Dial Me for Murder

Chapter 17

I THREW MYSELF DOWN ON THE COUCH, tucked my icy feet under my bottom, reached for the ringing phone, and snatched the receiver up to my ear. “Hellohhhhh,” I cooed, breathing directly into the mouthpiece, doing my best to sound sexy but probably sounding like a hoot owl with a head cold.

“Hi, babe,” said Dan. “You sound terrible. Are you drunk again, sick, or just tired? I hope you haven’t caught the flu from Lenny.”

(See, I told you!)

“I’m not drunk or sick,” I said (although I was probably a bit of both), “but I am pretty tired. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

“Really? That surprises me. The state you were in, I figured you’d be down for the count.” I couldn’t see Dan’s expression, of course, but I had a strong suspicion he was grinning.

Struck with an overwhelming desire to feast my eyes (and lips) on his gorgeous face, I said, “On second thought, I am feeling a little feverish, Doctor. I think you’d better hurry over here and take my temperature right now. I’m hot all over and I might need a thorough examination.” I was shocked by my provocative response. All of a sudden I was sounding like Abby.

Dan let out a deep, slow, sensual moan. “Don’t tempt me, babe. You have no idea how much I’d rather be with you than where I am. Can’t do it, though. I’m working on a big case, and I can’t leave my station.”

“What? You’re still at the station? I thought you were going to be out tracking some Mafia goons.”

“I didn’t mean station house, Paige,” he said, chuckling. Then he lowered his voice and confided, “I’m doing double-duty surveillance tonight, and I’ve stationed myself in a certain place where I can keep an eye on some underworld hotshots. I’ll be here for another few hours at least.”

“Oh,” I said, embarrassed that-after my brief but bold career at Daring Detective (not to mention my brief but bold romance with Detective Street)-I wasn’t an expert in police jargon. “So, where are you?” I asked, growing curious about his location and concerned about his safety.

Dan laughed out loud. “You think I’m crazy enough to tell you that? Next thing I know, you’ll be rushing uptown in a trench coat, wig, and sunglasses to take over the investigation.”

“Hardeeharhar.” My ego was sagging, but my curiosity was climbing the rafters. So, he’s uptown, not down, I noted, stationed in ‘a certain place’ where mobsters tend to congregate. I screwed my ear tight to the phone, listening for more clues to his mysterious whereabouts.

There was a lot of noise in the background: people talking and laughing; faint scraping, knocking, tinkling, and whirring sounds. I could hear glasses clinking and fingers snapping. Was he in a bar? Music was playing in the distance. A jazzy saxophone riff. Was it live or coming from a jukebox?

“You can’t fool me, Dan Street,” I said, acting mad, pretending that I’d flown into a jealous tizzy. “I hear people laughing and music swinging. You’re not working on a case! You’re carousing in a nightclub!”

Dan laughed again. “The two aren’t mutually exclusive, you know,” he said, inadvertently answering my unspoken questions. “But I can assure you there’s no carousing going on. Not on my part, anyway.”

“That’s what they all say,” I grumbled, continuing my petulant charade, still straining my ears for acoustical clues. The band was in full force now, and a strong male voice was belting out the lyrics to a popular song I’d heard before but couldn’t name.

“Cut it out, Paige,” Dan said, getting annoyed. “You have no reason to be upset. I’m working, not playing-and you know it.”

“Well, couldn’t you knock off early and-”

“No, I couldn’t.” His breathing was heavy and his voice was stern. “I have a job to do, and I’m not leaving here until it’s done.”

The vocalist began singing the song’s familiar chorus, and a portion of the audience chimed in.

“Will I see you tomorrow?” I asked.

Dan was an avid interrogator, but he didn’t like being questioned himself. “Can’t say,” he grunted. “It depends on how things go here tonight. And how much your lousy mood improves.”

The singer and the musicians brought the song to an explosive, drum-rolling, cymbal-crashing finish, and the audience broke out in wild applause.

“I’m sorry I doubted you, Dan,” I said, eager to make amends. “Please forgive me. I’m not myself. I’ve been out of sorts all day. Chalk it up to loneliness, exhaustion, and a hangover that just won’t quit.”

“Forget about it, babe,” he said, granting me an immediate pardon. (Dan can be very understanding-sometimes.) “I miss you, too. And I’m itching to take your temperature.”

“Then I’ll see you tomorrow night?”

“Come hell or high water. It’ll be late, though. Look for me around midnight.”

Not until after we’d hung up did it dawn on me that the song the band had been playing was “Love on the Rocks,” and the man who’d been singing it was Tony Corona.

“ABBY!” I CRIED, LEAPING BACK ACROSS THE hall and into her kitchen like a demented kangaroo. “The most incredible thing just happened! I was talking to Dan on the phone, and listening to the music in the background, and Tony Corona was singing ‘Love on the Rocks’!”

She looked up from her place at the table and stared at me as if I’d lost my marbles. “What’s so incredible about that? That song is number two on the charts, right under “Rock Around the Clock.” They play it on the radio all the time.”

“It wasn’t on the radio, it was live!”

“You mean a live broadcast,” she said, convinced that I was confused and making a fuss over nothing.

“No!” I shrieked, flailing my arms in the air for emphasis. “I mean a live performance-in person!”

“Oh?” She raised one eyebrow and curled her lips in a big fat smirk. “Tony Corona was singing his hot new hit in your boyfriend’s living room?”

By this point I really was losing my marbles. “Okay, let’s start over again,” I said, heaving a big sigh and flopping down in the same chair I’d been sitting in before. “I’ll take it from the top, but you have to shut your mouth and listen. No interruptions.”

Abby kept on smirking, but-wonder of wonders!-she didn’t say a word.

“Dan’s working tonight,” I began, “and he called me from a place he wouldn’t identify, where he’s spying on some mobsters. All I could find out from our conversation was that the place is uptown. I kept him on the phone as long as I could, though, listening hard to the background noise, trying to figure out where he is. I’m pretty sure he’s in a big nightclub or someplace like that, because I heard people laughing, chatting, and ordering drinks, and music playing, and a man singing, and an audience cheering and clapping. The song being sung was “Love on the Rocks,” and the singer was none other than Tony Corona. Live and in person. I’m certain of it.” I sat back and smugly crossed my arms over my chest. “So, what do you think about that, Pat?”

She was still smirking. “Am I allowed to speak now?”

“Please do,” I urged, eager to get her reaction to this incredible, mind-blowing coincidence.

“Dan’s at the Copa,” she said.

And that was all she said.

“What?” I screeched. “The Copacabana? Are you kidding me? How the hell do you know that?” The last of my marbles dropped out of my head and rolled across the floor.

“I read it in the papers.” Her tone and demeanor were dispassionate, but she looked pleased with herself nonetheless.

“They said Dan was going to be at the Copa tonight?” I sputtered. (Look, I know that was a really dumb response, but give me a break, okay? It’s hard to hit the mark when all your shooters are gone.)

“No, silly! They said Corona was going to be there. He’s headlining for two weeks. Two shows a night, three on the weekends. He opened last Saturday.”

“Oh,” I said, staring down at the tabletop in shame. How could I- Manhattan ’s champion news-sniffer and column-clipper-have missed this all-important announcement?

“And kingpin Frank Costello owns the joint, you know,” Abby continued, “so it’s crawling with gangsters. You dig what I’m saying? All the pieces of the puzzle fit.” Her smirk changed into a smile. “Dan is on stakeout at the Copa.”

I knew Abby was right. And if I had used my brain for just two of the ten minutes preceding her revelation, I would have put the pieces of the puzzle together myself. Though I hadn’t been aware that Corona was playing the Copa, I had known- from firsthand experience-that Mafia boss Frank Costello was the secret owner of the famous nightclub (a little nugget I’d dug up while working on my first murder story). And since Dan had told me, just last night, that he needed to “track down and question some of Frank Costello’s boys”… well, you get the picture. I could have-in fact, should have-put two and two together.

“I’m such an idiot,” I said.

“No, just a nitwit,” she teased.

“It’s good you saw the promos in the papers.”

“Glad to be of service.” With an exaggerated air of authority, she rose from her chair, tossed her ponytail over the opposite shoulder, and propped one hand on her jutting hip. “So, what’s next on the agenda, Brenda? I’m assuming you’ve got a plan.”

“Well, no, not really. I guess I need to-”

“Get your mojo working!” she jumped in, finishing my sentence for me. “You can’t catch a murderer by sitting around like a blob in my kitchen! You know what I think?” she said, eyes beaming like oncoming headlights. “I think we should get all dolled up and go to the Copa tonight. We can get there before the second show ends. Then we can sneak backstage, corner Corona in his dressing room, pretend we’re big fans, and ask him a lot of probing personal questions. Stuff like that probably happens to him all the time, so he won’t have a clue what we’re up to.”

“We?” I croaked, shuddering my shoulders and shaking my head. “Forget about it, Abby! I will not-under any circumstances-let you get involved in this mess. It’s too dangerous.” I lit another cigarette and spewed the smoke out in an obstinate huff. “Besides, I can’t possibly go to the Copa tonight. Dan’s there. And he would spot me for sure. And if he finds out that I’m working on another unsolved murder case, he’ll murder me.”

“Okay, then we’ll go tomorrow night.”

There was that word again.

“We are not going anywhere. I’m working this case alone. I promised Sabrina.”

“Oh, come on, Paige! You need me. You know you do. We’re a team, you dig? We’re Ozzie and Harriet, Martin and Lewis, Lucy and Ethel. We’re peanut butter and jelly!”

She was using the term we again, but I was beginning to like the sound of it. Playing detective was a lonely game, and Abby could be very good company (when she wasn’t being a pain in the butt). She had been a big help to me in past investigations, and-by clueing me in that Corona was playing the Copa-she was already helping me with this one. And I had to admit that descending on Corona in his dressing room would be a heck of a lot easier and safer than trying to ambush him in his private suite at the Plaza.

“Okay, okay!” I caved in. “We’ll join forces and hit the Copa tomorrow night. Seems like a pretty good plan. Except for one thing: We can’t go on our own. They won’t let us in without a male escort.”

“No problem,” she said. “I’ll make Jimmy go with us. After tonight, he owes me one.”

“Do you have something for me to wear?”

“Does a cat have whiskers?” Abby was a fiend for fashion, and she loathed my mail-order wardrobe, and she had closets- actually a whole room-full of fabulous clothes and costumes. She had dressed me up for previous uptown sleuthing excursions, and I could tell from the wicked gleam in her eye that she couldn’t wait to do it again.

“Hold on a second, Ab,” I said, suddenly realizing our pretty good plan had a pretty big hole in it. “There’s one more problem. How the hell are we going to get reservations? The Copacabana on a Friday night? It’s next to impossible. And with Tony Corona on the bill, you know they’re all booked up.”

“Booked, shmooked,” she said, sounding an awful lot like Lenny’s mother. “There are ways to get around these things.”

“Oh, yeah? Exactly what do you propose we do?”

“Don’t worry, Murray. I’ll think of something.”