“Kind of a tough monkey, huh?”
“Hey listen, I think I’ve said enough.”
“Jimmy, you ever take a polygraph?”
Jimmy Dunne pushed up in his chair, looking away from Vincent and then back to him. He said, “I don’t know how we got to where we are, but I’m not gonna say another word and have it come back to me, no-sir.”
“It won’t happen,” Vincent said. “All you have to decide, Jimmy, in your present frame of mind, would you rather have the cops holding you by the nuts or me?”
Yeah, rain helped business, the cab driver told Vincent. Rainy night, wind blowing. But otherwise, say you want to go a few blocks on Pacific you hop a jitney, six bits. You want a broad? They’re on the corner. Look, there’s one—got everything but a sign on her. Or you call an escort service. You walk to the casinos, the ones up at this end. Look. Golden Nugget . . . Tropicana . . . Playboy . . . Caesar’s. Then you got Bally’s, the Sands, the Claridge, Spade’s Boardwalk all close together . . .
What about after hours? Vincent asked him . . . After hours what, gambling? Twenty hours you don’t get enough? You can find it . . . They pulled up in front of Vincent’s hotel, the Holmhurst. You’re staying at a place, the driver said, the bar there, dealers go in there after work to party, unwind, five, six in the morning. Ask one of ’em where the action is after hours, they’ll tell you. If you can afford it.
Vincent was allowing himself a hundred bucks a day. Thirty for the room, not bad. But another thirty or forty if he had to rent a car. Eat cheap and drink beer . . . He liked the Holmhurst. It was homey, lot of furniture and paintings in the lobby, old leather sofas, flowery carpeting. Snug little cocktail bar. His third-floor room was okay, redecorated sometime during the past thirty years. He took off his raincoat—he’d had it on since the plane landed this morning—and dialed Dixie Davies’s home phone in Brigantine to ask him:
“The name Catalina mean anything to you?”
“You’re not talking about the island.”
“Or fashionable swimwear,” Vincent said. “Guy name Ricky Catalina was the doorman, the night before.”
“Oh, shit.”
“What do you mean, oh shit?” There was a silence on the line. “You understand what I’m saying? Not the night Iris was killed. Ricky was on the night before.”
“Who told you?”
“I’m not allowed to say.”
“Jimmy Dunne.”
“Jimmy’s afraid you’re gonna talk to him and get his name in the paper. You see any need to do that? You want Ricky, whoever Ricky is.”
“He’s a nephew of Salvatore Catalina. Sal the Cat, very high up. In fact, he’s the boss.”
“I never heard of him.”
“I’ll get you a Pennsylvania Crime Commission Report.”
“I understand what you mean—you’re talking about South Philadelphia, all those guys shooting each other to see who gets Atlantic City. I’ve been reading about it, Time magazine.”
“Something like twenty-two hits, killed different ways,” Dixie said, “car bombs, the usual; another half dozen attempted. It started out the young guys hitting the old guys, the mustaches, ’cause they wouldn’t get off their ass, make a move on the gambling. Then the guy who sent the hitter gets hit, the macaronis are shooting each other and it’s hard to tell who’s on whose side.”
“They should wear numbers,” Vincent said.
“You telling me. Six digits on a gray shirt.”
“I’ve read about it, but I don’t know the names,” Vincent said. “We got our own league in Miami. We got the wise guys, we also have the Cubans Fidel sent us.”
“We got Cubans,” Dixie said, “we got bikers handle the speed concession, brew methamphetamines out in the Pine Barrens, have their own chemical plants.”
“You have any Colombians?”
“I think I could look around, scare you some up,” Dixie said. “Sal Catalina, getting back, is South Philly. Except right now he’s in Talladega Correctional on a gun charge. They been hounding the shit out of him, finally got him on that convicted felon with a firearm. He had a High Standard Field King in his trunk, under the spare tire. Sal says the feds put it there—who knows? It’s only two years, you know, but it’s better than nothing. We got a tape of Sal and Ricky, you have to hear it. They’re in a toilet somewhere, I forget, men’s room of a restaurant. Sal’s giving Ricky the Zit a lecture on table manners. Guy eats like a fucking goat, Sal’s telling him never talk with your mouth full and chew each bite forty times, for your digestion. Ricky the Zit says, ‘I know how to fuckin eat, I been fuckin eatin all my life.’ You hear whack. Sal slaps him across the face. You hear Sal’s voice, very calm, always, ‘Ricky, listen what I’m telling you.’ “
“Ricky the Zit,” Vincent said.
“He was about twenty then, had a terrible complexion. It’s cleared up, but he’s still a mean little fucker. Sal, Sal thinks he’s George Raft. Expensive suits, or he’s got the shirt open all the way, the chains. Maybe just a little swishy. So he’s known as Sal the Cat or he’s Sally, or he’s Sal ‘Little Pussy’ Catalina. Only you call him that to his face he’ll kill you. Sal, though, you can talk to him, he’s not a bad guy. Ricky’s something else. Ricky the Zit. Ricky ‘the Blade’ Catalina. Ricky the Sickie. I wish somebody’d shoot him in this war they got going.”
“You’re telling me,” Vincent said, “he’s not ordinarily a part-time rent-a-cop, somebody’s doorman.”
“These guys,” Dixie said, “they’re into extortion, shylocking, prostitution, they take a cut from the bookies, any illegal gambling. Sal, they say, runs it from Talladega, on the phone. Ricky’s suppose to be a collector. Or you’re late with a payment they send Ricky.”
“So if he’s watching the door that night,” Vincent said, “he’s not upstairs collecting. Something else is going on, right? Would you say that, a party, they don’t want to be disturbed?”
“A party, a card game, a sex show, some type of off-premises gambling . . .”
“After hours?”
“Yeah, or less stringent rules than in the casinos. Guy might want to gamble in his underwear eating a cheese steak sub. Or they’re playing blackjack, guy might want to handle the cards. New Jersey, you can’t do it in the casinos, you can’t touch the cards. They got a lot more rules than out in Nevada.”
“You said ‘off-premises’ . . .”
“Not in a casino, not regulated. They could still have the same equipment, but without all the rules.”
“Would a casino operate the game?”
“Not the casino, I doubt it. Somebody from the casino might,” Dixie said, “but you’re getting out of my area. I’m Major Crimes, homicide, any kind of sudden or unattended death. The wise guys, racketeering, narcotics, they come under the Economic Crimes section. And then anything in the casinos, cheating, stealing, that’s handled by the DGE, Division of Gaming Enforcement. They’re state cops.”
“Iris’s death was fairly sudden.”
“That’s why I’m on it.”
“So you’re gonna talk to Ricky,” Vincent said, “not give him to somebody else.”
“No, I’m gonna talk to him first thing in the morning,” Dixie said, “if he’s still around. Bring along a couple of guys to hold him.”
Vincent said, “Dix?” He was going to mention Linda’s coat, but then hesitated. Maybe he’d better wait. “Never mind, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
After he had another talk with Linda.
She had warmed up a little in the cab, smiled a couple of times. There was hope. He liked her and had a feeling she liked him. But he also had a feeling—one of those good ones that kept you wide awake—she knew a lot more than she was telling. Most of the ride, from the funeral home to Spade’s, she was very quiet.
10
* * *
WELL, SHE WAS A DIFFERENT GIRL NOW. Brought back to life in a gold-orange turban, big loop earrings, low-cut bra and layers of ruffles on her orange tang
o skirt open all the way up the front to show bare legs moving, doing spastic little knee-jerk trip steps to a rattling, rackety sound of bongos, congas, steel drums, now a synthesized marimba sound kicking in—Now Featured in the Winner’s Circle Lounge, LA TUNA!—Linda Moon moving with the guys, everybody moving, caught up in the rhythm of the Caribbean funk, or was it barrio punk? There were dreadlocks gleaming up there in the stage lights, but it wasn’t reggae. Vincent sipped his beer and wondered, because what was the number? “Beat It,” that’s what it was. “Beat It” gone to the Gulf of Mexico and converted, brought back latinized. Linda was singing it in Spanish, belting it—”Pégale! . . . Pégale!”—shoulders back, whacking maracas off hips cocking to one side and then the other, back and forth to the beat.
Everybody in the packed lounge loved it, clapped and whistled and stayed through the set, sitting up, moving to “La Bamba” and “Hump to the Bump” and then grinning at the quick slick lyrics of “Oh, Frank Sinatra . . . Oh, Frank Sinatra . . . Frankie my boy you don’t know, you have the perfect voice to sing calypso.” Followed by “Mama, Look a Boo Boo.”
Linda said, “Cute, uh? Jesus.”
“You look different. I’ll say that.”
“I have to wear this goddamn Chiquita Banana outfit four straight sets. No costume change.” She glanced around. “I wouldn’t mind a drink.”
“I ordered you one,” Vincent said. “It’s coming.”
“All that noise, that jungle rock—six guys, they’re beating on everything but a washboard and a gutbucket. I can duplicate all that with one poly-synthesizer and a rhythm box. They’re not bad guys, but they ought to go back to Nassau, play for the cruise ships . . . How do you know what I drink?”
“You kidding?” Vincent said. “With that act? I got you a Rum Sunrise.”
She frowned, “What is it?”
“We’ll find out.”
The waitress’s legs appeared, long ones in net stockings. “In a frosted glass with an umbrella,” Vincent said, as the girl did the bunny dip to place the drink on the table without losing her breasts.
“Just what I wanted,” Linda said. She sipped it. “I could kill Donovan . . . You have a cigarette?”
“I quit while I was in the hospital.”
She said, “Yeah, why get cancer when you can get shot.” She said, “Donovan, the big shit, he tells me I can have my own band. I get here, I’ve got one number I do, ‘Automatic,’ the Pointer Sisters? These guys, they get on their roll I don’t even know what they’re playing. They’re spazzed out on ganja anyway, they don’t give a shit, they’re gone. ‘No Parking on the Dance Floor,’ the Midnight Star number. I’m on the synthesizer? I’m trying to keep it precise, these guys ride right over you.”
“You’re not happy,” Vincent said.
“I don’t know what I’m doing here.”
“When’re you through?”
“What’s today? Started at eight, we’re off at twelve. Weekends we’re on ten to two.”
“We could get something to eat after.”
“I don’t know—I could meet you for a drink. But not if you’re gonna ask questions.”
“I think Iris went up to that apartment the night before she died,” Vincent said.
Linda put her drink down, started to rise.
“That wasn’t a question. I didn’t ask if she went up there the night before. But I think she did.”
“I have to go back to work.”
* * *
The bartender came down from the lounge interior to the far end of the horseshoe bar nearer the casino floor, the dark edge before the circus of lights and mechanical sounds. The bartender was smiling. He said, “Mrs. Donovan, I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there.”
Nancy Donovan was watching Vincent and beyond Vincent the girl in the orange tango dress walking through the tables to the bandstand. She said to the bartender, “What’s her name? The singer?”
“Oh, that’s Linda. Linda . . . I don’t recall her last name. What can I get you, Mrs. Donovan?”
She watched Vincent get up from the table. Bearded man in a raincoat, out of his natural element. Talking to the waitress now, paying his check. Then coming this way, along the dark lounge side of the bar.
Nancy could take three steps and be standing in front of him. She thought about it. She thought of an opening line but didn’t like it. She turned to the bar and said, “A glass of water, Eddie. Please.”
“Nothing in it, Mrs. Donovan?”
“Ice.”
The bartender said yes ma’am and moved off as Vincent passed behind her. She wasn’t ready for him quite yet. But she would keep him in sight and turned to watch him as she had watched him in the lounge talking to Linda, Vincent close to Linda’s bare shoulders, dark hair showing beneath the headdress, Linda not bad looking, the same Linda who was in San Juan. They seemed to be friends. She watched Vincent walk through the empty outer lounge to a railing and stand looking over the casino, at the activity, the flashing lights, the serious faces in that funhouse the size of a dozen ballrooms. She watched him turn and walk toward the stairway, the five red-carpeted steps to the casino floor.
Nancy rode a gold elevator to the fourth level. She followed the executive hallway, pale gray and silent, past suites of offices with nameplates on double doors. Casino Hosts. Administration. Payroll. Division of Gaming Enforcement. Casino Control Commission . . . turned the corner, walked past executive offices and her husband’s suite of rooms to the end of the hall where she knocked on a door marked Surveillance.
“Mrs. Donovan—”
The woman stepped back, surprised, opening the door wide for Nancy.
“What can we do for you?” She wore a plastic-covered I.D. card pinned to her blouse that said she was Frances Mullen, Supervisor, Casino Surveillance.
“I think I saw somebody I know,” Nancy said, “but I lost him.” She led the way through a narrow hall.
Behind her, Frances Mullen said, “What’s he look like?”
“Beard and a raincoat, dark hair, about forty.”
“That shouldn’t be too hard.”
They entered a small, windowless office where a young man and woman sat before a bank of twenty monitors, rows of video screens that framed areas of the casino floor, bits of action in black and white, angles on gaming tables, aisles of people playing slot machines. Frances leaned in close to the console, between the young guy and the girl. She pressed buttons and pictures on several of the video screens changed while looking much the same as before. “Man with a beard, wearing a raincoat. What color, tan?”
“Yeah, natural,” Nancy said.
The young guy looked over his shoulder and smiled at her. “Mrs. Donovan, how’s it going?”
“Just fine, Roger. Thank you. Terry, you holding up?”
Now the girl glanced around, a healthy, happy face in this high-tech room. “No problem, Mrs. Donovan.”
Nancy stepped in behind Roger to watch a man in a leather jacket standing at the corner of a crowded craps table, next to the player with the dice. She noticed, now, the same man on three of the monitors, presented at different angles.
“Anyone we know?”
“Guy’s acting a little shifty,” Roger said. “Could be a railbird, waiting to grab a few chips.”
Frances looked over. “He still there? Let’s check him out, see if he’s in the file.”
Roger turned a knob, bringing the image of the man in the leather jacket into a close shot. From the floor next to him he picked up a Polaroid camera with a scoop attachment on the front of it that was like a long square megaphone. He placed it against the screen, covering the screen, and snapped a picture.
Nancy’s gaze moved to another screen. “Is that Jackie?”
Standing at a blackjack table where a single player sat facing the dealer, the player’s back to the camera.
“The one and only,” Frances said. “And here comes Miss Congeniality.”
On the monitor a young woman with sw
irls of blond hair approached Jackie Garbo from behind. When she spoke to him Jackie turned his head, said something over his shoulder without looking at her.
“Poor LaDonna,” Nancy said.
“Poor LaDonna my ass,” Frances said. “She begs for it. Jackie, you have to talk back to him or he’ll walk all over you. She wears that pushup bra with the peasant blouse? Jackie calls her boobs her Kathryn Graysons.”
“He’s a lovely man,” Nancy said. “Turns now . . . gives her a pat on the behind . . .”
“Means he still loves her.”
Nancy could see Jackie talking now, the diamond flash on his little finger as he raised his hand to his nose, turning again to the blackjack table.
“What’s he doing?”
“He’s scratching,” Frances said.
“It looks like a signal.”
“I don’t know about it if it is,” Frances said, “and I worked for him in Vegas twelve years, dealer to pit boss. Jackie’s always scratching, he’s a nervous type a person, lives on Gelusils . . . There’s Tommy. I didn’t think he was around this evening.”
“We had dinner in the Versailles Room,” Nancy said. “I think the food’s getting better.”
“They saw you coming. But I hear it is better,” Frances said. “That cute little Mr. Hayakawa, he’s finally straightening things out. All the restaurants served from the one kitchen, that’s gonna save you some money.”
Nancy was watching her husband talking to Jackie Garbo: Tommy’s silver crown towering over Jackie’s ball of curls, Jackie talking now. Jackie almost always talking, Jackie nodding toward the blackjack player, Tommy waiting, getting a smile ready as Jackie reached over to touch the player’s arm. She watched her husband in action now as he took the player’s hand in both of his and poured on the macho charm, big shooter to big shooter, the player’s head nodding mechanically up and down, expression deadpan.
“Do they know each other?”
“They ought to,” Frances said.
“Who is he?”
“Well, he’s from Colombia . . .”