The Best American Mystery Stories 2012 (36 page)

I know who the mobbed-up locals are here in America's Finest City. Sal wasn't one of them. We've had our wise guys for decades, mostly connected to the L.A. outfits. There's a restaurant they go to. You get to know who they are. I wondered if Sal was just a visiting relative, getting some R&R in Southern California. Or maybe a new guy they brought in. Or if he was a made guy trying to muscle into new territory. If that was true there would be some kind of trouble.

I watched the scorpion wriggle around in the shirt pocket. The pocket had a hula girl and it looked like the pincers were growing out of her head.

“I'm gonna get that eight grand for her,” said Vic.

“Where?”

“I got a start with the book sales.”

Vic has been hand-selling copies of
Fall to Your Life!,
which he wrote and published himself. It's about how “the Robbie Brownlaw event” seven years ago at the Las Palmas Hotel changed his life for the better. He does pretty well with it, mostly to tourists. I see him sometimes, down by the Star of India, or Horton Plaza, or there at the Amtrak station, looming over his little table with copies of the book and a change box. He wears his old Vic Pri­meval wrestling costume of faux animal skins—not fur, but the skins sewed together into a kind of bodysuit. It's terrifically ugly, but the customers are drawn to it. To attract buyers, he also sets up an aging poster of me falling through the sky. He used to charge five bucks a copy for the book, but a year ago it went up to ten. Once a month he still gives me a cut from each sale, which is 25 percent. I accept the money because it makes Vic feel virtuous, then turn it over to the downtown food pantry and ASPCA and various charities.

I did some quick calcs based on what Vic paid me in royalties for July—traditionally his best month due to tourists. My take was $500, which meant that Vic pocketed $1500 plus change for himself.

“It'll take you at least six months to get eight grand,” I said. “Plus winter is coming on and you've got your own expenses to pay.”

Vic brooded.

“Do you have any money saved up, Vic?”

“I can get the money.”

“So she can give it to him? Don't give her anything. Have her file a complaint with us if he's such a badass. She can get a restraining order. You don't know her and you don't know him. Stay away, Vic. That's the best advice you'll get on this.”

“What do you mean?”

“What about this doesn't scream setup?”

“A setup? Why set up a guy who doesn't have any money? She hasn't asked me for one nickel. She's the real thing, Robbie. That little baby. I don't have a world-class brain, but my heart always sees true. Farrel passes the Vic Malic heart test.”

“The best thing you can do is have her file a complaint.”

“She won't. I already told her to. She said the cops can't do anything until they catch him doing something. What she's afraid is, it's gonna be too late when that happens.”

Which is often true.

“But Robbie, what if you tell her? Coming from you, it would mean a lot more than from me.”

 

The San Diego mob guys own and frequent a downtown restaurant called Napoli. It's an unflashy two-story brick affair not far at all from police headquarters. They have controlling interests in a couple of much swankier eateries here, but they do their hanging out at Napoli.

“Hey, it's Robbie Brownlaw,” said Dom, the owner.

“Dom, I need a word.”

“Then you get a word, Robbie. Come on back. How's San Diego's famous detective?”

He's a round-faced, chipper fellow, early sixties, grandson of one of San Diego's more vivid mob figures, Leo the Lion Gagnas. Leo and his L.A. partners ran this city's gambling and loansharking. Back in 1950, two men out of Youngstown tried to get in on the Gagnas rackets, and they both washed up in Glorietta Bay one morning with bullets in their heads. Leo and company opened Napoli back in '53. He was tight with Bebe Rebozo, who was a big Nixon fundraiser. Beginning in 1966 Leo did two years for tax evasion and that was it. He never saw the inside of a prison before or after.

We sat in his dark little office. There were no windows and it smelled heavily of cigar smoke and cologne. The bookshelves were stuffed with well-read paperback crime novels—plenty of Whit Masterson and Erle Stanley Gardner and Mickey Spillane. A floor safe sat in one corner and the walls were covered with framed photographs of Dom's ancestors and the people they entertained at Napoli—Sinatra, Joey Bishop, John Wayne, Nixon, Ted Williams.

I looked at the pictures. “Where's the new celebrities, Dom?”

He looked at the pictures, too. “They don't come around here so much anymore. A time for everything, you know? It's good. Business is good. What do you need, Robbie?”

I told him about Sal—his alleged New Jersey outfit ties, his bad attitude and slick black Beamer, his fix on a young dancer at Skin named Farrel.

Dom nodded. “Yeah. I heard. My nephew, he's a manager at Skin. I got some friends checking this guy out.”

“Ever had any trouble out of Jersey?”

“Never. Not any trouble at all, Robbie. Those days are long gone. You know that.”

“What if he's what he says he is, trying to move in?”

“In on what?”

“On business, Dom.”

“I don't know what you mean,
business.
But somebody blows into town and starts popping off about he's a made guy and he's mobbed up in Jersey and all that, well, there's fools and then there's fools, Robbie. Nobody I know talks like that. Know what I mean?”

“I wonder if he's got help.”

“He better have help if he wants to shoot off his mouth. I'll let you know what I find out. And Robbie, you see this guy, tell him he's not making any friends around here. If he's what he says he is, then that's one thing. If he's not, then he's just pissing everybody off. Some doors you don't want to open. Tell him that. You might save him a little inconvenience. How's that pretty redhead wife of yours? Gina.”

“We divorced seven years ago.”

“I got divorced once. No, it was three times. You know why it's so expensive, don't you?”

“Because it's worth it.”

“Yeah.”

“You've told me that one before, Dom.”

“And I was right, wasn't I?”

 

I met Farrel at Skin that night before she was set to perform. We sat at the bar and got good treatment from the bartenders. Dom's nephew, a spidery young man named Joey Morra, came by, said hello, told Farrel the customers were liking her. I took down Farrel's numbers and address and the name of her daughter and hometown and parents. And I also got everything she could tell me about Sal Tessola—where he lived and how they met, what he'd done for her and to her, the whole story. I told her she'd need all these things in order to write a good convincing complaint. We talked for a solid hour before she checked her watch.

“You going to stay and see me perform?”

“Not tonight.”

“Didn't like it much, then?”

“You were good, Farrel.”

She eyed me. “I don't want Vic trying to get me the money. I didn't ask him to. I asked him
not
to. He's not the brightest guy, Robbie. But he might be one of the most stubborn.”

“You've got a point.”

“How come you're not married? You must be about legal age.”

“I was once.”

“I'd a found a way to keep you.”

“You're flattering me now.”

“Why don't you flatter me back?”

“Center Springs took a loss when you packed it in.”

She peered at me in that forthright and noncommittal way. “It sure did. And there's no power in heaven or earth strong enough to drag me back there.”

I saw the black triangles of dread and the yellow triangles of fear hovering in the air between us.

 

I followed her from Skin. I'm not suspicious by nature, but it helps me do my job. The night was close and damp and I stayed well behind. She drove an early-'90s Dodge that was slow and slumped to starboard and easy to follow.

She drove to a small tract home out in La Mesa east of downtown. I slowed and watched her pull into the driveway. I went past, circled the block, then came back and parked across the street, one house down.

The house was vintage '50s, one of hundreds built in La Mesa not long after World War II. Many of those navy men and women who'd served and seen San Diego came back looking for a place to live in this sunny and unhurried city.

A living room light was on and the drapes were drawn casually, with a good gap in the middle and another at one end. Someone moved across the living room, then lamplight came from the back of the house through a bedroom window on the side I could see. A few minutes went by and I figured she was showering, so I got out and strolled down the sidewalk. Then I doubled back and cut across the little yard and stood under the canopy of a coral tree. I stepped up close to the living room window and looked through the middle gap.

The room was sparsely furnished in what looked like thrift-shop eclectic—a braided rug over the darkly stained wood floor, an American colonial coffee table, an orange-yellow-black plaid sofa with thin padding. There was a stack of black three-ring binders on the coffee table. Right in front of me was the back end of a TV, not a flat screen but one of the old ones with the big butts and masses of cords and coax cable sprouting everywhere.

I moved along the perimeter of the house and let myself through a creaking gate, but no dogs barked and I soon came to a dark side window. The blinds were drawn, but they were old and some were broken and several were bent. Through a hole I could make out a small bedroom. All it had was a chest of drawers and a stroller with a baby asleep in it, and I didn't have to look at that baby very long before I realized it was a doll.

Farrel walked past the room in what looked like a long white bathrobe and something on her head. I waited awhile, then backed out across the neighbor's yard and walked to my car. I settled in behind the wheel and used the binoculars and I could see Farrel on the plaid sofa, hair up in a towel, both hands on a sixteen-ounce can of beer seated between her legs. She leaned forward and picked up one of the black binders, looked at it like she'd seen it a hundred times before, then set it down beside her. She seemed tired but peaceful with the TV light playing off her face.

Twenty minutes later a battered Mustang roared up and parked behind the Dodge and Sal got out. Gone were the sharp clothes and in their place were jeans and a fleece-lined denim jacket and a pair of shineless harness boots that clomped and slouched as he keyed open the front door and went through.

I glassed the gap in the living room curtains and Farrel's face rushed at me. She said something without looking at Sal. He stood before her, his back to me, and shrugged. He snatched the beer can from her and held it up for a long drink, then pushed it back between her legs and whipped off his coat. He wore a blue shirt with a local pizza parlor logo on it. This he pulled off as he walked into the back rooms.

He came out a few minutes later wearing jeans and a singlet, his hair wet and combed back. He was a lean young man, broad-shouldered, tall. For the first time I realized he was handsome. He walked past Farrel into the kitchen and came back with a can of beer and sat down on the couch not too near and not too far from her. He squeezed her robe once where her knee would be, then let his hand fall to the sofa.

They talked without looking at each other, but I can't read lips. It looked like a “and how was your day” kind of conversation, or maybe something about the TV show that was on, which threw blue light upon them like fish underwater.

After a while they stopped talking, and a few minutes later Farrel lifted the remote and the blue light was gone and she had picked up one of the black binders from the pile at her end of the couch.

She opened it and read out loud. There was no writing or label or title on the cover.

She waved the binder at him and pointed at a page and read a line to him.

He repeated it. I was pretty sure.

She read it again and he repeated it. I was pretty sure again.

They both laughed.

Then another line. They each said it, whatever it was. Sal stood over her then and aimed a finger at her face and said the line again. She stood and stripped the towel off her head and said something and they both laughed again.

He got up and brought two more big cans of beer from the kitchen, and he opened one for her and took her empty. He tossed the towel onto her lap and sat down close to her, put his bare feet up on the coffee table by the binders, and scrunched down so his head was level with hers. She clicked the TV back on.

I waited for an hour. Another beer each. Not much talk. They both fell asleep sitting up, heads back on the sofa.

It was almost three-thirty in the morning when Farrel stood, rubbed the back of her neck, then tightened the robe sash. She walked deeper into the house and out of my sight.

A few minutes later Sal rose and hit the lights. In the TV glow I could see him stretch out full length on the couch and set one arm over his eyes and take a deep breath and let it slowly out.

 

Two mornings later, at about the same dark hour, I was at headquarters writing a crime scene report. I'm an occasional insomniac and I choose to get paperwork done during those long, haunted times. Of course I listen to our dispatch radio, keeping half an ear on the hundreds of calls that come in every shift.

So when I heard the possible 187 at Skin nightclub I was out the door fast.

Two squad cars were already there and two more screamed into the parking lot as I got out of my car.

“The janitor called 911,” said one of the uniforms. “I was first on scene and he let me in. There's a dead man back in the kitchen. I think it's one of the managers. I tried to check his pulse but couldn't reach that far. You'll see.”