Fly Me to the Morgue (24 page)

‘Why would you quit?' I asked. ‘On you it's sexy; dead sexy.'

‘Sexy,' she said, ‘yeah, right.' She picked a piece of tobacco off her tongue with the last two fingers of her right hand.

I sat up and looked around the expensively furnished bedroom.

‘Adrienne,' I said, ‘how did we end up here?'

She looked at me and said, ‘I was wondering the same thing. You were telling me about Phil being dead, I started to cry, you held me . . . here we are.'

‘I'm sorry . . .'

‘For what?' she asked. ‘I took advantage of you. What is it about death that makes you want to feel alive?'

‘Adrienne—'

‘Come on,' she said, getting to her feet, ‘let's go back into the living room. We can't talk here. We'll end up fucking our brains out . . . again.'

Her bare buttocks twitched their way across the room where she grabbed her robe and put it back on.

‘I'll have drinks waiting,' she said, and left the room.

SIXTY-FOUR

I got up, found my clothes on the floor, pulled some of them on, carried my jacket and shoes back out to the living room. She handed me a glass of vodka, no juice. It suited me.

‘I need the truth, Adrienne,' I said. ‘Your brothers, DeStefano, what kind of business were they in together?'

‘Phil fancied himself a developer,' she said. ‘That's Developer, with a capital ‘D'. Only he was small time and didn't know it. The best he could do was a lower case ‘d', until he met DeStefano. He had just come to town and was trying to get a foothold in different businesses. I guess you know what he really was.'

‘I know.'

‘Somehow, Phil convinced him he could help. Only it was Phil who needed help. He was broke.'

‘What about the rest of the family?'

‘We all had our own money for a while,' she said. ‘Our parents died years ago, left us all a nice chunk of change. But we gambled it away – all but Chris. He put his to good use, even multiplied it. Then he decided to breed horses, and he came up with this one.

‘Phil realized what Chris had, and he wanted Chris to race the horse, not sell it. Race it, and after it earned a million then breed it. Phil always had big time ideas and no money; Chris had money, but small ideas.

‘They should have joined forces,' I said.

‘They might have except they both wanted to be in charge.'

‘So nobody was in charge.'

‘Phil tried to get me and Eric on his side, and our sister Elizabeth.'

‘Where is she in all this?'

‘She's the smart one,' Adrienne said. ‘Lives in Europe with her husband. Doesn't gamble. Doesn't even talk to the rest of us. Sends a postcard, sometimes.'

‘But Phil tried to recruit her, too?'

She nodded, lit another cigarette, then pulled the belt on her robe tighter and picked up her drink. Her red hair was tousled and she brushed a lock from her eyes. A damned sexy gesture.

‘He tried to recruit all of us, but Eric could only do the books. He had no influence with Chris.'

‘But you did?'

‘I had some,' she said. ‘I'm not proud of it, but Christopher was going to help me out when he sold the horse. You see, I'm more like him than Phil. I'm kind of small time too in my thinking. Phil sees turning the horse into five million in a few years. Me, I wanted fifty thousand next week.'

‘So you still say Phil wouldn't have killed Chris?' I asked.

‘I told you,' she said, ‘he's small time. Murder is big time.'

‘So would he get DeStefano to do it for him?'

‘No,' she said, ‘I don't think so.'

‘Well, could he have owed DeStefano enough money to get himself killed?'

‘Phil owes money all over town,' she said. ‘Any one of them might have killed him for it.'

‘But not DeStefano.'

She hesitated, then said, ‘Vince and I were . . . tight for a while. A short while. I wasn't above trying to use him to feed my habit. But Vince is not a gambler – not a casino gambler, anyway. And he didn't like that I was. So in the end he gave me ten grand, a pat on the butt and sent me on my way.'

She crushed her cigarette out in a glass ashtray on the kitchen counter.

‘Chris was business minded, but he still wanted to make a profit next week, not in five years. He wanted to sell the horse, and reinvest in other horses. Let whoever bought the horse race it. See, if it flopped on the track then it would be worth nothing. Chris didn't have the gambling gene. He always went for the sure thing.'

‘So sellin' the horse to Bing Crosby was a sure thing.'

‘That was how it looked.'

‘Adrienne.' I sat down and pulled on my shoes and socks. ‘You've got two dead brothers now. And Bing Crosby has a dead trainer. Now the same person might not have killed them all, but I think the same man was behind them. You can't point me in any direction?'

‘I told you,' she said. ‘Phil owed money all over town. Maybe he mentioned the horses to one of his partners, and maybe they thought killing the trainer and Chris would get Phil the horse. I don't know.'

‘Who would know? Eric?' I asked.

‘I think the only person who knew all of Phil's business was Vince.'

‘Do you think you could get me in to see Vince for more than ten minutes?' I asked. ‘Maybe without all the bodyguards?'

‘Without them?'

‘I don't want to get to him,' I said, ‘but without them around there might not be so much posturing, on his part.'

‘I don't know,' she said. ‘I could try.'

I put on my jacket. Her scent was all over me. I wished I could stay so we could drink and fuck all night and forget about everything else. I thought she might have felt the same way.

‘I have to go,' I said. ‘Will you try with Vince?'

‘I'll give him a call,' she said. ‘If he agrees I'll probably have to go with you.'

‘I don't want to put you in danger.'

‘Don't worry,' she said. ‘Vince won't hurt me. I can't promise the same for you, though.'

‘I'll take my chances.'

I headed for the door, then stopped and looked at her. A parting word? Kiss goodbye? It was awkward.

‘Just go, Eddie,' she said. ‘Do what you have to do. I'll call you.'

‘OK,' I said. ‘Uh, thanks.'

She was pouring herself another drink as I went out the door.

SIXTY-FIVE

I left her building and drove to my house instead of the Sands. It was late, but not late for Vegas. I figured I'd change for work, go in and spend some time in the pit. I wondered if the police had found Phil's body, and if Hargrove was hard at work yet? I knew his first move would be to look for me and Jerry.

It was getting dark when I pulled up in front of my house. As I entered I knew something was wrong. The place felt different. You know how when you live alone your home feels one way, and when something changes the way it feels you can tell? There had been some excitement in my living room on more than one occasion. I think there might have even still been a bullet in the wall, somewhere.

I looked around. Everything seemed to be in place, but I had the feeling someone had been there. It didn't feel like they were still there. I didn't feel the urgency to get out. I walked through the house carefully, finally determined that it was empty. I turned on the light in the kitchen and got myself a beer.

Somebody had been in my house. What for? I walked around with the beer in my hand. This time with the lights on. I saw a couple of signs in the bedroom that someone had searched. I have a thing about dresser drawers. They have to be closed tight. Two of mine were slightly ajar.

Also, when I looked in them, I could see that someone had rifled through my undies.

Whatever they were looking for had to be small enough to fit in a drawer?

I didn't have a good enough eye to narrow it down further than that, but I knew who did.

This time when I called Danny he was in his office. He got to my house in twenty minutes.

‘What's missin'?' he asked.

‘Nothin',' I said. ‘All I know is they looked through my underwear.'

‘Did you touch anything else?'

‘The refrigerator. For a beer.'

‘Got any more?'

‘Help yourself.'

He grabbed a Piels from the frig and then we walked the house. It wasn't until we got back to the kitchen that he saw something.

‘You close your cereal boxes after you use them, right?'

‘Well yeah,' I said. ‘Otherwise the cereal gets stale. Jerry made me start doing it.'

‘Well, you've got an open box of cereal on top of your frig.'

‘Anything else?'

He ran his hand over my kitchen counter, showed me the granules of sugar on his palm.

‘They went through my sugar bowl?'

‘Might even have dumped the whole thing on the counter to go through it,' he said, brushing his hands off in the sink. ‘Better chance, though, they just stuck their fingers in and wiggled them around. Still got sugar on the counter.'

‘So now we're smaller than a sugar bowl,' I said. ‘Anything else?'

He looked around a bit more, then shook his head.

‘Maybe if I spent another hour walkin' around, but—' I stopped him there, because something hit me.

‘We don't need you to do that,' I said. ‘Small enough to fit in a sugar bowl.'

‘Diamonds?' he asked. ‘Rubies?'

I shook my head and said, ‘A key.'

SIXTY-SIX

‘A key,' Danny said, ‘to what?'

‘A safety deposit box, I think.'

We'd gone down the block from me and around the corner to a bar I'd been in once or twice.

‘Hey, Eddie, long time,' the bartender said.

OK, so more than once or twice.

‘Two beers, Arnie.'

He set us up and we got back to the business at hand.

I told Danny about getting into Philip Arnold's house, finding him dead, and then discovering the bank statement mentioning the safety deposit box.

‘Whoa, back up,' he said. ‘Don't skip over the part about the dead guy. What did you and Jerry do when you found him?'

‘We wiped the place down, got out of there, and called it in to the police anonymously.'

‘You know, sooner or later, Hargrove's gonna get on to that.'

‘Yeah, I know,' I said. ‘Jerry figured he'd been dead since last night, but we set ourselves up with alibis for this afternoon, anyway.'

‘What else did you do today?'

I started from the beginning, told him about DeStefano.

‘Wait, wait, you took Frank Sinatra with you to see the mob guy?'

‘Frank loves mob guys,' I said. ‘Plus he got us the meet through Giancana.'

‘OK,' he said, ‘go ahead.'

I gave him the rest of the story, and then accounted for the remainder of the day.

‘Sounds to me like the dead guy and DeStefano have got some bad enemies,' he said. ‘Maybe DeStefano's next.'

‘Well he's got guys around him all the time,' I said, ‘although I
am
using Adrienne to try to set up a meeting without them.'

‘You really think he's gonna go for that?'

‘I don't know,' I said. ‘It depends on just how tight he used to be with Adrienne.'

‘Adrienne,' he said. ‘She wanted to meet me, right?'

‘Yeah,' I said, ‘we'll work that out.'

‘Well, when is she settin' up this meet?'

‘Hopefully tomorrow.'

‘Yeah, well, let's hope you can keep that meeting and you're not in jail.'

We finished our beer, ordered two more.

‘OK, so tell me what you think is in the safe deposit box?'

‘I don't know. Something worth killin' three people for.'

‘I thought this was all about a horse.'

‘So did I. But what if it's not?'

‘Go on.'

‘What if the whole horse thing is just a coincidence?' I asked.

‘Or, better yet, a smokescreen.'

‘To hide what's really goin' on.'

He looked at me. ‘So what's really goin' on, Eddie?'

‘I don't know,' I said. ‘Maybe Vince knows. Maybe I'll get the chance to ask him. So, what've you been doin' since yesterday?' I asked.

‘Lookin' for witnesses,' he said. ‘First in the hotel itself, and then outside. I've been goin' door-to-door.'

‘That sounds boring.'

‘It's called legwork, my friend. It's what bein' a detective is all about.'

‘OK, so what has your legwork gotten for you?' I asked.

‘It's gotten me nobody who saw the trainer, Red Stanley, get to the hotel.'

‘Not even a cab driver from the hotel?'

Danny spun around on his stool a couple of times, looking annoyed.

‘There are two cab drivers I haven't been able to get to yet,' he said, finally. ‘One's a family man, apparently, henpecked like hell. His wife got him to take a few days off, take her and the kids away. I'm waitin' for him to get back.'

‘And where'd they go?' I asked. ‘Can't you go to them?'

‘Florida.'

‘Who goes from Las Vegas to Florida for vacation?' I asked.

‘You got me.'

‘What about the other one?'

‘Him,' Danny said, as if he hated the guy. ‘He got fired. I'm still lookin' for him.'