When Elephants Forget (Trace 3) (19 page)

“Not a chance,” Trace said. “Not a fucking chance.”

“Why not?” Anna said, the picture of sweet reasonableness. “Nick’s offer makes sense to me.”

“You know, that was one of the things that smelled bad from the beginning. Nick didn’t seem to want anybody to try to find out who killed Tony, and yet everybody was telling me how tough he was, how he never forgot, how he had a memory like an elephant. Well, Nick’s two goons almost killed my father, and I’m not an Armitage. I don’t forget. When elephants forget, us Tracys remind them. No deal.”

Armitage looked up at the mention of his two bodyguards. “There’s another way I can go, you know,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“All I’ve got to do is nod, and Frankie and Augie will put you and the little missie here asleep forever. You can go join Lupus. He tried messing with me too.”

“Maybe we ought to ask them what they think about that,” Trace said. He rose from his seat and went to the suite’s front door. When he opened it, Frankie and Augie stood there. Behind them stood Sarge with a pistol in his hand. He prodded one of the twins with it.

“Inside, you two giboneys,” he said as he pushed them into the living room. Just then, the door to the bedroom opened and two more men came out.

“Did you get it?” Trace asked.

One of the men nodded.

“Get what?” Armitage said, his face snapping back and forth from his two bodyguards to the two men who had been in the bedroom.

“I told you before,” Trace said. “You should have paid a little more attention to Tony and what he was interested in.” He reached under the coffee table and removed a shiny piece of metal about the size and thickness of a stack of three quarters.

“This was Tony’s. A little transmitter. The two policemen here have you all on tape.” He smiled at Armitage. “What do you think?”

“I’m not talking till I see my lawyer,” Nick said.

“Too bad you don’t have one in the family,” Trace said.

They were in a small bar a few blocks from the Plaza. Chico had been disappointed that the bar’s kitchen was closed and she ordered three bags of peanuts and two Slim Jim smoked sausages from the bartender. Trace ordered a double Finlandia and Sarge a bottle of beer.

Sarge said, “I don’t know how your figured out the girl, Jennie, was involved.”

“It was the ransom message,” Chico said. “Armitage said that the guy who called warned that he had to pay up or Tony would be ‘chilled.’ And I remember one of Trace’s tapes when he was talking to her and she used the same word about killing, ‘chilled.’ That was a lead, and I remember Trace talking about Tony’s electronic junk, so I went to the house and his roommate, the big scarecrow, showed me Tony’s bag of stuff. There was an ad in there for that electronic voice changer. LaPeter said that Tony had one. He said Tony liked to play around with it, but he hadn’t seen it since his death. He didn’t know where it was. But he knew somebody else that had one and he got him to lend it to me.” She paused to dump half a bag of peanuts into her mouth.

“Then when I went to see Jennie and I showed her the machine, she just folded. So I convinced her that the police would go easy on her if she cooperated, and she said she would.”

“She’s probably skipped by now,” Trace said.

“Police can find her,” Sarge said. He savored a large drink from his beer mug. “My agency’s first case. A roaring success,” he said. “I’m very proud of me.”

“So am I,” Chico said, spraying peanut chips across the bar. She patted the top of Sarge’s bandaged head.

“It’s all right,” Trace said. “I’ll just sit here and drink while you two big detectives congratulate each other.”

“Chico,” Sarge said, “you want to be a partner in a detective firm? I was thinking of Dev, but he’s a little slow on the pickup. I think he spends too much time trying to think big thoughts.”

“We’ll talk about it,” Chico said.

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

“Good,” Trace said. “Get her off my hands.”

Daylight was peeking into the city when they got back to their hotel room. Trace was feeling pleasantly high, and as he lay in bed next to Chico, he said, “A nice day.”

“And tomorrow will be nicer,” she said.

“Oh? How’s that?”

“You drank tonight. Without permission. Tomorrow, you call your kids.”

“I can’t believe you’re saying that to me,” Trace said.

“It was our deal. No heavy drinking. You lost when you started sucking it up tonight,” Chico said.

“You’re hateful,” Trace said.

“You told me once you loved me. You remember that?”

“I take it back. I regard you as a hateful person, directly responsible for the sneak attack upon Pearl Harbor. You are a woman who will live in infamy.”

“And you are a man who will call his two children tomorrow.”

Trace spent a lot of the next day on the telephone.

He told Walter Marks that the Armitage case had been cleared up, Trace had personally saved Garrison Fidelity a half-million dollars, and his expense account would probably be a little high.

“You know how carefully I watch things, trying to keep costs down, but this one, well, expenses were heavy. Me and my staff, you know.”

“What staff?” Marks said.

“The private detective I hired. And Chico. She did a lot of work too. And we used the latest in electronic surveillance equipment. It’s going to be a big bill. I just thought I’d let you know.”

“You better have receipts,” Marks said. “Without receipts, I don’t pay for anything.”

“It’s nice to know that in a world of changing values and mores, some things are constant,” Trace said.

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re too goddamn cheap to live, Groucho,” Trace said.

“I don’t care about that. I want receipts.”

“You will get them,” Trace said.

“When?”

“As soon as I have time to write them.”

He hung up and called Robert Swenson, the president of the insurance company.

Swenson congratulated him when he heard that the Armitage killing had been solved. “Good work.”

“Thanks. Listen, Bob, does your brother-in-law still have that factory in Brooklyn?”

“Yeah. He still doesn’t make a nickel at it either. Somebody once told him that tax losses are good, and he can’t seem to get it through his head that they’re only good if you’ve got some kind of plus income to apply them against. He is a total minus.”

“I want to make him more minus,” Trace said.

“I don’t think I should talk to you anymore,” Swenson said.

“No. Seriously. Sarge has opened up a detective agency and he needs some clients. How about your brother-in-law hiring him? To stop thefts or something.”

“Sarge need the money?”

“He needs an excuse to get out of the house,” Trace said.

“I’ve met your mother,” Swenson said. “Consider it done.”

“And, of course, it didn’t come from me. Or you. Have the brother-in-law say he read about Sarge in the papers or something,” Trace said.

“All right,” Swenson said. “Anything else?”

“Tell Groucho to get off my back about my expenses on this case.”

“Just send in the receipts. I’ll see that he pays them.”

“You’re a big help,” Trace said.

He waited until late afternoon, trying to build up his courage to call his ex-wife and children. Finally, he realized that Chico would be back soon from shopping, so he hooked up the electronic voice changer to the telephone and dialed the New Jersey number.

When his ex-wife answered, he said, “Let me talk to the daughter.”

“Who?”

“The daughter. The girl,” he said.

“She’s not here. Who is this?”

“Let me talk to the son, then.”

“Who is this? Whose voice is this?” his ex-wife demanded. “I don’t know you. Who are you?” Her voice sounded like glass cracking.

“The son. Let me talk to him.”

“He’s not here either.”

“You’ll have to do, then,” Trace said. He began to breathe heavily into the phone. “Haaaaaa, haaaaaaa, haaaaaaaa.”

“Creep,” his ex-wife said, and hung up.

Quickly, Trace disconnected the electronic device and put it back in the bedroom.

When Chico came back, she said, “Did you call?”

“Call whom?”

“Your kids, of course.”

“Of course, I did. I promised you I would, didn’t I?”

“And?”

“They hung up on me,” he said.

She shook her head. “Well, at least no one can say you didn’t try,” she said.

Trace’s mother was due back in New York Thursday afternoon. He and Chico returned to Las Vegas aboard a Thursday-morning plane.