Blues in the Night (2 page)

Corrigan walked across the room, reached down and yanked the packet of currency from the dead man's fingers. He didn't have to break the fingers, so that was one good thing he could say about the slimy little weasel. He returned the banknotes to the briefcase and snapped the lid shut.

‘Egyptian,' he said.

‘I'd have done that for you, Cap,' Drier said.

‘The gun was in my hand,' Corrigan said.

He slipped the engraved coin back into its felt pouch and handed it and the pistol to Drier. ‘They go with the canvasses, Leonard.'

The door buzzer sounded.

Corrigan glanced at the monitor attached to a metal brace over the hall door. He smiled at the sight of the visitor standing on the stoop.

‘Think of some inventive resting place for Mr Sarif, Leonard. But be sure you dig the ceramic bullets out, first. Wouldn't want to confuse the Sûreté.'

He moved quickly to the front door. There, he paused to fix the knot of his tie, straighten his cuffs and pat down the hair at the back of his head. Satisfied with his appearance, he twisted the bolt lock free and opened the door to what, in his Yalie years, he used to refer to as ‘an F. Scott Fitzgerald wet dream'.

Angela Lowell was an ice princess in her late twenties. Blonde, dressed for success.
Grace Kelly playing a Rosalind Russell role,
Corrigan thought. He had to remind himself that the stunner entering his shop was too young to know who the hell Rosalind Russell was. She might not even know who Grace Kelly was.

‘Ms Lowell, an unexpected pleasure,' he said.

‘I just wanted to make sure that everything was set for the flight tomorrow, Mr Corrigan,' she said, leading him to he display room.

She could have phoned, Corrigan thought. Dare he hope that her visit might be an invitation to . . . something? ‘We're all set,' he said.

‘Could I take one last look at my selections?'

Corrigan realized her selections were in the back room with the freshly dead Mr Sarif. ‘I'm afraid they're already crated,' he said. ‘Not having second thoughts?'

‘No. I just wanted to see them again.'

Corrigan gave her his most charming grin. ‘You'll have years and years to do that.'

‘Assuming I remain . . . employed by the purchaser.'

‘Hold out for visitation rights,' Corrigan said.

She smiled. Damn. Bottle that smile and you could put Pfizer right out of the Viagra business.

‘I don't suppose you'd want to spend your last evening in Paris with a middle-aged art dealer,' he said, ‘who just happens to know a great little four star restaurant on the Rue de Varenne?'

‘That's sweet of you, but I'm meeting friends.'

‘Lucky friends.' Laying her would have been the icing on the cake, but since that option was off the table, he saw no reason to prolong his hard-on. ‘Well, you've got an open dinner invitation on your next visit,' he said, leading her to the front door.

Before exiting, she turned to look at him. ‘It must be so stimulating,' she said.

‘Beg pardon?'

‘Being constantly surrounded by all this wonderful art.'

Corrigan cocked his head. ‘Yeah. Stimulating . . . and frustrating,' he said.

‘Frustrating?'

‘Sure.' He smiled. She probably thought the smile was for her, but actually he was thinking about the dead self-proclaimed Egyptian in the back room. ‘You know the old saying: “Art is forever, but life is so damn short”.'

Los Angeles

ONE

‘
J
ee-zus,' Wylie said. ‘He's giving it to her good.'

Mace stared at the grinning young idiot sitting beside him at the window and wondered if he might be suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder. They were in darkness, in a room on the top floor of the Florian Apartment Hotel, a U-shaped, three-story building a block above Sunset Boulevard.

Wylie had his night vision binoculars trained on the wing of the building across the way. Mace guessed that he was barely into his twenties. Six feet tall, a couple inches shorter than Mace and maybe twenty-five pounds lighter at one-sixty-five to one-seventy. Greenish-blonde mop of hair showing black at the roots.

There was enough light from the moon and the Florian's glowing pool in the courtyard below for Mace to make out the head of a blue and red serpent tattoo poking above the neckline of Wylie's loud Hawaiian shirt.

At Pelican Bay prison, Mace used to watch an old con named Billy Jet stick needles full of dye into the flesh of some of the other cons. There wasn't much else to do there, except get tats or watch other guys getting tats. As far as Mace knew Wylie had never served time, so the snake didn't make any sense to him at all.

The second floor window occupying Wylie's attention wasn't the one they were there to watch, but that point seemed to be lost on him. He licked his slightly feminine lips and said, ‘Oh, ba-bee, don't use it up all at once.'

Mace stubbed out his cigarette and picked up his binoculars. He aimed them at a set of windows directly across the way. The main room of the apartment was still empty. The subject was somewhere to the right, probably in the bathroom, since no light had gone on in the bedroom.

‘Shee-it,' Wylie said, ‘this waaay beats the beater flicks on cable all to hell. I'm ready for a little hormone fix, myself.'

Mace sighed.

‘Whoa. Watch out for Mr Back-door Man.'

‘If I didn't know better,' Mace said, staying focused on the subject's apartment, ‘I'd take you for some snot-nose kid on his first trip to what they laughingly call a gentleman's club.'

‘Oh, yeah?' Wylie said, obviously stung. ‘Well . . . go fuck yourself.'

‘You're the one who's turned on,' Mace replied calmly.

‘What turns you on, big man?' Wylie said heatedly. ‘Little boys?'

Mace watched the subject enter her living room dressed in a robe, rubbing her blonde hair with a towel, her face shiny from night cream. She crossed the room and moved just past the wide window and out of view.

‘Pro work,' he said. ‘That turns me on.'

The subject walked back into his line of sight carrying a thick book. A coffee-table book. Probably an art book, Mace thought. He'd been told she was an art appraiser, an artist herself.

He liked the way she moved, a graceful glide. He couldn't see her feet, but he imagined they were bare, luxuriating in the soft texture of the carpet.

‘You saying what? That I'm not a pro?' Wylie asked, more hurt now than angry.

‘I'm saying you should concentrate on the job.'

The subject turned out the living room light. Mace started a countdown. One hundred. One hundred and one. One hundred and two. One hundred and—

A light went on behind the bedroom drapes.

Mace lowered his binoculars and placed them on the table. ‘She's tucked in,' he said.

Wylie was glaring at him. ‘So you don't think I'm a pro, huh?'

In point of fact, Mace thought he was a hopeless jackass. He'd formed that opinion as soon as he'd laid eyes on him at LAX that afternoon. But he didn't know how long they'd be cooping, so he said, ‘Right now, I'm jet-lagged, bone-tired and pissed off at the world in general. If Paulie Lacotta gives you a paycheck, you're a pro. OK?'

Wylie still wasn't happy. ‘I'm pro enough to stay out of the joint,' he said, half to himself.

‘Good point,' Mace said, letting it slide. ‘OK if I fade for a while?'

‘Do what you want,' Wylie said, raising the binoculars. ‘You're the pro.'

There were two beds in the room. One was filled with Wylie's crap; a black plastic shell, ear phones, a razor, a head set, various plugs and wires, candy bars, rubbers, a Dopp Kit bulging with colognes and creams.

Mace sat on the other bed and started taking off his shoes.

‘Yo, Mace,' Wylie said, shifting moods gracelessly. ‘We might as well make this as homeboy as we can. You stay off my back, I stay off yours. OK?'

‘Sounds like a plan,' Mace said, stretching out. ‘Give me a couple hours and I'll spell you.'

‘The bitch isn't goin' anywhere. What's the harm if I grab some Z's, too?'

Mace stopped the sarcastic reply that came immediately to mind. ‘You never know what a subject will do,' he said. ‘If she cuts and runs while we're snoozing, Paulie will see to it we both get lots of rest.'

‘You know Mr Lacotta a long time, huh?'

‘Long enough,' Mace said, closing his eyes.

TWO

A
t roughly eight fifteen the next morning, Paulie Lacotta slipped his SL55 into a visitor slot in front of the Florian. He was about to open his door when he saw a yellow Mustang convertible departing from the bi-level parking garage to the left of the apartment hotel. The top was down and the driver's blonde hair flowed in the wind as the car zoomed past.

He'd be damned if convertibles weren't made for blondes to drive.

He wondered where she was headed at – looking at his watch – eight sixteen in the morning. Well, he figured he'd know soon enough. Wylie's company Lexus sedan had just emerged with screeching tires to follow after the Mustang.

He pried himself free of his car, a stocky guy wearing two-inch heels that almost brought him to six feet. He was wrapped in a Zegna suit worth a couple thou, cut to emphasize his shoulders and hide a thickening waist. His nut-brown face had once been slick-handsome, but it was starting to sag at the jowls.

That morning while shaving he was thinking it just might be Botox-and-tuck time. Youth must be served, after all.

He circled the front building at a jaunty clip, strolled past the pool where two wrinkled old duffers were puffing through their morning laps. No hot babes in bikinis that early, if ever. The Florian was not exactly a Girls Gone Wild operation. It was a well-run apartment hotel with some permanent guests who enjoyed its full-service facilities and close proximity to the stores and restaurants on Sunset Boulevard and transients – mainly theater actors, artists and musicians from the Other Coast – who prized its vaguely Bohemian atmosphere, the harmless eccentricities of its friendly staff and the fact that each ‘suite' included kitchenettes for them to cook their own food.

Paulie, in his Sam Goldwyn-like way, had concluded that he wouldn't have been caught dead living there.

He took the rear stairwell at a brisk pace, paused before a door on the third floor and knocked. ‘Me,' he said.

He heard the lock sliding away.

When the door opened, he stepped in to find Mace, dressed in clothes that looked like he'd slept in them, his feet bare. Holding a coffee mug. It had been nine years since he'd last seen the man. Dave Mason looked harder now. Tougher. A little weather-beaten, but that figured, him living in swampland.

Lacotta opened his arms. ‘C'mere, you son of a bitch,' he said, grinning.

Mace put his coffee mug on a table and accepted the inevitable bear hug.

When Lacotta was through physically bonding, he took a backward step and gave Mace a head-to-toe. ‘You're looking money, amigo.'

The tan. The hug. Now ‘money' and ‘amigo'. Jesus Christ! Mace bit his tongue and said, ‘You too, Paulie. Really living la vida El Lay, huh?'

Lacotta beamed proudly, as if Mace had paid him a high compliment. ‘You know it, dude.' He turned to the windows. ‘My girl been behaving herself?' he asked.

‘So far.'

Lacotta scanned the room. He moved to the nearest bed and tested the mattress with a finger poke. ‘We've seen worse, huh?'

Mace supposed that was true. He took his mug over to the stove for a refill. ‘Coffee?' he asked.

‘Hell, no,' Lacotta said, wincing. ‘That caffeine shit stains the teeth. Sours the stomach. Coffee'll kill you quicker'n cancer.'

Mace toasted him with his mug and took a sip.

‘How's my boy Wylie doin'?' Lacotta asked.

‘Out tailing the subject.'

‘They were leaving when I got here. What I want to know is what you think of him.'

‘The snake on his neck makes close shadow work a little tricky. People tend to remember things like that. You know, start to wonder, wasn't there a guy with a snake walking behind me this morning?'

‘The fucking kid's body looked like the Sunday funnies. We got most of it lasered off, but the doc said he couldn't do anything with the snake. Something about the ink. He offered to turn it into a birthmark, like the Russian guy, what's-his-name, had on his head. Wylie's not exactly up with that. What do you think?'

‘I think you're losing it if you're coming to me for cosmetic advice.'

Lacotta ducked his head in a nod of agreement. ‘What else about him?'

‘If the subject decides to go for a stroll, he'll be OK, as long as it's on the Strip or Hollywood Boulevard. If it's Beverly Hills or Brentwood, that lousy hair-dye job and the beach-boy shirt might stick out more than the snake.'

‘I don't suppose you could call shit like that to his attention?'

‘You're beautiful, Paulie,' Mace said. ‘Not only do you bring me in cold and saddle me with a green punk, you want me to play mentor.'

‘The kid's a legacy. His old man was Leo Giruso.'

‘Leo, huh?' Mace said. ‘That figures.'

‘Leo was goddamn loyal.'

‘Get a dog. They're smarter.' Mace took a sip of coffee. ‘How'd the kid wind up with the name Wylie?'

‘I dunno. Read it in a book, maybe?'

Mace rolled his eyes.

‘OK, so you don't like the kid,' Lacotta said.

‘It's not him. I don't like this whole set-up.'

‘Hey,' Lacotta said with a little heat behind it. ‘You did me a good thing a while back, but I figure I kinda made up for it. Your old man kept his business going in Louisiana, right? Some kinda canning operation . . . where exactly?'