Authors: Robbins Harold
"The bastard beat her," said Angie to Jonas as she brought
the sobbing girl into the room where Jonas sat at his coffee table
desk.
"
What?
'Cause he found
out?
"
Angie shook her head. "No. Because it's the kind of guy he is."
Jonas stood and walked toward the trembling girl. "She need a
doctor?" he asked.
"Nuhh," said the girl. Her lips were
swollen and bleeding, her right eye was turning black, and she had a
growing swelling on her right cheek. "Nuh doctor. Gimme a
drink!
Gin!"
He took her hand and helped her to sit down on the couch. Angie went
to the bar.
"Did you get pictures?" Jonas asked.
The girl nodded. "I think so."
"The guys are souping the film," said Angie. "We
should know before long."
"We had no idea he'd beat you," said Jonas. "I figured
it was just a regular deal. This— What's your name?"
"Vicky," the girl mumbled.
"This multiplies our obligation to you, Vicky," said Jonas.
"The money will be better, and we'll get you out of Vegas, set
you up someplace else. Maybe we can get you out of the business, if
you want out."
Vicky nodded. "Want out. Second time I've been busted up."
"Are you really sure you don't want to see a doctor?"
The girl shook her head firmly. "Teeth okay," she said.
"Just fat lip, cuts— Like new in a couple weeks." She
seized the glass Angie handed her and drank three big swallows of
gin. '"Gain," she mumbled, handing the glass back.
"Can you tell me what you saw and heard?" Jonas asked.
"Heard nothing," said Vicky. "Saw
... Three guys came first. One of them was Chandler. Another one was
Jimmy Hoffa, I think. I'd seen the third guy before, remembered him
for his big cigars. Chandler left before the fourth guy —
the
one
— came in."
"Set up a photo array," said Jonas to Angie.
Angie laid out half a dozen pictures. She identified the photo of
John Stefano as the man she remembered for his cigars. None of the
pictures was of the man who had beaten her.
Jonas's security men had located Chandler the day after he abandoned
his office in The Seven Voyages. Thereafter they tailed him. He made
no great effort to hide himself, and it was easy enough to keep track
of him. They heard a rumor that Chandler was to be the manager of a
big, new, as-yet-unnamed casino-hotel that was to go up next year.
When he went to the airport, it was certain he was meeting somebody
important.
Having used the private airport himself, Jonas knew the private club
in the old house off the ramp was a meeting place for a variety of
men coming into Las Vegas for a variety of reasons. Some months ago
he had managed to place one of his men in the club as bartender. That
man had recruited Vicky as a spy, at five hundred dollars a month
whether she did anything or not. Jonas's men had installed a hidden
tape recorder and camera that could be activated by a button in the
girl's bed. Until now Vicky's tapes and film had produced what Jonas
had described as "high entertainment" but nothing
significant.
The bartender had given Vicky instructions to work especially hard to
sell her services to anyone who came to the club with Morris
Chandler. This was the first time she had earned the bonus Jonas had
authorized if she got pictures and tapes of a Chandler associate.
"Did he say anything worth hearing?" Jonas asked.
Vicky shook her head. "You can listen, but— "
"You can sleep in Mrs. Wyatt's suite tonight," said Jonas.
"Have a bath and some soup or something. Like I said before,
we'll work something out for you. You don't need to go back to the
airport, ever. Do you know who I am?"
"I know ... Mr. Cord."
"Then you know that when I say I'll take care of you, I'll take
care of you."
Half an hour after Vicky, now a little wobbly from gin, went to
Angie's suite, the lab men brought the photographs she had taken.
The equipment was good, and Vicky had known when to press the button
to take a picture and advance the film. From 35-mm negatives the
darkroom technicians had produced 8 x 10 prints of a middle-aged,
muscular, well-hung naked man.
"I want to know who he is," Jonas said grimly. "Send a
set of these to Bat. Somebody take a set to Lieutenant Dragon at
LAPD, and somebody show them to Detective Baker, Manhattan North.
Show a set to Ben Parrish. That hustling idiot knows everybody. Any
other ideas?"
"Send Bat two sets," Angie suggested.
"He can send a set to Toni. Maybe somebody at
The Washington
Post
will recognize the man. She might— "
"Good thinking," said Jonas. "Put two sets in the New
York courier bag."
They listened to the tape. They heard the sounds of the punches Vicky
took, of her screams and grunts and coughing and begging; but from
the time he entered her room until he left the man had said nothing
that suggested who he was — except that he was a vicious
bastard.
Lorena Pastor lifted her veil and peered intently at the bland face
of Ben Parrish. He smiled faintly at her and took a sip from his
vodka martini. His left arm hung in a sling, and she had driven the
car to bring them to this restaurant in Malibu.
"I really can't believe you, Benjamin," she said. "I
really cannot believe that you threw in the towel and went to work
for Jonas Cord."
"I don't work for him, Lorena. But I think you know that Jonas
has a way of getting people to do what he wants them to do. Anyway,
I'm married to his daughter."
"You two are naughty," said Lorena. "She
married you to spite her father. I can't imagine what
your
reason
was."
"If she married me to spite her father, it didn't work,"
said Ben. "He was furious at first, but he seems to have
accepted it."
Lorena had ordered a vodka martini, too, to see if she would like
them, she said. She lifted her glass and drained the last of her
drink, and by a nod to the waiter she ordered a second round. "You
say you have something for me," she said. "I can't imagine
your motive. Why would you want to feed me a story? I have to know
the truth, Ben. Is it really from Jonas?"
Ben nodded.
She smiled and for a moment closed her eyes. "I have a fond
memory of that man. I was just making the transition from would-be
actress to columnist, and he pumped me full of energy. He's ten years
younger than I am, you know. I was all but forty, and to have a
handsome rich young stud after me was a marvelous boost to my sagging
self-confidence. He took me flying and nearly scared me to death."
"He's a scary man in some ways."
"Nevada Smith introduced me to Jonas," she went on. "Talk
about studs, there was another one?"
"You didn't miss many, did you, Lorena?"
"In my day," she said. "If I wasn't so damn old and
hadn't got so damn ugly, I'd want a go with you. You could at least
let me have a look at what you're reputed to have."
"In the car on the way back," he said.
"Promise? Look and touch?"
"Promise. Look and touch." He laughed.
Their second round was delivered. She took a sip, then asked, "Well,
what've you got for me?"
"A piece of tape. And some pictures. Of the new Glenda Grayson
nightclub act that opened in Havana. She's been going out on the
stage all but naked. And wait till you hear some other monologue.
She's kissed television good-bye."
"Okay. I get it now," said Lorena. "What she kissed
good-bye to was Cord Productions. So Jonas wants her ass."
"She's doing the show," said Ben. "The pictures and
tape are real."
Lorena sighed. "I don't think I can do anything with it, Ben."
"Why not, for Christ's sake?"
"I don't think Walt will publish it. He's got
something against Jonas. He wanted the Margit Little story. Off the
record, he
ordered
me to use it. I don't think he'll want this
one. I don't think he'll help Jonas hurt Glenda Grayson."
"I think I know why," said Ben.
"Then you know more than I do," she said. She sighed again.
"Take the story to Edna. She won't have my problem."
"She doesn't have sixty-eight newspapers either," said Ben.
"She's got forty-six. That's enough to break a story. After she
breaks it, Walt may have to let me do something with it. Let me see
the pictures, anyway."
Lorena Pastor opened the big brown envelope that Ben handed her and
glanced through the photographs of Glenda's nightclub costumes. "This
is the end of her in television," she said. "The papers
that won't publish pictures like this will publish descriptions. And
if her monologue is raunchy the way you say, the guardians of our
public morality will go into a frenzy."
Bat brought the FBI fingerprint report to Las Vegas. He checked the
distant rooftop through the telescope while Jonas read the document
Toni had obtained.
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
WASHINGTON, D.C.
J. EDGAR HOOVER, DIRECTOR
The fingerprint laboratory of the Federal Bureau of Investigation has
examined the unlabeled wine bottle submitted this date and reports
its findings as follows:
Four sets of fingerprints exist on the bottle, two indistinct and two
distinct. The conditions of the indistinct prints make it impossible
to state with certainty that they are not the fingerprints of a known
person whose fingerprints are on file with this Bureau. The two
distinct sets of fingerprints are those of the following persons:
(1) One set are the fingerprints of one Angela
Burns Damone Latham. Angela Burns Damone Latham was born in Yonkers,
N.Y., on May 21, 1918. She was arrested by Postal Inspectors on March
11, 1941, in White Plains, N.Y., on a charge of stealing from United
States postal facilities, i.e., mail boxes. Counterfeit money was
also found in her possession. She pleaded guilty to mail theft and
was sentenced to five years imprisonment. She entered the Federal
Reformatory for Women on June 20, 1941—
Jonas flipped the sheet. He didn't want to read any more about Angie.
(2) The second set of fingerprints are those of
Maurice Cohen. Maurice Cohen was born in New York, N.Y., on April 26,
1882. This Bureau possesses fingerprint records of Maurice Cohen as
follows:
a. Subject was arrested on May 3,1900, in New Orleans, La., on a
charge of larceny by fraud. This charge was subsequently dropped.
b. Subject was arrested on August 8, 1900, in New Orleans, La., on a
charge of larceny by fraud. Subject was convicted on this charge and
sentenced to one year of imprisonment. Subject entered a Louisiana
state prison farm on September 21, 1900, and was released on
September 21, 1901.
c. Subject was arrested in Houston, Texas, on March 17, 1903, on a
charge of public vagrancy. He was sentenced to thirty days on a road
gang and was released on March 18, 1903.
d. Subject was arrested in Detroit, Mich., on June 4, 1927, on a
charge of being accessory to murder. The charges were dropped for
lack of evidence, and he was released from the Wayne County jail on
August 19, 1927.
e. Subject was arrested on January 23, 1932, in Lucas County, Ohio,
on a charge of violating the National Prohibition Act and the Ohio
state laws prohibiting the sale of alcoholic beverages. Subject was
convicted on this charge and sentenced to three years imprisonment.
He was received at the Ohio Penitentiary on February 27, 1932, and
was released on parole on May 2, 1934.
The subject Cohen is reputed to have been a member of the "Purple
Gang."
This Bureau has no further record of the subject Cohen.
Jonas grinned at Bat. "So that's who Morris Chandler is,"
he said.
"It makes me wonder what we'd find out if we ran a check on
Nevada Smith," said Bat.
Jonas's face darkened. "
No!
" he
yelled. "Don't even think of it. Don't even— Son of a
bitch!
" He grabbed a vial, popped off the lid, and shook
a tiny pill into his hand. He shoved the pill into his mouth and sat
silently for a quarter of a minute, eyes closed.
"Can I do anything for you?"
Jonas shook his head. "The pills take care of it," he said.
Bat stood staring at Jonas, his mind filled with things he might say,
with thoughts to which he would not give voice. God, it had to be
hard on a man to—
"Listen to me," Jonas grunted. "Don't you ever think
of running any kind of check on Nevada. He was a better man than
you'll ever be."
"Better than you, too?" Bat asked. It was what popped out;
he had not meant to challenge Jonas at this moment. "I mean—
"
"Yeah," Jonas interrupted. "Better
than me. Better than the old man. I mean my father. Some ways. Nevada
knew some special things about ... life. I wish you'd known him
better. I wish— " He paused, as if his breath came hard.
"So ... Chandler is Cohen. Felony record. By
God!
"
BAT SAT ACROSS THE TABLE FROM MARGIT LITTLE, in a cozy candlelit
Czech restaurant in Beverly Hills: the kind of place more likely to
be found on the Upper East Side than in Los Angeles. They had
finished their dinner and were sipping the last of their wine. Bat's
hand was on hers.
"Margit," he said in a low voice. "What I'm going to
ask probably won't come as any surprise to you. Will you come to the
hotel with me?"
"I don't think that's a very good idea, Bat," she said
solemnly.
"Sometimes the best things in the world are bad ideas."
She sighed softly. "I'm not surprised. I knew if I came out to
dinner with you again, you'd ask. I guess if I didn't want to hear
you ask, I shouldn't have accepted your invitation."
This was the fourth time he had taken her to dinner. From their
conversation over those dinners, he had learned that Margit was no
naïf. To the contrary, she was cunning and focused; she knew
what she wanted, and she thought she knew how to get it. What was
more, he could detect no sign that she carried any burdensome
emotional baggage. She was pretty and talented, and she knew it. She
was fresh and vivacious before the TV cameras. She was potentially a
bigger star than Glenda Grayson ever dreamed of being, and she knew
that, too.