“We better blow, Nate,” he told me with a grin, and nuzzled the giggling Janet’s neck. She seemed to be on something, too. “I got a nine o’clock show to do.”
It was a little after seven.
We made our goodbyes and drove the couple of blocks to his place in his white Lincoln Zephyr convertible.
“Do I take care of you,” he asked with a grin, as the shadows of the palms lining the streets rolled over us, “or do I take care of you?”
“You’re a pal,” I said.
We were slipping past more of those movie theater-like apartment houses, pastel chunks of concrete whose geometric harshness was softened by well-barbered shrubs. The three-story building on West Jefferson, in front of which Clifton drew his Lincoln, was set back a ways, a walk cutting through a golf green of a lawn to the pale yellow cube whose blue cantilevered sunshades were like eyebrows.
Clifton’s apartment was on the third floor, a two bedroom affair with pale yellow walls and a parquet floor flung with occasional oriental carpets. The furnishings were in the art moderne manner, chrome and leather and well-varnished light woods, none of it from Sears.
I sat in a pastel green easy chair whose lines were rounded; it was as comfortable as an old shoe but considerably more stylish.
“How do those unemployed showgirls afford a place like that?” I wondered aloud.
Clifton, who was making us a couple of rum and Cokes over at the wet bar, said, “Did you have a good time?”
“I like Peggy. If I lived around here, I’d try to straighten her out.”
“Oh yeah! Saint Heller. I thought you did straighten her out-on that couch.”
“Are you pimping for those girls?”
“No!” He came over with a drink in either hand. “They’re not pros.”
“But you fix them up with friends and other people you want to impress.”
He shrugged, handing me the drink. “Yeah. So what? Party girls like that are a dime a dozen.”
“Where are you getting the dope?”
That stopped him for a moment, but just a moment. “It makes ’em feel good; what’s the harm?”
“You got ’em hooked and whoring for you, Pete. You’re one classy guy.”
Clifton smirked. “I didn’t see you turning down the free lay.”
“You banging ’em both?”
“Never at the same time. What, you think I’m a pervert?”
“No. I think you’re a prick.”
He just laughed at that. “Listen, I got to take a shower. You coming down to the club tonight, or not?”
“I’ll come. But Pete-where are you getting the dope you’re giving those girls?”
“Why do you care?”
“Because I don’t think Frank Nitti would like it. He doesn’t do business with people in that racket. If he knew you were involved…”
Clifton frowned. “You going to tell him?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Maybe I don’t give a shit if you do. Maybe I got a possible new investor for my club, and Frank Nitti can kiss my ass.”
“Would you like me to pass that along?”
A grimace drained all the boyishness from his face. “What’s wrong with you, Heller? Since when did you get moral? These gangsters are like women-they exist to be used.”
“Only the gangsters don’t discard as easily.”
“I ain’t worried.” He jerked a thumb at his chest. “See, Heller, I’m a public figure-they don’t bump off public figures; it’s bad publicity.”
“Tell Mayor Cermak-he got hit in Florida.”
He blew me a Bronx cheer. “I’m gonna take a shower. You want a free meal down at the club, stick around…but leave the sermons to Billy Sunday, okay?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
I could hear him showering, singing in there, “All or Nothing at All.” Had we really been friends, once? I had a reputation as something of a randy son of a bitch myself; but did I treat woman like Clifton did? The thought make me shudder.
On the oblong glass coffee table before me, a white phone began to ring. I answered it.
“Pete?” The voice was low-pitched, but female-a distinctive, throaty sound.
“No, it’s a friend. He’s in the shower, getting ready for his show tonight.”
“Tell him to meet me out front in five minutes.”
“Well, let me check with him and see if that’s possible. Who should I say is calling?”
There was a long pause.
Then the throaty purr returned: “Just tell him the wife of a friend.”
“Sure,” I said, and went into the bathroom and reported this, over the shower needles, through the glass door, to Clifton, who said, “Tell her I’ll be right down.”
Within five minutes, Clifton-his hair still wet-moved quickly through the living room; he had thrown on the boating clothes from this afternoon.
“This won’t take long.” He flashed the boyish grin. “These frails can’t get enough of me.”
“You want me to leave?”
“Naw. I’ll set somethin’ up with her for later. I don’t think she has a friend, though-sorry, pal.”
“That’s okay. I try to limit myself to one doped-up doxy a day.”
Clifton smirked and waved at me dismissively as he headed out, and I sat there for maybe a minute, then decided I’d had it. I plucked my straw fedora off the coffee table and trailed out after him, hoping to catch up with him and make my goodbyes.
The night sky was cobalt and alive with stars, a sickle-slice of moon providing the appropriate deco touch. The sidewalk stretched out before me like a white ribbon, toward where palms mingled with street lights. A Buick was along the curb and Pete was leaning against the window, like a car hop taking an order.
That sultry, low female voice rumbled through the night like pretty thunder: “For God’s sake, Pete, don’t do it! Please don’t do it!”
As Pete’s response-laughter-filled my ears, I stopped in my tracks, not wanting to intrude. Then Pete, still chuckling, making a dismissive wave, turned toward me, and walked. He was giving me a cocky smile when the first gunshot cracked the night.
I dove and rolled and wound up against a sculpted hedge that separated Clifton’s apartment house from the hunk of geometry next door. Two more shots rang out, and I could see the orange muzzle flash as the woman shot through the open car window.
p height="0%" width="5%"›For a comic, Pete was doing a hell of a dance; the first shot had caught him over the right armpit, and another plowed through his neck in a spray of red, and he twisted around to face her to accommodate another slug.
Then the car roared off, and Pete staggered off the sidewalk and pitched forward onto the grass, like a diver who missed the pool.
I ran to his sprawled figure, and turned him over. His eyes were wild with dying.
“Them fuckin’ dames ain’t…ain’t so easy to discard, neither,” he said, and laughed, a bloody froth of a laugh, to punctuate his last dirty joke.
People were rushing up, talking frantically, shouting about the need for the police to be called and such like. Me, I was noting where the woman had put her last shot.
She caught him right below the belt.
After a long wait in a receiving area, I was questioned by the cops in an interview room at the Dade County Courthouse in Miami. Actually, one of them, Earl Carstensen-Chief of Detectives of the Miami Beach Detective Bureau-was a cop; the other guy-Ray Miller-was chief investigator for the State Attorney’s office.
Carstensen was a craggy guy in his fifties and Miller was a skinny balding guy with wirerim glasses. The place was air-conditioned and they brought me an iced tea, so it wasn’t exactly the third degree.
We were all seated at the small table in the soundproofed cubicle. After they had established that I was a friend of the late Pete Clifton, visiting from Chicago, the line of questioning took an interesting turn.
Carstensen asked, “Are you aware that ‘Peter Clifton’ was not the deceased’s real name?”