Come Die with Me (2 page)

“That’s what Jan keeps telling me,” I said morosely. “Get smart, get smart, get smart …”

“She’s right. Get smart—and
get yours
.”

Get mine? What did I need? I didn’t have a wife or sons. What did I need beyond an occasional glass of Einlicher and an occasional friendly bed?

Harry said, “You’re big and still kind of young and you’ve always considered yourself honest. But what has it got you?”

“Enough, Harry. I told Mrs. Malone I’d bill her if I thought this thing needed investigation. But I’ve never investigated a jockey’s social life before. Where would I start?”

“Start at the other end,” he said. “Start with Giovanni.”

T
HE RAIN KEPT COMING DOWN
in its idiotic way. A car was stalled, wheels submerged, in the low spot on Sunset a block from Jan’s shop. From behind the wheel a bulging matron looked out at me hopefully so I swung in a U-turn and came back.

My gallant flivver’s bumper was a perfect match for the bumper of her car and I pushed her out and pushed her to the top of the hill, from where she could coast to a filling station.

There was a parking space in front of Jan’s shop and behind the lettering on her front window, I could see my love, staring gloomily out at the rain. The lettering read:
jan bonnet—interiors
in dignified and uncapitalized black script. She waved at me as I stepped from the car.

She is a lovely girl, my Jan, small and well-shaped, with warm brown eyes and soft brown hair. She has a temper and a sharp tongue, at times, but one expects that from small people.

This noon she was all smiles. “You’ve come to take me to lunch. How thoughtful!”

I thought of the knuckles and kraut, already rumbling in my stomach. I said, “You’re a mind reader. How was the party last night?”

It had been a decorators’ party and I usually avoid them.

“It was all right,” she said. “What did you do?”

“Played cards.”

“With the boys?”

By the “boys” she meant the other ex-Rams, the ageing and nostalgic warriors, and there was some irony in her use of the word.

“With the men,” I said. “What have you got against athletes?”

“They don’t grow up.”

“Jan, let’s not get going on that. Are we going to eat or aren’t we?”

She went to get a raincoat, a frivolous creation of pliofilm and treated satin, and I went out to hold the door open for her on the curb side.

On the way over to Cini’s I told her about my visit from Gloria Duster Malone and my conversation with Harry Adler. I said, “I thought you might know the Dusters or Giovanni. They’re local people and they’re rich and you seem to know a lot of that breed.”

“I know Mr. Duster,” she said. “I did his house, God forgive me.”

“So—what’s wrong with doing his house?”

“It was all his taste, not mine. He’s a stubborn and tasteless man.”

“But you still took his money, I’ll bet.”

“Naturally. I am a business woman. Only an idiot athlete like Brock (The Rock) Callahan would refuse to accept business from a client.”

“You sound like Joe Puma,” I said: “Most of the athletes I’ve met have been pretty wonderful people. And so have the ones I introduced to you.”

“Socially wonderful and financially imbecilic,” she said. “I can give you a letter of introduction to Mr. Duster, if that will help. He thinks I’m kind of cute.”

“It’s his daughter who wants to hire me,” I explained. “His grown-up and married daughter.”

“But Papa has the money, and wouldn’t Papa be interested in the troubles of his son-in-law?”

I sighed and said nothing.

“It’s simply good business, Brock.”

“It is like hell. It’s an angle and you know I don’t play angles.”

Silence from her. The incessant rain kept coming down. It seemed that lately the only place Jan and I got along was in bed and that hadn’t been often enough.

Cini’s has a portico and I drove the flivver under that. An attendant, not quite hiding his disdain for my equipage, held the door open for Jan and then came around to take the wheel.

“Treat it right,” I told him. “It’s a special model.”

His smile was bland.

Jan said, “Could I have a drink first? You could have beer.”

“I’ve had my quota,” I said. “Tell me, is there anything you know about Frank Giovanni, any gossip you may have heard around town?”

“None,” she said. “I’ll write you the letter to Mr. Duster. You can use it or not, just as you see fit.”

It was a quiet lunch. I put some lasagna on top of sauerkraut and tried to stir Jan into some animated dialogue, but the smile she’d greeted me with was my quota for that day. I couldn’t believe her glumness was due to my business ethics; it must have been the rain.

Back at her shop, I waited while she wrote the letter, a letter I never intended to use, and then I drove over to the Beverly Hills Police Headquarters. Neither Sergeant Gnup nor Lieutenant Remington was in: I drove over to the West Los Angeles Station of the L.A.P.D.

Captain Apoyan was in his office and not busy. I asked him, “What do you know about Frank Giovanni? What’s his major source of income?”

My Armenian friend smiled. “Investments, I’d say. So far as I know, he’s left the rackets.” He yawned. “Why?”

“A jockey named Tip Malone is hanging around with him and Tip’s wife doesn’t like it. She wants me to sort of snoop around.”

For the first time, Apoyan showed interest. “Malone …? That little monster’s wife is worried about
him
?” He shook his head cynically.

“Go on,” I said. “Why is he a monster?”

“Involved in two paternity suits before he was twenty-one and a couple of assault cases since …”

“Assault …? Armed?”

“Hell, no. Against women, not men. He’s a real mean little son-of-a-bitch. A lot of those jocks are.”

I smiled. “You sound like a man who plays the horses, Captain.”

“That’ll be the day. Didn’t Malone marry Bill Duster’s daughter?”

I nodded.

“Well, then why is the woman worrying? Her old man had plenty of friends as crooked as Frank Giovanni ever was. Like Frank, he’s respectable now, but he pulled some raw ones in his day.”

“Well,” I said, “Well, well, well … So why did she come to see me? It couldn’t be that she hopes to play me for a patsy, some way or another?”

Apoyan leaned back and yawned again. “Brock, if a sharpie with money wants a stooge, their first thought is a private investigator. There is just enough larceny in you boys to make you the con man’s favorite mark.”

“You’re joking,” I said, “of course.”

“Am I? Look at the situation. Bill Duster’s daughter has a problem. She’s loaded; she can buy or hire any kind of advice or help she wants with it. She can get a big shot lawyer or afford a first class national investigative agency. Does she? No, she comes to a semipro named Callahan. Now, why?”

“You tell me,
sir
.”

“Because maybe Giovanni’s got something on Malone, something Malone’s rich papa-in-law would pay to keep quiet? Because maybe the jock has some shenanigans of his own going that need a fall guy? There are a number of angles. You know what I’d do if I were you?”

“Go right to Giovanni, that’s what you’d do. Because he’s a big, rich taxpayer. But I don’t like hoodlums, even after they get rich and retire.”

“So okay, you got three crooks and your client. You got Duster and Malone and Giovanni and this worried wife. I’ll tell you something, Rock; the guy that scares me the least in that foursome is Giovanni. He’s a
predictable
hoodlum, at least.”

“If I go directly to Giovanni, it’s a violation of my client’s confidence, isn’t it? No—wait, she didn’t pay me; that wouldn’t be a violation because she’s not my client.”

“She didn’t pay you?” Apoyan stared, his mouth open. “You mean, she isn’t going to?”

“I told her I wouldn’t charge her unless I could do her some good. I—kind of liked the girl.”

He shook his head. “Man, you’ve got no right to be in business.” He studied me. “Unless, maybe you figured to get paid—some other way?”

I stood up. “You malign me, Captain. You know, your suggestion was absurd, but it appeals to my sense of whimsy. I think I’ll run over and ask Frank Giovanni what his plans are for little Tip Malone.”

Both Harry Adler and Captain Apoyan had suggested I start with Giovanni, though they hadn’t both meant the same thing. I was sure that Harry hadn’t intended me to face the retired racketeer—only to investigate him.

I had met Giovanni once at a party and had helped a friend of his another time. It was not violation of client ethics to take my problem to him; Mrs. Malone wasn’t my client technically and she hadn’t asked for any secrecy. Whimsical as it had at first seemed, this might be the intelligent way to get Mrs. Malone her information.

By the time I got to Cresta Apartments, the rain had dwindled to a drizzle. The building was tall and white and modern, on a prominence east of the Sunset Strip, overlooking the entire town.

It was a hotel apartment and the clerk at the desk asked my name before ringing Mr. Giovanni’s apartment.

Mr. Giovanni, it developed, was not home at the moment, but a Miss Gina Ronico was in and asked that I be sent up.

And who was Miss Gina Ronico, I asked the clerk. Mr. Giovanni’s niece, he informed me.

I went up in the elevator to the penthouse apartment of Frank Giovanni. A girl was waiting for me in the hall up there. She was a slim girl with deep black hair and warm, alert brown eyes. Her mammary development, in the true contemporary Latin tradition, accented rather than contrasted with her essential slimness.

“Mr. Callahan?” she asked in a soft, warm voice.

“Right. Miss Ronico?”

She nodded. “You’re the private detective, aren’t you? The former baseball player?”

“Football, ma’am. When will Mr. Giovanni be home?”

“I’m—not sure. Would you come in for a moment?”

I came into a white and gold entry hall and from there into a lofty gold and white living room. From three sides of this immense room the city could be viewed.

Miss Gina Ronico was not alone. A short, slim, dark man in flashy Hollywood tailoring sat on the low davenport near the white brick fireplace. He was a jockey-sized man and I waited for Miss Ronico to introduce us, a sudden realization flowering in me.

She said, “Mr. Callahan, this is Tip Malone.”

He didn’t stand up or offer me his hand. He nodded and looked at me without interest.

“I’ve heard of him,” I said to Miss Ronico. “I’ve heard him mentioned as a friend of your uncle’s.”

Miss Ronico stared at me, momentarily flustered. Malone said, “Wise guy, aren’t you?”

I looked at him with the disdain of a man who outweighed him by a hundred pounds. I looked back at the girl. “You asked that I be sent up. What did you want to talk about?”

She licked her lips. “About—you. About—why you wanted to see my uncle.”

“I know him casually,” I explained, “and I had a personal question I wanted to ask him.”

From the davenport Malone said sharply, “You’re a liar! You’re checking on me, that’s what you’re doing.”

I studied him. “Watch your language, little man. I could drop-kick a man your size over fifty yards.”

His face whitened and his dark eyes glared. He stood up.

The girl said softly, “Tip … Please!” She glared at me. “Do you have to be insolent?”

I shook my head and stared at her quietly.

She took a deep breath, glanced at Malone, and then faced me candidly. “Mrs. Malone sent you here, didn’t she?”

“Nobody sent me. I came to see your uncle. I trust you’ll tell him I was here. My office number is in the phone book.” I turned and started to go out.

I was about half way to the entry hall when Malone called, “I’ve got friends even bigger than you, footballer.”

“That puts you one up on me,” I said. “I have no friends smaller than you.” That was my exit line.

Outside, the rain had stopped and from the west the sun was starting to break through. I walked to the flivver thinking about Gina Ronico with the beeg bosooooms and that little man with the nasty tongue. A great mis-match there, a horrible waste of vintage body.

Back at the office, I phoned the one friend I did have who was close to Malone’s size, my jockey friend, Nose Silvane. He wasn’t home, but his wife told me he’d be home in few minutes and she’d have him call me.

I sat back in my chair and looked out at the sun getting bigger and hotter and the steam coming off the tops of the cars on the parking lot across the street. Maybe the rain would leave us for a while and we would again be sunny California.

And then I thought of Harry Adler, with a wife in a mental hospital and two sons at Columbia and a reputation for being a slow man to pick up a tab.

It was so easy to be wrong about people. Look at what I had thought Gloria Duster Malone was. And she, in turn, had thought her miserable little husband was hanging around with Frank Giovanni, when in reality he was hanging around Frank’s niece.

Easy, now, Callahan
… I couldn’t be sure of that. It had seemed obvious half an hour ago, but how often is the obvious the true story.

My phone rang, and it was Nose. I asked him, “What do you know about Tip Malone?”

“He’s a mean little bastard, for one thing.”

“All you guys are that. What else do you know about him?”

“All of us are spunky and a few of us rough, Rock, but Tip’s a first class son-of-a-bitch. He’s a woman chaser, too, and has got the nicest damned wife you’d want to meet. He knocked up a couple of minors and beat the rap both times. The latest I heard on him, he’s hanging around with Frank Giovanni, and I guess you know what he is.”

“I’ve heard of him. And I’ve heard most of what you’ve told me. Why would he hang around with Giovanni?”

“I’d just be guessing, but it would be a good guess to figure he’s looking for a way to make a dirty buck. It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Married to a millionaire’s daughter and a good season at Santa Anita behind him? Why would he need a dirty buck?”

“Brock, Bill Duster is no Malone fan; he’ll never get a nickel Out of Duster. And Malone was lucky with his mounts at Santa Anita. He’ll never be a big winner, not that monkey.”