And 47 Miles of Rope (Trace 2) (10 page)

Herman was a man with no discernible bones in his body. His face looked like a water-filled baloon. His body was round, his arms were short thick ovals, his fingers overstuffed little sausages. He had a jeweler’s loupe in his eye and he grunted when Trace entered the small back-room office. There was a piece of black velvet on the work counter in front of Herman and it glittered with the jagged flashing of a few dozen diamonds.

Trace walked to a file cabinet in the far corner of the room, opened the top drawer, and removed a chess set. He walked back to the work counter, cleared aside the IN basket, and set up the board.

He moved one of the white pieces and called out, “Pawn king four.”

Herman was holding a diamond between narrow little tweezers, turning it back and forth under his glass. Without looking away, he said, “Pawn queen bishop four.”

Trace made Herman’s move on the board for him, and then his own. “Knight king bishop three.”

Herman put the diamond to one side and picked up another. Still without looking at the board, he said “Pawn queen three.”

Herman was sorting the diamonds into two piles. Playing both sides of the chess board, Trace called out each move he had made, and the jeweler, without even a glance at the board, would instantly call out his response, which Trace entered on the board.

It took Herman eight minutes to finish examining the diamonds. He had separated four from the rest. He pushed the black velvet aside and said, “Crap, all crap. You’d be amazed at the crap we get. Hello, Trace.”

“Hello, Herman. I thought diamonds were forever.”

“No. Crap is forever,” Herman said. “Now what have we here?”

He looked down at the chessboard, where Trace had just launched a queen, knight, and rook attack on Herman’s castled king. He grunted to himself and, after Trace’s next move, sacrificed a bishop to check Trace’s own king, and three moves later had won Trace’s queen.

Trace turned his king over in the traditional gesture of surrender. “You’re slipping,” he said. “You had to look at the board this time.”

“The ravages of age,” Herman said. He was still looking at the chessboard. “You always attack too soon. You play like an Irishman.”

“The old argument,” Trace said. “Nature versus nurture. What’s wrong with the stones?”

“All dreck,” Herman said. “They come from the same rotten armpit of the world, they’re all umpty-ump million years old, and lately, all I get is bort. Stuff you should put in drills, not in rings.”

“That’s what you get for making your living in a controlled marketplace,” Trace said. “Diamonds are off, so the geniuses who run the industry push out junk because junk always draws junk prices. When the market goes up, good stones go up more, and that’s when you’ll see them.”

“You’re very smart, Trace. It took me half a lifetime to figure it out.”

“That’s because you’re Jewish and I’m only half a Jew. The Irish half of me figures out plots and conspiracies, things we’re good at. Most of the time we don’t make any sense at all, but if we luck into a real conspiracy, then; hell, you came to the right place. You know why I’m here?”

“Actually, I thought you came in for your biweekly drubbing,” Herman said.

“Not this time. Felicia Fallaci.”

“I heard that that was Roberts’ case,” Herman said.

“It is, kind of. I’m checking out the murder that went with it, but since the two of them are connected, I’ve got to check the jewels too.”

“What can I do for you?”

“Roberts tells me there’s no sign of the jewels on the street. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“I thought he might be lying to me,” Trace said.

“Not this time.”

“He talk to you?” Trace asked.

“There you are, being Irish again. No conspiracy. Ever since that business with young Jack, you’re my friend. Sure, Roberts talked to me. He asked me to keep an eye open for him, even promised me a piece of a reward if he gets one. So I’m keeping my eyes open for him. Nothing going on in town and nothing in California either.”

“How the hell can anybody tell that?” Trace asked. “So many jewelers, so many diamond dealers.”

“And so many big mouths,” Herman said. “One guy makes a buy and he’s got to tell his brother-in-law, but his brother-in-law hates him, so he tells everybody else and before you know it, the whole world knows about it. It’s rotten, but it’s the way our business works. It’s why we can make deals with handshakes, ’cause everybody knows everybody else’s business. If someone ran across a lot of good stuff, everybody’d know about it and so would I. Nobody. Nothing.”

“New York?” Trace said.

Herman threw his hands up into the air. The motion set the fat on the backs of his arms to jiggling.

“New York is different. It’s…well, it’s New York. People change so fast, so much money changes hands. There’s a million dollars changing hands on Forty-seventh Street every five minutes. Another million would just get lost in the shuffle. Nobody hears anything out of New York.”

“If Felicia’s jewels wound up there, they could just vanish?”

“Off the face of the earth,” Herman said.

“Why doesn’t every thief go to New York, then?” Trace asked.

“The good ones do. The rest panic. They’re afraid their luggage will rip open and somebody will find the stones. Or that they’ll get mugged. Or who knows what. Most thieves aren’t very smart.”

“So far, you can’t prove it by me,” Trace said. “I don’t have an inkling on this one.”

“It’ll come,” Herman said confidently. “Time for another?”

“Where were you when mercy was handed out?” Trace asked, but he began setting up the chessboard again.

“Am I on tape?” Herman asked.

“Yes. Should I turn it off?”

“Leave it on,” Herman said. “Later you can play back your screams of anguish.”

Spiro lived in a two-family house on a tired old street a half-mile from the downtown business district.

Trace leaned on his door bell and, when he got no answer, pushed the lower bell on the assumption that the owner lived on the first floor. If the woman who answered the bell was the owner, she wasn’t exactly thrilled by her status as a real-estate mogul.

She was short and fat and aggressively packed into pedal pushers and a pink sweater. Her hair gave new dimension to the description “lifeless,” and she had a cigarette hung from her mouth that kept curling smoke into her eyes and causing her to squint.

“What do you want?” she said.

“Just in time,” Trace said. He took the cigarette from her mouth and threw it out onto the broken-cement walk.

“Hey. Hey. What’s that for?”

“I’m from the gas company,” Trace said, “Mr. Spirakodopolous called and said he had a gas leak.”

“He ain’t home,” the woman said. It hadn’t been the smoke that made her eyes squint. She was still squinting.

“Probably fled before everything blows up,” Trace said. “I’ve got to look around. If you’ve got a gas leak, it can be very serious.”

“I told you, he ain’t home.”

“And, lady, I thought I just told you that if I don’t check this out, this house might blow up around your ears. Is this your house?”

“Naturally it’s my house.”

“And where’s Mr. Spirakodopolous’s apartment?”

“Upstairs, but he ain’t home.”

“His gas leak’s still home. Get me the key. Hurry, woman, before we’re all incinerated.”

“Who are you?”

“I told you, I’m from the gas company.”

“You got any identification?”

“Yes. My name’s Reddy Kilowatt and you might want to stand here chatting, but I don’t want to blow up. I’m leaving.”

“All right. Wait a minute.” She lumbered off and came back a few seconds later with a key. She handed it to Trace.

“Now, listen, ma’am. This is very important. While I look around, please step outside and wait on the sidewalk. No point in both of us dying.”

She had finally started to believe him. She pushed by him and walked out onto the sidewalk.

“Wait there for me,” Trace said.

He went quickly up the steps and unlocked the door to Spiro’s apartment. He just looked inside and knew he was too late. The apartment was two rooms: a small kitchen and an all-purpose living room-dining room with a pull-out bed. The entire place had been turned upside down. Drawers had been pulled out and their contents emptied. Magazines were tossed all over the floor. A large closet in the living room had been ransacked. Clothes were piled in a heap on the floor.

Somebody had gotten the idea to search Spiro’s apartment before Trace did. Score one for Sherlock Holmes. He looked around and decided there was no point in looking for anything. If there had been something in the apartment, either it had been found already, or he wouldn’t be able to find it either.

He closed the door and made sure it was locked, then walked down the stairs, whistling. Outside, he gave the landlady her key back.

“It’s all A-okay,” he said. “No danger.”

“What was it?”

“It’s hard to tell sometimes since the Alaska pipeline opened. But it’s perfectly safe. Tell me, has anybody else been here today?”

“From the gas company? No.”

“From anywhere? Anybody come in to see Mr. Spirakodopolous?”

“No.”

“You been home all day?”

“Yeah. Well, except this morning, when I went to get my hair done.”

“And done very well it is, too, ma’am,” Trace said.

“Your father called,” Chico said.

“What’d he say?”

“He said he’s made a major breakthrough in this case. He said that he wants half your fee.”

“What’d you tell him?”

“To hold out for two-thirds. I’ve got expensive habits and it’s going to cost him to take me away from all this.”

“Is he still at the airport?”

“He told me he was, but that was about an hour ago. He said he wants to meet you at four o’clock. He said pick a cops’ bar.”

“There aren’t any cops’ bars in Vegas. This isn’t New York. In New York, you can’t go near Third Avenue and Twenty-third Street without tripping over cops. Did he say what he found?”

“No. He’s going to call back. What should I tell him?”

“Tell him to meet me at Boggle’s.”

“That’s a mob bar,” Chico said.

“Only difference is that the clientele dresses better in a mob bar. Boggle’s. At four.”

“I’ll tell him when he calls.”

“You see my mother?”

“Not today,” Chico said. She turned back to the cocktail lounge bar and waved to the bartender for another Coke.

“Not even for lunch?” Trace asked.

“Nope.”

“My mother passed up a free lunch?”

“Maybe she’s on a hot streak at the slot machines.”

“I hope so,” Trace said. “If she loses another ten dollars, I’m never going to hear the end of it. The next thing will be the gas pipe.”

“She can take Bob Swenson with her.” Chico said. “He’s had this look on his face all day.”

“Just because National Anthem wouldn’t play?”

“He’s been wandering around, I think they call it mumbling darkly, about some people born to be unlucky in love.”

“You’ve got to admit it must have been tough for him. Sleeping next to her and having her imitate Little Goody Two-Shoes.”

“You’d really like to give her a go, wouldn’t you?” Chico said.

“Stop it, will you? I’m sober. I’m watching my cigarettes. What more do you want from me?”

“Total loyalty and unremitting faithfulness. You’d really like to take a run at that big cow, wouldn’t you? Just because she’s got a big chest.”

“Not just because she’s got a big chest. It’s the challenge. To boldly go where only donkeys have gone before.”

“Tell the truth. The chest has something to do with it, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. Actually, yes,” Trace said.

“I hate you when you get fixated on other women’s bosoms. Here I am, working my little tits off for your insurance company and—”

“No, thank you, that dog won’t hunt. You’re working your reasonably sized, nice, beautiful knockers off for two thousand dollars. And how do you figure I’m fixated on chests when you’re the one who’s always talking about them?”

“You think I’d be doing this if it weren’t for you?” she asked.

“For two thousand dollars? Sure.”

“You’re hateful, Trace.”

“Last night you told me I was lovable.”

“Last night you
were
lovable. Now you’re the same hateful no-good that I’ve come to know and despise.”

“Only a fool is loved by everyone.”

“And what about somebody who’s loved by no one? What do you call him?” she snapped.

“An insurance man, I guess,” said Trace. “And right on cue, here comes Walter Marks, sprightly of step, clear of eye.”

“And empty of mind,” Chico mumbled, then turned her dazzling smile on Marks. “Good afternoon, sir,” she said.

“Yes. Well, Tracy, what’s going on? I mean, it’s nice that you’re able to sit here on company time, drinking…I guess it’s nice that the two of you can do that, but I was wondering what gives with the Jarvis case.”

“We’re getting close to a breakthrough,” Trace said.

“Oh?”

“I think it was a ritual killing. All the signs are there. The gloves on his hands. The blow to the skull with a blunt instrument. The overturned tree, the dirt scattered all over the living-room floor. Even the missing jewels and the ashtray. It has all the earmarks of another killing done by the Rustinayle Terrorist Society of Upper Egypt. Don’t confuse that with Lower Egypt. If you look at a map, you’ll see that Upper Egypt is at the bottom of Egypt and Lower Egypt is at the top. This is what we call in the trade a paradox.”

“Don’t talk to me about Egypt,” Marks said. “What is this society?”

“The Rustinayles. After the Thuggees in India, they were the most fearsome of all the groups. Lately, they’ve been financing their nefarious activities by jewel theft. But trust me, Groucho. I’ll bring those towel-heads to justice if it’s the last thing I do. It’ll be a great feather in our caps. Well, maybe a smaller feather for your cap.”

“The Rustinayles, you say?”

“None other,” Trace said.

Marks nodded, then strolled away as if he had just remembered an appointment. Chico had been sitting with her back to them, and when she turned, Trace saw that she had a cocktail napkin stuffed into her mouth. She pulled it out and said, “You are a terrible person, Trace.”

“We’ll see. If he goes right to a telephone, then we know he’s calling the fancy insurance detective to warn him to get right on the trail of those Egyptians “

“The Rusty Nails. You re awful.’ she said.

“Stay here.” Trace walked away and was back a minute later. “Groucho went right to a phone booth in the lobby. He knows who the insurance detective is.”

“If the guy’s got any sense at all he’s going to know you’re jerking Marks around”

“One never know, do one?”

Chico finished her Coke and started to excuse herself when Marks returned.

He tried to chuckle. “That was a good one, Trace. The Rusty Nails. Heh, heh. Sorry I had to run off like that. Now, tell me the truth. Any breaks in the case?”

“Excuse me, you two,” Chico said. “I have to run.”

Trace kissed her cheek. “Tell Sarge Boggle’s.” She nodded and smiled at Marks, who ignored her.

Trace turned back to him. “I wasn’t kidding, Walter. You know I’m serious when I call you Walter.”

“Come on. You can’t expect me to believe that nonsense.”

“When I have the perpetrator incarcerated, you’ll see,” Trace said. “A great feat of detection. I’m thinking of having my brain registered with the police as a deadly weapon.”

“Or another victim of alcohol abuse,” Marks snapped.

“That too,” Trace said.

“I don’t know,” Sarge said. “An awful lot of Italians in here for this to be a cop’s bar.”

He was sitting with Trace at a table in a dark corner of Boggle’s, a cocktail lounge on Desert Inn Road, but far off the usual tourist paths that tended toward excess in both prices and air-conditioning.

“I don’t see an Irishman in here, except us,” Sarge said. “All cops in Vegas are Italians?”

“These aren’t really cops, Sarge.”

“Mobsters, right? Gunsels? I could smell it when I came in. All that cheap cologne. Ten Nights on a Pepper Farm. A dollar a gallon. Why don’t we roust the joint?”

“Because they haven’t really done anything wrong. And because most of them are friends of mine.”

“I guess we’ll let it go, then,” Sarge said grudgingly.

“So let me in on your big discovery today,” Trace said.

“No job for amateurs, son,” Sarge said.

A man sitting at the bar glanced in their direction. His eyes lingered a shade too long on Trace’s father, and Sarge started to rise to his feet, a scowl on his face. The man at the bar turned away and Sarge settled down, nodding in satisfaction. “Got to teach these people to keep in their places,” he said.

“Today. The airport. What happened?”

“Nobody at American Airlines remembered seeing Jarvis the other night. I talked to a couple of people who were working then and there’s a couple more to go. I’m going back tonight to talk to them.”

“That’s the big revelation?”

“I’m coming to it. You’ve got some good friends out there at the airport,” Sarge said. “That Sergeant Murray, the redheaded guy, he said he owes you.”

“I did a favor for him once.”

“More than just a favor, the way he told it. You kept his kid out of jail.”

“They had the wrong kid. Just a mistake. What did Murray do?”

“The two of us sneaked around checking lockers with a master key. No passport. Who do you have to know to get a drink around here?”

“Just me,” Trace said. He waved to a cocktail waitress in a skirted sailor suit, who came quickly to their table.

“Debbie, this is my father.”

“What will you have, sir?” she asked.

“Whatever he has,” Sarge said.

“I’ll have Perrier water,” Trace said.

“Hold it,” Sarge said. “I’ll have beer.”

Sarge waited until she had left, then opened his big red notebook and brought out a photo of Jarvis, an enlargment of a typical but clear backyard snapshot. “I showed this around,” he said.

“And?”

“Your man Jarvis was quite a traveler,” Sarge said.

Trace realized that his father was relishing this and was going to tell the story in his own good time. So, let him. He lit a cigarette and sat silently, waiting for Sarge to continue.

“Yup, quite a traveler,” Sarge said.

“I didn’t know that.”

“I bet you didn’t. And I bet you didn’t know that for three weeks in a row before he got killed, he flew to New York every Thursday. Three weeks in a row.”

“No, I didn’t know that either.”

“I found a girl at the ticket counter. That’s her regular shift and she sold him his tickets. She recognized his picture. But you know what?” He stopped as Debbie approached. “Hold it until she goes. She might be on the earie, you know.”

He waited as Debbie put down their drinks smiled, and left

“You were saying,” Trace prompted.

“The name ‘Jarvis’ didn’t ring any bell with this girl at the airport. She recognized the face from the picture but riot the name. So I had her dig out the manifests from those flights. There was only one name on all three of them: Edward Stark. Mean anything to you?”

“No.”

“Me neither,” Sarge said, “but I’m going to check it out. So why’d he go to New York three Thursdays in a row and why’d he go under a different name?”

“A girlfriend? Maybe he was in love? Business? I don’t know.”

“Funny kind of business because the girl told me that he came back the same day. He’d go to New York and it was like he turned around and came right back the same day. Does that make any sense?”

“Well, it rules out a girlfriend, unless Jarvis was into quickies. You got any ideas?”

“I’m thinking about it,” Sarge said.

“Sure as hell complicates things, doesn’t it?”

“Life is complicated, son. The more you check things, the more you find out they’re complicated. Easy answers are almost always wrong in our line of work, I think that guy over there is staring at us.” He cracked his knuckles. It sounded like sticks breaking in the dark, quiet bar.