Only Make Believe (29 page)

“We heard about that.”

“
We
did? Oh, my word.” Patt lit a Lucky and puffed twice, shaking his head. “Why don’t you bring your cop friend down to the truck garage one Saturday night? Some of the boys do play pretty rough. But I’ve never heard of anything like—like what happened to Mr. DiGennaro.”

“Have you ever seen Fletcher there?”

“Never. Not once. He’s a happily married man now. Remember?”

“So was the Diva. Look, I saw action in the war. Some people go nuts under stress. I kind of know what you’ve been through. I’ll tell you about it some other time. But I promise you now, what you’ve told me is what we needed. This is going to stop Four Eyes from ever hurting one of us again.”

Patt Cope sobbed. “You can’t prove it was him.”

“I can try,” I said, standing up.

The little dog barked.

Back at the hotel, another anonymous letter had arrived with the morning mail:

Sir we prayed for you in church today if you do not except the word of the LORD and close the doors of your deadly Hell Hole of Race Mixing and Immoral Wickedness you will be sorry and regret it. Our pastor quoted the words of Leviticus, Judges and St. Paul. Thus sayeth the LORD, except the word of GOD and put away the lusts of earthly flesh or you will eat fire and drink the blood of the BEAST for ever and ever. Amen.

We’ll get to this later,
I thought, carefully handling the letter by its edges.
Before Bud’s through, he’s going to round up at least half you cowardly Klanners and sanctimonious church mice. And I’m going to testify that my life, liberty and livelihood were threatened over and over again.

I called the sheriff’s department and asked for Bud. The desk sergeant told me to wait, put his hand over the phone, muttered something, listened to somebody and came back to say that Detective Wright had the day off. This was news to me. I left a message. “Mark it urgent,” I said. “Tell him to call the Caloosa Hotel switchboard right away. Tell him I’ve got the information he needed.”

I phoned the rooming house. Nobody answered. I drove over and knocked on the door. Nobody home. Bud kept a spare key under the front steps. I used it. His room was empty. So was the backyard.

In Edison Park, the glass jalousies on Four Eyes Fletcher’s apartment were shut tight. The weather had warmed and the sky was clear blue. Windows up and down Marlyn Road were open. It crossed my mind that Fletcher had packed up his family and fled. I drove the three blocks to the Edison Estate on McGregor Boulevard. The guard on the gate helpfully informed me that “Mr. Al” had taken a crew of men to Estero Island to collect a load of beach sand. The party wasn’t due back until quitting time.

I’d missed lunch. I was hungry, angry and frustrated as hell. So it should go without saying that when a minor crisis arose at the Caloosa I over-reacted.

A gentleman named Edmund O’Malley had been staying in a river-view suite since Christmas. He’d arrived by train from Cleveland with two leather bags, a fat briefcase and an English umbrella. With the exception of a New Year’s Day fishing trip on which he was accompanied by party girl Betty Harris and Bud’s waitress-girlfriend Slim Nichols, he kept to himself the first week. He received no mail and not a single phone call. He usually started drinking in his cabana around noon, switching to a table in the dining room after dark. Although he was seldom without a glass in his hand, he never appeared drunk. He didn’t ask to join the club or offer to purchase bottles from our unofficial liquor locker. Instead, he sent the bellboys out for Old Crow or Four Roses. When anybody greeted him, he smiled and made small talk. Aside from his habit of tipping the help with twenty dollar bills, there was nothing much to remember about him. He was simply in residence, taking a little vacation, biding his time, amusing himself with agreeable women, placing bets by phone with a Miami bookie and settling his accounts in cash every few days. He reminded me of a sailor freshly released from the hospital—or the brig.

O’Malley’s wife showed up at an extremely inopportune moment. To make matters worse, she had a private investigator and a photographer with her. The PI, we found out later, had been casing the Caloosa for days. Not only had he bribed one of the bellboys for information, he’d consulted Ralph Nype at the
News-Press
. Nype was happy to brief him on the racy nature of the Caloosa’s entertainments. He also provided a staff photographer in exchange for an exclusive story.

When Mrs. O’Malley identified herself to the desk clerk, she was welcomed without a glance at the special-requests list. O’Malley had specified “no visitors” in big letters but the desk clerk was new. He did not ring O’Malley’s room to announce the visit. He did not consult me. He simply handed the bellboy a key and asked him to show the lady and her party up to suite 702.

O’Malley was enjoying a late lunch in bed. When the door to his room swung open, Slim Nichols and another waitress, Zelma Smith, were energetically impersonating toasted slices of rye and whole wheat. O’Malley was the ham in the sandwich.

As soon as the screaming began, a maid working down the hall phoned Brian Murphy. The bouncer-masseur alerted the housekeeper, Mrs. Smallwood, and stuck his head in my office on his way upstairs.

O’Malley had positioned a pillow over his midsection and was calmly smoking a cigar when we arrived. Zelma had crawled under the bed and lay there, sobbing. Slim was on her feet, hopping up and down in frustration. She’d gotten her blouse over her head but unfortunately the blouse was on backward. When she tried to start over, the camera flashed again and Mrs. O’Malley began screaming again.

I seized the Speed Graphic and tossed it out the window. When the PI tried to grab me from behind, Brian put him down with a chop to the gut.

Mrs. O’Malley began slapping my face. “Me six innocent children. Me house and happy home. Abandoned and betrayed. We’ll starve or end up in the poorhouse. Where can we go in our hour of need?”

“You the wife?” I yelled back, trying to hold her at arm’s length. “How about back to Ohio?”

The housekeeper wrapped the weeping Zelma in a blanket and led her into the hall. “You’re fired, Zelma,” I called after the girl. She gasped and ran back into the room. For a second I thought she was coming after me. Instead she scooped up her clothes and a wad of greenbacks on the dresser, spat at Mrs. O’Malley and fled.

“Hoors,” Mrs. O’Malley shrieked. “Hoors and panders. Living the life of Reilly without a word of goodbye. Spending the bank’s money on hoors and panders.”

The bank’s money. Uh oh.

The PI groaned. Brian checked him for serious injuries and helped him to a sitting position. “Embezzled a hundred and twenty-seven grand over the last four years,” the PI whispered. “Blew most of it at the race track. I’m working for the bank. I don’t care who Edmund O’Malley takes to bed. But you’re witnesses, all of you. Witnesses.”

I looked at Brian, then at Slim.

Brian shrugged and rolled his eyes. Slim, her blouse now right side around, pulled on her skirt and took off barefoot, shoes and stockings in one hand, lingerie and greenbacks in the other.

Mrs. O’Malley turned on her husband. “We thought you were on your way to Cuba.”

“I took the wrong train.”

“Don’t give me that blarney.”

“O’Malley, where’s the briefcase?” The private detective spoke slowly, fingering his jaw. “We know you departed Cleveland carrying at least five stacks of twenty dollar bills and four stacks of fifties.”

“Who’s gonna pay for the box camera and flash and plates?” the photographer shouted. “They was newspaper property. I ain’t responsible.”

O’Malley threw the pillow aside and stood up. He was bone thin, hairy, badly sunburned and very modestly endowed. A wet condom dangled from his shrunken penis, not a pretty sight. I looked away.

“Spent as much as I could, fast as I could,” O’Malley said, reaching for his drawers. “Pigskin suitcases, Hart Shaffner & Marx suit, a bed all to myself, booze for breakfast. Best two weeks of my life. If Myers had a horse track, I’d never want to leave. Brian, would you be kind enough to hand me that bottle there?”

Brian did as he was asked.

O’Malley sucked down four or five swallows, coughed and grinned. “Prison, that’ll be a pleasure after managing my ass-hole father-in-law’s savings and loan for five years. Stacks of fifties, my aching weenie. You didn’t even miss the four stacks of hundreds?”

The private detective was on his feet. “Witnesses. You people heard that.”

O’Malley turned to me, “And Mr. Ewing, let me thank you for the hospitality. I’m afraid I can’t cover my last bill. So let me give you a piece of advice instead. Don’t fire that waitress. Zelma’s a good girl, good as ever I’ve tasted. Especially after she gets warmed up. Don’t let her go.”

It took an hour to get Edmund O’Malley properly dressed and taken into custody by a federal deputy. Once he’d been led away, Mrs. O’Malley turned to me and said she’d be pleased to accept the Caloosa’s hospitality—“Only until I can catch me breath.”

I told her we were fully booked and directed her to the Bradford Hotel on First Street.

The contrast between the embezzling, adulterous O’Malley and the cross-dressing, bribe-paying DiGennaro was obvious. Neither man was a saint. Both came to the Caloosa for a bit of illicit but essentially harmless fun. Both left their families in ruins. Yet their fates were completely different.

O’Malley, the filling in the Dagwood sandwich, got caught in his own room with a couple of waitresses. He hardly blushed. DiGennaro masqueraded as a seductive woman, attracting the attention of more than one horny, gullible man. There was no evidence he invited anyone upstairs. But he left his door unlocked and ended up dead.

I couldn’t sit still. I phoned Bud’s rooming house. The pay phone in the hall rang ten times before I gave up.

I looked up Albert Fletcher’s number and dialed. He answered on the second ring: “This here’s Al. Yeah?” I listened for ten seconds. No baby crying. No radio playing. I figured he was alone.

On my way out, I collared Phil, told him to call Brian to take over the front desk and instructed him to track down Bud without fail. Here are my car keys, I said. Check the rooming house backyard, I said. Check all known hideouts: the Legion hall, the parking lot outside the sheriff’s office, the records room at the courthouse. Check the diner on Fowler Street, the Arcade Café and waitress Slim Nichols’ apartment. “Find him and tell him to meet me at the garage apartment on Marlyn Road,” I said. “He’ll know where I mean. Don’t come back until you do.”

I’d changed into workout shorts, a short-sleeve golf shirt and white tennis shoes. The girly look was beyond me but at least I didn’t look like a cop. The late-winter afternoon felt like mid-summer. I quick-marched the mile to Edison Park with the sun setting in my face.

A single steak was grilling on the brick and coral-rock barbecue pit outside the apartment door. The glass jalousies were open. I peered through a window before knocking or calling out. Four Eyes was sprawled on his side on the rattan couch. He was wearing boxers, a sleeveless undershirt and thick eyeglasses. In his right hand, the latest issue of
Boys’ Life
. The cover, an iconic image by Norman Rockwell, told the story: An eagle scout with one hand on a cub scout’s shoulder, the other holding a flagpole, the pair surrounded by a boy scout, a sea scout and an air scout.

Fletcher’s left hand was inside his shorts. Nearby, a can of Ronsonol lighter fluid stood upright on the dinette table. Bingo.

I opened the door and pointed at the magazine. “See something you like, Albert? Sure looks good to me.”

He jumped to his feet and tossed the magazine and glasses under the couch.

“Boys, Albert?”

“The fuck? You mind? Please get out of here.”

“Bible camp? Boys talking dirty?”

He came after me. “You got it wrong, mister. I got a wife and family, remember?”

Backing out the door, I jumped aside when he tried to grab my arm. I’m quick. I ducked behind a small, thorny citrus tree. “You made a pass at the Diva last Sunday and she turned you down. And you hurt her for it.”

He came around the tree. “No. NO. Listen. Nothing like that. I hate queers and sissies.”

“The Diva wasn’t queer. Maybe I’m not really queer. Hey, I’m smaller than you are. Will I do? You want to wrestle? I’ve got a good ass, I really do. You want that? Your wife’s not right for you? You too small down there? Or too big? Let’s get those shorts off you and see.”

I reached for his boxers and pulled. I got a good glimpse of soap-white butt before Fletcher grabbed my hand, twisted hard and almost cracked the bones in my wrist. I was suddenly fighting for balance, careening into a spiky hedge and falling hard. He yanked me upright before I hit bottom and shook me like a terrier shakes a rat.

So much for sophisticated interrogation techniques. What the fuck was I thinking? He’s gonna kill me. Fight. Kick him in the nuts—now!