Too Old a Cat (Trace 6) (14 page)

“I did figure it out,” Jackson said.

“Oh, sure.”

“Remember I told you about the bells. Karen had one on her dresser when we went to see her. I knew there was something to that. And she disguised her voice when we talked to her there so we wouldn’t recognize her as the girl in the cereal shop.”

“Right,” said Razoni. “How come you’re always so smart after I solve the case?”

They got into the car and drove off, but Jackson stopped at the corner and walked into a small store at the end of the block. He came out minutes later and got back behind the wheel.

“I knew I didn’t like this case,” said Jackson.

“Why not? Now that I have it all solved.”

“I just talked to the florist there. He sold this joint the roses for their ceremonies.”

“And?”

“And somebody came in every Sunday morning and bought a dozen yellow roses. All for the initiation ceremony.”

“So what?”

“The last batch, the ones that killed the Swami, were picked up by two girls.”

“Oh, no,” said Razoni.

“Oh, yes. Karen Marichal and Abigail Longworth. He positively identified them from the pictures.”

“Shit. Does that mean—” Razoni began.

“I think that’s just what it does mean,” Jackson said.

“Oh, Jesus. The captain’s going to love you when you tell him that Theodore Longworth’s daughter killed the lizard,” Razoni said.

“What makes you think
I’m
going to tell him?”

“Who else?” demanded Razoni.

“You. Remember? The Swami’s murder is your case. All I’m supposed to be doing is finding Abigail Longworth.”

“Oh, you rotten field hand, you,” Razoni said.

They drove up to the Marichal house on the West Side of Central Park, but there was no answer to their leaning on the doorbell and pounding on the door.

“Screw it,” Razoni said. “Let’s go get a drink.”

“I think we ought to go talk to the captain first,” Jackson said.

The black man was driving. He drove like a maniac and Trace was hard-pressed even to stay near their blue Chevrolet. Obviously a maniac lawbreaker, Trace thought, one who couldn’t even be bothered to obey the traffic laws.

He followed them downtown, proud of himself for staying so close to them, proud of himself for being so inconspicuous.

Jackson said, “That black shit-wagon’s still following us.”

“I know,” Razoni said. “I saw it.”

“I wonder who it is,” Jackson said.

“I’ll find out now.”

Razoni bent over on the front seat so he couldn’t be seen from the car that was tailing them and talked into the radio to headquarters, giving it the license number and make of the old car that had been on their tail since they left the Salamanda headquarters.

He wrote down the identification as the woman radio operator read back the name: Patrick Tracy, and an address in Middle Village, Queens.

“Patrick Tracy,” Razoni said. “Mean anything to you?”

“No,” Tough said.

“Well, screw him, then, who cares? Probably just another faggot attracted by your nice heinie. This whole city sucks.” Razoni crumped up the piece of paper with the name on it and tossed it into the doorless glove compartment whose door had somehow broken off once when Razoni had locked his cigarettes inside and couldn’t find the key.

They parked alongside police headquarters.

“Oooops,” Trace said. He saw their car pull into a spot between squad cars and emergency wagons and realized he had been trailing two city policemen all around New York. “Not too swift,” he mumbled to himself. But how could he have known? They certainly looked like criminals.

That was the trouble with New York. The mayor looked like your uncle, the Statue of Liberty looked like Sylvester Stallone. Naturally the cops looked like criminals. What else? He was just glad they hadn’t seen him.

When Trace got back to the Salamanda headquarters, Sister Glorious was working the room. Obviously, the news coverage of the Swami’s death had attracted a lot of curious people and the large meeting room was half-filled. Faint, vaguely Indian music played, and Gloria Alcetta slowly worked her way through the room, like a politician at a political banquet, stopping to chat with everybody, smile, pat shoulders, proselytize.

She finally reached Trace, who was sitting in the far corner of the room. He saw her and clicked on his tape recorder.

“Am I a suspect?” she said. She had a warm voice to go with a pleasant smile and an absolutely first-rate face and a body that was still marvelous, even though mostly hidden by a long white gown.

“Suspect?” Trace said. “I don’t understand.”

“I saw you hanging around before,” she said. “I thought you were a policeman.”

“Not me,” Trace protested mildly. “Not me. You’re…you’re Sister Glorious, right?”

“That’s right. And you’re not a policeman?”

“No.”

“I’ve really made a mistake. I’m sorry,” she said. “One of our young people saw you around and thought you were a policeman.”

“No. I think it’s terrible what happened to the Swami. Have the police been harassing you?”

“No. I guess it’s just their job. So what brings you here today?”

“I was wondering. Will Swami Salamanda’s work go on?” Trace asked.

“It certainly will. Are you interested in our work?”

“Praise be,” Trace said. “I certainly am.”

“You don’t look like the praise-be type,” Gloria said. “Where are you from?”

“Nevada. I guess I was attracted to this by the Swami’s message. The freedom he preaches.”

“It is his way…was his way,” the woman said.

“I’d like to follow, but…Well, it’s embarrassing.”

“You have a family,” Gloria Alcetta said.

“That’s right. How did you know that?”

“Many of us have families. Many of us have left them to join the Love Is All movement. Some have brought their families with them. All are welcome, you know.”

Trace laughed. “My wife doesn’t believe,” he said. “She thinks I’m a dimbulb going into my second childhood.”

Gloria shook her head sadly. “There are many like that,” she said.

“It hurts,” Trace said. “It was probably easier for you to join the movement.”

“No easier than for you. I too left a family, a husband, to follow the path.”

“What did your husband say about that?” Trace asked.

“He didn’t like it.”

“But he didn’t try to stop you?”

“He tried. Oh, how he tried. He came here and threatened me. He even threatened the Swami. I asked him to join me in my new life, but he refused, so I had to live it alone. When he saw I would not be swayed, he left me alone. Take heart.”

“I don’t think my wife would ever let me alone,” Trace said. He thought of Cora, his ex-wife. “I doubt it. She might try to kill me.”

“Think of it honestly…. What is your name?”

“Devlin.”

“Think of it honestly, Mr. Devlin.”

“No, Devlin’s my first name.”

“I’m sorry. If you think of it honestly, Devlin, you’d realize that violence is very unlikely to happen. A lot of people talk about violence, but that doesn’t mean they will do it when the time comes. It is just a way of ventilating their feelings and they need it because they don’t have the power of love to use.”

“I sure hope you’re right,” Trace said. “Your husband didn’t come back, you say.”

“Not after I made things clear to him,” Gloria said.

“No phone calls in the middle of the night or any of that? I’m afraid of things like that,” Trace said.

“Minor annoyances. Tell me, Devlin, what do you do?”

“I run an insurance company.”

“Successfully?”

“One of the biggest in Nevada.”

“Would you be prepared to give it up to follow our path?”

“I’m ready,” Trace said. “If I don’t get shot.”

More people drifted into the room. Gloria stood up and said, “You won’t be. I hope we see you on Sunday. When we move to Pennsylvania, to the City of Love, there will be many jobs to be done. Someone who knows insurance would be very helpful there.”

“I’m going to do it,” Trace said.

“Good for you.” She patted his upper arm and turned on the full-voltage smile for a split second, then drifted toward the new people who had just come into the room.

Trace hung around a few minutes more, and then left to go back to the office.

Zero. Meeting Gloria had been zero. Except for looking at her. That had definitely been in the plus column.

“I don’t need this,” Razoni said as the two policemen left headquarters.

“It’s called a reaming,” Jackson said. “We’ve had one before.”

“Yeah, well, maybe you. But, goddammit, I’m working a million jobs, working Sundays, who needs this shit, and then he tells us ‘Be careful.’ Be careful ain’t the way you do things. Be careful is what you tell morons. You don’t tell us be careful.”

“I think you need a drink,” Jackson said, slipping behind the wheel of the car.

“No. Let’s go to OTB. A little off-track betting sounds good now. We’ll go watch the horses. Dammit, Tough, you’re drinking too much and you’d better watch it.”

“What do I want to go to OTB for? I don’t bet.”

“And that’s another thing that’s wrong with you. You’re the only black man in New York City who isn’t in hock to OTB. Act right. Go for a couple of bucks, you cheap bastard.”

“I’d rather have a drink,” Jackson said.

Razoni was rooting around in the open glove compartment of the car for a cigarette. He looked at a crumpled piece of paper, then dug into the side pocket of his jacket.

“I’ll be a son of a bitch,” he said. “Somebody’s after us.”

“After us? What the hell for?” Jackson said. “Of all the policemen in the world, the way we’re going, we pose the least threat of anybody who ever lived.”

“Shut up. Remember that license plate we got, Patrick Tracy, right?”

“Right,” Jackson said.

“Well, remember the other day when we were fixing that restaurant shakedown except you screwed it up because you couldn’t work the tape recorder.”

“I remember the broad outlines of the incident,” Jackson said. “Yes.”

“Well, I pulled a card off that guy, some card for a private eye. And here it is, Patrick Tracy. I knew it. This was the suit I was wearing then. And that ding-dong who was trying to trail us today, that was Patrick Tracy. And this other guy, what was his name?”

“Some wop name,” Jackson said.

“That makes it harder,” Razoni said, “’cause all Italians aren’t named Jackson or Washington, unlike some people I know. Wait a minute. I’m thinking.”

“Alcetta,” Jackson said.

“Right. I told you. Alcetta. Angelo Alcetta. You remember him?” Razoni said.

“Right. The sleazy greaseball, as opposed to the one who looked like a tractor trailer.”

“You got it,” Razoni said. “Well, that guy Alcetta had this Patrick Tracy’s card on him and now this so-called private eye Patrick Tracy is following us around. What does that sound like to you?”

“Love at first sight?” Jackson said.

“No, wiseass. It sounds like somebody’s trying to set us up for something.”

“What, pray tell?” Jackson said.

“I don’t know hhhhhhwat,” Razoni said, imitating Jackson’s precise pronunciation. “As soon as I figure out hhhhwat, I will hhhhhlet you know.”

“Stop it. You sound like Jack Palance.”

“I think we ought to go see this Patrick Tracy,” Razoni said.

“I think we ought to go drinking,” Jackson said.

“After we see Patrick Tracy. On to West Twenty-sixth Street,” Razoni said.

Trace, expecting Chico, answered the telephone: “Tracy, Tracy and Friend Investigations, Our Eyes Never Close.” He turned down the sound on the television.

“Trace. Is that you?” The voice sounded anxious, a little frantic.

“Why, I do believe it is Walter Marks, noted executive with Garrison Fidelity Insurance Company calling to chat. How are you, Walter?”

“Did you send that lunatic up here?” The voice was changing to a whiny snarl.

“Please be more specific. Which lunatic?”

“That Mangini woman,” Marks said.

“Chico? Yes, I sent her. Well, at least I knew she was coming. What’s the matter? What did she do?”

“She threatened me.”

“That’s ridiculous. She’s as small as you are. Almost,” Trace said. “Actually, she’s in better condition, but that’s because she dances. Maybe you should dance.”

“Dammit, I don’t want to dance and you stop waltzing me around.”

“Good, good, very good. Waltzing you around. Very good. Wurry good. That’s how Frankenstein would say it if he could talk. Wurry, wurry good.”

“Will you shut up?” Marks shouted. “She threatened me, I tell you. Guns and all. I don’t want that woman around here.”

“Love me, love my associate,” Trace said. “You mean she threatened you with a gun? Like to shoot you?”

“That’s what she was getting at. She was telling me that she’d shot other people before. With her gat.”

“With her gat? Come on, Groucho, you’re making this up, right?”

“No, I’m not. I know a threat when I get one and that woman was threatening me with her gat if I didn’t give you all a lot of work.”

“What’d you do?”

“What could I do?” Trace could almost hear Walter Marks shrug in absolution of his conduct. “The Dundee case was taken but I gave her something else. Trace, handle it, but I do not want that woman back here. She frightens me. She frightened me before, but now that she’s carrying a .357 Magnum, she frightens me worse. I think that woman has a psychological problem.”

“I think you’re right, Groucho,” Trace said. “When she comes in, I’m going to finish this once and for all.”

“What are you going to do?” Marks asked.

“I’m going to let her have it, right between the eyes,” Trace said.

“What?”

“I’m going to plug her, right between the eyes. I’m fed up with this.”

“Trace, you’re as crazy as she is.”

“Well, only one of us is walking back out through that door, pardner. And I reckon it’s going to be me. Thanks for calling, old buddy.”

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Marks said.

Trace hung up on him and went back to working on what Sarge laughingly called his books.

Razoni and Jackson stopped at the bottom of the long flight of stairs leading to the second-floor offices. Razoni took his gun from the holster behind his belt and checked it.

“You’re not going to need that,” Jackson said.

“Hey, baby, you never know. First this guy’s name winds up in the wallet of some Mafia ginzo that we leaned on.”

“
You
leaned on,” Jackson said.

“And now this guy is following us around town. It’s not too far out to think that he works for Angelo there and Angelo said, ‘Go teach these guys a lesson for pushing my face in the soup, especially the black one with the snotty kid.’ Hah? Makes sense, doesn’t it? Hah?”

“Don’t go shooting anybody,” Jackson said wearily.

The two men started up the stairs.

Before he left his ex-wife and children, before he packed it all in and moved to Las Vegas to be a gambler, Trace had been an accountant. Eventually, in Las Vegas, he had met Chico and Robert Swenson, head of the insurance company, and that had gotten him where he was today, wherever that might be. He had not looked at a ledger book in years, but it hadn’t occurred to him that they might have changed so drastically. Income on the left, outgo on the right; that seemed pretty basic. Sarge seemed to have a different system: income nowhere, outgo nowhere, and just random lists of numbers and amounts written down.

He wrestled his way through it, trying to make some sense of the numbers, but the more he wrestled, the more sure he was that this agency was taking in very little, and if growth was projected on a bar chart, it would be the twenty-second century before the company made enough money to pay him and Chico a salary.