And 47 Miles of Rope (Trace 2) (9 page)

“You know,” she said, “that insurance detective. Nobody knows who he is.”

“Right.”

“I bet Walter Marks knows.”

“I think he would,” Trace said.

“So why do you think he was cozying up to that baron all night long? You said they were talking about the case.”

“Yeah.” A light was starting to glimmer in his head.

“And the insurance detective was supposed to just arrive, and that Baron Humbug or whatever his name is, he just arrived. Wouldn’t being a baron be a wonderful cover for some insurance snoop who works on jewel thefts?”

“Sure would. And it would also explain a lot of inquisitiveness on his part,” Trace said.

“Think about it. He may be your man,” Chico said.

“I don’t have to think about it. He is.”

“I didn’t say that, remember. Just a possibility. But Marks was all over him.”

“Yeah, he was doing everything but shine his shoes. When he wasn’t abusing Willie.”

“My secret Italian lover’s valet?” Chico said.

“The same.”

“I was talking to him. He’s nice. And very funny.”

“‘Funny’ is never a word I would have applied to Willie,” Trace said.

“He did an impersonation of Marks while I was talking to him. You know how Marks curls up his lip when he tries to sound important and winds up sounding like a constipated Richard Nixon?”

“God, do I know. I hear it all the time. In my sleep I hear it.”

“Willie did him to an absolute T. And he’s cute. He never said he was doing him, but he was watching my eyes, and when he knew that I knew, we both laughed.”

“Good for him,” Trace said. “The next time you’re chitter-chattering with him, tell him to keep his eyes open for Jarvis’ passport. Felicia couldn’t find it.”

“Maybe Sarge can help,” Chico said,

“Maybe. Quiet now. It’s time for my thinking cigarette. No more talk.”

“Who’d want to talk to you anyway?” Chico said.

Sober, well-rested, Trace woke up at eight-thirty and panicked. God, he thought, I’m sober and well-rested. I don’t even feel like throwing up. This can’t be allowed to continue.

“What do you want for breakfast?” Chico yelled from the kitchen.

“A glass of ipecac. A big glass. Get me back to normal fast.”

“Stay as you are. Your father will be over in a while.”

“Oh oh. Now I’ve got to think of something for him to do.”

“Stop worrying.”

Trace showered and brushed his teeth and went into the kitchen, where he answered the phone on the first ring. Chico was already at the table eating. She was always eating, it seemed. The tiny woman seemed to have the determination of a picnic ant and Trace sometimes wondered if she actually ate all the food that she made disappear or if she buried some of it for the winter.”

Bob Swenson was on the telephone.

“How’d it go last night?” Trace asked.

“Awful. The worst night of my life.”

“I don’t believe it. You had her eating out of your hand,” Trace said.

“I overplayed my hand,” Swenson said. “I got her head so filled with dog dust, I didn’t know she was going to believe it. I’m cursed. I slept with a woman who makes her living balling donkeys and I didn’t get in. If this gets out, it’ll be the end of me.”

“There, there. I’ll never tell,” Trace said consolingly.

Swenson grumbled on for a while and then admitted he had forgotten why he called. “Tell Chico I’ll see her at the sales workshop.”

Trace hung up. “Swenson,” he said.

“How is he?” Chico asked, and put more food in her face without waiting for an answer.

“He’s not happy,” Trace said as he sat down, sipped at his coffee, and looked without enthusiasm at his plate. It held one egg, one piece of bacon, a half-slice of toast, and a dollop of jam. He nibbled at the edge of the toast like a mouse on a diet.

“He was doing all right,” Trace said. “National Anthem thought that he was warm and wise and wonderful. She was really impressed by his plans for her career. She should go straight, make people regard her as a serious actress. How long can one screw donkeys before the public begins to regard it as a shallow gimmick?”

“It’s hard to have a relationship with a donkey and have anyone think it’s meaningful,” Chico mumbled with a full mouth. “God knows I’ve tried.”

“Silence, woman. So he spirits her off to his room, still talking his nonsense. Be the part. Let your good heart shine through. Drop your drawers. They were thinking out parts for her to make her career on. Swenson had in mind Cleopatra. Did you know that she blew the whole Roman Senate?”

“I didn’t know that,” Chico said.

“Well, Swenson said that she did and he knows things like that. Anyway, he’s thinking Cleopatra or Catherine the Great—she was kind of strange too—but somehow Nash gets in her head Joan of Arc, the Virgin of Orleans. And then she’s got to be Stanislavsky and live her part. No touchie, no feelie. Her womanhood is assault-proof. She puts her hands over her crotch and falls asleep. And she snores. This morning, she gets up and dresses and kisses Bob like he’s her pastor and tells him that he’s a very special man to her and leaves and he’s yelling at the door, ‘I don’t want to be a special man in your life. I want to fuck you like everybody else does.’ But she’s gone and he’s miserable. Watch out for him today.”

“I’ll wear my chain-mail knickers,” Chico said. “He should have stuck with Flamma. First rule of wing-walking.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t let go of what you got until you’re damn sure you’ve got hold of something else,” Chico said.

Trace nibbled another crumb from his toast. “You know, eating is good sometimes.”

“All the time,” Chico agreed, and stole his single piece of bacon.

She had already left, looking very professional and very lovely in a dark-blue suit with a red blouse and a red handkerchief in her jacket pocket, when the doorbell rang and Trace let Sarge in.

“Sergeant Tracy reporting as ordered, sir,” his father said, and tossed off a snappy military salute. He was wearing a gray business suit. His shoes were thick-soled, highly shined, and very practical-looking. Under his arm, he carried a red-covered spiral-bound notebook.

“Have some coffee, Sarge. Where’s Mother?”

“I left her in the coffee shop playing Keno. It’s a new game for her. She likes the idea of maybe winning twenty-five thousand for only seventy cents.”

“Good. Keep her busy.”

“Just what is it you want me to do?” Sarge asked.

They sat at the small table in the kitchen and Trace poured coffee.

“What’s the notebook for?” he said.

“For notes.”

“Good,” Trace said. “The first thing you have to do is keep accurate records. That’s really important.”

“Accurate records of what?”

“Your expenses, of course. But now, don’t give them to anybody or talk to anybody about them except me. Well, you can talk to Chico if you want, but mostly me. And what I’ll do is I’ll be very creative with them and I’ll send them in to Groucho, and then when he and I are finished negotiating over them, you’ll probably get all your money back and maybe show a small profit.”

Trace sipped more coffee and sat back with a satisfied look, as if he had just solved the mystery of existence. “That’s all there is to it,” he said.

“I think I ought to know a little bit about how I’m supposed to run up these expenses,” Sarge said. “Like maybe, what is this case all about?”

“Okay. Let me tell you what’s going on.” Trace quickly and carefully explained the jewel theft and the murder of Early Jarvis. Before he could even sum up, his father said, “Where was this Jarvis’ passport?”

“That’s good, Sarge,” Trace said. “That’s what I’m wondering too. He needed a passport to get back into the country. But he didn’t “have one on him and Felicia told me last night that she couldn’t find it.”

“Felicia?”

“The countess.”

“Oh, the redhead who was here. I didn’t know you had friends who were countesses,” Sarge said.

“To know me is to love me. Anyway, the passport. I’d like to know where it is. Did he lose it? Did he put it in a locker at the airport? What the hell for, if he did? What’s that all about? You got any ideas?”

“Some,” Sarge said. “But I’d like to nose around first.”

“How do you start?” Trace asked.

“You have a picture of Jarvis?”

Trace shook his head.

“Your first mistake. All right. I’ll go down and see your friend Rosado at headquarters. He should have a picture of him and I’ll borrow it. Then I’m going out to the airport and start talking around, see if anybody saw him, the usual. I know how to do all this stuff, son.” While he talked, he was making a neat list in his notebook of things to do. Trace thought of suggesting to him that he keep one page free for his grocery list.

He said, “I know you know how to do this stuff, but this isn’t New York.”

“What do you mean?”

“In New York, everybody talks. Hell, you can’t buy a newspaper without getting somebody’s whole life story. But that’s New York. This town’s different. Everybody’s a smart guy or thinks he’s a smart guy. Keeping your mouth shut around here is a way of life. Nobody talks in Vegas, nobody tells you a thing. If you give them money, then, maybe. But they’re all just afraid that if they wind up saying the wrong thing to the wrong, person, they’re going to be found the next day buried in the desert with a canary sewn inside their mouth.”

“They’ll talk to me,” Sarge said confidently.

“How’s that?”

“Because I’ll reason with them. I’ll be very polite. I’ll explain how it’s incumbent on a citizen to cooperate with a police investigation because if one man isn’t safe, then no man is safe. I’ll talk, movingly, about the responsibilities of good citizenship. And then, if they still won’t talk to me, I’ll punch the piss out of them. You got a gun?”

For a moment, Trace envisioned the Las Vegas Airport laid waste, strewn with dead bodies, and Sarge standing atop the Golden West Airlines counter, shooting his gun into the air and screaming, “Talk. Damn your eyes, talk.”

“I don’t think we actually need a gun yet. Not until we get closer to something. If you need a deadly weapon, use your hands.”

“Don’t be smart.”

“You’re not licensed to carry a gun around here anyway,” Trace said.

“Devlin, my boy, I may be retired but I’m not senile. Everybody in this town carries a gun. Or else there’s a helluvan outbreak of goiter under the left armpit.”

“That’s why we’ll do it without guns. It adds a touch of challenge to it. Another thing. Remember that guy you met last night, the baron?”

“What’s his name? Hubbell?”

“Hubbaker. I think he’s a secret agent for the insurance company that insured the jewels. Let me know if you run across him today.”

“Got it.”

“And there’s a private eye in town named Roberts who’s on this case too. He’s a hairball. Watch out for him.”

“Got it,” said Sarge.

“Good. Go get ’em, Tiger.”

His father drained his coffee, wrote down the names of Hubbaker and Roberts in his notebook, snapped it shut, and rose from the table.

“Maybe this’ll be the start of a new career,” Sarge said. He clapped a big heavy hand on Trace’s shoulder. “You and me, fighting crime. Patrick and Devlin Tracy. Confidential investigations. We never sleep. Crooks’ll tremble at the mere mention of our names.”

“Or we could work the other side of the street,” Trace said. “Open an accounting firm. And steal.”

“I’ll do that too. I’ll do anything to get out of the house. I’m off to see Rosado.”

“All right. If you’ve got any messages for me, filter them through Chico at the convention. Otherwise, I’ll see you back there, maybe around five. I think they have cocktails today at five.”

After Sarge left, Trace called police headquarters and spoke to Rosado.

“Dan, my father’s on his way down to see you. He’s working with me on this Jarvis case. I’d appreciate it if you’d help him out with anything he needs.”

“I’m not going to give him a gun permit,” Rosado said.

“No, God, no. Don’t give him a gun permit.”

“Anything else he can have. Who’s going to argue with a man whose hands are deadly weapons?”

“Thanks, Dan. He used to be pretty good, you know. He might still help.”

“We’re dead-ended. We can use all the help we can get.”

“It’ll be good to give him a chance to work again too,” Trace said.

“Trace, it’s all right. This is your friend you’re talking to. I met him yesterday, remember? I know he’s going stir-nuts hanging around this town playing slot machines. It’s a nice thing for you to let him work.”

“Don’t let on you know,” Trace said. “This is one I owe you.”

“You can buy me a Bjoerling record for my collection. I don’t have
Trovatore
.”

“I refuse to promulgate mediocrity in the world,” Trace said.

“Go screw yourself.”

Trace heard a voice inside Roberts’ office, so he waited across the hall where Roberts couldn’t see his outline through the frosted-glass windows that overlooked the hallway.

“I don’t care, dammit, that’s the way things are,” he heard Roberts say. He was talking on the telephone; there was no answering voice.

Then Roberts said, louder, “Just do what she says,” and Trace heard the receiver slam down.

He waited a few seconds, then began to whistle loudly and stepped toward the door. He rapped once, hard, and walked inside.

Roberts looked up from behind his dirty desk.

“Hello, Tracy.”

“How’s it going, R. J.?” Trace said with unfelt warmth.

“Win a couple, lose a couple. Sit down. You want a drink or something?”

“No, thanks. I was just wondering if you’d heard anything on the street yet about the countess’s jewels?”

Roberts shook his head, and folded his hands on his notebook. “Like they vanished,” he said. “I’ve got lines out all over and I haven’t felt a quiver. I’m telling you, Tracy, this is out-of-town work. You find out anything?”

“Nothing yet. I was up at the plotzo yesterday and looked around. Nothing.”

“You talk to Spiro?” Roberts asked.

“Yeah.”

“What’d you think of him? I figured, maybe an inside job,” Roberts said.

“I don’t know,” Trace said. “Little thieves are always little thieves. The way they make more money is to do more little thefts, not one big theft. They deal in quantity, not quality.”

“How’d you know he’s a thief?” Roberts asked.

“Just a guess,” Trace said.

“He’s got a little record. Nickel-and-dime stuff. Did six months about four years ago, then started hopping cars and keeping clean. He’s a Greek. Greeks never steal anything big.”

This was a breakthrough in crime detection that Trace had never heard before, but he decided to let it slide.

“You hear anything about another detective in town?” he asked.

“No. Who?”

“I don’t know. I hear the insurance company’s got some hotshot jewel detective in town. I thought you might have run into him.”

“Those bastards. They got me on this, what do they need anybody else for? Those bastards.”

“That’s the insurance business for you,” Trace said cheerily. “Swine of the earth.”

“What’s his name?” Roberts asked.

“Nobody knows. He’s the Secret Avenger, right out of the Saturday-morning television cartoons.”

“I’ll Secret Avenge him. You find out who he is, Tracy, you let me know.”

“Sure will,” Trace lied. “And I’ll keep you posted on anything else I come up with.”

The clerk was very pretty and very young, and her eyes were very wary. It was the kind of look that came naturally to people who worked in businesses with a high armed-robbery rate. It came extra easily to girls who were voted the prettiest in their high-school class and came to Las Vegas to take the town by storm and wound up working, a few months later, in a side-street jewelry shop.

“I want to see Herman,” he told her.

“May I tell him your name?”

“Tell him Trace is here, please.”

She nodded but gave him a smile that suggested he was a loan shark coming for an overdue payment, and went into a back room. A moment later, she came out and the smile was real. “You can go right in.”