Tender Is LeVine: A Jack LeVine Mystery (24 page)

“That’s your name?”

“It is tonight.”

She nodded and blew more smoke across the Nevada desert.

“You don’t look like a Buddy. Try another name.”

“How about Lassie?”

“Now you’re getting warm.”

We were getting near the airport. I looked at my watch; it was a quarter to four.

“What the hell,” I told her. “Let’s go to the Flamingo.”

“You’re ready.”

“‘Ready’ isn’t the right word. ‘Resigned’ is probably more like it.” I leaned forward. “Listen, there’s gotta be a service entrance over there, right?”

“You don’t want to march through the lobby.”

“Correct.” I was ready to take this girl on as a partner.

“Okay. I have a friend in the back. Dorothy Washington. She’ll take you up the freight elevator. She’s a dyke, too, a Negro one, talk about two strikes and you’re out.”

“Is she someone who keeps her eyes open?”

Kim looked at me in the mirror again.

“Believe me, Lassie, there’s nothing happening inside that hotel she doesn’t know about.”

Ten minutes later Kim was leading me from the cab to the service entrance of the Flamingo. It was now nearly four in the morning, and kitchen and casino workers were arriving for the dead-of-night shift. They walked alone or in friendly chatting groups across a parking lot that was about a quarter-filled with cars and trucks and a large green bus that had
VAUGHN MONROE ORCHESTRA
painted in white script across both of its sides. The Flamingo—like all of Las Vegas—was an enterprise that never stopped, and Kim acted as if she owned the joint.

I followed Kim through the service entrance like a kid she was taking to kindergarten. She marched straight to the house phone, picked up, and asked for Dorothy Washington. I flattened myself against the wall, but it was an unnecessary precaution—the Flamingo employees were parading past me as if I didn’t exist.

Kim listened for a couple of silent seconds, then hung up.

“She’ll be right down.” She studied me. “You look awful tired.”

“I’ve had a busy couple of days.”

“Maybe you’ll tell me about them sometime.” Kim raised her eyebrows. “Right? When you’re in the mood? I’ve always liked private eye stories.” Even under the fluorescent lights, Kim had high color in her cheeks. We were standing face-to-face, maybe a foot apart; I studied her small and sensuous mouth, long and inquiring nose, observed the startling blue of her eyes.

“By the way, you’re a knockout,” I told her.

“Thanks,” she told me. “I bet you’re pretty cute when you take that beaver off your head and hang it back on the wall.”

“I’m adorable.”

We both smiled at each other, had an intriguing flicker of eye contact, and then she laughed and shook her head.

“Uh-uh. No more guys for me. Not worth the trouble.”

She squeezed my arm in friendship. I rewarded her trust and affection with an immediate hard-on, but that tumescence wilted the instant that Dorothy Washington came into view. Wearing the black and whites of her profession, Dorothy was built roughly along the lines of Jersey Joe Walcott, with wide shoulders and a massive high-cheekboned head. Her skin was cocoa-colored and she had dyed her brush cut into a copper-coil red.

Kim made the introductions.

“Dorothy Washington, meet Lassie.”

“Buddy,” I offered.

“That’s not his name, either.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” Dorothy said in a delicate soprano totally at odds with her imposing physique. “You’re staying here?”

“In 207.”

“But you want to keep out of the mainstream, is that the point?” she asked.

“That’s exactly the point.”

“He’s a private dick, but he’s a good guy, has that wicked New York sense of humor,” Kim said, then leaned over and kissed my cheek. “I have to go back to my chariot.” She then handed me a card, which identified her as Kim West of the Royal Flush Cab Company. “You need any help, I can play Nancy Drew.” Then Kim kissed Dorothy on the cheek and went racing out the back door.

“She’s something,” I said.

“She’s everything,” said the maid.

Service elevators, like service entrances, are all the same; from the swankiest establishment to the rankest, they all stink of moldy bedsheets and rotting cheeseburgers, and the Flamingo’s was no exception. Dorothy and I stood shyly on opposite sides of the drab green elevator car, like two people on a blind date.

“When you check in?” she asked.

“This evening. Listen, I’m going to have to trust you completely, Miss Washington, because I’m on my own in this town, and there’s a great deal of very strange stuff going on.”

“Always is in Vegas,” she said. “And call me Dorothy.”

“You born here, Dorothy?”

She smiled. “Nobody was born here. I’m from Chicago.”

“You like this town?”

“It’s a new world, mister. That’s what I like. For people like me, people like Kim …” she didn’t elaborate and didn’t have to. “It’s easier, y’know? People don’t ask any questions ‘cause they all got their own secrets. That’s why a lot of folks come here. To start from scratch.”

“How long you been at the Flamingo?”

“Since the week before it opened.”

“Really. So you knew Bugsy?”

She smiled with a certain reserved pride. “Yessir. I remember Mr. Siegel, all right. Everybody thought he was just so handsome, but he wasn’t handsome when you looked in his eyes, know what I’m saying? In his eyes he was just plain crazy. I wasn’t surprised he wound up with a bullet in his head. Not at all. That man was put on this earth to get himself shot up.”

“So then you must know Lansky,” I said just as casually as all get-out. Dorothy’s expression never changed. She just smiled. That was it; there was no elaboration. When I took out my wallet, she waved it off.

“Don’t even think about it,” she said.

“About giving you some cash if you help me out?”

“You can do it later if I do help you out. I don’t want to owe you nothing.”

“Fair enough. So what about Lansky?”

“What about him?”

“When’s the last time you saw him?”

She checked her watch. “About an hour ago. He’s in 406. Looked like he was turning in for the night. I can check if you’d like.”

“I’d like,” I told her.

The elevator stopped. Dorothy got out and gestured for me to follow. We stepped into a dun-colored cubicle that held a half dozen ghostly room service carts and some lidless trash cans.

“Room 207 is right across the hall. Hang on.” She picked up a house phone, but this one wasn’t virgin white like the ones in the lobby. This one, for the enslaved class, was industrial gray.

“Hey, it’s me,” I heard Dorothy say to her unseen comrade-in-dust-rags. “There a ‘Do Not Disturb’ on 406?” She looked over at me, listened, then nodded. “And he got his night service? Okay, thanks.” The chambermaid hung up. “He closed up shop for the night. That going to help you sleep better?”

“It’s a start. Thanks.”

“No problem. Any friend of Kim’s …”

I looked out through the window of the service door. My room, as advertised, was directly across the way. I pushed the door open, then turned back to Dorothy Washington. She was ringing for the elevator.

“Dorothy, do you know who Toscanini is? Arturo Toscanini?”

Dorothy stopped and stared at me. For the first time, there was a flicker of unease in her eyes.

“No.” The elevator doors opened.

“You never heard of him? The most famous symphony conductor in the world?”

“Heard the name maybe. Sure. Once or twice.”

“He’s staying at this hotel, Dorothy, isn’t he?” I walked toward the chambermaid and she backed into the elevator. “You couldn’t miss him in a thousand years. He doesn’t look like anyone else in the world, particularly anyone living west of the Mississippi. Came in sometime yesterday.”

“I don’t know,” she mumbled. “Haven’t heard the name.”

Dorothy reached for the buttons in the elevator, but I held my finger on the down button, keeping the door open.

“Gotta go back to work, mister,” she said with a little quaver in her voice. It was a little unsettling to see this strapping woman so discomfited.

“They told you to play it deaf and dumb? If you see him you don’t see him?”

“Let go of the button, please.”

“He’s about five-foot-three, snow-white hair, and pink, luminescent skin. You’d miss Teddy Roosevelt checking in before you’d miss this guy.”

“I’m asking you nice, let go that button,” she said, her voice getting firmer.

“Fine. You don’t know a thing, you never saw him. You’re doing your job, I respect that. But here’s the problem, Dorothy—I’ve also got a job to do, which is to save the old man, because the fact is he’s been snatched and I don’t think he’ll ever get out of this town except in a fancy Italian box.”

Dorothy’s eyes opened very wide.

“Mister, I don’t know anything about this.” She said it very slowly, so I would understand that further questions were pointless.

“I’m sure you don’t, and there’s no way I’m going to put you at any sort of risk. You could do me one favor, though.”

Dorothy continued staring; I knew she was real sorry she’d ever been introduced to me, Kim or no Kim.

“The favor is this: I need a waiter’s uniform. Forty-four regular. After that, I won’t bother you.”

The elevator bell rang downstairs.

“You’ll let go of that button?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And I get you a uniform, you’ll never say how you got it?”

“You can trust me with your life. I mean that.”

“Okay.” The elevator bell rang again. Someone was getting impatient. “Just let go, mister. Now.”

I did so. The doors started to close, then abruptly reopened. Dorothy stuck her head out.

“What kind of waiter?”

“Room service.”

“That’s what I thought. Be careful, mister.”

“Don’t worry. I know my way around a hot plate.”

She didn’t smile. The doors closed.

*    *    *

I got out my key and entered room 207. It was dark and I fumbled for the wall switch. I half expected to be jumped the instant I came through the door, but the room was happily free of stalkers. I had not been spotted coming back to the hotel and there was no reason for anyone to connect me to someone named Buddy Barrow. But this was a very small town and I had no illusions that I’d be able to continue this charade much longer. I was going to have to find the old man and find him fast.

After fifteen minutes, there was a delicate knock at the door. I checked the peephole: Dorothy was outside, looking up and down the hall as fearfully as if a pack of yelping Alabama bloodhounds was tearing up the carpets after her. I opened up. She handed me a black plastic garment bag.

“I need this back by nine
A.M
.,” she whispered. “No later.”

“You’ll have it. Thanks a million.” She walked away before I ever finished the sentence. And never looked back.

Five minutes later I had the uniform on and was examining myself in the bathroom mirror. It was not a pretty sight. Between the bad toup and the monkey suit—white shirt, black bow tie, red jacket, shiny black pants—I looked depressingly like half the foul-tempered Yids who enjoyed dripping matzo ball soup onto my lap at the Stage Deli. I sighed and checked my watch; it was now four-thirty in the morning and I had sailed past fatigue into a sort of altered and anxious consciousness. I felt like a long-distance truck driver with a belly full of pills and Minneapolis still four hundred miles away. It was a tad too early to start making my rounds, so I decided to call Hilde Stern.

The prolonged process of placing a New York call through the hotel operator gave me more than enough time to check my impeccable nails; in fact, I could have gotten a manicure and a facial in the time it took the Flamingo to hook me up to Manhattan. Finally, the call went through and after three rings, Hilde picked up.

“Mr. LeVine,” she said. The connection was filled with light static and a kind of distant jangly distortion, as if somewhere in the middle of the country a telephone lineman were swinging from the wires.

“Lieber Gott,
where are you?”

She sounded as if she hadn’t gone to sleep since the last time I’d seen her.

“I’m out West, actually.” I suddenly felt an almost physical chill of paranoia. “And just call me Buddy.”

This threw her for an immediate and predictable loop.

“‘Buddy’?
Vas
is ‘Buddy’?”

“It’s just better if you call me that or call me nothing at all, you know? Just don’t use my name.”

“Lieber, lieber …
” I could hear the phone on her end begin to clatter like a percussion instrument; she had obviously gotten the shakes. Placing this call was shaping up as the dumbest idea I’d had since taking the case in the first place.