David Bishop - Matt Kile 04 - Find My Little Sister (12 page)

When Mickey gave you something private it was an act of friendship. He expected it to be used in accordance with the conditions
, particularly if one expected to get more tips from the Mickster.

W
ould I be placing a bet? You’re damn right. I had nothing to do with arranging the fix, if there was a fix to begin with, so what the hell. Yeah, I’m rationalizing. I’ll also be collecting, hopefully. There was still some risk. Horse breaks a leg. Jockey falls off. The guys with the big risks were the ones at the track if things didn’t go as Mickey may have instructed they should go.

I nodded and he said, “Remember, b
et your shorts on this one, it’s a lock. And place your wager with one of Dragna’s books so nobody connected with me will have to pay you.”

Mickey
laughed while walking me to the door.

I had promised the Mickster I’d deliver his message
and bring back Tony’s reply before I went to the hotel to see if their guest list included one Johnny Breeze, gunman extraordinaire. I’d done that, so it was time to visit the Hotel Roosevelt to try and brace the man who carried the odd description of gorgeous and ruthless.

The
Hollywood Roosevelt was a place habited by the swells and those who had enough green to stay down the hall from the swells. Johnny Breeze would be in the later group, assuming he was in residence.

The front desk claimed no guest by the name of Johnny Breeze or Tommy Rocco, the alias Mickey Cohen said Breeze
sometimes used. The way the counter jockey’s eyes went tight and he ran his tongue across his lips before answering told me he had either lied, or his shorts had suddenly and invisibly been yanked up to his waist.

I sat around awhile
before venturing into the hotel’s Blossom Room for lunch. Eating gave time for the desk clerk to tire of keeping track of me. While I ate I watched the cashier for the restaurant scanning the nickels in her cash box. The Jefferson nickel had been introduced a few weeks ago and many people were hoarding them as collector’s items. After I ate and settled up with that cashier, I roamed the halls.

Eventually,
I found a young bellhop with a name badge. Morgan had the manner of a self-ordained man-about-town, a hustler, at least in his mind. It cost me twenty, which was a lot of cabbage in today’s moola. Hopefully, I’d make it back betting on Stagehand in the Santa Anita race. The double sawbuck bought me a room number and enough description to be reasonably sure I had the found Breeze.

“Half the maids is playing with themselves after they see ‘im,” Morgan said. “As for the dish he’s with
… whoa. The boys who work my job are jockeying to be on call when that dame needs something. I never heard no name for her, but she is gor—geous. Movie star scrumptious.” Morgan then wrapped up his apt description with, “Yummy and I don’t mean for the tummy.”

After Morgan did a three-sixty on the ball of his left highly-polished brogan, I asked,
“Red hair?”

“Yeah. She’s got
red hair. And she can sure stretch a sweater.”

I
extended another ten spot toward Morgan. He grasped it between his thumb and forefinger, while I kept a firm grip on my end. After that we stood there speaking with a ten dollar bill suspended between us.

“This is not to be talked about with anyone
—anyone. If I learn you have spoken of this with … anyone … I’ll be coming back for my money. And you don’t want me to come back for my money. You get me?” When Morgan nodded, I released my grip on my end. Morgan folded the ten once and hid it in his front pocket.

“I understand,” he said. He didn’t, but if he kept his trap shut my
dough had bought what I wanted.

I located
Breeze’s room on the fourth floor. Then I reconnoitered to find the elevator and stairs closest to his room. I followed them down to where they came out in the lobby. After stopping at the gift shop for a newspaper, I hunkered down where I could see the two ways Breeze would have to pick from when he came down.

Two hours later, almost two hours, the elevator doors parted and Breeze, at least a guy I assumed to be Breeze, came out.
He was mid-to-late thirties and tight. I don’t know a better word to describe him. He was neither skinny nor fat. It was his skin, yeah, his skin, his face in particular. Tight, the experts might say taut. The skin over his cheeks wrinkle free to the point where they could be played like bongos. His eyes twinkled, but not like the merry connotation that goes with twinkle. His twinkle made me think of light reflecting off a grave shovel.

He walked toward me
. Before he got by, I said his name, “Johnny, Johnny Breeze,” loud enough for him to hear, but no one else.

His stride shortened for a step,
more a hesitation, a hitch, before he recaptured his pace as if to appear he had not heard me, or more precisely hadn’t reacted.

“I can say it louder, Johnny. I’m trying to be discreet.”

He came back and sat in the seat next to me, settled in, and leaned toward me. His hand firmed his arm against the edge of the chair. His forearms weren’t Popeye’s, but nonetheless well muscled and taut like the rest of him. The sag in his coat just enough to show off the rod kept warm by his armpit. It appeared to be a practiced move when he wanted someone to know he was packing a gat.

I did the same
, showing off my Stainless Thompson 1911 pistol. After the attempt on my life the other night, Sadie, my pet name for my Thompson, and I were again going steady. I offered a mirthless smile. He did as well. We each sat back.

“Are you the guy who’s been asking about me in the clubs
lately?”

I nodded.

“And what is it I can do for you?”

I had heard that Breeze was well educated and the way he spoke confirmed it.

“Your name came up while I was having ice cream with Mickey Cohen.”

That was true
. It was also true that I was shamelessly name-dropping. Letting Breeze know I was pals with the Mickster. I wanted Breeze to be sure of that, more sure than I was.

“You a
copper?” He smiled.

“Don’t smile, Johnny. You face looks better without it. Like cold, chiseled
granite, a headstone waiting to be carved.”

His smile withdrew
like a flushed toilet. Just then I glanced across the lobby to see a gorgeous woman with black hair take a quick look in our direction before turning and heading out the door. I thought it might have been Frances in a wig, but, at the distance, I couldn’t be sure. It happened too quickly.

“I asked, are you a copper?”

“If I am, I wouldn’t be alone and you wouldn’t still be sitting. Now let’s quit wasting time. You know who I am. My identity was part of the messages you got about my asking for you in the clubs.”

“You’re an ex-copper, Kile
, a not very smart ex-cop, coming looking for me alone.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not smart, but you are. Smart enough to know you don’t need the heat that would
follow plugging a guy known as the Walter Winchell of the West. For bumping off a news writer, the press would make you public enemy number one and keep the prod on the coppers to bring you in.”

“You figure I know that?”

“I do. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have been satisfied stitching up the side of my car the other night. That was a warning, not an attempted murder. Had you meant to knock me off I wouldn’t be here at your hotel.”

“
Get to it, Kile. What do you want?”

“I’m looking for a dame name of Frances. You said you heard
I’ve been asking about you around town. That means you know I’ve also been asking about her.”

“Showing a picture around, I’m told.”

I held the picture of Frances out to Johnny, my fingers remaining on a good measure of it.

He grasped the upper corner
, tilting it a bit to get rid of a reflection from the ceiling light, and looked. “Don’t know the woman,” he said after about a ten-second look. Then he said, “I’ll hold onto this.”

I
tightened my fingers on the picture he still held the other end of. The tug of war with Morgan over the ten spot had been good training.

“You said you don’t know her, so what would you want
with her picture?”

He smiled
.

“I figure you told her to get rid of all the pictures of her at home. She missed one.” I pulled back gently. Enough for him to know I didn’t plan on letting him have the picture.

Breeze drew back his hand. “Don’t overly rely on that Walter Winchell of the West bit. It’s in play, I grant you that, but it doesn’t override all other considerations.”

“You could try and plug me right here, right now. Then take the picture of Frances. Of course that would mean walking away from what you got in
your room upstairs. I don’t figure you want to do that.”

Breeze
got up and moved across the lobby without saying another word, without another look. He went out through the far door, the door through which the dame with the black hair had exited a few minutes before.

I
moved to a chair out of sight of the doorway that Breeze had just walked through and waited ten minutes. When he didn’t come back into the hotel, I went looking for Morgan. As the mayor had said, information like goods and services traded openly in the tax-free cash market.

For another
twenty, making my investment in Morgan a half-a-hundred, he got me in their room. I left ten minutes later. I thought about taking a lipstick or whatever for Callie to identify as the brand used by her sister, but they’d miss it and know I had been in their room. Instead, I wrote down the brand, along with the brand of face powder and the label name in some of her dresses. I also found one of those head-shaped forms on which women kept wigs when they were not being worn, it held no wig. That could explain the black hair I saw on the woman, who otherwise resembled Frances, I saw going out the door. While none of this was foolproof, I added the black-haired dame who went out the hotel door, and the redheaded woman Morgan said shared the room with Breeze, for the answer that they were one and the same: Callie’s sister, Frances.

I expect
ed that Callie would confirm this dame with Breeze was Frances. Why else would he have wanted to keep the picture of Frances? I had also remembered two locked cases in their room at the Roosevelt, heavy-duty cases which were also just plain heavy.

So, far I knew two things, I was falling for Callie and we had
quite different opinions of her little sister. Callie saw Frances as a wayward young girl fascinated with the danger that comes with chasing bad boys. Me? I was starting to see Frances as more like a leaf blowing from one gutter to the next.

Being w
ith Johnny Breeze meant Frances was in a major gutter. He wouldn’t have her with him unless she was actively helping him.

* * *

I got home, opened the mail, paid a few bills, took a dip in the pool, poured three fingers of the Dew over ice and started working on my next column.

Bad Happenings in the City of Angels

Bad things happened this week in our booming metropolis, the same bad things that happened last week. That happened last year and the year before that. Only difference, this week they happened to different people. Hope none of them were you or yours.

Right this minute, t
he law dogs are hunkered down planning how to sink Tony Cornero’s new luxury gambling ship the S.S. Rex. Not sink it literally, just figuratively. It’s long been common knowledge that the guardians of the rest of us, or those who purport to be our guardians, want all the gambling ships gone. So, they are certainly opposed to Tony’s new bigger and better floating casino. Frankly, on this matter the law and the underworld are substantially in agreement. With the demise of the gambling ships, the politicians get to polish their images as saviors of the rest of us, from ourselves. The mobsters will then get your gambling business once the ships are not getting a piece of the gambling pie. Realizing that almost none of us ask the politicians to save us from ourselves, the mob has the better angle and the bigger benefit from this.