Fly Me to the Morgue (27 page)

‘I know that Phil – and Eric, too – had borrowed money from a man named Lenny Markwell.'

‘Markwell,' I said. ‘OK. I'll look into that.'

We both kept our eyes on the doorway, even after she went through.

‘Mr G. . . .' Jerry said.

‘I know.'

‘If I was Vince DeStefano, I wouldn't be done with somethin' like that for a long time.'

‘Well, maybe she was done with him.'

‘Still, I don't see him just lettin' her go.'

‘I know what you mean.'

We looked at each other.

‘You know that name she gave you? Markwell?'

‘Yeah,' I said. ‘He's a local loan shark.'

‘Sharks break bones,' Jerry said, because he was an expert on the subject. ‘They don't kill people who owe them money.'

‘I know that,' I said.

‘Well, what do we do now?' he asked. ‘No matter how fast Elizabeth sends the key we ain't gonna have it for a couple of days.'

‘Depending on where Elizabeth is.'

‘We don't know?'

‘She just said she's in Europe with her husband.'

‘It'll be days before we see that key,' Jerry said, shaking his head. ‘We just gonna wait?'

‘No,' I said, ‘we've got to do somethin'. We can't just wait for somebody else to die. We'll take our meeting with Vince.'

‘We? You think he's gonna agree to see you alone. And let you bring me along?'

‘How about we don't tell him?'

SEVENTY-TWO

We got a couple of drinks for ourselves while we waited. Seemed to me I'd been drinking a lot more lately. When I moved to Vegas years ago I was both a drinker and a smoker. I'd pretty much cut those two vices down to almost nothing. Over the past few years I'd gone back to drinking a bit – beer, and an occasional bourbon – but still stayed away from the cigarettes.

When she came back out almost fifty-five minutes later – Jerry had suggested at the half-hour mark we check to see if she had run out on us – her make-up was perfect and she had composed herself. Still, she poured herself another brandy and lit a cigarette. The way she inhaled the smoke and expelled it, you could see she was still churning inside.

‘All right,' she said. ‘Elizabeth said she got an envelope in the mail from Phil weeks ago.'

‘The key?' I asked.

‘She claims she never opened it. Now she says she doesn't want to. She agreed to send the whole thing on to me by international messenger. Still, it might take two days.'

‘What about Eric?'

‘I couldn't get him on the phone,' she said. ‘Not at home, and not at work. He's either in a casino or he's—'

‘In hidin',' Jerry said.

‘I was going to say “dead”,' she said, ‘but I hope you're right, Jerry.'

‘And what about Vince?'

‘Vince agreed to meet with me.'

‘You? Alone?'

‘Yes.'

‘Did you ask him about me?'

‘I did. He said there was no reason to meet with you.'

‘Why did you arrange to meet with him, then?' I asked.

She shrugged.

‘I thought you'd come along, anyway.'

‘I will,' I said.

‘Mr G.—'

‘I know, Jerry,' I said. ‘He won't be alone.'

‘You won't be, either.'

‘Yeah, you'll be there,' I said, ‘but we'll have to set it up so the advantage is ours.'

‘How do we do that?' Jerry asked.

‘By controlling the time and place.' I looked at Adrienne.

‘I'm supposed to call him back and arrange that,' she said. ‘He was in a hurry to get off the line. He said to call back in two hours.'

I looked at Jerry, who looked back at me. I found the silence on both our parts very loud.

‘OK,' I said. ‘We have some stuff to do. We'll pick out a place and be back in two hours.'

‘Are you sure you can't . . . stay?' she asked.

This time I felt Jerry look at me, but I didn't return it.

‘No, Adrienne,' I said, ‘but we'll back before the two hours.'

‘OK.'

‘Keep tryin' Eric,' I suggested. ‘He has to be warned.'

Jerry and I left. I knew we were thinking the same thing. If she hadn't been able to get Eric, and DeStefano hadn't been able to talk, why had she been in the bedroom on the phone for almost an hour?

We had two hours to figure out a place for the meeting, someplace where Jerry would have a good line of sight on us.

‘And I need to be close,' Jerry said to me as we left Adrienne's building. ‘If the shooter out at Red Rock was from DeStefano, he'll probably use him again. He won't have to be close. Me, with my forty-five, I'll have to be closer.'

I was starting to think I was a fool to have come away from the first meeting with Vince DeStefano believing that he was not involved. Unless somebody else came out of the woodwork, he was the likely suspect . . .

‘Why'd she give us that loan shark's name?' Jerry asked.

‘And why was she on the phone for almost an hour?' I asked.

‘You think she's settin' us up?'

‘I think the only person I'm ready to trust over the next few hours is you,' I said. ‘So we're gonna have to watch our backs.'

‘I got yours, Mr G.,' he said, ‘and I know you got mine.'

I suddenly remembered something, and opened the glove compartment. There was Frank's .38.

‘I definitely have got yours, Jerry.'

SEVENTY-THREE

We drove around. I didn't want to get a drink, and I didn't want something to eat. Neither did I want to sit and watch Jerry eat. So we compromised. I stopped where he could jump out and grab a hot dog.

Here,' he said, getting back in the car. He handed me a container of coffee.

‘Thanks.'

‘Where to?' he asked.

‘Someplace where we can park so you can eat.'

‘It's OK, Mr G., I can eat and drive.'

‘I don't want you takin' out a bunch of tourists with my car,' I said. Then, on the spur of the moment, I said, ‘Pull in here!'

‘What's this?'

He pulled into the parking lot of a two story building that had just recently been completed, but wasn't open yet. We were at the northern end of the Strip, not exactly considered prime real estate.

‘This is gonna be The Westward Ho Casino and Motel,' I said. ‘They're gonna call it The Friendliest Casino in Las Vegas.'

‘What's gonna make it so friendly?'

I took the top off my coffee and sipped it.

‘It's gonna be the only casino
motel
on the Strip,' I said. ‘Also, they're supposed to have some really cheap food specials.'

I knew the Westward Ho was owned by brother and sister, Dean and Murray Peterson, as well as Faye Johnson. They had hired Hans Dorweiller to manage it. I didn't know him, but I'd heard some good things. He would go on to manage the place for forty years.

Jerry ate his hot dog and studied the two-story motel building.

‘Not gonna be very big, is it?' He looked around. ‘Pretty deserted here. When's it supposed to open?'

‘This year.'

We both sat and stared at the building.

‘You thinkin' what I'm thinkin'?' I asked.

‘Yeah,' Jerry said, ‘but who says we get to pick the place? What if DeStefano tells Adrienne where he wants to meet her?'

‘Well, she got him to agree to the meet,' I said. ‘We'll have to hope she can get him to agree on the place.'

We drove back to Adrienne's with a half-hour to spare, decided to park down the block, across the street, and watch.

‘She may have called somebody as soon as we left,' Jerry said.

‘Maybe,' I said. ‘Let's just sit here for about twenty minutes and see what happens.'

Nothing did.

‘Let's go up,' I said. I opened the glove compartment, took out Frank's gun and stuck it in my belt. I knew Jerry had his .45 on him.

We entered the building and the doorman smiled at us.

‘Hey, guys,' he said. ‘You're gettin' to be regulars.'

I took a twenty out and held it out to him.

‘Who do I have to kill?' he asked.

‘The lady get any visitors while we were out?' I asked.

‘Nope,' he said. ‘She's all alone up there.'

‘Is there another way up?' Jerry asked.

‘Freight elevator, but I can tell from here that nobody used it while you were away. Nope, the lady is alone.'

Jerry took the twenty from me and stuffed it into the doorman's breast pocket forcefully, then kept his hand there.

‘If she ain't,' he said, ‘I'll be back.'

Adrienne opened the door and looked relieved.

‘Oh my God, I didn't think you were going to make it. What do I do?'

‘Call Vince,' I said, ‘and here's what I want you to tell him.'

She was on the phone for fifteen minutes, then came back out from her bedroom.

‘Well?' I said.

‘He agreed,' she said. ‘He'll meet us there tomorrow morning at nine a.m.'

‘He wouldn't meet tonight?'

‘No,' she replied. ‘He said he didn't want to meet in the dark.'

‘Well, OK,' I said. ‘Daylight's good. At least we'll be able to see who he brings with him.'

‘B-but . . . when will you be here? We're going together, right?' she asked.

‘Yes,' I said. ‘I'll be here at eight thirty.'

‘And Jerry?'

‘Don't worry about Jerry,' I said. ‘He'll have his own job to do.'

Out in the hall, as we left, Jerry said, ‘What's my job gonna be, Mr G?'

‘What it always is, big man,' I said. ‘To keep us alive.'

SEVENTY-FOUR

‘You think it's a trap?' Jack Entratter asked. Jerry and I had gone back to the Sands, called Jack in his suite and asked him to meet us in his office so we could tell him what was going on.

‘Think about it, Jack,' I said. ‘Why would Vince DeStefano agree to meet me at a time and place of my choosing?'

‘Well, the way you paint this broad he's doin' it for her.'

‘I can see a man like DeStefano makin' a fool of himself for a woman like Adrienne Arnold,' I said. ‘I can't see him puttin' himself at risk for her.'

‘Maybe,' Jack said, ‘he doesn't see you as much of a risk.'

‘He knows Jerry's with me, and he knows who Jerry is,' I reasoned.

‘All right,' Entratter said, ‘if he's gonna set a trap for you, why bother to let you leave his house the other day?'

‘He didn't wanna shit where he lives,' Jerry said.

‘True,' I said, ‘and there was also the fact that Frank was with us. Killing Frank Sinatra – aside from the publicity it would cause – would be like a smack in the face to Mo Mo.'

‘So after you went to his house you said he was innocent,' Jack said. ‘Now you're sayin' he's behind the killing?'

‘I think he had them done, yeah,' I said. ‘For himself and for the person he's workin' with.'

‘And that would be . . . the woman?'

I shrugged.

‘Why would she want her own brothers dead?'

I knew Jack loved his brother, who had been killed years earlier in the service of Legs Diamond.

‘Why not?' I asked. ‘It wouldn't take much to make me hire somebody to kill mine. But with her it's gotta be money. She and her brothers are all gamblers. I think she and Phil both wanted that horse, or at least a piece of it, and Chris wouldn't come across.'

‘So she's lyin' about her and DeStefano bein' done,' Jack said, ‘and he backed her up when you went to see her.'

‘He didn't back her up, he acted like he didn't even know she existed. If he knew her brothers, he had to have met her, or seen her, at least once. And after once there's no way he could've ignored her.'

‘So you think the woman is settin' you up.'

‘That's what I think.'

‘Then how do you wanna play this? You wanna send in the cops?'

‘They won't get anything,' I said. ‘We can't prove anything. No, I want to go in there and meet with him, and get him to admit he had Chris and Phil killed, and Fred Stanley too. And I want him to admit that he did it for her.'

‘He's gonna have a rifle on you,' Jack said.

‘It's Jerry's job to find him, and make sure he doesn't kill me.'

‘You goin' in unarmed?'

‘Frank left his gun in my car,' I said, patting my pocket.

‘How many torpedoes you think DeStefano's gonna have with him?'

‘Well,' I said, ‘I know one I'm hopin' he'll have.'

‘Potato nose,' Jerry said. ‘He'll have the rifle. Then there was the three we saw at Phil's place, and the three we saw at Vince's place.'

‘Seven? You and Jerry against Vince DeStefano and seven guns? That's crazy.'

I frowned. That was exactly what I had been thinking while Jerry counted them off.

‘OK then,' I said, ‘I've got another idea.'

SEVENTY-FIVE

At eight twenty-nine the next morning I knocked on Adrienne's door. Once again the doorman – the only one I'd ever seen on duty – said she was alone. I gave him another twenty.