Everybody Kills Somebody Sometime

Twenty-three

They asked me a few more questions and then let me go. Hargrove’s partner, a Negro detective named Smith, wanted to take me in, but Hargrove overruled him.

“He’s a good citizen, Jake,” he told his partner. “He called it in as soon as he found the girl. ’Course, he thought it was the wrong girl.”

True, I had given Carla’s name when I called. I didn’t have any reason to think she wasn’t the girl at the bottom of the pool, but then again I didn’t have good reason to think she was. How was I supposed to know it was her roommate? In fact, it could have been anyone.

But the fact remained the dead girl was named Misty Rose-or Mary Reed, from some of the I.D. they found in the apartment. “Misty Rose” was her stage name, the name she danced under at the Riviera. I didn’t know her; hell before today I had never heard of Carla DeLucca. I suggested that the detectives talk to Verna Ross at the Riviera. She was, I told them, the choreographer who also doubled as the girls’ den mother.

So they let me go and I drove back to the Sands in a haze, wondering why Carla DeLucca had run out the back door rather than talk to me? And where was she now? Where was Lou? And how could this possibly have anything to do with what I was doing for Frank and Dean? The simplest answer was, it couldn’t ….

Me finding a dead body was a coincidence, and not one that I ever wanted to repeat.

“A dead broad?” Jack Entratter repeated, staring at me from behind his desk? “Some little piece of trim who worked at the Riviera? Why you tellin’ me about this, Eddie?”

“You told me to check in with you at the end of every day, Jack,” I said. “This is what happened today.”

“It ain’t the end of the day, Eddie, and you been here twice already, today.”

“It’s after six, Jack,” I argued. “That’s the end of your work day.”

He took his cigar out of his mouth.

“If you think my work day ever ends, kid, you’re livin’ in a dream.”

“Believe me, Jack, I’m not livin’ in a dream.”

“Okay,’ he said,”okay, so tell me, you think this dead broad’s got anything to do with the threats bein’ made to Dino?”

“No,” I said, “it’s got to be a total coincidence. I mean … I go looking for Lou Terazzo to ask if he knows anything about two guys who worked me over in my house because I was trying to do Dean Martin a favor. I end up looking for a girl named Carla DeLucca and finding her roommate, Misty Rose, at the bottom of a pool. Gotta be total coincidence, Jack.”

“Then what are you worried about?”

“I don’t like finding dead bodies, Jack.”

“You ever found one before?”

“No, but-”

“Chalk this one up to experience, and keep workin’ on the Dino thing.”

I rubbed my face with both hands. He was right. I’d walked into something today that was none of my business. And I still had some work to do for Frank and Dean.

“What’d you tell the cops, Ed?” he asked.

“I told them the truth.”

“You tell ’em why you were looking for Unlucky Lou Terazzo?”

“Well …. I told them he owed the casino money.”

“That was good thinkin’.”

I had had to lie about that because I hadn’t wanted to bring any other names into it. The last thing Sinatra and Martin needed was the cops asking them about some girl they never heard of.

“Okay, kid?” Jack asked.

“Sure,” I said, “sure.”

I got up and headed for the door.

“You got my number in my suite,” Entratter told me. “Use it if you have to.”

“Okay, Jack.”

I contemplated my next move over a drink in the Sands lounge. In a few hours Alan King would be cracking them up in there, but at the moment it was half empty and most of the people who were drinking there looked shell-shocked. It was a common look in Vegas. You saw it on the face of the woman who brought twenty dollars with her to gamble on the slots and lost it in the first machine she played. You saw it on the face of the guy who brought ten grand with him and he don’t know what happened, but it’s all gone the first day. What’s she gonna tell her husband? What’s he gonna tell his wife? Their problems are the same, just on different levels. And it was a toss up as to who was gonna be the maddest, her husband or his wife.

“Rough day, Eddie?”

Bev had come up next to me and startled me.

“Yeah,” I said, “the roughest. I found a dead girl today.”

“What?” She put her hand on my arm. “Oh, Eddie, I’m so sorry. That must have been terrible for you. Was she, uh, a friend of yours?”

“No,” I said, “I didn’t even know her. I just … stumbled onto the body.”

“Still, it must have been a shock.”

“And then the cops questioned me, almost like I was a suspect.”

“Why would they do that?”

“They’re cops,” I said, “it’s their job.”

She ordered some drinks from the bartender and put her tray on the bar so he could weight it down.

“Gee, I’m sorry you had such a bad day, Eddie.”

“Ah,” I said, “I’m sorry I dumped it on you, Bev.”

“That’s okay,” she said.

She picked up the heavy tray with grace and surprising strength. I thought I would have staggered under the weight.

“If you want to talk later, Eddie,” she said, “I’m a real good listener. Just give me a call.”

“I might do that, Bev,” I said, “I might just do that.”