The Last Private Eye (10 page)

“I was followed on the way over here.” He told Farnsworth about the incident on the expressway. The old man cackled and slapped his palm down on his knee and said, “God damn, boy, that was a nice piece of driving. It sounds like you're in the middle of something hairy.”

Rhineheart nodded. “Yeah, it's getting kind of complicated. That's why I came to see you. I need some help,” he said. “I need another operative. I figured you might be able to handle it. If you got the time, that is.”

Farnsworth didn't say anything for a moment. He looked stunned by the offer. He reached up and smoothed out his tie. Then he withdrew a large white handkerchief from his coat pocket, unfolded it several times, buried his nose in the folds, and cut loose with several loud honks. He inspected the handkerchief, refolded it, and replaced it in his pocket. Then he cleared his throat and said, “I'm a little bit busy, but I think maybe I can help you. Fill me in, kid.”

Rhineheart filled him in. He told Farnsworth about the case—from the first meeting with Kate Sullivan to the shooting at the racetrack the night before. When he was done telling it, Farnsworth sat back in his chair, and let out a low whistle.

“Jesus,” Farnsworth said, “you got a real lulu here. Missing people. Derby horses. A dead Spic. A syringe. Mafia goombahs. Socialities. It's enough to make your head spin.”

“I'm going to concentrate on Walsh,” Rhineheart said. “See if I can find him. I'd like you to see if you can locate his wife and talk to her. She might know where he is. She's a nurse's aide, works at Saint Anthony's.” He dug out the slip of paper he'd found in Walsh's garbage. “Maybe you can make some sense out of this. I found it at Walsh's apartment. You're the ace when it comes to deciphering puzzles.”

Farnsworth smoothed out the piece of paper and looked at it. “I'll see what I can do, kid.”

“As far as the rest of it goes, you're on your own. Play it any way you want to. Do whatever you need to do, whatever you think's right. You're on the payroll as of this afternoon. You need an advance?”

“Well . . . ”

Rhineheart pulled out some bills, handed Farnsworth two fifties.

“I'll keep a strict account, kid.”

Rhineheart nodded. “I'll see you later, old man.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

It was after three when Rhineheart got back to his office. McGraw was on her way out the door, but she stopped long enough to tell him that Kate Sullivan had phoned and left a message to call her as soon as he got in. The number was on his desk. No one else had called and McGraw had to hurry. She had a date. A hot one. With an attorney who worked in the prosecutor's office.

“Where's he taking you?”

“Dining and dancing,” McGraw said.

“Does he know how much you eat?”

“Kiss my ass, Rhineheart.” McGraw stomped out, slamming the door behind her.

Rhineheart dialed Kate Sullivan's number. She came on the phone, and they exchanged greetings. She asked Rhineheart how the case was going. He told her it was going okay. She asked if there had been any new developments. Rhineheart said no, nothing worth talking about.

“You're not exactly forthcoming, are you, Michael?”

Forthcoming? What the hell was that? Rhineheart remembered that the Kingstons' maid had begged his pardon. Everyone in the case, it seemed, was well spoken. Even the servants. Maybe they were all conspiring to use words that weren't in his vocabulary.

“I come forth,” Rhineheart said, “when the occasion warrants.” He wasn't sure what that meant, but it sounded good.

Kate laughed. “Very well said, Michael.”

“Do you know who Howard Taggert is?” Rhineheart asked.

“Yes, of course. River City Stud. Calabrate.”

“There's a chance he's involved in this.”

“What makes you say that?”

“It's too complicated to explain over the phone. I'll tell you about it when I see you.”

“Let's get together soon,” Kate Sullivan said.

“Soon,” Rhineheart promised.

She asked Rhineheart to call her if he found out anything else. He promised her he would, and after she hung up, he called the Motor Vehicles Bureau and asked to speak to L. T. Dewhurst.

L.T. was a computer programmer. For a twenty-dollar bill, L.T. could get you the name and address of any license-plate holder in the state. Rhineheart gave L.T. the number of the red Camaro. L.T. excused himself, was gone thirty seconds, then came back on the line with the news that the Camaro's license number was registered in the name of Executive Transport, Inc., a car-leasing agency whose offices were in the 3900 block of Shelbyville Road.

“A car-leasing agency?”

“I just push the keys, Rhineheart. I got no control over what comes out.”

“I'll send you a check, L.T.”

Before Rhineheart left the office, he called Marvin Greene's number.

“Yeah?”

“Marvin, this is your old buddy, Rhineheart.”

Marvin didn't say anything for a moment, then in a fakey friendly voice, he said, “Hey, Rhineheart. How you doing? What do you need?”

“I want to talk to you, Marvin.”

“So talk.”

“In person. Private.”

“What's this about?”

“I'll meet you somewhere,” Rhineheart said. “You still hang around the Kitty Kat Club?”

“No,” Marvin said too quickly.

“Where then?”

“You know where the Backstretch Lounge is?”

“Yeah.” It was on Berry Boulevard. Near the track.

“I'll be there around seven.”

“Wait for me,” Rhineheart said.

The customer relations representative for Executive Transport, Inc., thought Rhineheart resembled her favorite movie actor. “No kidding,” she kept saying. “You look just like him.”

The customer relations rep's name was Diana Martindale. She was a good-looking woman in her mid-thirties, blonde, blue-eyed, with a sexy smile and a nice body. She had fine-looking thighs. She was sitting at her desk with her skirt hiked up. Rhineheart sat across from her, trying not to stare too deliberately at her thighs.

“Hasn't anyone ever told you how much you look like him?” Diana Martindale asked. “You've got the same kind of nose and chin.”

“Bent and big?”

“Exactly.”

“You're just saying that to get next to me, aren't you?”

“You're not married, are you?”

Rhineheart looked at her. “No,” he said, “I'm not married.”

“Are you going with anybody?”

“Nobody'll have me,” he said.

She laughed.

“About these lease records . . . ” he said. Rhineheart had spent the past half hour trying to get a look at the lease invoices.

“They're supposed to be confidential.”

Rhineheart said. “And I promise to keep them that way. You tell me who rented this license number”—he pushed a slip of paper across the desk—“and it'll go no further.”

Diane Martindale looked around the room to make sure none of the other people in the office were watching her. She opened a steel box on her desk, flipped through the card file, and pulled out an invoice card, which she handed to Rhineheart.

The invoice was made out to the Capitol Investment Corp., with an address on East Broadway. There was a scribbled signature at the bottom, but Rhineheart couldn't make it out.

“You look disappointed,” she said.

“I am.” He handed her the card, and glanced at his watch. It was quarter after four, too late to make it to the tax assessor's office and check out Capitol Investment Corp. before they closed. Well, the assessor's office would be there tomorrow.

He stood up and smiled at Diane Martindale. “You've been very helpful,” he said.

She returned the smile and handed him a slip of paper. “My address and telephone number,” she said. “Call me anytime.”

“Sure,” Rhineheart said, but he didn't really think so. She was a good-looking woman with a nice body, but so were Wanda Jean and Karen Simpson and five or six other women he knew. He had all the one-night ladies he needed. He stuck the slip of paper in his pocket, and walked out of the place, feeling old and tired and a little lonely.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Rhineheart drove out to the track and caught the last two races. He bet the winner of the feature, and in the last, he had twenty dollars on the winning exacta, a 4 and 8 combination that paid $112.00. He left the track with over a thousand in his kick. He felt better. Hitting the exacta was like an omen. Maybe it meant he was going to find Carl Walsh, solve the case, be a winner for a change.

Rhineheart ate dinner at Trattori's, an Italian restaurant on Bardstown Road. He had Veal Parmesan and spaghetti and drank two glasses of wine. After dinner he drove over to the Backstretch.

Marvin was sitting at a table in the rear. Marvin had a receding hairline and a potbelly. He wore a Derby Fever T-shirt and Bermuda shorts. He was peeling the label on his beer bottle. He peered at Rhineheart through thick, wire-rimmed glasses.

“Hello, Rhineheart.”

“You nervous, Marvin?”

“What do you mean?”

“You seem a little nervous.”

“What'd ya want to see me about, Rhineheart?”

“I'm working on this case,” Rhineheart said. “I come across your name. I thought maybe you could help me out.”

“In what way?”

“In an information way.”

“I ain't no snitch, Rhineheart.”

“You owe me two or three favors, Marvin.”

“Sure, of course. I'm just saying I ain't nobody's snitch, Rhineheart. Favor's a different thing.”

“Who bets with you, Marvin?”

“Hey, come on now, that's confidential stuff. Like
your
job. You don't go around talking about your clients, do you?”

“Does Howard Taggert bet with you?”

Marvin shook his head. “I'm too small-time for someone like Taggert. If he bets, he bets personally with the Big Man.”

“Corrati?”

Marvin looked over his shoulder, then around the room. Finally, he nodded.

“What about Duke Kingston?”

“Out of my league also.”

“Does he bet?”

“I hear he does.” He paused. “Heavy.”

“What else do you hear about him?”

“I don't hear nothing else. I make it a point not to hear about people like that. They carry too much weight for guys like me.”

“Tell me about Carl Walsh.”

“Who?”

“You fuck with me, Marvin,” Rhineheart said, “and I'll throw you through the window there.”

Marvin held up a hand. “Easy, easy. Okay, Walsh bets with me. He's into me for two dimes. I cut him off, told him to get the money up by next week. I ain't heard from him for a couple of days.”

“Since when?”

“Last week. I ain't sure.”

“Think.”

“Early last week. Monday or Tuesday. He says he'll have something for me this week.”

Rhineheart put a twenty on the table and stood up. “Thanks, Marvin.”

Marvin snatched up the bill. “No sweat.”

“I find out you been bullshitting me, I'll be back.”

John Hughes's address was in the two-thousand block of Brownsboro Road. A rectangular complex of squat, pale green, pseudo-Spanish-style apartments.

Rhineheart parked in the lot, climbed an outside stairway to the second floor of B Building. The sounds of a party—music, voices, laughter—drifted out from behind Hughes's door.

Rhineheart knocked, and from inside, a slurred voice yelled, “Come in!”

He pushed the door open and walked into a large, square room filled with people. There was a buffet table on one side of the room and a well-stocked bar on the other. The furniture was heavy-looking, Mediterranean.

The wall at the far end of the room was a large glass window. The drapes were open, and through the glass, you could see row after row of squat, pale green buildings. It was a hell of a view, Rhineheart thought. If you looked out at it long enough you'd probably get brain damage.

Most of the guests looked as if they were already suffering from it. Rhineheart asked one of them, a spiky-haired platinum blonde wearing oversized shades, if she knew where John Hughes was.

“What do you want
him
for?” she asked Rhineheart. “Why don't you hang around and talk to me?”

“I like your hair, but this is business, babe. Show me Hughes, will you?”

She frowned and pointed to a tall thin man with a guardsman's mustache who stood near the buffet table. Rhineheart walked over and introduced himself.

Hughes was dressed in a tan safari shirt and dark brown slacks and he was holding a glass full of whiskey in one hand. Scotch, from the smell that drifted Rhineheart's way.

He reminded Rhineheart of the British actor, Peter O'Toole. His angular English features had a smeared look to them. He appeared to be about three-quarters smashed.

He brushed a shock of thick brown hair back from his forehead, and squinted, bleary-eyed, at Rhineheart.

“What did you say your name was?”

“Rhineheart.”

“Rhineheart? I've heard that name somewhere. What is it you want, old man?”

“I'd like to talk to you for a few minutes.”

“You're not one of those bloody
Sports Illustrated
people, are you?”

“No.”

“No,” he said. “Of course you're not.” He nodded in the direction of the bar. “Have a drink, old man.”

“No thanks.”

“I'm the host of this bleeding party. It's not polite to refuse one's host.”

“I'm not a polite person,” Rhineheart said.

Hughes took a big swallow of his drink. Over the rim of his glass, he peered nearsightedly at Rhineheart. “I say, old man, do we know each other?”