Tender Is LeVine: A Jack LeVine Mystery (27 page)

“I won’t bother asking how you got in the room,” I said, closing the bathroom door and pocketing the gun.

“It wasn’t terribly difficult,” she hollered over the running water. “The bellhops here respond very well to minimal offerings of cash. Plus, I batted my eyes a little.”

“I’m not registered under my name.”

“Somehow ‘Buddy Barrow’ spoke to me. Sounded like something you’d dream up. Then I described you, and this kid—”

“Name of ‘Happy’? On the short side? With overdeveloped shoulders and imagination?”

“Happy, yes. Said there was a gentleman who fit the description, except the gentleman was wearing a cheap hairpiece.”

“I resent that.”

Barbara laughed and shut the water off, then poked her beautiful wet head out from behind the curtain.

“Could you hand me a towel?”

“No.”

“Okay, you want to be like that.” She smiled demurely, then stepped daintily out of the shower, arching her leg high over the rim of the tub and affording me a momentary and heart-stopping view of the entirety of her. Barbara wrapped a bath towel around her waist and draped a face towel around her neck, leaving her full, elegant breasts exposed.

“I called your mother,” I told her. “She said you’d gone to California. Imagine my less-than-delighted surprise.”

“I had to tell her I was going to California.” Barbara began toweling her hair dry. “She would’ve had a breakdown if she knew I was flying here.”

“So you came here straight from Havana?”

“With a stop in Miami. I told Meyer I was going back to New York. Guess I’ve been lying to everyone.”

“Including me that night in Havana.”

She stopped drying her hair and looked directly into my innocent brown eyes. “No. I never lied that night. What happened to you was truly out of my control. You have to believe that.”

“It’s an awful lot to believe.”

“I know it is. But as God or whoever’s on vacation up there is my witness, I had nothing to do with it.” She peered at me from under the towel. “That thing on your head, Jack, please tell me it’s a disguise.”

“You don’t approve?”

“Looks like an otter pelt.”

“I’m trying to avoid your old playmate.”

“Well, a fella can’t blame you for that,” she said. She let the towel droop babushka-style over that magnificent head and took one step forward. “But it’s gotta go.”

She leaned forward and lifted the toupee off my head like it was a loose Band-Aid. “Much better,” she murmured, then pressed her lips against mine. We kissed oh-so-softly, then she flicked her tongue up across my chin—don’t knock it till you’ve tried it—and kissed me a lot harder, uttering a low and incendiary moan. I could feel myself short-circuiting and took a step back.

“Last time you made that sound, I got hit by a truck.”

“You don’t trust me, do you?” She brushed her knuckles against my cheek. “How could you, after what happened?”

“I don’t know what I think. You’re so gorgeous it really isn’t a fair fight.”

“That night was totally mortifying.” She now took the towel and began to dry her breasts; I would describe what that looked like if there were words adequate to the task. “Those guys dragging you out of there, staring at me the whole time …” She sighed. “I think Meyer flipped is what really happened.”

“Out of jealousy? Come on, he left us together, for crissakes.”

“Obviously he didn’t think we’d get physical.”

“Because why would you go for a moldy old Hebe?”

She smiled. “You’re mature, not old. Big difference.” She lifted the towel off her head and wiped my sweaty forehead. It was plenty steamy in the smallish bathroom. “Fact is, I don’t think Meyer even
considered
what I might be feeling about you—no big surprise there. I’m also sure he figured you wouldn’t have the gall to seduce his old girlfriend.” I was sufficiently a sap to feel my robust heart ache at the mere use of the word “girlfriend.” It took Barbara approximately the speed of light to see inside me.

“Don’t look so miserable, Jack. I was never in love with him, I told you that.” She put her arms on my shoulder and kissed me again. The towel fell from her waist and she ground herself up against me.

“Baby, we can’t …” I told her while I could still form English words.

“Afraid you’re going to get clobbered again?” She kissed my nose, my eyes, brushed her lips against my cheek.

“I have to get out of Vegas.…” I stepped back, held up my hands. “We gotta stop.” I opened the door and walked out of the bathroom. Barbara followed.

“You want to get out of Vegas? Let me call Meyer and arrange it.” She walked to the phone.

“No.”

“Don’t panic, he’ll listen to me.” She picked up the phone.

“Put it down!” I yelled.

She stood holding the phone, wearing only that little towel around her shoulders. “First time you ever raised your voice, Jack.”

It was now all of seven-fifteen in the morning and I was trying to gather my wits before those wits got scattered to the desert winds. I wasn’t at all sure that I could trust Barbara Stern, nor could I trust my judgment when I was around her. I realized that for my protection, and probably for hers, I would have to hurt her very badly.

“Sweetheart, Meyers not our friend here.”

“I know he has schemes. He always does.”

“No, baby, I’m not talking about schemes. Meyer had your father killed.”

Fritz Stern’s daughter pursed her lips as if she were about to say something, then sat down on the bed and stared at her bare feet.

“Whether he or Lucky gave the actual order is moot,” I told her. “He’s responsible.” Barbara didn’t lift her head. “Sidney Aaron’s version is that the intention was simply to scare your father, but the button man got carried away. I don’t believe that for a second. I don’t believe anything Aaron says. It was a hit, pure and simple.”

“Meyer did it.” She mumbled this to herself in the form of a question that supplied its own answer.

“It’s a nightmarish thing to consider, I realize that, given your history with him, but there’s really no time to dwell on it. Right this second, there’s gotta be a half dozen guys looking for me, and seeing how easily you tracked me down, I don’t have high hopes for getting out of here with my arms and legs still attached unless I start right now. And I don’t think there’s any way Toscanini gets out, either, not unless we do it—literally, you and I physically transporting him.”

Barbara looked up at me; tears coursed down her cheeks.

“They’re going to kill Toscanini. That’s so totally impossible for me to conceive.”

“I didn’t say they’re actually going to kill him. I think the idea is to keep him in Vegas until he dies a natural death, at which point, or shortly thereafter, they kill the double. Or maybe they just stick the old man in a freezer for a while and continue the scam.”

Barbara stared at me, not yet comprehending.

“Why …?”

“Did Meyer ever tell you about the hotel he wanted to build here?”

“He mentioned something about it in Havana, said it was going to be gigantic.”

“Beyond gigantic. He told me it was going to change the gambling business forever. And the live entertainment business.”

“La Scala,” Barbara said. “That’s what he said it was going to be called.” She paused and then her entrancing mouth opened in full amusement-park wonder. “Holy smokes, how could I be so stupid? La Scala—like the opera house.”

“Precisely,” I told her. “The Old World comes to the New World. Meyer’s front men erect Hotel La Scala and announce that the world’s greatest orchestra will be organized to perform here, none other than Maestro himself to conduct it. That’s what Meyer told me.”

“Toscanini in Vegas.”

“The faux-Toscanini leading the Hotel La Scala Orchestra. Except, of course, the old man would never agree to it; he just wants to get back to New York and lead the NBC Symphony. He’s up on the third floor, a prisoner in the Valencia Suite.”

“So you’re saying this kidnapping is all about this La Scala Hotel?”

“Totally. Lucky and Meyer build their hotel and this fake Toscanini is the big drawing card, plus NBC is in for a piece—probably a big piece through a phony corporation—and just like that the company’s out of its obligations to the symphony, which costs a fortune and isn’t worth it now that television’s here to stay. Aaron admitted as much, although he was pretending he was on guard against the barbarians. In fact, he’s the middleman here.”

Barbara lay back on the bed, oblivious to her nakedness. I wasn’t.

“Jesus Christ,” she said. “Even I’m surprised, and I don’t surprise easy.”

“It’s a huge deal, with giant consequences for Vegas, which is why Meyer and Lucky had your inquisitive father eliminated. He was just the wrong curious guy at the wrong time.”

“It’s entirely my fault.” Barbara lay unmoving.

“No. It’s a hideous coincidence is all it is. Maybe your father gets killed earlier if it wasn’t for you. But we really don’t have time to discuss this. Get your clothes on. I never thought I’d say that, but I mean it from the bottom of my heart.”

While Barbara started to get dressed, I opened my wallet and fished out the card that Kim the lesbian cabby had handed me.

“What’s that?” Barbara asked, hopping into a pair of tan slacks.

“I gotta make a call,” I told her, and picked up the phone.

“To who?”

“To the only person I’ve met out here who I’d trust with my life.”

“What about me?”

“I didn’t meet you out here.”

“True, but I hope that’s not just a technicality.” She started getting into her brassiere, turning her back in a sudden show of modesty. I dialed the number on the card and after three rings, a very sleepy voice answered.

“’Lo?”

“Kim, it’s Lassie. I know I’m waking you.” Barbara threw me an appropriately disbelieving look.

“Las …?” Kim mumbled.

“The private dick from New York. I hate to do this to you, but I’m in a spot.”

“Really.” I heard coughing on her end. Barbara strolled over to me, pulling a sleeveless white sweater over her head. Her arms looked very long and very brown.

“What’s with ‘Lassie’?” she whispered. “That some kind of joke?”

I covered the phone. “Long story.”

“Another girl, Jack?” Her eyes flashed with amusement, but also some concern, I was gratified to note.

“She’s a woman, she’s a cabby, and she’s gonna be a lot hotter for you than she is for me. Please, get your shoes on. We gotta get moving.”

“Such a bully.” She strolled over toward her valise.

“What time is it?” I heard Kim say, then I detected some mumbling beside her. Probably her dancer pal, Cheryl.

“Almost seven-thirty,” I told her. “The day’s practically shot.”

“Jesus H. Christ.”

“Listen, I’m in the middle of an extremely dicey situation here and I need a very substantial ride.”

She coughed some more. “I gotta quit smoking.”

“Yes you do.”

She wheezed a little, then cleared her throat. “So where do you need to go, Lassie?”

“You can call me Jack.”

“That’s the real?”

“That’s the real. Jack LeVine. And I need to go to New York.”

There was a brief, pregnant silence.

“New York by taxi.”

“Correct.”

“When do you need to go?”

“Five minutes ago.”

“Really. It’s like that.”

“It’s more than like that.”

“Dangerous.”

“Very.”

“I’m just taking you?”

“No, there’s two others—the daughter of a violinist who’s been murdered, and a musician. A very eminent one.”

“How eminent?”

“You can’t imagine.”

There was a pause. Kim was trying to wake up and process this locust-plague of information at the same time.

“Shit,” she said. “This some sort of musical crime in progress?”

“You’re very warm.”

“What are you willing to pay me?”

“A lot.”

“Define ‘a lot.’”

“Five hundred bucks.”

“Really. Plus gas?”

“Plus gas, oil, water, and sandwiches.”

“That’s a bunch of money, Jack. Should I be terrified?”

“Yes.”

At this moment a large shadow fluttered rapidly past my window. My stomach turned over; seconds later I heard a dull wet thud. Then silence.

“What the hell was that?” Barbara asked, looking up from her valise. But she knew. “A person?”

“Kim?” I said into the phone.

“Yes?”

“Can you do this?”

“What the hell … sure.”

“Meet me at the Flamingo service entrance in fifteen minutes.”

I hung up the phone. There was the beginning of a commotion outside, an almost slow-motion perception of disaster: voices, distant at first, then closer, then some yelling. I walked over to the window and pulled it open.