The Consummata Page 12

  “Don’t worry about me, kid.”

  “Con su permiso, I will worry about us all.”

  Then she was gone like a lovely wraith and I lay back on the oversize bed, and folded my hands behind my head, staring at myself in the mirror on the ceiling. If that thing had been a television screen, it would have some wild reruns to play.

  Right now I looked like a rerun of myself—on a distant channel that was coming in fuzzy as hell. I looked like ten miles of bad road.

  Twenty.

  My sport coat and sport shirt and slacks were of high quality, but I’d been in them so long, they were a wrinkled mess and needed a wash. Me, too. Plus a shave.

  I closed my eyes for just a moment, and never even heard them come back. When Bunny shook me, I woke up swearing at myself, because nodding off like that could get me killed.

  “Morgan,” Bunny said, almost a snarl, “will you please be quiet!”

  “Sorry, baby.” I didn’t realize the .45 was in my hand until I saw them both gaping at it, then I stuck it back in its berth under my left arm.

  Bunny shoved me back onto the bed. “Take it easy, cowboy.” She gave me an appraising look and let out a disgusted sigh. “You look like hell.”

  “I feel like hell.” I wiped my hand across my face and the bristles damn near hurt my tender little palm. I looked at the hostess of the Mandor Club. “You don’t exactly look your best either, kiddo.”

  “Thanks a bunch,” she said. “Like they say, with friends like you who needs enemies.”

  This little adventure was taking its toll on her. Worry lines creased her face, showing through the makeup, and her hair was straggling loose from its formerly artful styling. With those purple streaks, she had a Bride of Frankenstein look as she clutched a handful of note papers, fidgeting with the clips that bound them.

  I sat up with a couple of plump pillows propped behind me. “What have you got there, Bunny?”

  “First things first.” She sat on the edge of the bed. Lithe legs crossed, Gaita was seated at the makeup mirror, but had her back to it, facing us.

  “I did what you told me, Morg,” Bunny said. “I made inquiries about that murdered client of mine, Dick Best. There was no next of kin and nobody to claim the body. The cops thought it was goddamn big-hearted of me to contribute toward a decent burial, and it didn’t seem funny to them at all, when I asked how he was killed.”

  “How was he killed?”

  “The usual unidentified blunt instrument that broke his neck. Or it could have a blow from a hand, if the killer was skilled enough.”

  “A karate chop, you mean?”

  She nodded. “They said it was a common mugging technique.”

  I smirked in disgust. “It really isn’t. But that helps the Miami fuzz close the file and not have to look into the matter.”

  She was nodding again. “Which they didn’t, and aren’t. They wrote it off as homicide during a burglary gone wrong. They figured Best surprised the robber and got himself killed in the struggle.”

  “How did the thief get in and out?”

  Bunny shrugged. “Either picked the lock or had a skeleton key. There was a fire escape in the hall. Morg, it really is pretty standard stuff.”

  “Is it? I’d say we’re seeing a pattern.”

  “How so?” Her forehead knitted.

  “Somebody likes those single-handed blows. That’s how the old porter got it at the Amherst hotel, after he screwed up a certain simple assignment an old amigo of yours hired him to do.”

  Gaita whispered, “Jaimie Halaquez....”

  “At least he’s consistent,” I said. “Give him that much.”

  Bunny, still on the edge of the bed near me, said, “But the Cuban boys that were tracking him—in Missouri, Arkansas and Mississippi...they didn’t die that way.”

  Gaita said, “Halaquez used a blade. They die slow and painful, those boys, with their insides in their hands.”

  “Two different kinds of kills,” I said, clinically. “Those brave kids were made to suffer—to make them examples, and to send a message back to Little Havana. And they may not have been killed by Halaquez at all.”

  “What?” Gaita snapped.

  It was Gaita’s question, but I aimed the answer at Bunny. “They may have been killed for him by the Cuban assassin who died in your apartment house lobby. Fitting, he died by the blade.”

  “You’re a cold-blooded bastard,” Bunny said with a shiver.

  “A breathing one,” I said, then went on: “The old man and this Richard Best required efficient kills, not so messy, not so noisy.”

  The Mandor’s madam had a glazed, dazed expression. “So he’s still around, our Jaimie....”

  “Well,” I said, “more like he’s back. Bunny, you said first things first. First, was finding out from the cops how Dick Best bought it. What’s second?”

  Now she smiled; now her eyes took on a twinkle. “Finding out who Dick Best really was.”

  I leaned forward. “Who, Bunny?”

  “A businessman I was introduced to years ago...but not as Richard Best—different last name...Parvain.”

  Meant nothing to me.

  She continued: “Now this goes back a good twenty years, Morg. I thought Dick Best looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him—and he looked more than twenty years older. Anyway, after seeing the poor S.O.B. stretched out on the morgue tray, well, I came back here and sat down for a good think. Best and I had talked lots of times, in the last year or so—had anything of it meant anything, I wondered?”

  “Had it?”

  “Maybe. It came back to me that one day, a couple years ago—Best and I were sitting in the bar downstairs, and he gets to telling me about a business of his called Possibilities, Inc. And how it was too bad my husband wasn’t around to get in on the ground floor with him again.”

  “Again?”

  “Yes, again, he said. Morg, at the time, I wondered what he meant by that. But I didn’t ask, because you don’t pry with clients, or maybe I just got distracted...but at any rate...I never asked him about it.”

  “Understandable,” I granted.

  “Then seeing him dead like that, suddenly something jarred loose. I remembered something. I remembered that when my husband kicked off, I went through some papers he left, and there was a notation about this Possibilities, Inc.”

  She gestured with the yellowed packet that she had been holding onto like the railing at a sharp drop-off.

  “So I dug them up again,” she said, “from my old box of souvenirs from back when we were rich and infamous.”

  Bunny tossed the moldy sheaf my way, and I picked it up, wondering what answers it might hold.

  “They may not make much sense to you,” Bunny said. “That old fox I was married to wasn’t much for making notes that the income tax people might follow. But you’ll see that he invested ten thousand in a gimmick Parvain invented that was supposed to detect uranium ore from an airplane, instead of working at ground level.”

  “When was this?”

  “Oh, back in those days of all the big strikes in Canada. Up north, everybody and his brother was inventing these gizmos that claimed to sniff out the stuff.”

  “What are we talking about here,” I asked, “glorified Geiger counters?”

  She nodded and tendrils blonde and purple bounced. “Exactly right—least as far as I understand it. Nothing ever came of Parvain’s deal, or I would have heard about it. My dear departed reprobate husband liked to brag about his scores, but if something didn’t pan out, it became a dead issue.”

  I leafed through the pages, which dated to the mid-1950s, and found the phrase “Possibilities, Inc.” twice, among a couple of rows of abstract figuring, and a half-paragraph in an almost illegible scrawl. A heavy check mark went through the whole page, like a memorandum to forget it. “Bunny, you said Best mentioned that it was too bad your husband wasn’t in with him again. Maybe those Possibilities panned out after all.”

  She
shrugged grandly. “If they did, why didn’t Best have a pot to piss in? Unless him living like an old fart on a fixed income was just a front.”

  “Maybe he was hanging around your club because he eventually planned to hit you up for a touch—to refinance a business your husband had been part of.”

  Bunny shook her head thoughtfully. “No, the conversation in question goes back a good couple of years, and Best never mentioned the subject again.”

  Something wasn’t adding up.

  I asked, “Where the hell did Best get the kind of money it takes to hang out at the Mandor Club? And how did a nebbish like that even gain entry?”

  That stopped her. “Be damned if I know. Somebody on our approved list must have brought him in as an invited guest.”

  “Is that something you can track?”

  “Probably not. Why?”

  “Because he was murdered. And anything to do with nuclear physics can be important enough to get somebody killed. It’s the only damn lead we have.”

  Bunny gave me a funny look then, then shook her head.

  I said, “What is it?”

  “Oh, just something Best said to me, not too long ago. Couldn’t be anything important.”

  “Damn it, who the hell knows what might be important, in this damn mess? Spill.”

  “Well,” she said, and paused, thinking back, “I had a birthday party a few weeks ago. Best wasn’t here for it, but he called to wish me happy returns. He sounded half in the bag, and I was a little potted myself, so...”

  “So?”

  “So he said he was sorry he didn’t have a present for me, but he’d stop by with something when he got a chance. And then what he said after that was weird....”

  “Weird how?”

  “Weird and then some—Morg, he said that if anything happened to keep him from visiting the Mandor Club again, I should expect to receive a late birthday present.”

  I frowned. “Has anything shown up? In the mail, or from a shipping firm?”

  She shook her head. “Nothing.”

  “Well, keep a goddamn sharp eye out. Do you think Best thought his life was in danger?”

  Her shrug was almost comically exaggerated. “I don’t know. Like I said, he sounded drunk. And I was drunk. I’m really not sure I should be trusting my memory on this subject....”

  “Perhaps,” Gaita said from her seat on the sidelines, where she’d been quietly taking it all in, “Tango might know something of this.”

  “Tango, kitten? Who’s that?”

  But it was Bunny who answered. “Just one of the girls, Morg. Real name’s Theresa Prosser. Gaita’s right—this Best character, or Parvain or whoever he was, was pretty smitten with Tango. Even took her out to supper a few times.”

  “Is she here now?”

  “No! Look, Morgan, the last thing we need to do is get anybody else involved in this mess...”

  “Let me worry about that. Tell me about Tango. How special was she to Best?”

  Bunny was rolling her eyes. “Christ, Morg, don’t make more out of it than what I’ve already told you! Best just seemed to prefer Tango’s company, if she was available.”

  “Meaning, Best might have told her something that he didn’t tell you or any of the other girls.”

  Bunny seemed openly annoyed now. “This is a business like any other—employees get days off, and this is hers. She’s probably at the Vincalla Motel. Goes there and sits around the pool all day, when she’s not working. At night she reads or watches TV. Quiet girl.”

  “Is there a boyfriend in the picture?”

  Now Bunny seemed strangely amused. “Gaita, why don’t you break it to him?”

  Gaita made a resigned gesture with her shoulders. “Tango, she is a lovely woman. One of the loveliest and most in demand here at the Mandor. But she does not like the men.”

  “Funny game to go into, then. So, she’s a lesbian?”

  “No. She is...how you say...frigid.”

  Bunny said, “Tango says the act of sex is no more exciting, or meaningful, to her than brushing her teeth or using the john.”

  I frowned. “What, so she puts on an act for her clients?”

  “No. She takes great pleasure in having them work hard to please her while she remains bored. It’s her way of feeding her hatred for men.”

  “Why is she popular, then?”

  Gaita took that one: “Because she is very beautiful, señor.”

  Yeah, and what man doesn’t think he’s just the right guy to melt an ice queen?

  I asked, “Yet she went out on...what, dates with this Best character?”

  “Him she did not mind,” Gaita said. “He was more the father to her. My guess is, they never did the act of sex together.”

  Bunny cut in: “To what degree she can put up with men, Tango prefers older ones, like Best. Younger men, closer to her own age, she has a supreme contempt, even hatred, for.”

  “Why in hell?”

  Again, it was Gaita who responded: “It is because of her older brother, Señor Morgan. He is dead now. Because he raped her. And she killed him.”

  “Okay, I’m starting to get the picture.”

  “This is why she left Cuba, señor. To flee the police for this crime, but it was really self-defense.”

  I nodded. “How old is she now?”

  “She is twenty.”

  “Brother,” I whispered under my breath. “How long has she been at the Mandor?”

  Bunny took that one: “Four years,” she said, too casually.

  “That’s rape, too, you know,” I told the madam pointedly. “Statutory rape.”

  “She had papers saying she was twenty-one when she came here,” Bunny said. “I take my girls at their word.”

  “Even when you know they’re lying.”

  “Excuse me if I don’t take morality lessons from Morgan the Raider.”

  I raised a hand to quell any argument.

  Then I crawled off the other side of the bed, got to my feet and tried to shake the tiredness out of my body.

  “Okay,” I told them, “I’m going to speak to Tango, then I’m coming back here. In the meantime, Bunny, you rack that memory of yours for anybody else who might have been involved with Parvain and your hubby in that Possibilities company. Come up with somebody we can track down.”

  Her eyes flared. “Morgan, damn it, that was years ago.”

  “Phone operators are the best tracers of missing persons in the world. Let your fingers do the walking—just don’t bust a nail.”

  Bunny came over and touched my arm. Suddenly the good-looking old broad had what seemed to be a genuine look of concern. “Going to that motel—aren’t you taking a big chance?”

  “Who isn’t?”

  “Morgan...”

  The tone of Bunny’s voice made me meet her eyes. “What, kiddo?”

  She whispered, though surely Gaita could hear. “Tell me ...please...what did you do with that...that person who was killed at my building?”

  “I left him in Domino Park behind some bushes.”

  She had the expression of a startled deer. “There was nothing about it in the papers.”

  “Yeah, I know. Kind of curious, isn’t it?”

  Her mouth was a tight line now. “Morgan...sometimes you frighten me.”

  “Just sometimes?”

  Then I got a closer glimpse of myself in the dressing table mirror.

  “No wonder,” I said. “You think maybe I could scare up a shower and a shave around here someplace?”

  Bunny didn’t answer me—maybe this simple indignity was the last straw.

  But Gaita came over, took my arm and gave me one of her funny, sexy grins. “Why, of course, señor—we attend to all of a man’s needs here at the Mandor Club.”

  She was good as her word.

  I was halfway through the shower, the spray like hot little friendly needles that were bringing me to life even as the steam soothed me and uncoiled muscles that were tight with stress
and too little sleep. I was washing my hair with a bath bar, eyes tight shut as soapy water trailed down my face, when I heard the shower stall open.

  Gaita slipped inside and she was naked, with her hair pony-tailed back, and her makeup already washed off, a fresh, youthful girl but no kid, not with breasts so full and high, their dark nipples taut, not with that supple belly where a little whisper of dark hair worked its way from her navel down to gradually expand into the lush dark tangle of the delta between her legs, the rest of her a coppery smoothness that the water seemed to love, to caress, to turn her into a gleaming goddess, pearled with moisture, her parted lips dripping water down like nectar flowing from a goblet.

  She began to soap my front, lathering up my chest hair, then lathered lower and had she spent any more time down there, we’d have been finished before we started; but then her arms slipped behind me as she soaped my back while the front of her was pressed to me, the breasts splayed against me.

  “Gaita...no...I’m....”

  She covered my mouth with hers, lips with a full plumpness that seemed to consume mine, and over the hammering of the shower and the splash at our feet and the gurgle of the drain, she drew away from me and said, “You are not married. Did you not tell me so yourself? You have not consummated the act. You do not betray her. You do not.”

  This time I kissed her.

  We moved away from the spray of the showerhead, to the rear of the stall where she pushed me against the wall like a suspect, but she did not interrogate me, she went down on her knees, she went down on me, and for a moment I thought of Kim, but just a moment, because then the Cuban kitten was rising and turning and leaning against the wall with her hands flat against the tile, glancing back at me with sultry insistent invitation, offering the rounded cheeks of the most perfect posterior that fool Castro ever banished from his country.

  And not doing something about it would have been goddamn insulting, so I entered her and she said, “Si!” with every stroke, grinding back at me in a rhythmic sexual samba that required no music but our heavy breathing and the percussive insistence of the shower.

  We wound up on the floor of the bathroom on a fluffy little rug, first with her riding me, her eyes shut dreamily, her mouth beaming with bliss, rocking, grinding, rocking, then with me on top, stabbing her sweetly, and when she came, she cried out in a language neither Spanish nor American, but I understood it perfectly.