Authors: Robbins Harold
"What? Well, let me ask Angie." Jonas turned from the
telephone and asked her, "Bat wants to know if we can supply
anything that would have a clear set of Chandler's fingerprints on
it. In his office, you think?"
"We don't have to look in his office," she said. "He
left a bottle of absinthe under our bar. His private stock. He had
the damned stuff smuggled in from Hong Kong, you know. Nobody else
ever touched those bottles, except maybe me when I poured him a
drink."
"Angie says we can send you a bottle that will have his
fingerprints on it. I'll have her wrap it so the New York courier can
deliver it to you in the morning. So ... You can go to bed now. I'll
talk to you in the morning."
Angie had already gone to the bar and was looking underneath for the
bottle of the illegal liquor. She slipped a paper napkin under it and
lifted it by the cork.
"Absinthe," Jonas muttered. "The stuff is supposed to
fry your brains. I always wondered why he liked it."
"Why do you suppose Bat wants Chandler's finger-prints?"
Angie asked.
She had picked up another bottle and was pouring them two bourbons.
Jonas was aware of her little trick. She knew he would want a drink
about now, and if she poured it, it would be smaller than if he
poured it himself.
"He didn't say, and I didn't ask," said Jonas. "But if
I were Morris Chandler I'd watch my ass. Bat's got a mean streak in
him."
"Like you never did." Angie laughed.
Glenda opened her new club show in the Nacional Hotel in Havana. Sam
Stein had tried to book her into the Riviera, but Meyer Lansky vetoed
the idea. "The long arm of the Cords," Sam complained.
Glenda told Sam she was tired of television and wanted to do a bold
act, in the kind of costume she used to wear, doing a monologue with
words and subjects that were taboo on the little tube. Sam was
dubious, but she swept aside his cautions, wrote her own lines, and
designed her whole production.
"I'm gonna be a
sensation
," she
told Sam.
For the first half of the show, she returned to a costume that had
always worked very well for her and was something of a Glenda Grayson
signature: a simple black dance leotard, this one cut very high on
her hips, dark sheer stockings, blood-red garters, and black hat. Her
hips and upper legs were bare, emphasizing as always the theatrical
contrast between white skin and black costume.
After she had danced and sung, she climbed on a stool, took off her
hat and shook her blond hair, then put the hat on again, now on the
back of her head.
"God, I feel like I've come home!" she
cried. "Do any of you have any idea how goddamn
boring
making a television show is? The first guy who yells 'About as boring
as watching it' is gonna get a kick in the nuts. Anyway, I feel like
I'm back where I belong, entertaining a live audience. And, hey, you
are
alive! And I thank you."
Her audience applauded.
"Television is supposed to be
family
entertainment. But if you make any reference as to how families come
to be, they cut that from the script. Right? The TV father nearly
faints with surprise when the wife tells him she's preggers. 'Really?
Really, honey? Gee, that's great! I can't believe it!' What the hell
did he think was gonna result from what he's been doin' three times a
night for the past six months?"
The audience laughed, then applauded again.
"Margaret Mead, I think it was — you
know, the anthropologist — writes that some primitive people
just don't make any connection between doin' it and getting pregnant.
But ...
Americans
, in the twentieth century yet? Television.
Jesus!"
She took a break, while an act featuring trained chimpanzees amused
her audience.
When she appeared on the stage for the second half of her show, she
walked out into the beam of a spotlight wearing fifty strings of tiny
glittering black beads that cascaded from her neck to her ankles.
Under the thousands of beads she wore a diaphanous straight black
gown. When she moved, the strings of beads shifted, and her audience
could see she was wearing nothing under the gown. The sheer fabric
blurred what they saw of her, but no one doubted they were seeing
everything. The applause rolled up as a roaring wave before she sang
a note.
She did not dance in the second half of the show. Or do a monologue.
She walked around the stage singing, while four handsome, muscular
young men in skin-tight flesh-colored panty hose danced a balletlike
routine behind her.
The audience called her out for two encores and four extra bows.
"I'm better than ever!" she exulted in her dressing room
afterward. "Thirty-six friggin' years old, and I'm better than
ever!"
"You're dead for television," said Sam grimly. "That
deal that was made for you is dead. No network will touch you. You're
too hot."
"I'm too
good!
"
"That, too. But television won't dare. This
is the time of Billy Graham and Norman Vincent Peale, and of
President Eisenhower, who thinks this country is a 'God-fearing one.'
Presley appears on the Sullivan Show, and they don't let the cameras
show him below the waist. You just went out there
naked
, sis.
You're using bad words on stage. You think a network is going to let
you in front of its cameras?"
"The great unwashed won't even know about it," said Glenda.
"Only the people who can afford to come to clubs like this will
know — and they will appreciate it."
"Let us hope you're right. And this act has got to be toned down
before you take it back to the States."
"Never mind, never mind, never mind," said Jonas to Ben
Parrish. "And I didn't put a fix in. Get that idea out of your
mind. You see to it that Jo-Ann cooperates one hundred percent with
those guys I've assigned to her. Until this mess is straightened
out."
Ben nodded solemnly. His broken left arm was in a sling. He couldn't
drive. Jo-Ann had delivered him to the airport in Los Angeles, and
Angie had driven him from the Las Vegas airport to The Seven Voyages.
He wore a lightweight blue-and-white checked jacket, a white polo
shirt, and gray slacks. He was subdued.
Angie handed Ben a vodka martini.
"What?" Jonas asked. "You a public-relations guy? You
got connections? You can plant stories?"
"Yes, sir."
Jonas flared. "Don't call me sir. Or Mr. Cord. Or, God forbid,
Dad. My daughter calls me by my first name, and so do you. Now—
I've got some pictures. And I've got a piece of tape. You don't have
to be a genius to figure out what I want done with them. Here. Look
at these."
Infrared flash had penetrated Glenda Grayson's bold sheer costume
even more than bright stage lights did. In the six 8 x 10 prints
Jonas handed Ben, she appeared to have gone on stage stark naked,
with nothing covering her but the strings of beads.
"Jesus Christ," Ben murmured.
"It's her, okay?" Jonas asked. "I mean, you oughta
know."
"It's her, all right. What did she have in mind?"
"Ask Angie."
Angie shrugged. "What do you suppose she has in mind? She thinks
she's been had. I guess I don't need to say how and by whom."
"Listen to this tape," said Jonas.
Angie pressed the button and started a tape
rolling between reels. The voice of Glenda came out clear. "So,
the guy says, 'I got one like a baseball bat.' And his wife says,
'Naahh. More like a
soft
ball bat.' The old guy asks the cute
young chick for a date. She says, 'I don't think so. You're too
bald.' He says, 'No. What I'm gonna show you is, I'm two-balled.'"
The tape rolled on silent. Then a little laughter broke out, then
more, and then more and more. "Took you a while to catch it,
huh?" asked the voice of Glenda Grayson.
Angie switched it off.
"Old burlesque routines," said Jonas. "They say she
was once a stripper. I guess she was."
Ben nodded. "You want this stuff placed."
"You got it."
"Okay, Jonas. I can do it."
"Keep your ass outa trouble, Ben. When you signed on with this
family, you signed on for a war."
"Goddammit!
Goddammit!
" Jimmy
Hoffa slammed his fist down on the table in the dining room of the
house on the private airport. There were only three men in the room —
Hoffa, John Stefano, and Morris Chandler — and Hoffa's outburst
drew the attention of no one but the single hooker sitting at the
bar, forlornly hoping for business.
"You knew the Cords are bastards," said Chandler.
"Well, so am I! Aren't I? Aren't
I
a
bastard?"
"It's been suggested," Stefano replied dryly.
"Am I supposed to be afraid of those
bastards? By God, I came up from the
streets!
I
worked
to get someplace. My daddy didn't leave me
nothin'
. He
couldn't. I wasn't handed
my
living on a silver platter. Were
you?"
Chandler shook his head. "I never ate a mouthful of bread I
hadn't earned."
Hoffa's mood made another abrupt swing, and he grinned. "That
somebody else hadn't earned," he said. "I've heard stories
about you."
"All right, guys," said Stefano. "A plane just landed.
It's maybe the guy we're waiting for. Time for you to blow, Maurie. I
mean, go. You can't have a look at this guy."
Chandler shrugged. He took a final slug from his drink and stood.
"I'm gone," he said. "Have a good meeting."
Five minutes later a sad-faced man entered the room.
"Here's Malditesta," said Stefano nodding toward the door.
"Be careful how you talk to him."
No one — with maybe an exception or two
among the dons — knew the real name of the man called
Malditesta. In street talk, to shoot a man in the head was called
giving him a major headache. The Italian words for headache were
mal
di testa
. Combined they made the pseudonym given this man after
he had shot three or four people in the head. At fifty or so,
Malditesta was aging but still handsome, taller and broader in the
shoulders than the average man, with gray at his temples but sleek
black hair not in the least thinned. His face was long, his nose and
chin sharp, his eyes heavy-lidded, and he wore a lugubrious
expression. His long raincoat was rumpled, as if he had worn it on
the plane. He wore a brown hat.
Before he came to their table to join Stefano and Hoffa he stopped to
listen to a proposition from the hooker, and from her smile it looked
as if he had agreed to visit her a little later.
Stefano and Hoffa stood and shook hands with the hit man.
"Well ... Glad you're here," said Hoffa. "You talk
with Don Carlo?"
"Don't ask who I talked to," said Malditesta. "I won't
tell anybody I talked to you, either."
Hoffa fixed a hard glance on Malditesta, but he might as well have
fixed a hard glance on a tree for all the reaction he got.
Malditesta was a pro. In the past twenty years he had killed eighteen
men and three women. It was said of him that he had never failed to
hit his target. What was more important, he had never so much as been
suspected. He had never been arrested, never questioned. Stefano had
heard of him but had never met him. Jimmy Hoffa had never heard of
him, until now.
"This has gotta be done fast and clean," said Hoffa.
Malditesta summoned a waitress. "A Beefeater martini on the
rocks with a twist," he said. "Medium dry. Tell the
bartender I do like about a quarter of a teaspoon of vermouth in my
martini — assuming he's using a good vermouth." He spoke
to Stefano. "What do you eat here?"
"Steak."
Malditesta nodded. "Rare. And a good red wine? Whatever's the
best you've got. Dry. I'd rather have a Bordeaux than a Burgundy."
"It may have to be a California, sir," said the waitress.
Malditesta wrinkled his nose. "If there's a problem, tell the
bartender to come out and show me what he's got."
When the waitress had left, Hoffa spoke impatiently. "You wanta
talk business or not?"
"There is nothing to talk about, Mr. Hoffa. I work one way and
one way only. You name a person and set a date. You hand me money,
the down payment. What happens after that is none of your business."
Hoffa grinned scornfully. "What if the guy dies of typhoid?"
"If by the date you set the man is shot by a jealous wife, you
still owe me the balance of the fee," said Malditesta coldly.
"You mean even if you didn't do it?"
"How would you know I didn't do it? Things can be arranged in a
variety of ways."
"How do I contact you?" Hoffa asked.
"You don't. You can't. When you hear word that the job has been
done, you hand over the balance of my money to Don Carlo Vulcano."
"How do I know you won't take the money I hand you today and
scram?" Hoffa asked.
Malditesta turned his heavy-lidded eyes on John Stefano.
"Jimmy," said Stefano solemnly, in a voice so low Hoffa had
to frown and strain to hear it. "Don't even talk like that to
this man."
Hoffa pondered for a long moment, then shrugged.
"No offense," he said. "But if Don Carto is handling
the payout, why am I sitting here with a briefcase full of cash I'm
delivering personally?"
"I always meet personally with the people I do business with,"
said Malditesta. "I want to know what they look like, in case I
have to hunt for them later."
Angie reached over from the driver's seat and put a hand on the hand
of the weeping and trembling blond girl. "Look. We'll take care
of you," she said. "It's over. We'll take care of you and
protect you."
A little later she led the girl from the black Porsche to the private
elevator that carried them from the garage under The Seven Voyages to
the suite where Jonas waited.