The Big Kiss-Off of 1944: A Jack LeVine Mystery (21 page)

“Confidential-like.”

“Calm down, LeVine,” Shea said, taking a chair. “I don’t know a thing. All I got are questions. A few things happened recently that didn’t take with me at all and I thought we could hash it over.” His voice was a flat monotone, which made him very effective in the back room. After a while the voice itself drove you nuts.

“I know the way you hash things out, Shea. Where’s the hose?”

“Be smart, shamus, you’re getting upset over nothing.”

“I assure you we’re acting in good faith, LeVine,” Savage concurred in a soothing tone.

“Story goes like this,” Shea began. “A guy named Fenton got croaked after unsuccessful brain surgery in a john at the Hotel Lava. This is maybe a week ago. You know the Lava, LeVine?”

“I was bar mitzvahed there.”

“I remember the affair well.” He went on. “I sniff around the Fenton murder and it checks out routine; a shakedown artist usually gets somebody mad. I wasn’t very interested in spending my time on the case, to tell you the truth.”

“I love it when you tell me the truth.”

“Please, gentlemen,” crooned Savage. Dewey was enjoying it. Like old times.

“Stop throwing me the nasty, LeVine,” said Shea. “It ain’t funny.” He cleared his throat. “A couple of days after this they find a corpse named Rubine stuck in a drainage pipe up in Olive, New York.”

“I know Olive,” Dewey contributed.

“Yessir. Well, it’s this Rubine and it turns out he was in cahoots with Fenton. I went after the parley. Which is when I got yanked from the case. Suddenly nobody wants to know from nothing.”

“They pulled
you
off the case, Paul?” asked the nominee.

“I was told the Olive rub-out was a matter for the local law. When I called the sheriff up there, he told me they weren’t pursuing the case either.”

“And
those
were the men who contacted Anne and me,” declared Savage, like he had solved the whole case. “LeVine, it sounds to me like political influence is being used to throw a monkey wrench into the police investigation of this matter.”

“An incredible scandal,” said Dewey.

I didn’t like where this was leading. Not at all.

“Let me ask you something, Mr. Savage,” I finally rasped, after examining my shoes for about twenty seconds. “Do you
want
a police investigation of this case? I was under the impression that you wanted this matter handled without publicity. That’s why I was hired.”

“That’s not the point, LeVine,” said Savage. “The point is
why
were the police pulled off those homicides?” He was dead right, of course, but I was damned if I was going to tell him so.

“That’s the nub of it,” the candidate agreed.

“We could sew things up pretty fast if we had half a chance.” Shea grabbed some brownie points.

“Sure you could and the story would be on the front page of the
News
every day for two weeks. If you folks want that, it’s yours.” I had to keep harping on the publicity bit or everything would get queered.

“We don’t want that, of course,” said the banker.

“But Jack,” Dewey said in the soft tones of a priest making a house call, “who pulled the police off the case?”

“If I knew, I’d have the blackmail material. And that, gentlemen, is my only job in this case: to get that material back to Mr. Savage. That’s all of it. I’m not a cop or a judge, I’m a plain old shamus who can only do one thing at a time. I’ve got to recover something. Whether or not anybody gets caught, or is thrown in the cooler or off a cliff, is someone else’s business, not mine. Now I think I’ve got a way to keep everybody happy, get the materials back, and keep Mr. Savage in your campaign, governor. But I can’t do a thing if I have to play guessing games with Homicide. Sorry, Shea.”

Shea grunted.

“Sounds to me like you’re not too anxious to have the blackmailers named, LeVine. I smell a cover-up.” The son of a bitch.

“Smell what you want. My job is to do something nice and quiet. This might be a juicy case for Homicide, you boys could all get your pictures in the paper. Poring over the evidence, wagging a finger at the suspect, showing your teeth for the photogs. I don’t give a damn about that. I want to get something back for Mr. Savage and I don’t want the
News
and the
Mirror
drooling all over the case. I’m hired by Savage to protect Savage’s interests. Period.”

Shea wasn’t impressed, but Savage was and that was all that counted.

“That’s the sticking point, Tom.”

“Governor,” I said, “Shea’s right. I don’t care if the blackmailers are ‘caught’ in a conventional sense. I’m a professional who wants to have that material returned with no waves, no harm done.”

“Gentlemen. LeVine’s a smart boy and a good shamus, but I’ve got to think he knows more than he’s telling.” Shea spelled it out in large type.

Dewey threw me a long look.

“You have something to say to that, Jack?”

“Governor, I’m not a religious man, but let God strike me dead if I’m covering up for anyone or not acting in your best interests.” I was almost ashamed of myself.

There was an embarrassed silence. Shea was unbelieving.

Savage broke the stillness.

“Well, I have faith in you, LeVine. And I do want to stay out of the press.”

Shea stood up.

“I guess I’m not really needed here, then. Good luck, governor. All the best.”

Dewey got off the couch, put his arm around Shea’s shoulders and whispered into his ear. Shea smiled and shook his head, then went to the door. As he started to open it up, he called me over.

“Jack, let’s step outside for a second.”

“No fighting, gentlemen,” chortled the candidate, who stood a few feet from Shea, with his hands behind his back.

“Nothing like that, governor,” the detective said amiably.

We stepped into the corridor.

“Nice work, LeVine. I liked that part about God striking you dead.”

“I noticed tears in your eyes.”

“Oh yeah? I noticed something else. A report came in this afternoon that Lee Factor was carried into the Waldorf by a hackie and an elevator boy from your building, 1651 Broadway.”

“I’m fascinated.”

“Funny thing, I am too. When I got pulled off those two homicides, I figured it had to be orders from on high, but how high I couldn’t guess. That story about Factor starts to make sense.”

“Why didn’t you tell Dewey about it?”

He flashed an ice-cold grin. “Because, you miserable Jew shamus son of a bitch, I enjoy seeing you caught in the middle and mainly because I can’t do a thing on this case without winding up walking the beat on Staten Island. When I’m told to lay off, I lay off. It was a risk just coming over here tonight.”

“Why did you?”

“I just can’t tell the governor to go fuck himself, Jack. Don’t play dumb. I did my bit and now I’m going home. Also, I did you a nice favor in there.”

“Telling them I was covering up? I wasn’t sure that was a favor, but if it was, I’m forever in your debt.”

“I knew they wouldn’t go for that. But it was nice of me not to say anything about Factor.”

“You just got through telling me you couldn’t.”

“I could have worked it in there somehow, but I didn’t.”

“So?”

“So maybe one of these days you’ll help me clear up a couple of murders.”

“Forget it, Shea. The higher-ups will never let this one see the light of day.”

“FDR in on this?” he whispered, those blue eyes folding into slits.

“I don’t know how high it actually goes, Paul, and that’s for real. FDR may not know a thing about it. If he did, a lot of heads would have rolled already. But suffice it to say, you should forget you ever saw anybody dead in the Hotel Lava.”

“I have the funny feeling you’re not lying to me, LeVine. It’s a unique experience.”

“Enjoy it.”

“I will.” He stuck out his hand and I shook it. It was very hard. “You’re walking on eggs, huh, LeVine?”

“On eggs on a tightrope.”

“Well, don’t get hurt. It’s always fun to get you in the back room.”

He turned on his heels and walked down the corridor. I watched him go and then reentered 1807.

Dewey and Savage were seated on the couch, speaking confidentially. I closed the door and they looked up.

“LeVine, I apologize if you thought we were attempting to interfere,” Savage said as I walked back into the living room. He sounded pretty sincere about it.

“It was entirely my fault,” Dewey broke in. “I called Paul and asked him if he knew of any large and powerful blackmail rings operating in the area and gave him the name of the two men who had contacted Eli. When he told me that he had been pulled off their cases, I thought it was significant and he should come up here and discuss the matter with us.”

“You’re right, governor. Shea’s being pulled off those cases
was
significant, but not significant enough to have Mr. Savage’s name become a household word in the tabloids.”

“Absolutely,” said the Republican nominee, and then he said it again. “Absolutely.”

There was silence and the two men stared at me. Savage cleared his throat and crossed his legs.

“You said you had a plan.”

L
E
V
INE’S PLAN
was fairly simple but required explanation. It also required another scotch and soda.

“My contacts with the blackmail group, gentlemen,” I began, like Eisenhower standing before a map of Normandy, “have led me to believe that they are a frightened group of men who have gotten in over their heads.”

“You know who they are, then?” asked Savage.

“I have a
sense
of who they are, and what their limits are, but that is different from knowing all the names and addresses. We don’t need the names and addresses, as far as I can see; all we need are the films. Having discovered what I believe to be their weak points, I believe the time has come for us to go on the offensive.”

“Agreed,” said Dewey. He took a small cigar from his breast pocket and lit up. If he got elected, they would have to keep the windows open at the White House.

“My strategy hinges upon the blackmailers’ deepest fear: that their scheme be exposed.”

“It’s not the Syndicate then, that’s for certain,” Dewey remarked. Then he hit the bull’s-eye. I could tell when his eyes took fire like a bed of coals. “The Democrats.”

“Good God,” murmured Savage.

“Close,” I said, forging ahead. “Very close. These, I believe, are friends of Democrats, but that should be obvious. If these are individuals who don’t want Dewey elected, it stands to reason that they do want Roosevelt elected. That is elementary logic.”

But the governor was in his own world. “We can use it My God, what an issue!”

“There’s nothing to use, governor, not without getting Anne Savage into some big black headlines. And respectfully, I really don’t see an issue play here. What can you say, that Roosevelt has blackmailers on his side? What does that prove?”

“It proves a lack of moral leadership.” Dewey was warming to the task. “It proves that the Democratic party is riddled with gangsterism.”

“It proves nothing of the kind, governor; you’re taking this way too far. Look, a lot of people are going to vote for you in November and among them are going to be wife-beaters, draft dodgers, and guys who cat with their fingers. Like I said, it doesn’t prove a thing.”

There was silence. Jack be nimble.

“He’s right, Tom,” Savage finally said. “We can’t make an issue out of it without hurting ourselves.”

Choruses of angels sang in my head.

“I’ll admit that one or two important names are involved in this,” I continued, more confidently. “The bank roll obviously has to come from somewhere and that is where we have them. Exposure for them would be as ruinous as it would for Anne Savage, more so, and like you said, governor, morality is on our side. We’re not shaking anyone down. And so I propose the following, in order to keep Savage in the campaign and keep his daughter out of the papers: we will take fifteen minutes of radio time, let’s say on July 4th, for an undisclosed purpose. Just take the time for an unspecified ‘political broadcast.’ No release to the papers, of course, just an innocuous listing in the daily radio log. Nobody will ask any questions: it’s an election year, it’s July 4th. Everybody figures it’s just some guy who’ll get on and say that Governor Dewey is a swell guy.”