Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 14 (20 page)

“It’s showtime?”

“It’s showtime.”

We exited through the sliding glass doors of our room out onto the patio around the pool. The Fischettis were down to the left, sitting under a yellow umbrella. The showgirls were not with them; a pair of burly bodyguards, however, were. The bodyguards—an interchangeable pair of flat-nosed, cauliflower-eared, dead-eyed dagos—sat on either side of the brothers, but back a few feet.

Rocco wore a white sportshirt and gray slacks and canvas shoes; he was smoking a cigar and leafing through
Ring
magazine. He seemed bored, glum. The umbrella shaft was stuck down through a small round table, which had drinks and ashtrays on it and separated him from his brother.

Charley—his hair was blond, like mine, also a dye job— wore gray shorts and a white blue-checked shirt which hung open revealing a tanned hairy chest and small paunch; he was stretched out in a lounge chair, smoking his cigarette-in-holder, watching pretty girls in swimsuits, of which there was no shortage.

But pretty girls in swimsuits was one thing, and Vera Jayne Mansfield in a bikini, that was a whole other thing.

In my sunglasses and tourist attire, the camera blocking my face, I shot picture after picture of Vera, in and out of the pool, preening, posing, sticking out her chest, pushing out her bottom, peeling those lush lips back across the white teeth. I was whispering photographer type things at her, complimenting her, directing her; but she didn’t need any direction. She knew just how to handle herself in front of a camera.

Every man around that pool—and this included young men, old men, married men, single, even guys on their honeymoons— watched the brunette babe in the bikini like they’d just heard about sex for the first time, and were really, really impressed….

And in many of those shots, I caught Charley and Rocco Fischetti on film. Neither one of them—nor their bodyguards— thought a thing about it.

The problem was, the brothers were under that umbrella, sitting in shade, and I didn’t have what I needed, not yet. We had talked about this, Vera and I, and as she climbed from the pool and I helped her into a hooded terrycloth robe that ended midthigh, I whispered, “We haven’t got it yet.”

“He’s leaving,” she said, looking past me.

“What?” I said, but Vera was on the move.

I turned to see Charley and Rocco getting up, their two thugs falling in line—it was almost noon, so this was simply lunch, most likely. We could have waited for another time, but she was going right up to him…and I moved in—clicking.

“Excuse me, sir,” she said, in that Betty Boopish voice, “I hope you don’t mind my saying how elegant you look.” She was standing in front of him, the robe open onto all that bikini-bound, water-pearled flesh of hers, and Charley smiled, tightly.

Her smile radiant, she said, “I mean, that cigarette holder— you just look so…continental.”

This gibberish was holding Charley hostage. Rocco was gazing at her suspiciously, but neither he nor his brother—or their idiot retinue—seemed to have noticed me, moving in ever closer, snapping photos.

“Thank you, my dear,” Charley said. “You’re a lovely girl. Are you in show business?”

“I want to be.”

And now Rocco stepped up to the plate, his suspicions gone. “We have business associates in that field,” he said. “Ever hear of the Chez Paree?”

“Oh yes!”

“We own a piece.”

I faded back—I had all the photos I needed, but she was still talking to them. Finally, she beamed at them and said something—I was out of ear range, now—and bounced over to me.

“I think I made a good impression,” she said.

“They’re making impressions in their pants right now,” I said, taking her gently by the arm and walking her over to our room. I unlocked the sliding doors and we stepped in.

She jumped up and down, jiggling in all the interesting places. “They liked me! They said they’d give me an audition.”

“Vera. Sit down.”

She sat on the side of the bed and I told her about Jackie Payne. I gave her a fairly detailed version, starting with the religious parents in Kankakee and ending with death by overdose.

When I was finished, Vera wasn’t crying or anything, but her expression was sober and her eyes melancholy.

“You didn’t have to tell that story,” she said. “I know they’re gangsters. I don’t want anything to do with them.”

“I know. But you’re just starting out—and I saw today the effect you have on men.”

“It’s just my body.”

“No, lots of girls have big tits, kiddo. You have confidence, and stage presence. You’ll go somewhere. Just try not to do it by getting in bed…literally or figuratively…with the likes of Charley and Rocco Fischetti.”

She grinned up at me. “Hey—I wouldn’t care if that was Darryl Zanuck out there…I’m here with Nate Heller.”

“Actually, you’re here with Joe Samuels…who has work to do.”

I dropped the Kodak rolls in a packet off at the front desk; arrangements had been made for my film to be taken by courier to Mexico City and delivered directly to the Associated Press office, where it would be developed and the best shots of the Fischettis wired to Washington…where both Drew Pearson and representatives of Senator Kefauver would receive them.

From our poolside room I made two calls: room service, to bring us lunch; and the American consulate, where a lanky, well-tanned Narcotics Bureau agent named Dennison was waiting to hear from me.

“The photos are on their way,” I said.

“Good,” the agent said. “First thing tomorrow morning, I should have the proper warrants. I won’t pull in the local
policia
till the last moment.”

“Smart. Outfit guys have a piece of this town.”

“You haven’t been made?” Dennison asked.

“No. I’ll lay low till tomorrow morning.”

After I hung up, Vera looked at me with what pretended to be innocence and asked, “You’ll lay how?”

She was a handful. Two, actually.

I took her to another hotel to spend the evening—Los Flamingos, a hotel whose modernistic architecture stretched along the edge of an orange-and-slate-blue cliff three hundred and fifty feet above the ocean. The dining room had no outside walls, only a high-beamed roof; but we sat under a roofless section with the moon and stars as our ceiling, while in nearby papaya trees, yellow-and-blue macaws tried to make conversation with us.

Out in the ocean, under the moonlight, on the silver waves, a whale was spouting, and flying fish were leaping from the depths, huge creatures that looked like minnows from our high perch. We both ate charcoal-broiled red snapper, drank wine, and danced to a rumba band well into the night.

When we slipped into our room, back at La Mirador, just after one a.m., we were both a little tipsy and neither of us expected skunk-haired Rocco Fischetti to be sitting on the bed waiting for us, with my nine millimeter Browning in his hand.

“Go in the bathroom, honey,” Rocco said. His eyes were like dark stones close-set in that pockmarked face; the black slashes of eyebrow angled down in a scowl that his mouth was participating in. My suitcase was open on the floor—that’s where he’d found the gun.

Vera was clinging to my arm, shivering with fright. Like me, I had the feeling she was sober, suddenly.

“Honey,” he said, just a little louder, “in the damn bathroom.”

“Do it,” I told her.

She ran in there, glancing back at us, framed in light.

“Shut the door,” Rocco said.

She did.

I stood looking at him. Wearing the same white shirt and gray slacks as this morning, he was seated on the edge of the bed, the gun in his hand draped casually in his lap.

“This is the rod you waved in my face, in the Chez crapper, ain’t it?” he said.

“She’s an innocent, Rock. Let’s go someplace and do whatever we have to do. And leave her out of it.”

“Those shiners you give me—they’re almost gone.” He laughed hollowly. “I looked like a fuckin’ raccoon.”

“Rocky—we were friends once. Let’s settle this another time, in another setting—with this girl out of the picture. She’s an innocent kid.”

Rocco swallowed. Something was weird about him. Was he drunk?

“Jackie was an innocent kid, too,” he said.

“Yeah…yeah, she was.”

“What are you here for?”

“What do you mean, Rock?”

“What the fuck are you
here
for?” He hefted the nine millimeter. “To kill me? To kill Charley?”

Standing there casually motionless, I was nonetheless looking for the moment to jump him. The weird state of mind he was in might help—
might…
.

“I’m not here to kill you,” I said. “You’d already be dead, if I were.”

“Or you’d be dead. Why
are
you here, Nate?”

“…you saw me.”

“Playing photographer. Yeah. You snapped me and Charley.”

“Yes. And those photos are on their way to Washington.”

I thought that might get a rise out of him, but he just sat there, zombie-eyed. Finally, he said, “That means, unless Charley and me clear out…tonight…we’ll be in cuffs tomorrow. On our way back home.”

“That’s pretty much it. yeah.”

“He’s fuckin’ ruined me, you know.”

“What? Who?
Charley?
”

Rocco sighed, nodded. He kept thumping my gun against his thigh, nervously. “He and Tubbo went against the Outfit.”

“Arranging the Drury and Bas hits, you mean?”

“Yeah. They had inside help, y’know.”

“I do know.”

And I told him who I figured it was.

He confirmed my suspicions with a shrug and a nod. “You don’t buck Accardo and Ricca or even old Greasy Thumb. You either die, or if you’re real lucky, you lose damn near everything. Giancana, that crazy bastard, he’ll be sitting where the Fischetti brothers was sitting.”

“Because your brother bucked the Outfit.”

“Yeah. Drury had all sorts of tapes of Charley and Tubbo talkin’—’bout the election and shit.”

“You haven’t told Charley about me, have you?”

“No—no, Nate, I ain’t told him, and Charley ain’t made you. He was too busy today looking at Little Miss Big Titties. I saw you, though. You kinda look like my fuckin’ brother, with that blond hair.”

“If you don’t tell him now, Rock, you’ll be arrested tomorrow, along with him. You know that, don’t you?”

“What the fuck’s it matter? Maybe I go back and plead the fifth, don’t cause the Outfit no trouble, and the boys see I’m a stand-up fella.”

“You
want
Charley to get dragged back to the States?”

“Oh, yeah. ’Cause if he does, they’ll either kill him…or his heart will. He’s a sick man, you know.”

“How sick?”

Rocco coughed a laugh. “Sicker than he fuckin’ knows.”

“What do you mean?”

A shrug. “Maybe somebody switched his little pink pills with, whaddyacallit…playsee what’s-it’s.”

Was I hearing this?

“Placebos, Rock? You switched your brother’s pills?”

“You tell him, Nate, and I
will
kill you.”

I looked at him for a long time—the depression I’d seen lately in my own face was in Rocco’s, only deeper, like a mask that wouldn’t come off.

Then I came over and sat next to him. “You loved her, didn’t you?”

“What, jus’ ’cause I slapped her around, you don’t think I loved the little bitch? She could get under your skin. She was so goddamn sweet, and pretty. You ever hear Jackie sing?”

“Yeah.”

“How could you kill that? How could you kill something sweet like that, when you know your brother loves her?”

“You married her to protect her.”

“Of course. Then Charley found out that wouldn’t do no good, in this Kefauver thing…and he and Tubbo…. Fuckers.”

“I tried to save her.”

“How?”

All Rocco knew was Jackie had turned up in Lincoln Park, overdosed. I told him the whole story—about Riverview, and how Tubbo had covered it up so masterfully.

“Somebody’s got to bring that fat bastard down,” Rocco said.

“Somebody will. She was a great girl. I can see how she’d be easy to fall for.” I didn’t say I knew as much because I’d fallen, too.

He was slumped so far over now, it was like he was doubled up with a cramp; he was rocking a little. “She died, all cold and scared…overdosed. It’s my fault…I got her hooked on that fuckin’ junk. I thought I could…handle her better, that way. She wanted a career, I wanted a wife.”

Only in Rocco’s world would you try to accomplish that by putting your fiancée on junk.

But the guy loved her, all right, in his twisted way. He was sitting there, slumped in half, and I reached over and took the gun from his fingers, and slipped my arm around his shoulder. He put his head against my chest and he wept. He wept for a long time.

Then he got up slowly and swallowed thickly, wiping his face with his hands, saying, “Nate…don’t tell anybody.”

“Don’t tell anybody what?”

“That I blubbered like a baby. I will kill your ass, you do.”

“I cried for her, too, Rock. I just got it out of my system, already…and anyway, you loved her longer…and more.”

He sighed, nodded, straightened his shirt. “Nobody can know about Charley, neither.”

“Obviously.”

“But with a little luck, that bastard’ll keel over dead, any day now.” He smiled to himself, savoring his brother’s imminent demise, as he headed for the door. “Any day….”

Around ten the next morning, Charley was sitting by the pool again, with his brother next to him, the thugs playing bookends. Charley was wearing a bathrobe and swim trunks; and Rocco was in a loud sportshirt and quiet slacks.

I had left Vera in our room, but she was watching out the glass doors. She saw me as I pulled up a deck chair and sat next to the broad-shouldered, oval-faced gangster, who was smoking his black-holdered cigarette.

“How you feeling, Charley?” I asked pleasantly. “You look a little peaked to me.”

The cigarette in the holder fell from his mouth, and hot ashes hit his chest; quickly he brushed them off, his eyes wide with surprise and alarm.