Only Make Believe (6 page)

Bud glanced at Carmen. “So you was directing this little song-and-dance act?”

“
Si, señor
,” Carmen replied, filling his own coffee cup. “And, for your informations, Nick and I put that special requests page together last month. New girl needs, how you say? Guidance.”

Bud turned back to Phil. “Any ideas who it was that called?”

“Got to have been the wife. Who else would know he was here? A business associate wouldn’t call on a Sunday afternoon.”

“So it was a woman?”

“Operator couldn’t be sure. I asked especially.”

Brian punched one big fist into another. “Say the wife brought a strong arm with her. Came in the back door when nobody was looking. Open and shut case, wouldn’t you think?”

“An out-of-court divorce, like?” Phil said.

“Catholics can’t get divorced,” I said. “Isn’t that right?”

“Have to get annulled,” Brian said. “Wearing a dress and lipstick would surely count against him.”

I turned to Bud. “We need to get you officially assigned to the case.”

He closed the file and stood up. “Left a message for the boss. Talked to the shift sergeant. Told him it’d got dumped in my lap. They’ll get back to me on it pronto.”

“You did secure DiGennaro’s room?”

“Hell, yes. Had to nail a board across the door. Posted a Do-Not-Enter sign.” Bud yawned. “Shift sergeant is assigning a street cop to guard the evidence. Just until we can work the crime scene.”

I turned to desk clerk Phil. “Pull all the keys to 522. Plus any fifth-floor pass keys. I’ll put them in my safe.”

“Done.”

Bud handed me the Diva’s folder. “Better stow this in the lock-up, too.” He looked around the table. “OK, listen up, folks. Somebody near about killed a man in this place a few hours ago. There’s only two people that know what happened.”

“Two at least,” Phil said.

“Stand corrected. So meanwhile I don’t need people telling certain details to every Tom, Dick and Harry that
don’t
know. Understood?”

Everybody else nodded. I grinned. Bud sounded like thousands of Southern veterans whose lives combined small-town upbringing, indifferent book learning and battlefield education. Bud’s ranch-hand accent was most intense and appealing when he was either under pressure or drunk. He’d grown up in LaBelle, a cowtown on the edge of the Glades, twenty-five miles northeast of Myers. Raised by his granny and her second husband, a logger from Lake City, he’d finished high school only because of intensive tutoring by his best friend and father figure, the baseball coach. A strong but unconsummated attraction between the married coach and the young athlete left Bud angry and confused. Despite Coach Andy’s help, he flunked senior English and almost left without a diploma. But the war was on. The grade was changed by the principal after Bud was named to the all-state seniors’ baseball team. He joined the Marine Corps a week after graduation.

Bud took a final swig of coffee. “I got to get going. Here’s what I do need. Dan, Carmen, Phil, you get me a list of everybody that set foot in the hotel since, say, four o’clock yesterday evening.”

“I’m talking about guests, cooks, card players, lifeguard if he was still on board. Which lady was night maid, Bertha Williams? Dan, you and Mrs. Smallwood talk to her. Phil, I want sign-in sheets, chits, baggage checks, phone messages, delivery trucks, all of it. I want names.”

Phil whistled. “Good thing Sunday’s a slow night.”

I nodded. “Carmen and Brian, can you and Tommy get me a list of who was in the club and the dining room?”

They both nodded.

Bud clapped his hands together once. “Sounds like you got it under control then. If I could have them lists by, hey, about noon?”

“Or sooner,” I said. “Now take off.”

Mrs. Smallwood followed Bud out. I held up my cup for more coffee. “Carmen. Who was cooking last night? Who was on the cold table? Bus boy? Sink? Any strangers come through the kitchen door? The service dock?”

Carmen began to pour a fresh round. “I start by pulling all time sheets. You want me to ask them what they saw?”

“No. Better let Bud do the asking. There’ll be talk enough. Tell ’em nothing except to keep quiet and not discuss it, not until Bud sees them.”

“Under pain of mortal sin,” Brian said. “Seal of the confessional. Heck of a thing. Men in skirts. St. Paul would choke.”

Carmen put down the pot and struck an Ethel Merman-plays-Annie Oakley pose—fists on hips, head held high. “Did I ever tell you about the
padre
in my
barrio
? He say to a certain young altar boy, who is my cousin Pedro in absolute fact, that it is no mortal sin to, how you say, to”—Carmen made kissing noises—“so long as you do it on your knees, under the sainted father’s black skirts, so nobody see.”

“Jesus, Carmen,” I said. “Simmer down.”

“My cousin Pedro did not have to confess it as sin, that is what Father Gonzalez say. Not if they did it together.” Carmen’s hands opened and fluttered like little exasperated birds. “Bastard priest and holy Jesus both wore skirts. No more church for Carmencita until she join the AME with Tommy.”

“Your priest must have been one bad apple,” I said. “They’re not all—”

Carmen cut me off. “Maybe Brian’s right. Maybe Diva’s wife see the dress as the sin and La Diva as the Devil?”

“And kick him straight to hell?” Brian shook his head. “Like I said.”

“
Si
, like you said. Maybe she brought a strong arm with her.”

“Which is why we need to get this list done,” I said.

Carmen touched the hidden scar on his forehead, lightly smoothing the pancake makeup. “Nick wasn’t a bad man. He tipped fifty dollars. Tommy got twenty.”

“Gave me twenty as well,” Brian said. “Coming in the club door. Asked me to keep a particular sharp lookout for goons and troublemakers.”

“And upstairs before the show,” Carmen continued, “When Mr. Patt finished doing up the hair and face, when we got the blue dress and gloves just right—when DiGennaro become La Diva. She look in the mirror. She turn back and forth, smooth the opera-length gloves nice. And you know what she say? She say, ‘Patsy, this is the first time in my life I ever feel whole, feel all human.’ And Mr. Patt, he say, it’s the girl in you coming out. And the Diva she say, Oh, no. No, no, no. She say, ‘Now I know what it feels like to be a man
and
a woman.’”

“Jesus,” Brian said. “Poor bastard.”

Carmen threw him a withering look.

I need to talk to Mr. Patt right away
, I thought. “What do you figure Diva meant?” I said.

Carmen smiled and touched his face with a handkerchief. “I’m remembering one boy in the soldier shows with me. Adam’s apple like a broken coffee cup, horse’s ankles and ears to match. Hung like a prairie dog. Half bald and not yet twenty-five. Big, ugly Palooka and he knew it. Played the cornet and sax, that was his gig with us. Then we lost two dancers to aggravated jungle rot, a real emergency. So this boy Earle David Jones he put on a dress and wig and long gloves to fill in. And the first time he got decent makeup on, the first time he sashayed out on the stage—we were fronting Frances Langford, just a gorgeous, gorgeous, lady, real big-time—he learn about love.”

“Not with Frances Langford?” I could see what was coming.

“He was more gorgeous even than Miss Langford. The soldier boys they hooted, hollered and whistled. He gave ’em some leg and you’d have thought the war was over. He remove a glove—dynamite. Remove the other and drape it over his shoulder—and bite—and these horny Marines they go so wild we thought the Shore Patrol would step in.”

“He stripped?” Phil asked, clearly fascinated if slightly repulsed. “No kidding.”

“Not all the way. No, he teased. He was man and woman both—Gypsy Rose Lee with skinny, hairy legs—and some kind of magic. They loved it. He loved them.”

“And he got it?” I said. “That he was loveable? That he could play more than just a horn?”

Carmen rolled his eyes. “We keep him in the show. He go by the name Earle the Pearl. Say he don’t know what come over him. Say he’d never felt so alive in his whole life.”

My mind drifted back to the morning I’d been assigned to speak to the crew of the
Indianapolis
, a routine safety-at-sea speech that Captain McVeigh and his exec were both too busy to deliver. It was July 15, 1945. We were fresh out of the navy yard at Mare Island, hours from sailing from Hunter’s Point in San Francisco. Using the now-hear-this horn on the bridge, I spoke to almost a thousand unseen men, each one aware that officers like me held the power of life and death over them all. For five minutes, I felt like God. I wanted to keep talking forever.

Carmen hadn’t stopped. “The Pearl has three kids now. Quit dancing when our USO group broke up. Lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Sends me Christmas cards. Beautiful wife and family. Works in a drug store. Must be happy.”

“He wasn’t a …?” Phil coughed politely. “One of the boys”?

“Who knows?” Carmen answered, standing up, dismissing the question. “He did get beat up bad once by an army sergeant. Grease monkey from the motor pool. Most girls wouldn’t have let a gorilla like that touch ’em with a ten-foot bass fiddle. But it was wartime. You did what you had to do.”

“So do we,” I said, touched but having no more time for Earle the Pearl. “Carmen, start with dinner—since that’s when the Diva made her first appearance last night. Who was in here? Any goons or troublemakers hanging around?”

Carmen turned toward the kitchen door. “Maybe we speak to Homer first?”

“Sure,” I said. “Thanks, everybody.” And I followed Carmen back into the kitchen.

Homer Meadows was drinking coffee at the staff table behind the hot line. Carmen explained what we wanted.

“A guest got in some trouble,” I added. “We need to know who was in the hotel.”

Homer smiled gravely. “Terrible. Yes, sah, I heard something about that. I want to help all I can.” He held up his order pad. “Table ten, Mr. and Mrs. Treadwell. They be locals. Always tip real good. Came in early, same as they always do. Table twelve, Dr. Brown and his two lovely daughters, Doctor live over on McGregor Boulevard. Them girls don’t eat enough to keep birds alive. Table four, Mrs. Nordeen Simms, room 418.”

“She came down to the club later,” Carmen put in. “Navy widow, friend of the admiral. Sat next to Diva at the bar.”

“I know the lady,” I said. “Bud will want to talk to her.”

“Also at the bar, at least for a while,” Carmen said, batting his eyelashes, “Our own Betty Harris. After you left, she started making time with that dentist from Sebring.”

“Dr. Ayers. Founding club member. Ex-navy.” I said I’d speak to Dr. Ayers later.

“Table six,” Homer continued. “The Sottile party, suite 701 and room 202. Paid in cash, tip came out to under ten percent. Nice folks, though. Very polite, no trouble.”

“Slim served the twins,” Carmen said. “Tim and Todd. Tim is staying with us in the hotel. Todd lives down south, Marco, I think. The twins talk to everybody, they’re both big, tall, handsome guys, Norwegians, maybe. Play golf all the time. I know they talked to the Diva.”

“No wives?” I asked. “Girlfriends?”

“Tim’s divorced,” Carmen said.

“No, it’s Mr. Todd,” Homer said. “Mr. Todd’s the one was married.”

“What’s their last name?” I asked. Nobody could remember. I wrote them down as interview candidates.

Homer and Carmen went through another half dozen tables. All were either locals or hotel guests.

“No obvious goons,” I finally said. “And Mrs. Simms, Dr. Ayers and the twins don’t strike me as strong arm types.”

“Looks can be deceiving,’ Carmen said with a shake of his head. “As our poor Miss Diva do seem to have proved.”

I looked at Homer and Carmen. “No intruders? No free-lance hookers? No punks smoking reefer in the parking lot? No complaints from guests about prowlers or noise?”

Carmen cut me off again. “Just the one call, bossman, like Phil said. From the, ah, from Mr. DiGennaro. When he called downstairs at two a.m.”

I walked down the hall to my office, picked up the secure phone, the one with a line that didn’t pass through the hotel switchboard, and dialed Nick DiGennaro’s home in Bradenton. I figured somebody must have called the family by now. I wanted to assess the situation before returning to Lee Memorial.

A boy answered on the second ring. He sounded breathless and tired. He said the hospital had phoned a few minutes ago, that his mother had taken the call and that they were about to go out the door. I identified myself as one of the people who helped get his father to the emergency room. He told me he was Chuck DiGennaro, Nick’s son. Chuck’s voice veered up and down the scale. “We don’t really know what happened to Daddy. Were you there?”

From his voice, I couldn’t tell whether the youngster was fourteen or twenty. “Daddy went on a business trip to Myers,” he said. “The nurse at emergency told Mother she better come on down right away. Mother asked if he was in an accident. Nurse just said he was being worked on.”