1970 - There's a Hippie on the Highway (12 page)

He dialled Terrell’s home number. There was a little delay before Captain of Police Terrell came to the phone.

‘Riccard’s car has been found, Chief,’ Beigler said.

Lepski stopped typing and pointed frantically to himself, but Beigler ignored him.

‘The Miami police are checking it for fingerprints. I’m sending Hess there. Okay, Chief, I’ll keep in touch,’ and he hung up.

‘I didn’t hear you mention my name,’ Lepski said bitterly.

‘I didn’t,’ Beigler returned. ‘Get that report written!’ He swung his eyes to where Jacoby was still mouthing sentences.

‘Max! Take a car, go to Fred’s place, pick him up and take him to Mear’s Self-Service Store.’

‘Okay, Sarg.’ Jacoby put his books away hurriedly and charged out of the room.

‘Hess at home cutting his lawn too?’ Lepski asked bitterly.

‘His boy is sick. He’s taken the afternoon off.’

‘That two headed little monster? Sick? That’s a laugh? That little horror couldn’t be sick if he wanted to. It’s my bet Hess is snoring his head off in the sun.’

Beigler grinned.

‘You could be right . . . get on with that report.’

Ten minutes later, Lepski ripped the sheet out of the typewriter, read through what he had written, signed it with a flourish and laid it on Beigler’s desk.

‘I’ve got an idea,’ he said. ‘Danny O’Brien served five years with Baldy and Dominico. Suppose I go along and twist his arm a little? He might know what Baldy was doing when he was here for three days.’

Beigler read the report, then looked up at Lepski.

‘You think Solo is lying?’

‘Of course he’s lying, but he’s too big and smart for us to twist his arm. I’m as sure as I’m standing here Baldy called on him and I want to know why. If anyone can tell me it’s Danny.’

Beigler rubbed his thick nose.

‘Well, okay. Go talk to him.’

Lepski eyed him.

‘If I were a Sergeant and read that report, do you know what I would think?’

‘Sure,’ Beigler said promptly. ‘You’d think it was written by a mental defective who had got to 2nd Grade by nepotism.’

Lepski gaped at him.

‘What was that again . . . nepot . . . what?’

Beigler was a great reader of paperbacks. When he came across a word he didn’t understand - and there were many of them – he looked them up in a dictionary and filed them away in his memory to use to impress. He savoured his triumph now by looking insufferably superior as he repeated, ‘Nepotism . . . favouritism to relatives in bestowing office.’

He was on safe ground here because Lepski’s wife happened to be a second cousin of Carrie, Captain Terrell’s wife. Beigler never ceased to pull Lepski’s leg about this knowing full well that the only difference the relationship made was to make Lepski mad.

‘When I become Chief of Police in this goddamn City,’ Lepski said heatedly, ‘I’ll have you retired. Don’t forget that!’

‘When you become Chief of Police of this City, Lepski, I’ll be the tenth man on the moon! Get the hell out of here and get working!’

Lepski drove to Seacombe, a suburb of Paradise City where the workers lived: a small, shabby colony of bungalows and tenement buildings, which spoilt the approach to the opulent, flower-laden millionaire’s playground.

Danny O’Brien lived in a two-room cold-water apartment on the sixth floor of a sordid tenement block overlooking the sea. At one time he had been a thriving coiner, specialising in making coins of the Roman era B.C. He had made considerable sums of money, selling these fakes to art collectors: his sales talk had been as impressive and as convincing as his forgeries. But he had become overambitious in his old age and had attempted to sell a Caesar gold piece to the Washington Museum who had unkindly handed him over to the police. Now, Danny made lead soldiers which he painted in exquisite colours and sold to a speciality toyshop that catered for elderly clients wishing to fight great battles of the previous century.

Danny O’Brien was seventy-three years of age. His only extravagance was a harmless Sunday night orgy when he hired two girls to mime the sexual act while he watched, beer in hand and projected his mind back to the time when he had been the participant and not the spectator.

Lepski found him at his workbench, a watchmaker’s glass in his eye, lovingly applying a coat of scarlet to the trappings of a cavalry officer, made perfectly in lead.

Lepski kicked the door open and breezed in, his thin, tanned face set in a cop scowl, determined to stand no nonsense from this old coot and to rip his arm off if he had to.

Danny looked up, then removed the watchmaker’s glass. He was frail looking, balding with a high dome of a forehead. His green eyes were misty and his smile kindly, but vacant. He looked harmless; a nice old man, slightly senile who could be trusted with children. Lepski knew otherwise. Behind the domed forehead was a needle-sharp, cunning brain that might just possibly be now losing some of its edge, but this Lepski doubted.

‘Mr. Lepski!’ Danny laid down his model soldier and smiled the smile of an old man who has been given an unexpected and expensive present. ‘How nice! How are you, Mr. Lepski, and how is Mrs. Lepski? Can I congratulate you yet on your promotion?’

Lepski pulled up a straight-back chair and sat astride it.

‘Listen, Danny,’ he said in his cop voice, ‘cut the oil. Baldy Riccard was in town last Tuesday. He stayed for three days. I want to know what he was doing during those three days . . . so go ahead and tell me.’

‘Baldy Riccard?’ Danny sat back, his old eyes widening with surprise. He was here? Well!’ He shook his ageing head. ‘Mr. Lepski, I must confess I am a little hurt that he didn’t come to see me. After all, one time, we were good friends.’ He heaved a sigh that knocked down three of his model soldiers. ‘There it is. Ex-criminals don’t keep friends. They lead lonely lives. Of course a man with your contacts and with your ambitions, Mr. Lepski, couldn’t know nor appreciate what it means to be lonely.’

Lepski smiled: an unpleasant smile of a cynical cop.

‘Danny, you may not guess it, but you’re heading for a load of trouble,’ he said. ‘You are going to sing about Baldy or else . . .’

Danny was far too old a hand to react to anything that sounded like a bluff ‘You have nothing on me, Mr. Lepski. I told you I haven’t seen Baldy.’

‘I’m not deaf. Those two whores who come here every Sunday night and perform . . . I’m tossing them in the tank. When they are not wriggling about on your goddamn carpet, they are shoplifting. So they’ll go away for a couple of years, and I’ll tell them it was you who put the finger on them. How would you like that?’

Danny blinked, telling Lepski from the blink he wouldn’t like it.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Lepski.’

‘You’re wasting my time. When I have those two bags in the tank, I’m coming after you. How would you like another five years in the cooler, Danny?’

Danny flinched.

‘I’ve done nothing.’

‘Of course you haven’t, but suppose I found a couple of packets of the white stuff in this hovel? Do you imagine you could talk yourself out of that rap?’

‘You wouldn’t do a thing like that to an old man, Mr. Lepski.’

There was now a whine in Danny’s voice.

Lepski grinned evilly at him.

You can bet your rotten old life that I would and will. Now, are you singing or do I get busy?’

Danny knew when he was beaten. He sat back, his eyes defeated.

‘What do you want to know?’

Lepski nodded approvingly.

‘That’s my fella. I knew you’d get smart. Baldy came to see you, didn’t he?’

‘If I tell you, Mr. Lepski, will you leave those two girls alone?’

‘Sure . . . why should I bother with them? I’ll leave you alone too, Danny. . . can’t be fairer than that, can I?’

‘Yes, he came here. First, he went to Solo, but Solo wouldn’t help him, so he came to me. He wanted to borrow five hundred dollars.’

‘Why?’

‘He said he wanted to hire a boat. I hadn’t five hundred dollars so he had to do without his boat.’

‘Why did he want a boat?’

Danny hesitated, then seeing Lepski was getting impatient, he said, ‘He told me he had to get to Cuba.’

Lepski stared at him.

‘Cuba? Why the hell didn’t he hijack a plane? Everyone is doing it now, and what the hell did he want to go to Cuba for?’

‘He was taking stuff with him. He’s a Castro fan.’

‘Stuff . . . what do you mean . . . stuff?’

‘I don’t know, but he had to have a boat so I guess it was something pretty big and heavy.’ Danny paused, then went on, ‘He was frightened, Mr. Lepski: really frightened. Just looking at him scared me.’

‘What do you mean . . . he’s a Castro fan?’

‘Didn’t you know? Baldy is a rabid Commie. He thinks Castro is the greatest man who ever lived.’

Lepski snorted.

‘What was this job he pulled in Vero Beach, Danny?’

‘I don’t know. I heard things, but that means nothing. All I do know it was something big.’

‘What did you hear?’

‘Rumours. They said Baldy was onto the biggest deal of his life.’

‘Who said?’

Danny waved his hands vaguely.

‘You know how it is, Mr. Lepski. You stand in a bar and you hear talk. You run into the small men and they talk.’

‘And they’re saying Baldy’s dead, aren’t they?’

Danny nodded. ‘That’s right, but it doesn’t mean anything. He could be alive.’

‘No, I guess he’s dead,’ Lepski said firmly. ‘Who killed him, Danny?’

‘I wouldn’t know. I’m not even convinced he is dead.’

Lepski believed him.

‘Baldy was a vain bastard,’ he said. He always covered his baldpate with a wig. That tells me he had an eye for the girls. Who is his present doll, Danny?’

‘I was never close enough to him to talk about his women, Mr. Lepski,’ Danny said, but by the way he blinked, Lepski knew he was lying.

‘I’ll ask that question once again, then those two whores of yours will be in the tank by this afternoon. Who was his girlfriend?’

Danny licked his dry lips, then again made a little gesture of defeat.

‘I heard her name was Mai Langley.’

‘Who is she . . . where does she hang out?’

‘I don’t know.’

This time Lepski knew Danny was speaking the truth.

‘Gimme the telephone book.’

Danny got up and walked over to his desk. He found a dog-eared telephone book and handed it to Lepski.

It took Lepski only a few seconds to locate Mai Langley. Her address was 1556b Seaview Boulevard, Seacombe.

‘Okay, Danny. Keep your mouth shut, and if I were you, I’d cut out this Sunday night caper. It could get you a lapful of the Vice Squad.’

Lepski left the apartment and ran down the stairs, taking two at the time.

Danny waited for a moment, then he went silently to the door and leaned over the bannister rail, watching Lepski as he rushed down the stairs. He returned to his room, shut the door, then checked Mai Langley’s telephone number. He dialled the number, thinking it was only fair to give her an anonymous tip-off. The bell rang for some minutes before he decided she wasn’t in.

* * *

Captain of Police Frank Terrell, a big man with sandy hair, with white streaks in it and a jutting aggressive jaw, strode into the Detectives’ room and looked around.

Beigler was talking on the telephone. Jacoby was hammering at his typewriter. Fred Hess, in charge of Homicide, short, fat and shrewd, was checking through a report he had just written.

The three men looked up as Terrell closed the door.

Beigler said, ‘The Chief’s here now. Yeah, I’ll tell him. He’ll be here for the next hour,’ and he hung up.

As Terrell moved to his small office, he said, ‘Joe and Fred, come on in. Max, you take care of the desk. Where’s Lepski?’

‘Talking to Danny O’Brien,’ Beigler said, following Hess into Terrell’s office. ‘Should be here any time now.’

Terrell sat down.

‘Charley bringing coffee?’

Like Beigler, Terrell found serious thinking hard without coffee.

‘He’s coming,’ Beigler said as the door opened and Charley Tanner, the desk sergeant of the Charge room, came in with three cartons of coffee which he set on the desk.

‘Thanks, Charley,’ Terrell said, and when Tanner had left, he looked at Hess. ‘Well, Fred?’

‘It’s the car Baldy hired all right,’ Hess said. ‘Miami got the Hertz man from Vero Beach to identify it. The Lab boys are working on it now.’

‘Chief Franklin said he would phone a report any moment now,’ Beigler put in.

Terrell nodded.

‘Lepski?’

‘He thought it might pay off to talk to O’Brien,’ Beigler said and grinned. ‘He’s bursting with ideas.’

Terrell puffed at his pipe, frowning.

‘All this talk about Baldy pulling a big one,’ he said, looking at Hess. ‘Do you think it means anything?’

‘Yes . . . there’s too much talk for it not to. It’s my guess he pulled a hijack . . . that’s why there’s been no complaint.’

Outside, they heard an excited voice bawl: ‘Is the Chief in?’

‘Lepski,’ Beigler said with a grin. He got up and opened the door. ‘Come on in Sherlock.’

Lepski shoved by him and rushed up to Terrell’s desk.

‘Chief, I’m on to something hot!’ Concisely, he told the three listening men of his interview with Danny O’Brien, carefully omitting how he obtained his information, knowing his method would have been frowned on by Terrell. ‘So I did a quick think and came up with Cherchez le femme.’ He too had been slightly influenced by Jacoby’s efforts to better himself.

‘La femme, stupid,’ Hess said.

‘Who the hell cares?’ Lepski cut the air impatiently with his hand. ‘I knew Baldy had to have a piece of tail: that wig of his pointed to it. So I dug around and found her name and address. I went out there after her but she had scrammed and in a hurry. The old biddy who runs the apartment block told me she went off with Baldy on Thursday afternoon in her Volkswagen car.’

Terrell absorbed this, then turning to Beigler, he said, ‘Let’s pick this woman up, Joe. We know her, don’t we?’

‘Sure. Mai Langley. One time taxi dancer. Three times convicted for possessing reefers. Now working as a hostess at the Spanish nightclub.’