Kiss Her Goodbye

Chapter 12

SOMEHOW I GOT UP the stairs to the little landing outside the ancient office, the weathered wood under my shoes wheezing as bad as me. I worked the key in the lock, stepped inside, didn't bother hitting the light switch. I got out of the wet sport jacket and let it drop to the old wood-slat floor like a sodden little corpse.

With some effort—the painful places from where bullets had pounded the bulletproof vest were prodding me like sadistic children with a helpless pet—I climbed out of the speed rig and flung it somewhere, retaining the .45, which I tossed onto the old leather couch.

Wracked by a hurt that threatened my consciousness, I wriggled in the dark as rain clawed at the windows and got out of my shirt and the bulletproof vest, kicked out of my shoes, and stepped out of my drenched trousers, just dropping things in damp clumps wherever they chose to fall. Then I stumbled in my T-shirt and shorts, which were moist not wet, to the supply closet where on a high shelf I'd seen an old folded-up blanket. I dragged that behind me like a squaw's papoose over to the leather couch. The .45 I moved to the floor where I could reach it—the wood-and-pebbled-glass door was to the right of the file cabinets, and I had a decent enough view of it.

The blinds behind Cummings's desk, a vague blobby shape over to my far right, were shut, but there was no daylight out there to get in. On my walk here, I'd seen the afternoon give way to night, hours early, thanks to the thunderstorm and black clouds that rolled and roiled like a black tidal wave in the sky, shot through with crackling veins of white.

After reclining in slow motion, I settled on the couch, on my right side, the plump armrest my pillow. Soon I got to like the driving sound of the storm. The thunder had let up, mostly, its roar reduced to an occasional halfhearted murmur. Now there was just downpour, cleansing the gray collection of steel and glass and concrete that New York had become, or giving it a good goddamn try.

I didn't dare go back to the Commodore, not right now. Too many people knew I was staying there. And too much temptation for me to return to those pill bottles, the magic vials that quelled the hurt and beat my subconscious into submission and mellowed me out when that was the last damn thing I needed.

But the temptation remained, as the pains in my side and my midsection throbbed and burned and traded spasms like they were in competition for my attention. They had it, all right.

The saving grace was how tired I was, the energy I'd burned in the jungle of that three-story brownstone, followed by a wind-whipped, rain-lashed twelve-block walk, had left me spent, empty, and it didn't take long for sleep to roll in like fog and fill me up.

***

The sound of the key in the door lock was small and scratchy and subtle, and if the rain hadn't reduced itself to drizzle that merely pattered at the windows, I might not have heard it.

I came awake at once, but moved not at all. The dream I'd been lost in had been intense and dramatic and was gone now, a tiny vivid life snuffed out by the reality of someone entering the office.

A woman.

Framed there in the doorway, enough light making its way from the street to the little landing two floors up to give me the shape of her, tall, with a shoulder-length helmet of hair, blonde, a raincoat, the hand holding the key going into a purse and coming back with something small and flat.

A gun.

A little automatic.

I held my breath. She hadn't gone for the light switch, either. She was moving toward Cummings's desk, and my hand was snaking silently through the darkness to the floor by the couch where the .45 lay.

The shape of her against the windows was indistinct but again I knew she was tall, and well built, and it might have been Angela Marshall.

Had she come looking for me?

Her head was lowered when she clicked on the little desk lamp and all I could see was the top of her head, the blonde hair.

Was it Chrome? How had she known to come here?

As she went through papers on the desk, the file folders I'd been going through still there, the little automatic remained clutched in her right hand. Meantime, my fingers touched the cold oily metal of the .45, and then found the familiar walnut grips, and the weapon was in my hand when I said, "You want to lay that little automatic down gently, doll. Nice and easy."

The blonde looked up at me, startled, but the hand with the gun neither released nor pointed it. The ash blonde hair curled around a lovely face whose deep brown eyes searched through the darkness, a lush, red, moist mouth open in surprise but not dismay.

"Mike...?"

"... Velda?"

She let the nasty little hammerless .32 drop to the desk and came around quickly, and I was off the couch, the .45 plopping on a sofa cushion as she rushed over and I took her in my arms, every aching muscle and bone in my body not giving a damn about discomfort, because the wonder and joy and delight of seeing her again, of having her in my arms once more, overrode all else.

She was a woman in a sopping raincoat and I was a mess in damp underwear with a mouth full of thick sleep and neither of us cared, the kiss of hello making up for the goodbye kiss that never happened, any recriminations, any frustrations, any irritations gone in one fast embrace.

Her face was buried in my neck, where she murmured my name again and again.

"Velda," I said. I felt like a man who'd been crawling across a desert and had seen an oasis and crawled and crawled some more and thank you God it was no mirage, it was real, so very real. "Velda."

"Oh Mike ... oh Mike ...coming in from the airport, I heard about that slaughter at the social club." She brought her eyes around to meet mine. "Was that you, Mike? Did you do that?"

"What do you think?"

"The cops are speculating it was two mob factions mixing it up. The only survivor is a bartender who said he didn't see anything. They say twenty-four are dead."

"Sounds about right, kitten." My legs went rubbery, and I groaned.

Alarm colored her voice: "Were you wounded?"

"I had a vest on. I took a couple in the midsection."

She was shaking her head, the ash blonde arcs swinging like scythes. "Jesus, Mike, you can die, getting shot up in a vest. You might have internal bleeding."

"I'm ... I'm all right, baby. Now that I see you, I'm all right."

But she wasn't hearing any of it. She put me back on the couch, switched on a standing lamp nearby, and headed for the little john in the rear corner. She came back with a cool cloth and sat beside me and soothed my brow and cleaned my face. And my hands.

"Blood all over you, Mike."

"But not mine."

"You need something for the pain?"

"I'm off the meds."

"Aspirin at least. I have some in my purse."

She fed me half a dozen that I washed down with a Miller from Cummings's little fridge. Then I was stretched out on my back again. She perched beside me and looked down at me with so much love I could hardly take it.

"I'm sorry, baby," I said. I felt my eyes fill up. Goddamn sissy.

She shook her head. "We were both fools. That's all the discussion we need."

"Okay. So..." I gave her my slyest grin. "...You been in Colombia, huh?"

Her eyes widened, like a pinup girl whose skirt blew up in a convenient gust of wind. "How much do you know?"

"I know that Doolan didn't kill himself."

She frowned, shook her head. "He would never do that. Never. I wanted to come back right away, as soon as I heard, but I had things to do first. You made it for the funeral?"

I nodded. "Saw to it that that gun he gave Pat got buried with him."

"Good." She swallowed. "That's good."

"You were the mystery woman everybody thought was Doolan's girl."

"Is that what they thought? Well, I guess we wanted them to. All he ever talked about was how I should stop being so goddamn stubborn and go find you and get back with you. He said without me in your life, you would be lost. And without you in my life, I'd never be whole again."

"Doolan wasn't wrong. What was your relationship?"

She sighed, smiled a little. Hard to get used to her as a blonde. "He came to me for help, Mike. You weren't around, and I had a P.I. ticket. And anyway, I could go undercover better than somebody as well known as you."

"When was this?"

"Four, five months ago." She cocked her head and her eyes narrowed as she regarded me. "We need to tell each other our stories, Mike. You want to go first?"

I did.

I told her how Doolan had been found in his apartment with the night latches undone. How whoever killed him was close to him, a girlfriend maybe. How a young would-be dancer got herself mugged and killed in a war zone near McCormick's Funeral Home the night we gave Doolan his send-off. How the dancer's apartment had been searched, and how a boyfriend of hers had been killed. And when I mentioned Basil's pebble, her eyes flared and her nostrils, too.

"You know something about that, baby?"

"I do. But go on, Mike."

I told her about Dulcie Thorpe getting run down because some amateur got sloppy making a try for me. I told her about Assistant D.A. Angela Marshall's interest in the case, but did leave a few details out—why spoil a great homecoming? I explained how Anthony Tretriano wasn't really deserving of his reputation for going straight, and how his Club 52 was a degenerate's Disneyland that was about to go the big-time franchise route, like McDonald's. Cocaine with that?

I told her everything. Almost.

"Okay, doll. Tell me about your spring break vacation."

There was something wistful in her half smile. "I have to give you credit, Mike. You came back to the city and in a few days gathered enough information to come to the same conclusions that Doolan and I had worked for over many months. But we had gone the second step—we had a strong lead on who and where Little Tony's coke connection was."

"In Colombia."

She nodded. "Let me dispense with one false assumption you made—those fabled stones of Basil, that unpolished pebble of yours? There are no others. It's the last one."

"The last? Why?"

"Because despite the legend, Basil did not escape the Holocaust, not really. He was betrayed by a high-level Nazi who had agreed to help smuggle Basil into Switzerland in exchange for the stones as well as a handful of precious gems already cut and set in rings and other jewelry. The exchange was made, all right, and the Nazi got the pouch of pebbles ... but Basil escaped the gas chamber only in the sense that he died under a gun."

"Why has a stone turned up now?"

"After the war, a small cadre of Nazis hiding out in South America used the gems to build their new lives. This included the predictable cover stories and lavish estates, not to mention top-notch tutors to teach them a new language and culture ... but eventually the need to create a new, ongoing income became imperative. This group of Nazis—three of them, two ranked just below Goebbels, the other was two notches under Himmler—used the stones and cut gems over the years ... parceling them out to discreet, wealthy, very private collectors ... to become the masters of the Colombian drug cartel."

"Gems were a perfect way to fund their activities," I said.

"Yes—your theory about the mob using them for money laundering was essentially correct, only it wasn't the mob. It was the cartel."

I was nodding. "And Doolan sold two valuable paintings, which he neglected to remove from his will, to fund your South American trip. What the hell did you do down there, doll?"

Her chin went up, proud of herself. "I landed a job as the executive secretary to one of the three masters of the cartel. They have also built up legitimate businesses over the years, in part for cover and money laundering, but some are very successful in their own right."

"How did you and Doolan swing getting you in that close to the top guys?"

Her smile had an impish quality, which in such a big sleek cat of a woman should have been silly, but wasn't. "I have contacts that even Doolan doesn't have ... that even you don't have, Mike. You know I worked for Military Intelligence during the war."

"And did a C.I.A. stint in the Cold War. Which I could hardly forget. So they helped you with a cover story?"

"They call it a 'legend' these days, Mike. See? You're not the only legend in this partnership." She stroked my cheek. "Through those contacts, I got tight with some D.E.A. agents. They are anxious for this information."

"Bet they are. So your federal friends paved the way?"

"Yes."

"So what did you learn?"

"Plenty. I have microfilm of financial records and extensive photographs of all three former Third Reich bigwigs—they have been discreet over the years about having their pictures taken, as you might imagine. And I have confirmed their relationship with Anthony Tretriano. He'll be taken down by the D.E.A. and I.R.S. within days."

Old Alberto had been right—he'd had contacts, too.

"Doll, what was the photography bit? Why did Doolan want those pictures of Chrome, and where does she fit in? He wasn't really shooting photos for some L.A.-based reporter, was he?"

She laughed lightly. "Doolan was no photographer, Mike. You knew that."

"That was you taking the shots of him posing with Chrome, right?"

"Right. And as for Chrome, I don't know where or even if she fits in, Mike. She's an entertainer, and a very rich, successful one, and apparently Tony Tret really is crazy about her. Which surprises me, because I always thought he leaned the other way. But these days, you never know. The pictures weren't of her, anyway."

"Sure they were—I saw them. They were in Doolan's files."

"Well, she's in the photos. But we were after shots of the three guys in her band."

"Her band?"

"Yeah. So-called band. They're phonies. My friends in the D.E.A. suspected those three might be connected to the Colombian bunch, and they are. They're not musicians, not really—they're bodyguards with a long association with the cartel."

I snapped my fingers. "I knew they weren't playing those instruments on stage. Chrome was singing to a prerecorded track—they were just faking it, miming it."

Velda shrugged. "It may be as simple as Chrome needs protection. She's a big star in South America, and the word is that she's primed for superstardom here as well. Those three bodyguards are the only direct connection between her and the cartel."

"So who was the pebble for?"

She frowned. "What do you mean, Mike?"

"I mean that kid Ginnie Mathes—she was an innocent, manipulated into being a delivery girl. Somebody mugged and killed her before the handoff was made. Who was supposed to get that last stone of Basil's?"

Velda shook her head. "No clue. But it sounds like you think the mugging really was a mugging...."

"I can't prove it, but I can tell you what makes sense to me. I think Ginnie Mathes got back together with Joseph Fidello, maybe not steady again but just saw him a few times when he was between cruise-ship gigs. And I think sailor-boy Fidello, who had been around, saw that unpolished gemstone and knew what it was. Knew that his dumb little ex-girlfriend had temporary possession of an object of untold value."

"So he mugged her?"

I nodded. "But Ginnie wasn't as dumb as Fidello thought—the pebble wasn't in her purse, it was tucked in the sleeve of her blouse."

"Then who killed Fidello?"

"Whoever sent Ginnie to make that delivery. That's who went to Ginnie's apartment looking for the stone, and that's who went to Fidello's apartment to look for it there."

She was nodding slowly, following right along. "And to tie him off as a loose end, when the stone wasn't found in his flop ... or when Fidello claimed he never had it."

"Right. The problem with this case, doll, is that I have been viewing a whole scattering of puzzle pieces and trying to make one picture out of them. This is not one puzzle. It's two or three or even four puzzles, and each one is simple."

"Unless its pieces are mixed in with all those others."

"Bingo, baby."

"So what now?"

"Now I think I'd like to get cleaned up."

"I think I'd like to see you cleaned up."

I gave her a funny look. "I don't know, though—I can't quite buy you as a blonde."

She pretended to take offense. "Really? I was a blonde when we met."

"Yeah, you were an undercover policewoman and I damn near ruined everything trying to save your pretty behind."

"I didn't mind. That guy needed killing anyway."

Memories.

"So," she shrugged, "maybe blondes don't have more fun."

And she grabbed at the scalp of the ash blonde hair and yanked it off. She tossed the wig with the rest of the odds and ends scattered around the office floor, and unpinned all that black, auburn-highlighted hair and shook it and shook it and shook it some more ... then smoothed it some.

Then there she was—Velda.

With that timeless pageboy and those beautiful brown eyes and a mouth that fed your hunger even as it encouraged you to sup some more.

"Baby...," I said, and was reaching for her.

"First you get cleaned up," she said. She shook a finger at me. "And maybe buy a girl a meal. You don't think I'm easy, do you?"

She had left a suitcase out on the landing, and we collected that and caught a cab to the Commodore. When I took her up to my room, and she saw that it was the Honeymoon Suite, she started laughing, but managed to blurt, "You gotta be kidding me!"

"Hey, you know I'm a sensual slob."

She gave me a narrow-eyed look, hands on her raincoated hips. "Have you been having fun while I was away?"

I ignored that and pointed. "There's a hot tub in there. Big enough for two. You had a long plane trip. Maybe we could ... wash away each other's sins?"

She came over and wrapped her arms around me and gave me a short but sweet kiss. "I don't think they have enough soap for that. But it's not a bad idea."

That was when the goddamn phone rang.

Velda said, "A buck says it's Pat."

"No bet."

It was Pat.

"Mike, where were you this afternoon?"

"At Cummings's office going through more files. Why?"

"Have you heard about the raid on the Y and S social club?"

"Yeah. Who'd have thought in this day and age those guineas would go back to the mattresses."

"Mike ... we found a lot of .45 shells there."

"No kidding."

"No kidding. I put a rush through ballistics on them. Some came from an old grease gun, World War II era. Strictly illegal weapon. The others came from a Colt .45."

"Do tell."

"I thought sure it would match up with yours on file. But it didn't."

"I could have told you that."

"Somehow I think you could. It did match up to another weapon on file. The .45 used at the Y and S Club belonged to Bill Doolan. Somebody in that shoot-out was using Bill Doolan's piece, Mike. Who do you think that could have been?"

"Probably not Doolan."

His sigh was inevitable. "If the forensics guys didn't say that massacre likely involved an invading force of around ten, I would haul your ass to Centre Street."

"If elephants had wings, hats would get popular again. Where are you calling from? Are you outside?"

"Yeah, this is a public phone. I'm around the corner from Club 52. You might want to get over here and have a look. I think you'll be interested."

"Why?"

"Somebody just killed Tony Tret."

We had to postpone the hot tub, but I did take a quick shower and Velda laid out clean clothes for me. I switched back to my own .45 for the shoulder sling, and told Velda to go downstairs after I left and put Doolan's gun—which I'd borrowed from his private stash in the old desk at his apartment—in a manila envelope and have it stowed in the hotel safe.

"I'm not going with you?" she asked.

"No. I want a better sense of who's doing the shooting before I risk putting you back on the firing line."

"If you say so. But I am a big girl."

"And in all the right places. Do keep that little .32 of yours handy. People have been dropping in on me at this hotel with more in mind than leaving a mint on my pillow."

"Got it."

So I was in the trench coat and my dry-cleaned suit with my hat only mildly spattered with remnants of my afternoon at the Y and S. I would get a new porkpie soon enough. Right now I had a cab to catch.

The rain was gone but its memory endured in the slick black patent-leather look of the sidewalks and streets. I grabbed a cab and fifteen minutes later got dropped at where yellow police sawhorses cut off Club 52's block. The only crowd in front of the art deco marquee tonight was police-oriented—an ambulance, four black-and-whites, Pat's unmarked Ford—and the only people playing dress-up were uniformed cops and E.M.T.s.

They were loading the long, lumpy rubber bag into the ambulance when I strolled up to where Pat was watching the procedure. "Do I need a look at him?"

Pat shook his head. "Not much to see." He pointed across the way at an office building. "It was a rifle shot from the fourth window over, on the tenth floor."

"He got shot right here, out on the street, in front of the club?"

The Homicide captain nodded. "While he was picking out tonight's lucky customers from the crowd." His eyes went to the office building again. "We've already been up there. Empty office space."

"Night watchmen?"

"Six empty floors get a cursory inspection, twice a night. Whoever did this had a little eagle's nest setup. Regular Oswald routine. We found nothing but the three spent shells."

"Three?"

"Yeah, took the shooter three tries. The third one went in small and came out big, splattered a security guy pretty good." Pat sighed. "They were lucky it was a rainy night, and the crowd unusually small. Otherwise, those other two shots might have taken out a clubber or two."

"Have you released the crowd?"

"Yeah. We took names. I didn't see any need for holding them here. They saw nothing."

"What about the security guys?"

"They're still inside."

"Mind if I step in there?"

"What for?"

"Maybe I want to pick up a souvenir swizzle stick."

He grabbed my arm—not hard, not exactly friendly. "Mike—what's going on? I'm trying to tell myself you had nothing to do with that slaughter this afternoon. But even without that, the body count is getting out of hand. What kind of war is this?"

"I'm not sure yet."

"Mike...."

"Pat, you'll be the first to know."

"Will I?"

"Okay—the second." I grinned at him.

He couldn't help it—he grinned back. Where would he be without me to do his dirty work?

The lights were up inside Club 52 and its magical world was revealed as the old theater it had once been, all its renovations designed only to work in the near dark. The club was a blowsy woman wearing a lot of flashy makeup, hoping to get picked up before last call and the lights coming on.

Chrome was on stage.

Not performing, sitting backward on a white caneback chair, like Marlene Dietrich in The Blue Angel. She was in an electric blue version of that midriff-baring outfit she'd done her disco thing in the other night—the blue against her naturally tan skin made a stark contrast. Nobody was up there with her. The drum kit on its riser, the synthesizer, a guitar on a stand, a few amps. But her Colombian "musicians" were M.I.A.

I walked across the plexiglass dance floor where a pair of bare-chested bartenders were sweeping up, a strangely pitiful sight. Normally the stairs at the far side of the stage were blocked by security staff, but not now. I was able to go right up there.

"Hi, honey," I said, depositing myself before her.

She looked up. Her makeup had run, and the big brown almond-shaped eyes had the same raccoon look as that little, mostly naked kid in the cellar at the Y and S. The platinum mane was in disarray. "Mike. Oh, Mike, what a terrible night is this."

Stress had not robbed the Latin lilt of its musicality.

"Any idea who might want to kill Little Tony?"

Her chin quivered. "He like to be called Anthony."

"I know. No offense to the dead. You're taking it hard, kid. Wasn't he just a guy you worked for?"

"I love him, Mike. He love me."

"I thought you weren't anybody's girl."

She swallowed. Tears were streaming. She was a wreck. "If he here, if he were alive ... I would be his. Only his."

"Sorry. Look, Chrome—Anthony's murder is the latest sour note in a pretty sorry symphony. That nice man Doolan got killed, and so did a little hooker named Dulcie Thorpe."

"Doolan, he kill himself, the papers say."

"They say wrong. And there was a girl you knew who was mugged and murdered."

She nodded, swallowed, trying to be brave. Her face was a shambles within the unruly platinum frame, but the long legs on either side of the chair were as smoothly appealing as ever.

"Ginnie," she said. "My young friend, Ginnie Mathes. We were in dance class together. She was good. I wanted her to join my new act."

"Didn't know you used backup dancers."

"The new act, it will. Both boys and girls. It would have mean the whole new life for Ginnie. It is sad. Very sad."

"Did you know Joseph Fidello?"

Her scowl was underscored by those smeary, runny cosmetics. "Ginnie's ex? He was a bad person. He knew her a long time ago and he ... what is the word? Try to worm his way back in her life. I told her, he is the bad ... what is the word? Influence. I do not think she was seeing him anymore, when she ... when we lose her."

"Okay. Look, I'm sorry to bug you right now. I can tell this is rough for you."

"You come see me, Mike. You come see Chrome later. I will have myself put together." She smiled bravely. "You will like what you see. I promise."

Her smile was a quavering thing, and I nodded and smiled, and left her alone.

Alone in the middle of the stage of the hottest club in Manhattan, which tonight—and perhaps on any future night—was as dead as Little Tony Tret.