Tender Is LeVine: A Jack LeVine Mystery (13 page)

“We expect THREE MILLION cash by next Friday or you will receive TOSCANINI’S right hand by registered parcel.”

That was it.

“Nice touch, the hand.”

Aaron remained standing. “Can you imagine?”

“Yes I can.”

“Me, too. Makes me dizzy, just the thought.” Aaron walked back to his desk. “Have you ever been to Havana, Jack?”

“No. Miami’s as far south as I’ve traveled. I did once date a Cuban dancer….”

“Havana’s quite fabulous, quite decadent.” He opened another desk drawer.

“You’re not about to pull out an air ticket, are you?”

Aaron smiled thinly. “There’s a nonstop flight out of Idlewild at nine-thirty tomorrow morning that’ll get you into Havana at a quarter to three in the afternoon.”

“That’s just great. Then what am I supposed to do, rent a couple of bloodhounds and a magnifying glass? Or do I go to plan B and assemble a mercenary army?”

Aaron shrugged. “You’re the detective.”

I jumped out of my chair, more than a little irritated. “Listen, I just got chased across Broadway by two gorillas intent on extreme physical harm. Now you want me to storm into Havana like I’m Teddy Roosevelt, six-guns blazing, and carry the old man out on my back? Blow it out your ass. That’s point A. Point B, I’m still working for the Stern family and not for NBC.”

“I spoke to the widow this morning.”

“To Hilde?”

“I asked her if we might share in the expense of Mr. LeVine.”

“And she said yes, of course.”

“She said she and her daughter were very fond of you.” Aaron scratched his cheek. “Particularly the daughter.”

“Stop it.”

“She’s unbelievable, Jack. I haven’t seen a body like that—”

“Enough. So Hilde’s willing to let me do this?”

“She was very supportive of the idea.”

“Does the daughter know?”

“I have no idea. Now, I’m not sure what Fritz was paying you, but we’ll give you two thousand dollars just to go to Havana, and ten thousand more if you bring Maestro back alive.”

“Who’s ‘we’? I thought the top brass didn’t want the old man returned.”

“I have a budget to play with. There’s funds in there for what we call development,” Aaron explained. “Okay?”

“So you’re out on your own on this?”

“I want him back. Period.” I was starting to think this guy was maybe a little nuts, but I also was starting to like him. “Now, I don’t expect you to go in there like the Rough Riders.”

“But you expect me to bring him back?”

“I didn’t say that. But obviously that would be the optimum result.”

“What’s the minimum result?”

“I want to know who’s behind this.”

“You really have no clue?”

“None.”

“And all the NBC gumshoes …?”

“They’re idiots. Security here is mostly ex-army. They strategize and bullshit, but mostly what they do is cover their own asses, in the time-honored tradition of the military. That’s why I feel it’s time to go outside the company.” Aaron pulled the air ticket from his drawer.

I got up and walked over to his desk. He held the ticket toward me.

“I want twelve thousand if I bring him back alive,” I told him. “Not ten.”

Aaron didn’t blink. “Done.”

“What would you have said if I asked for fifteen?”

Aaron smiled. “Given it to you.”

“That’s what I thought.” I took the air ticket from his hand. “I used to be considered very bright.”

“You still are. Have a good trip.”

“Guess I’ll stay at the Hotel Nacional.”

Aaron’s phone started ringing. “You’re already booked,” he said. “Ocean view.” He picked up the phone and I left the office.

With a knot in my belly.

José had another greeting for me when I returned to 1630 Broadway.

“Two cops,” he told me, and slammed the elevator door shut.

“Sure they’re cops?”

“Definitely. They got that stupid look. Too much hair.”

“Never a good sign.”

“No.” José touched his own disappearing coiffure. “Us baldies, we stick together, right, Señor Detective?” He opened the doors to the ninth floor. “Don’t take no shit from them.”

No surprise—it was O’Malley and Breen, holding up the wall across from my office.

“Now my day is perfect,” I greeted them.

They grunted in reply and watched me unlock my front door as intently as if I were performing a magic trick, then followed me inside.

“Lights are on,” O’Malley observed. “You were here already.”

“That’s sound detective work.”

“Then you went running some errands?”

“Now you’re two out of two,” I told the younger of the two cops. “Want to go for the hat trick?”

“Why are you giving him shit?” Breen asked huffily.

“He’s seen too many Bogart pictures,” O’Malley said. “That’s how the shamuses talk at the Roxy.” Now they followed me doggedly into my inner office. I took my hat off and tossed it onto the antlers of my moosehead.

“Cute,” said Breen.

“I like to think so,” I told them, then sat behind my desk and yawned. It was a quarter past twelve, but I would have been very happy to go back to bed.

“Busy day so far, Jack?” Breen sat down without being asked. O’Malley pulled the other chair over and sat down beside him.

“Have a seat, boys,” I told them.

“Don’t mind if we do,” O’Malley said. “Shall we continue jesting at each other?”

“Fine with me.” I lit up a Lucky. “I’m good at it.”

“I’m sure you are,” Breen said. “Busy day so far?”

“You asked me that already.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t answer.”

Now the two buzzards just stared at me.

“Is this what they call a significant pause?” I asked them.

O’Malley grunted, while Breen reached into his pocket and pulled out a small brown notebook. “About an hour and a half ago,” he began, flipping through the book, “there was a serious vehicular accident a block from this office involving a city bus and two pedestrians. It resulted in the death of one individual and the serious injury of the other. The injured party is at Roosevelt Hospital; his prognosis is about fifty-fifty.”

I pulled a bit of tobacco from my lower lip. “Do tell.”

“The dead man was identified as Michael Carbone, otherwise known as Mikey Blond or Mike the Kraut, on account of his blond hair pigmentation.”

“Should I be taking notes?”

Breen rolled on. “The injured party is one Vincent Galliano, who also goes by the name of Vinnie Meatballs.”

“Not very imaginative. Must of been an off day in the nickname department,” I said.

“I have to agree,” said Breen.

“That’s not really the point,” O’Malley added helpfully.

“Both these guys are out of Brooklyn and they’re in the Anastasia crew. Used to work for our old pal Lucky Luciano.”

“No shit.”

“Yeah.” Breen put the notebook away. “So how come, Jack, how come they’re chasing your fat kosher ass up the street?”

“And don’t even try to deny it,” O’Malley said. He took his hat off and placed it in his lap. “We got three eyewitnesses.”

“Am I denying it?”

“You’re not?”

“No.”

“So they were pursuing you.”

“Correct. But God’s blessed truth is, I don’t know why.”

The two cops looked as pleased as if I had just puked on their shoes.

“Jack,” Breen began, his voice tightening to a nasty whisper, “I’m starting to lose my fucking patience here.”

“You can lose your patience here or in the lobby, that’s not my concern,” I said cheerfully. “The fact is, I didn’t know who these guys were, nor did I know that they were mobbed up.”

“You never saw them before.”

“I never said that. I said I didn’t know who they were.”

“So you had seen them on a prior occasion?” asked O’Malley, using his meaty thumb to pick his nose ever so subtly.

“Once. In Riverdale.”

“Riverdale.” Breen opened his notebook again.

“Where in Riverdale?” O’Malley asked.

“That I can’t tell you.”

Breen’s eyes turned to ice chips. “Jack, stop pulling this coy shit. We have a homicide case here.”

“I thought we were discussing a traffic accident.”

“We’re talking about the Stern case, for crying out loud,” O’Malley interjected. He crossed his legs and looked at his partner in exaggerated dismay.

“You’re sure they’re connected? Listen …” I got up and opened the window. “I’m really not trying to make your life more difficult, but Stern hired me on a matter that’s shaping up as a lot more complicated than I originally thought.”

“So try to help us out, Jack,” said Breen. “And maybe we can help you out.”

“Guys, don’t play dumb, you know the drill. I’m a licensed PI. Confidentiality goes with the territory.” Breen opened his mouth, but I ran right over him. “I know you’re going to say this is a homicide, but that still doesn’t mean I’m gonna share every half-assed lead I have with you. I can’t.”

I sat back down. The two cops looked glum.

“I will share one thing with you, however, because there’s no confidentiality associated with it. You say the guys who got whacked by the bus were out of the old Luciano mob. Well, there was another of Lucky’s cronies at Sterns funeral, a squirt named Giuseppe LaMarca, and nobody can figure what he was doing there.”

“I know that name.” Breen said. “Why was he—”

“I just told you, I have no idea. But there it is.”

Breen looked befuddled.

“This is a mob case, Jack? Some little fiddler gets shot? What the fuck?”

“Exactly,” I told him. “What the fuck?”

Breen got up. O’Malley sat for a second, like he was thinking about something, then realized he wasn’t thinking about anything, so he got up, too.

“We’ll be back,” Breen told me.

“How did I know you’d say that?” I told him, but he was already out the door.

EIGHT

The National Airlines flight
to Havana featured a red carpet stretched across the Idlewild tarmac. It was a gray, windy morning when I boarded the DC-6 with about forty other passengers, about half of whom were dressed entirely in white. Some looked to be legitimate businessmen, down for sugar or cigars, but most looked like gamblers, particularly the parties in white. There were maybe six women on the flight, none of them a day over twenty-five, and they were all accompanying the gamblers, none of whom was a day under forty-five. You will probably not be surprised to learn that the women were a great deal thinner than the men and that none of them appeared to be deeply in love.

The plane was remarkably plush, with navy blue carpeting and thickly padded seats; “We’re in the Money” played through a Muzak system hooked up to speakers recessed in the ceiling. The plane also featured an area dubbed the “Starlight Lounge,” where one could have a drink and read a magazine or just sit and dream of hot roulette numbers. This was like no other airplane I had ever been on and resembled more of a flying cathouse than anything Lucky Lindy had ever imagined while he was winging his way to Paris. I liked it very much.

My seatmate was a dour Cuban in his sixties who introduced himself as Alfonso Logart, Jr. He told me that he ran a soft drink business outside Havana and was attempting, without much success, to make cream soda a popular beverage among the Cuban people.

“They know beer, they know Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola. That’s it. And fruit juices, of course. But I had to make this attempt,” he told me, tapping my arm with his chubby fingers, “because I believed in cream soda.”

“Maybe if the Cubans ate more pastrami, they’d get the hang of cream soda.”

Logart, Jr., shook his large graying head. He couldn’t have been more than five-foot-three, but more than compensated for his lack of height with his girth, which was well over three hundred pounds. He carried his weight right above the belt, like a large and placid pet.