Everybody Kills Somebody Sometime (9 page)

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Authors: Robert J. Randisi

BOOK: Everybody Kills Somebody Sometime
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I
WAITED ABOUT A HALF an hour. During that time many of the girls had come out of the dressing room and either gone home or out to run their daily errands before returning later for the show. A couple of brunettes came out and when I asked if they were Carla they smiled politely and said no, Carla would be out soon. Finally, I got tired of waiting and approached the door to the dressing room. I knocked, opened it cautiously and said, “Hello? Anyone in here?”
“Come on in, handsome,” a woman’s voice said.
I entered and found myself face-to-face with a blond amazon. Even without the high heels she looked six feet. She was dressed for the street in blue jeans and a purple short-sleeved top that was being dangerously stretched by her breasts. In my opinion jeans were invented for dancers to wear. The denim clung tightly to their legs so you could see if a muscle even twitched. She had her long blond hair pulled back by a kerchief that matched her top.
“What can I do for you, lover?” she asked.
She had already applied her street makeup, which was considerably less than her stage makeup. Still, her lips were scarlet, and there was plenty of mascara surrounding her blue eyes.
“I’m, uh, looking for Carla De Lucca?”
“You mean I won’t do?” she asked, putting her hands on her rounded hips.
“Oh, any other day I’d say yes without even hesitating,” I answered.
“But not today.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You don’t know how sorry.”
“Well, don’t be too sorry,” she said. “There may be time after all.”
“What do you mean?”
“Carla beat it out the back way about twenty minutes ago.”
“Do you know why?”
“All I know is Verna came in and told her something, and she got dressed real quick and scrammed out the back. Is she runnin’ from you? And if the answer’s yes, why?” She eyed me with increased interest.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I’ll have to ask her when I see her. Which way did she leave?”
“Go out that door,” she said, pointing to the other end of the dressing room, “and then there’s a door that’ll take you to the back parking lot.”
“Okay, thanks.”
“My name’s Honey, by the way,” she said. “Honey Sweet.” She wrinkled her nose. “Stage name.”
“Well, Honey, tell me, do you know Lou Terazzo?”
Now she wrinkled he nose in a totally different way.
“Do I? He’s always hangin’ around here, sniffin’ after the girls.”
“He’s supposed to have a thing going with Carla,” I said, “at least, that’s the info I got.”
“Well, that may be so, but it don’t keep him from chasing the rest of us around here with his tongue hangin’ out.”
I decided to compliment her to see if she might have something else to tell me.
“Well, in your case,” I said, “I guess you can’t really blame him.”
She liked that, and came closer. Her perfume was heavy, but it wasn’t altogether unpleasant.
“You’re sweet,” she said.
“No,” I said, “I thought you were, remember? Honey Sweet?”
She laughed and ran her hand up my arm. Her fingernails were painted the same scarlet as her lips.
“Well, maybe when you’re done chasin’ Carla you could come back.”
“Maybe I could,” I agreed. “When was the last time you saw Lou around here?”
“Earlier today.”
“And you wouldn’t happen to have an address for Carla, would you?”
“Actually, I do,” she said. “I don’t have much use for her, but her roommate and I are friends.” She gave me an address of an apartment complex that was off the strip. “In fact,” she added, “a few of the girls live there.”
“Like you?” I asked, because it was expected of me.
“No,” she said, “I have my own place somewhere a little more private. If you’re lucky, maybe you’ll see it some day.”
“Hey,” I said, “this is Vegas. It’s all about luck. Thanks for talking to me, Honey.”
“My pleasure, handsome,” she said. “By the way, what’s your name?”
“Eddie,” I said, “Eddie Gianelli.”
“Well, Eddie Gianelli,” she said, “see you around.”
“Yeah,” I said, “see you.”
Her perfume had started to get a little too heavy for me, and followed me outside like a cloud. Once I was in the Riviera parking lot, though, it dispelled and I was able to breath again. I took a few deep breaths, not only to get rid of the fragrance, but also the euphoria showgirls seemed to cause in men. It was something I certainly was not immune to, even after all these years in Vegas.
I
WALKED BACK past Wilbur Clark’s Desert Inn—Louie Prima and Keely Smith on the marquee—and collected the Caddy from behind the Sands. In the car I wondered if I wasn’t going off on a tangent, somehow? Why was I chasing down Carla to find Lou when I didn’t even know if Lou could help me? Was it because I couldn’t think of anything else to do? And if that was the case what kind of real help could I be to Frank and Dean, who both apparently felt they could count on me?
Low-income housing had gone up all around the strip for the dancers and dealers and hotel employees, what I called the “non-rollers” of Vegas, who worked their asses off every day and never got to roll the dice, looking for their own luck. The complex where Carla and some of the other girls lived was just such a place. It was set up like a motel court, with a pool in the center that was designed to make you think you had a place to lounge and meet people.
As I entered the court I saw that the pool was so dirty nobody would be lounging there for a long time. The surface was covered with black and green areas of dirt and algae combining to form a condition most egghead professors try to create in beakers.
I wondered if Carla had even headed home when she ran out the
back door of the Riv? Was she running or hiding from me, or from who she thought I might be?
Her apartment was on the second level so I climbed the stairs and started looking for her number. When I reached the door I saw that it was ajar. Maybe she had run back here, packed quickly and left so fast she didn’t lock the door behind her. Still thinking this was all some misunderstanding, and that all I needed to do to straighten it out was talk to her, I went to the door and knocked.
“Hello? Carla? Anybody?”
I opened the door slowly and peered in. The place was in a shambles. For a moment I thought it had been burglars, but looking closer it resembled the scene of a fight. I’d seen some of the rooms in the Sands left this way after a fight had broken out between friends, usually fueled by the fact they were both losing.
I wondered if the police or sheriff had been called, but I didn’t hear any sirens in the distance. The place had two bedrooms, a living-room area and a kitchenette. I stepped into the kitchen and saw that the fight—if that’s what it had been—had not extended into there. It was not a place where anyone who cooked frequently lived. The tables and chairs were perfectly in place. On the counter was a cutting board with a variety of different-sized knives next to it. They were lined up by size, all neat and clean. None were missing.
I looked into both bedrooms. One was made up, the other a mess. However, the second room just looked lived-in to me, so apparently the fight—again, if that’s what it had been—had been confined in the living room.
The sofa was askew, and the two armchairs had been overturned. The flimsy coffee table was in splinters, as was the single end table. I was no detective, but even I could see the grooves in the deep piled carpet where someone’s heels had dug in while they were being dragged.
I went outside, looked back and forth and then, when I could put it off no longer, looked down. From this vantage point I could see there was a place where the dirt and algae in the pool had been disturbed, a place where someone might have gone into the pool. I continued to stare until I thought I could see a body at the bottom of the pool, but I was going to leave it to the police to find out for sure.
I
WATCHED FROM THE BALCONY outside her room as two sheriff’s deputies brought Carla DeLucca up from the bottom of the pool.
“Those guys are gonna have to be decontaminated,” someone next to me said.
I turned my head and found myself looking at a tall, slender man in a lightweight gray sports jacket, gray slacks and a felt fedora.
“My name’s Detective Hargrove,” he said. “I’m with the Las Vegas P.D. And you are?”
“Gianelli,” I said, “Ed Gianelli.”
“And you’re the one who called this in, Mr. Gianelli?” he asked.
“That’s right.”
I caught something on his breath, the unmistakable smell of Sen-Sen. He either thought he was going to meet some showgirls here, or like most cops he drank and was trying to cover the smell of booze. Since he was in his forties, with a busted blood vessel or two around his nose, I opted for the second.
He leaned his elbows on the railing right next to me and stared down at the pool.
“There’s a job I wouldn’t want to have.”
“Shouldn’t you be down there?”
“Naw,” he said. “I’m pretty sure she’s dead.”
“Maybe,” I said, “she fell.”
“Nope,” he said. “If she’d just fallen over the edge she would have hit the tiles. No, somebody picked her up and pitched her off. That’s how she hit the pool.”
“Wouldn’t she have made a big splash?”
“Probably,” he said.
“Somebody would have heard it, wouldn’t they?”
“That’s what we’re gonna find out,” Hargrove said. “We’ll go around door to door, asking people what they heard. And do you know what they’ll say?”
“What?”
“They didn’t hear a thing, didn’t see a thing.”
Unfortunately I knew just what he was talking about. After all, I was from New York.
“So,” he said, then, “tell me what you saw?”
Briefly, I told him about finding the door open and what I’d found inside.
“You didn’t see her in the pool and then go inside?” he asked.
“No, sir,” I said. “I didn’t look into the pool until after I saw the inside of the apartment.”
“And what made you look into the pool then, Mr. Gianelli?”
“I—I’m not sure,” I said, truthfully. “To me the place looked like there’d been a fight. I came outside, leaned on the railing. I guess I was wondering what to do next when I looked down.”
“Back up a moment, Mr. Gianelli,” he said. “What do you mean, you ‘were wondering what to do next?’ Why wouldn’t you just call the police?”
“I—I was trying to decide whether to go back inside and use the phone, or go to the office.”
“And what did you decide, sir?”
“I went to the office,” I said. “I told the desk clerk what happened and asked if I could use his phone.”
“Did you know the deceased?” Hargrove asked.
“Never met her.”
“Who lives here, Mr. Gianelli?” he asked.
“A girl named Carla DeLucca lives here with her roommate.”
“And what’s the roommate’s name?”
“That I don’t know.”
He returned to face me, still leaning on the railing. Below me they were laying the body out on the tiles next to the pool.
“Why were you lookin’ for her?”
I decided to tell the truth. There was no harm in it that I could see. The only thing I knew I wasn’t going to mention to the police were the names Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin.
I explained how I’d gone to the Riviera looking for Lou Terazzo, and had been told by someone that Carla might know where he was.
“The Riviera,” Hargrove said. “Buddy Hackett’s playin’ there, ain’t he?”
I was about to say I didn’t know when I realized he was right. I guess I had glanced at the marquee on my way into the Riv and now it sprang into my head with Buddy Hackett’s name on it.
“Yes, I think he is.”
“I love that guy,” he said, “but you know who I really think is funny?”
I was afraid he was going to say me. Was he not believing what I was telling him. It was true, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to haul me in.
“Who?” I asked.
“Redd Foxx,” he said. “That guy cracks me up. Is he in town, anywhere?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you work for a casino, Mr. Gianelli?”
“Yes,” I said, “I’m a pit boss at the Sands.”
“The Sands,” he said. “Frank Costello’s got a piece of that place, hasn’t he?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m just a pit boss there.”
“But you know Jack Entratter, right?”
“Of course,” I said, “he’s my boss.”
“Yeah.”
Maybe he’d wanted to see if I’d lie about knowing Jack.
“Lou Terazzo works for Eddie Torres,” Hargrove said.
“You know Lou?”
“I know all the mob guys in Vegas, Mr. Gianelli,” he said. “That surprise you, to hear that Lou’s mobbed up?”
“Lieutenant—” I said.
“Detective,” he said, “just detective.”
“Detective Hargrove,” I said, “I’m not naive. I know the mob is in Vegas.”
“That’s an understatement, Mr. Gianelli,” he said, cutting me off. “The mob is Vegas. You work in a casino, you work for the mob. That’s just how it is.”
Yeah, I wanted to say, and all the cops in Vegas are on the take. Hargrove looked down towards the pool, nodded and waved to somebody.
“My partner is downstairs, Mr. Gianelli,” he said. “He wants you to take a look at the body. Maybe you can identify it.”
“I probably can’t,” I argued. “I never saw Carla DeLucca, I just heard about her.”
“Well, maybe you’d be kind enough to take a look, anyway.”
I was going to argue and ask why they didn’t get the desk clerk to do it when I looked down. The girl was lying on her back, her showgirl’s body looking curiously sunken. Her wet hair was plastered to her head, but even though it was wet I could see one thing clearly.
“That’s not Carla DeLucca,” I said. “I don’t know who it is, but it’s not her.”
“You’ve gone from not knowing her to bein’ able to I.D. her from up here?”
“I don’t know her,” I said, “but I know that she’s a brunette, and that girl—” I pointed down, “—is definitely a blonde.”

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