seated there, oblivious, his pale face floating above hers like a seance trick, his chin almost touching the top of her head, the .45 dimpling her throat under her ear.

I said, “You're new at this, aren't you?”

“Fuck you, Heller. Get the hell out of here.
Now!
”

“I don't think you CIA boys get the training the FBI guys do. You're too collegiate. Too upper-crust.”

“Shut up! Get out!”

“Were you absent that day?”

“What fucking day?”

“The day they taught you what happens with a head shot.”

“Well, it fucking kills you.”

“Yes. Immediately.”

I fired and a third eye appeared in his forehead that did not signal enlightenment, rather a blankness that his other eyes mimicked, the bullet going through to spiderweb a Folies Bergère poster and spray lacy petticoats a glittering red. He lingered for a moment on his dead legs and feet, as if the Statler blazer were holding him up, though his arm with the gun fell at once to his side and the weapon tumbled with a thud from fingers no longer getting signals from the brain I'd shut off, and then as if every bone in his body had melted, he fell in a pile.

Bettie just sat there, numbly, like Ethel Rosenberg waiting for another jolt.

I came over, holstered the nine-millimeter, and untied her wrists and elbows and removed the ropes binding her to the chair. She began to come around, shaking her head, blinking, opening her eyes wide, and her mouth, as if trying to make sure everything still worked.

Her face swung toward me, and so did the black hair. “What … what
happened
? Nathan! Where
am
I? What's that awful … smell?”

“Death,” I said.

The coppery tang of blood gave highlights to the foul bouquet of bodies evacuating waste.

I helped her onto her feet. Normally she was good in those exaggerated heels, but she was shaky now. She looked right. She looked left. She pointed at this body. She pointed at that one.