High Spirits [Spirits 03] (19 page)

      
That’s when I knew for certain I was done for. I’d figured all along that Sam Rotondo would be the death of me, and it looked as if this was the night. I was one unarmed female in a car full of three murdering hoodlums, and nobody’d probably ever see any part of me again.

      
Perhaps, if they shot me and took me out into the Mojave Desert to dispose of me by allowing vultures to clean my carcass, a coyote might run across my mouldering corpse and carry a thighbone to a nearby ranger’s station or something, but I doubt that anyone would know it was
my
thighbone.

      
Or maybe, if they took me to the end of the Santa Monica pier and threw me into the drink wearing cement overshoes, my bones might wash up on the beach someday, but again, would anyone recognize them as
my
bones? Certainly not.

      
I was truly depressed in spirits as that big black motor rumbled away from my cozy abode on Marengo.

      
Mr. Maggiori’s voice, horning in as it did on my melancholy thoughts, surprised me so much, I must have jumped a foot. “It was very kind of you to join me this evening, Mrs. Majesty.”

      
I gulped. “Sure.” My voice was barely a squeak, and it annoyed me. Darn it, it wasn’t my fault I’d become involved with these blackguards! Stiffening my jellied spine, I said, “Certainly,” much more forcefully.

      
“I want you to see the new place. We’ll be opening up on Monday, and it would be swell if you could do a séance and get in touch with my godfather. He needs to know how we’re carrying on the business.”

      
The business, eh? Hmm. Still, it didn’t look as if Maggiori was going to direct his henchmen to dispose of me. Yet. “I’ll be happy to hold another séance for you, Mr. Maggiori,” lied I, “but you didn’t have to come in person. You could have telephoned.”

      
“Naw. I like the personal touch.” He pronounced it
da poisonal touch
. “Besides, I want you to see the joint. That way you can tell me where’s the best place for you to do the deed.”

      
Do the deed? Or, rather,
do dah deed.
Reminded me of the Camptown Racetrack. However, that’s neither here nor there. “Very well,” I said, striving to recapture my spiritualist serenity. “I shall be happy to.”

      
I can’t remember a single other time in my life when I’d said so many lies in so short a period of time. Well, unless you count all the séances I’ve held and tarot cards I’ve read and Ouija boards I’ve manipulated. Oh, all right, I guess I’m a fairly accomplished liar—but only in business situations.

      
“Good. That’s good.” He rubbed his gloved hands together, and I instantly envisioned those hands tightening around my throat. Oh, boy, this was bad. Sometimes I wish I were as unimaginative as my mother.

      
However, we all got to Lamanda Park in one piece, and the machine stopped behind what looked like a perfectly respectable house surrounded by orange groves. There were a lot of orange groves in Pasadena at that time. In April, you could positively swoon from the fragrance if you drove near some of those orchards. It was heavenly. Which made the existence of Maggiori’s speakeasy amongst those innocent trees even more of a blasphemy than the one in the sycamore grove had been, in my opinion, not that anyone cares about that.

      
Maggiori’s goon was Johnny-on-the spot when it came to opening doors and stuff. He leaped from the front seat of that automobile and had my door opened before I had caught my breath. Then he rushed to Maggiori’s side of the car and opened the door for him. At least he’d opened mine first.

      
“Right this way, Mrs. Majesty,” said Maggiori, taking my arm and guiding me gently through the back door. Although I felt like yanking my arm from his grasp, I didn’t, thereby demonstrating that I can occasionally control myself.

      
The same goon who’d met Harold Kincaid and me at the door of the former speakeasy, met Maggiori, his henchman, and me at the door of this one. He must have been watching through the peephole because he had the door open before we’d reached it. Boy, were these guys organized! The Pasadena city government might want to take lessons.

      
“Right this way, Mrs. Majesty.”

      
“Thank you,” I mumbled as, feet dragging, I reluctantly crossed the threshold. Wasn’t there something in
Dracula
about a person not being vulnerable to the vampire’s fangs until she or he had walked into the count’s castle of her or his own accord? I think so, and I felt kind of like Jonathan Harker must have felt when he’d entered Dracula’s castle on that long-ago night. Except that Jonathan Harker didn’t have a clue that the count was an evil so-and-so, and I
knew
these guys were. The more fool me, I reckon.

      
“Let me show you around.” Maggiori, like Count Dracula, sounded perfectly at ease. “Would you like to take off your hat and coat first?”

      
How polite. “Um ... no, thanks. I really can’t stay long.” Even if I had to walk the seven or eight miles home in the pitch-black of a cold February evening.

      
“Right. Well, I’ll just show you around a bit then.”

      
“Thank you.”

      
My heart thundered like mad as he led me through that place. Yet there was nothing remarkable about it, really. It looked as if it might have been a farmhouse once upon a time. Probably the people who’d planted the orange groves had lived there. It looked to me as if a couple of walls had been knocked out to create what would probably be a dance floor on Monday night, and a long shiny bar ran along one wall of that room. They must have pinched it from the old place after the police had left. Another few rooms were, I suppose, where people could gather, drink, and chat if they felt like it because several round tables resided in them, all of which had chairs upended on them.

      
“And this here is my office,” Maggiori said, and he opened a door.

      
I’d just peeked inside, when I heard a delighted shriek that nearly gave me a heart attack. Slamming a hand over my cheek, I prayed my heart wasn’t weak like Pa’s.

      
“Daisy!”

      
And darned if Flossie Mosser wasn’t dashing up to me. She stopped short right in front of me, apparently realized her behavior might not be approved of by all present, and cast a frightened glance at Maggiori. “I’m sorry, Mr. Maggiori. I’m just so ... happy to see Mrs. Majesty again.”

      
Thank the good Lord, Maggiori was feeling benevolent that evening. Rather than telling the goon to haul Flossie out to the orange grove and shoot her, he only chuckled. The sound he made reminded me of rough pebbles rolling around in a velvet-lined box. A black, velvet-lined box.

      
In order to spare Flossie any possible repercussions of her happy outburst, I pasted a huge smile on my face and reached out to her. “Flossie! How nice to see you again!” I’d already lost count of the lies I’d told that night. And really, in the overall scheme of things, that wasn’t a big lie. I was happier to see Flossie than anyone else present.

      
She threw her arms around me and gave me a big hug. I hugged her back, resigned to my fate. When I glanced over her shoulder, I saw Jinx Jenkins scowling at the both of us, so I put more enthusiasm into my own hug.

      
“How are you, Flossie?”

      
“I’m swell, thanks.”

      
She didn’t look swell, although her bruises were more yellow and green than black and blue now, and the puffiness around her black eyes had gone down. With another glance over her shoulder, I saw Jinx still scowling malevolently, and whispered, “You probably need to get back to him now.” I jerked my head so she’d know to whom I was referring.

      
Poor Flossie. She wasn’t the brightest candle in the box, as I may have mentioned. It took her a few seconds to figure out what I was trying to tell her, and it wasn’t until the despicable Jinx hollered, “Floss! Get your butt over here,” that she jumped like a frightened hare and scurried back to her man. Huh. Some man.

      
To my horror, I looked at Maggiori and discovered him scowling, too. When he said, “Watch your manners, Jinx. There’s ladies present,” I almost fainted with relief.

      
A telephone jangled somewhere in the distance, but I didn’t pay much attention until another of Maggiori’s underlings sidled up to him and said, “It’s him, boss.”

      
Giving a minuscule nod, Maggiori said, “I’ll take it in the ’phone room.” He turned to me. “You just look around, Mrs. Majesty. I was thinking this room would be best for the séance ‘cause it’s got soundproof walls, but you know better than me.”

      
Maybe. We’d see.

      
So Maggiori sloped off with his minion and I, deciding I was doomed anyway, decided to snoop around a little bit on my own. Heck, the big boss had given me permission, hadn’t he? And since there was no other way to know who “him” was who’d called, it might be a good idea, if not a wise one, to see if I could overhear something of Maggiori’s conversation.

      
Therefore, I pretended to be fascinated by the lush decorations in the various rooms while trailing several feet behind Maggiori. The telephone room proved to be a nook reserved for the magical invention located just underneath the staircase leading to the upper rooms. Nobody’d said anything about what went on upstairs, but I figured no one would mind if I examined the staircase a little. I didn’t hear much of the conversation.

      
“Maggiori here.”

      
Silence.

      
“Yeah. Monday.”

      
Silence.

      
“Right. You know what to do when you hear about another raid.”

      
Silence.

      
“You’ll get paid, dammit. Quit whining.”

      
Silence.

      
“I don’t give a good God damn if you lose your job on the force. I’m paying better than the damned
law-enforcement
people do, and don’t you forget it.” He said the words
law enforcement
as if he thought they represented a lousy joke.

      
A law-enforcement person? Was the guy on the other end of the wire a
policeman?
Mercy sakes. I guess that would explain why the police always found Maggiori more or less ready any time a raid was planned, wouldn’t it?

      
But who could the culprit be?

      
I wandered away from the ’phone room, figuring I’d better not press my luck, my mind spinning in circles like a whirlwind.

      
Maybe the rat wasn’t a policeman. It could be a deputy sheriff, I suppose. Or perhaps it was someone who merely worked for the police or sheriff’s department. A clerk or a secretary or a switchboard operator—someone like that.

      
Would a clerk or a secretary or a switchboard operator have inside information like when the cops planned a raid? What the heck did I know about that sort of thing?

      
Bother.

      
Well, at least I had something to tell Sam Rotondo, providing I got home in one piece. It looked as though I would because right after I made it back to the room where Flossie and Jinx still sat, Maggiori joined us, rubbing his hands in a satisfied manner, and smiling a smile that might have looked friendly on somebody else.

      
“Well, that’s taken care of.” I presumed he was talking about the telephone call. “You wanna see anything else, Mrs. Majesty?”

      
“Um ... I don’t think so. Thanks.”

      
“Sure you won’t have a drink?”

      
Good Lord, no! “No, thank you. I need to get home.”

      
“Good. Then I’ll take ya.”

      
I prayed he meant it.

      
Before Maggiori could escort me back to my family’s precious little bungalow on South Marengo Avenue, Flossie, eluding Jinx once more, cornered me.

      
“It’s so good to see you again, Daisy.”

      
“You, too, Flossie. Say, are you going to the Salvation Army church on Sunday?” I hoped so. And I hoped she’d see the error of her ways, join the Army, and leave Jinx, too. Hey, without hope, the world would be a pretty dismal place.

      
Shooting a quick glance over her shoulder, she said, “I guess so. I’d really like to.” She focused on me again. “Are you going?”

      
“My whole family’s going,” I declared, although nothing had been decided yet. My family still thought I was nuts for asking, actually.

      
“Say, Daisy.” Flossie looked down and began toeing the thick rug at our feet. “Um, you wouldn’t want to get together again for lunch or something, would you?” As if she anticipated a negative response, she hurried to say, “I know you probably don’t want to, but I just thought—”

      
“I’d love to,” I lied nobly, breaking into her apology since I just couldn’t bear it. The poor woman
really
needed an infusion of self-respect.

      
And then, by golly, Mr. Maggiori, his goon, and his chauffeur drove me home. Maggiori and I discussed the séance, and I told him that his office would be fine for the setting of same. He seemed pleased, thank God. The goon escorted me to my front door, where Spike, who has the sharpest ears in the universe, madly barked on the other side.

      
Turning to the goon, I said, “Thanks.”