And 47 Miles of Rope (Trace 2) (7 page)

Trace had just finished dressing and reloading his tape recorder when the telephone rang. It was Dan Rosado.

“Trace, is your father in town?”

“Yes, why?”

“I met him today.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. He came down to headquarters. He said he wanted to register his hands as deadly weapons.”

“Was he drinking?”

“I don’t think so. I think he just wanted to look around. I think he misses being on the job,” Rosado said.

“He misses being out of the house. He’s with my mother. Did you meet her?” Trace asked.

“No.”

“If you do, register her mouth as a deadly weapon.”

“I’ll give her a wide berth. Anyway, Trace, I thought you’d just like to know.”

“Thanks, Dan.”

Trace was at the front door when the telephone rang again.

“Trace, this is Bob,” Swenson’s voice growled. “Where are you?”

“On my way to that reception.”

“Get here fast. There’s a woman here that you won’t believe.”

“I know her,” Trace said. “She’s into donkeys.”

“Hee haw, hee haw,” Swenson said. “Will that do?”

“That and maybe your checkbook if you’re interested in financing fuck films.”

“As long as I don’t have to be in them,” Swenson said. “Oh, by the way.”

“I hate your by-the-ways. They always mean trouble for me,” Trace said.

“I think I figured out what Marks is up to,” Swenson said.

“What’s that?”

“The insurance company that had those jewels insured? I was talking to the president today and he told me they’ve got a big fancy detective here to investigate the theft.”

“So what?” Trace asked.

“I think Marks figures that the guy will show you up and you’ll look like an idiot.”

“What change would that effect? I always look like an idiot.”

“You know that and I know that,” Swenson cheerfully agreed. “But I think what Walter has in mind is that if you are really made to look like an imbecile, he can come at me and complain about why I keep you on retainer when, for the same amount of money, we could get somebody really good.”

“So this is the way it is,” Trace said. “Tossed aside like an old shoe after years of service. Your faithful watchdog. Now I’m old and my teeth are going and my breath is bad, so it’s off to the city dump. That’s it, huh?”

“Are you rehearsing for the school play or what?” Swenson asked. “How could I ever let you go? You mean too much to me.”

“Old friendships are best,” Trace said.

“Not really. I just want you around to introduce me to this blonde with the knockers.”

“What about Flamma?”

“Next to this one? Flamma could incinerate herself in my fireplace and I wouldn’t bother getting a cup of water from the kitchen.”

“I’ll be over in a little bit,” Trace said. “By the way, what’s the guy’s name?”

“What guy?”

“The big insurance detective who’s going to make me look bad.”

“That’s an interesting part,” Swenson said. “Nobody knows. He works in secret for a lot of companies but no one knows his name or who he is. They say he’s bagged a lot of jewel thieves in Europe. Just gives the information to the cops and then splits, and no one knows anything about him.”

“When’s he coming? Maybe I can get done fast,” Trace said.

“I’m told he’s already here in town. Hurry up over.”

It didn’t really matter, Trace told himself as he walked from his condominium down the broad Las Vegas Strip toward the Araby Casino and Hotel four blocks away. What did he care if the ghost of Sherlock Holmes was trudging the Las Vegas streets right now, ready to swoop down on the jewel thief and murderer? No skin off his nose.

Right?

Definitely not right, he admitted to himself. Screw Groucho. He was just not about to be shown up, not by Sherlock Holmes, not by anybody. It didn’t have anything to do with any longing for justice or any overriding sense that murderers and jewel thieves should be brought to the bar.

What it had to do with was pride. Trace might be the most reluctant detective who ever lived, but right now he was a detective and this was his case, and if anybody was going to solve it, it would be him. Not R. J. Grundge or Sherlock Holmes or Groucho or even Dan Rosado. Him. Devlin Tracy. Nobody else. Case closed.

He was musing about this when a young girl planted herself in front of him on the sidewalk. She wore a short white skirt and sweater and looked like a high-school cheerleader.

“Mister, excuse me,” she said. “I need change of a twenty.”

Trace looked around. Sure enough, about eight feet away, casually lighting a cigarette, was a young man, about eighteen, trying very hard not to watch them.

“Sure thing, Sweetie Pie,” Trace said. “Anything for a pretty little girl like you.”

He pulled some bills out of his pocket and found two tens. The girl started to hand him the twenty and he put forth the two tens when the youth with the cigarette made his move, running forward, ready to clip all forty dollars from their hands and race off down the street.

He was too slow. Trace swallowed up the youth’s hand in his and squeezed. Hard.

“What are two nice children like you doing, trying to run a stupid stunt like this?” Trace said.

The girl started to back away. “I don’t know him,” she told Trace. “I never saw him before.”

“Sure. And everybody who believes in fairies should clap.”

The young man was squirming, trying to pull his hand free from Trace’s.

“Sonny,” Trace said, “spend some time in the minors before you try to make it in the bigs.” He released the youth’s hand.

The youth backed off about ten feet and snarled, “Prick.”

“That just cost you twenty dollars,” Trace said. He pocketed his own bills and the girl’s twenty and walked up the drive toward the Araby.

He was feeling good. Let Sherlock Holmes come to town. He might find out pretty quickly that Las Vegas had very little in common with foggy streets in London Town.

The Garrison Fidelity hospitality suite spread out over three connecting rooms on one of the upstairs floors of the hotel. The bar was situated in the center of the three rooms, manned by a uniformed bartender whom Trace recognized because he worked generally in the casino lounge bar downstairs.

“Hi, Trace. Usual?”

“Just Perrier, Richie. I’m tapering off. Seen Chico?”

“Wandering off in that direction with some greasegun in hot pursuit,” Richie said.

“Thanks.” Trace took his drink, sipped it, hated it, and tipped Richie his twenty dollars of stolen money. He stood by the bar and looked to see who was in the room. He didn’t recognize anyone. They were mostly men with a sprinkling of women who had the happy part-of-it look of convention wives. The insurance men traveling alone would be in the other two rooms, trying to engage whatever passable-looking woman they could find in conversation.

Trace let the conversation in the room sort of wash over him and in thirty seconds he had heard the phrase “sales quota” four times and decided to leave. He nodded to Richie, then wandered off in Chico’s direction.

Compared to the bar room, the side room was almost empty. He saw Chico in a corner. Paolo Ferrara was leaning his arm against the wall on one side of her. His body blocked her escape on the other side. She was smiling, but Trace knew the smile well. It was the kind of tolerant mouth-wrinkle she gave to high-spending but personally obnoxious gamblers at her blackjack table downstairs. Polite enough so no one could complain; cold enough so no one could think they were going to win the dealer. Nobody did that. Not unless Chico wanted them to.

Ferrara was being very continental. He had enough gold chains around his neck to get a sixteen-wheeler up Pikes Peak in a blizzard. He was flashing a lot of white teeth, in a very tan face, and when he glanced over and saw Trace, he didn’t even acknowledge him. No, Trace decided, he didn’t like Paolo Ferrara very much, and if the opportunity arose sometime during the evening, he might try explaining that to the young man.

Trace looked around the rest of the room. He saw Felicia Fallaci. She was dressed in modish tight blue jeans and cowboy boots with a fancy embroidered silk shirt that was tightly tailored to display her bosom. She was talking to a man who had his back to Trace, and when she saw him, she nodded and winked. He winked back.

Past the countess he saw why the room was less crowded than the other two rooms. Bob Swenson was sitting on the windowsill, and salesmen, until they were drunker, would just as soon stay out of the way of the president of the company. Later, fortified by demon rum, they would stop in to brag about their sales exploits, but it would do them no good because, by that time, Swenson would have been drinking all night, would care nothing about insurance, and would play drunk so that they would have to go away.

He wasn’t playing drunk now. He was talking very earnestly to National Anthem. Trace waited but didn’t hear her squeal once. Swenson seemed very serious and she was very serious right back. He was a wonder to watch, Trace thought. Some people had to work to figure out the right things to say to different people, but Swenson did it on automatic pilot; instinctively, he seemed to know who wanted to be treated seriously and who wanted to be looked at like Hard-hearted Hannah, the Vamp of Savannah.

National Anthem, Trace figured, would like very much to be treated like Sarah Bernhardt.

Walter Marks was in the room too. He was sitting on a sofa in the corner, tied up in a tight conversation with Baron Hubbaker. Another sofa was given over to the Neddlemans, who sat side by side, each holding a drink, neither talking nor stirring, just staring straight ahead. Trace wondered if they walked side by side, in lockstep. They’d be a great team to bet on in a sack race.

The countess had brought her entire retinue, except…There he was. Willie Parmenter was by himself in a corner of the room, looking out a window toward the Las Vegas Strip, nondescript and small in a dark-blue suit. Even as Trace noticed him, he heard Ferrara bellow, “Willie.”

The small man almost trotted toward his employer, who did not take his eyes off Chico. Instead, he just held out his empty glass, a king not deigning to look at a commoner, and kept jawing at Chico. No, Trace didn’t like Ferrara at all.

Parmenter took the glass and turned away, looking around the room. Was he embarrassed in case anyone had noticed his treatment at Ferrara’s hands? No. He was just looking to see if anyone else wanted a drink.

Hubbaker waved to him and Parmenter nodded and approached.

“Hello, Mr. Tracy,” he said.

“Hello, Parmenter.” Trace couldn’t bring himself to call the man Willie. “If you ever want to hit that boss of yours, I’ll hold him while you do it.”

Parmenter flashed a nervous little smile. His eyes looked lost behind the big lenses of his eyeglasses. “He’s really all right,” Parmenter said.

“Sure,” Trace said. “So is rain, if you don’t have it every day.”

Parmenter smiled again and walked toward the baron, with Trace following him.

“Willie, if you please, would you freshen this?” the baron said politely.

“Of course.”

Marks held out his glass too. “Fill mine too,” he snapped. He was speaking without looking at Parmenter. “And last time you made it too sweet. Don’t make it too sweet this time, if you can manage that.”

“Sorry,” Parmenter mumbled.

Marks grunted. Trust Groucho, Trace thought, to be a bully when he thought he could get away with it. A tiny tyrant. Walter Marks, the midget king of Misanthrope.

After Willie had walked away, Trace said, “I see you’re as pleasant to the help as you always are, Groucho.”

Marks looked at him in disgust and turned back to the baron, who nodded at Tracy, smiled, and said to Marks, “But of course your man here is the expert on crime.”

“He’s not my man,” Marks snapped.

“Oh…” The baron seemed confused. “I thought you two worked for the same company.”

“No,” Marks said. “
I
work for the company. Tracy here avoids working for the company. He just collects an inflated check from us once in a while.”

“I was watching Mr. Tracy today,” the baron said. “He seems to know what he’s doing.” He looked up at Trace and said, “We were discussing Felicia’s jewel robbery.”

“Come up with any new theories?”

“Maybe all the good theories are taken,” Hub-baker said. “And of course we amateurs shouldn’t really interfere with professionals.”

“Professional?” Marks said. “Tracy’s an accountant.”

“No, no,” Trace said. “I’m a former accountant. I worked my way down through gambling degenerate and alcoholic until now I’ve reached the absolute bottom of the line. I draw checks from an insurance company.” He sat in an easy chair near the baron. “Anyway,” Trace said, “I thought your theory this afternoon was pretty good.”

“You would,” Marks said. “It might give you something to work on.”

“Are you having your period, Groucho? Why are you so cranky tonight?”

“We’ll see,” Marks said. “We’ll see just how good you are. You’ve been lucky once in a while and you’ve got Mr. Swenson snowed, but I know what you are.”

“At last. The metaphysical explanation to the big question. What am I?”

“You’re a faker. You get lucky once in a while, but you don’t fool me. Now if you don’t mind, the baron and I were discussing the robbery and I wanted to hear his theory.”

“Just amateur stuff, you understand,” Hubbaker said. Marks snorted. Trace nodded.

“One of the questions that needs answering,” Hubbaker said, “has to be why didn’t Jarvis wait at the airport for Spiro to pick him up.”

“My question exactly,” Trace said.

“Suppose he met somebody at the airport. Somebody that he knew who offered to drive him back to the house. Then he tried to call Spiro and tell him not to pick him up, but Spiro had already left. So Jarvis said, ‘Oh, well,’ and left with this person he recognized, and then that person came into the house with Jarvis and he’s the one that looted the safe and killed him.” Hubbaker paused. “Just a theory, you understand.”

Marks looked as proud as if his wife had just delivered a full-grown child, Trace thought.