FORTY-THREE


I HAD A drink with Rudy Vallone at a restaurant called the Paddock Tavern, downstairs from his office. There was a bar along the right-hand wall as you came in; other than that, the place was basically the kind of restaurant where you might go to get a cheeseburger or a club sandwich, or if you had a date you wanted to impress you could shoot the moon and order chicken pot pie, or a spinach salad. There were Tiffany-style hanging lamps and dark oak booths opposite the bar, and a bunch of tables in the back where the room widened out. There was a big mirror behind the bar so you could look at yourself, or watch women. Or both.

"You're an industrious lad," Vallone was saying as he sipped a double bourbon on the rocks.

"Thank you for noticing," I said. "Did Walter Clive ever talk to you about changing his will?"

Vallone took a leather case from the inside pocket of his suit coat and took out a cigar. He offered me one. I declined. He trimmed the end of the cigar with some sort of small silver tool made for the task. Then he lit the cigar carefully, rolling it in the flame. Drew in some smoke, let it out, and sighed with contentment.

"Man, smell that tobacco," he said.

It smelled to me like there was a dump fire somewhere, but I didn't comment. Vallone sipped some more bourbon.

"Now," he said, "by God, this is the way to finish a workday."

"Did Walter Clive ever talk to you about changing his will?" I said.

"That might be considered a private matter between an attorney and his client."

"It doesn't have to be," I said. "Especially since the client got shot dead."

"There's something to that," Vallone said.

He puffed on his cigar and rolled it slightly in his mouth.

"And you've got some local support."

I cast my eyes down modestly.

"Dalton Becker has spoken to me about you."

"That is local support," I said.

"He asked me to be as helpful to you as possible. Said of course he wouldn't want me to violate any ethical standards, but that he'd be grateful for any support I could give you."

"Dalton and I have always been tight," I said. "Did Walter Clive ever talk to you about changing his will?"

Vallone twiddled with his cigar some more. He seemed preoccupied with getting the ash exactly even all the way around.

"He talked about it with me once," Vallone said.

"When?"

"Before he died."

"How long before?"

"Well, you are a precise devil, aren't you. Maybe a month."

"What did he say?"

"Said he might want to change his will in a bit, would that be difficult? I said no, it would be easy. I said did he want me to get a start on drafting something up? He said no. Said he wasn't sure if he was going to. Said he'd let me know."

I drank a little from the draft beer I had ordered. "Did he ever let you know?"

Vallone took the cigar out of his mouth and shook his head. Had he left the cigar in his mouth when he shook his head, he would probably have suffered whiplash.

"Do you have any idea how he would have modified his will?"

"No."

"Or why?"

"None. Walter wasn't talkative. I think the only person he ever trusted was Penny."

"She say anything to you?"

"Penny?" Vallone smiled. "Sure-charming things, funny things, sweet things. Anything that gave you any information? Not ever."

"She understand the business?" I said.

"Recent years, she ran it. He was the front man mostly, since she got old enough. He'd shmooze the buyers, drink with the big money in the clubhouse, he and Dolly would take them to breakfast at the Reading Room in Saratoga. They could always get a table at Joe's Stone Crab in Miami. That sort of thing. Penny stayed home and ran the business."

"And the other girls?"

Vallone smiled.

"How'd they occupy themselves?" he said. "In the business?"

"Yes."

"They didn't. They had nothing to do with the business that I could ever see," Vallone said.

"So how'd they occupy themselves?" I said. "Besides boozing and bopping."

Vallone took out his cigar and smiled again. "They didn't," he said.

"So, boozing and bopping was all there was."

He nodded.

"Bopping and boozing," he said. "Boozing and bopping." He flicked his perfect ash into an ashtray on the bar.

"Well," I said, "there's worse ways to spend your time."

"And ain't that the by-God truth," Vallone said.

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