“His widow’s.” Heslip pulled abruptly off the street under a wide-spreading walnut tree. Fallen nuts crunched under the car’s tires. “Thing is, me and Nucci’s chauffeur, old black cat named Jeter, are buddies, and he told me...”
Sally Prichard, the Nuccis’ housekeeper, had been abruptly fired after hearing parts of an argument between Nucci and Mrs. Louisa Padilla and a slim handsome wavy-haired man Sally had never seen before.
“Fazzino?” asked Giselle tightly.
“The description fits.”
And the timing was interesting, too. It was just after Padilla’s death, when the transfer of his stock to Fazzino had been proposed. Louisa Padilla had screamed a number of things containing “damned” and “murder” and “evil” at the slim wavy-haired man.
“Of course. They’d need her permission for the transfer, wouldn’t they?” Giselle looked over at him keenly. “You going to tell me how you want to play this?”
“You figured I stopped here to put the make on you?”
Dan Kearny and Larry Ballard were at the Tree House, Ballard feeling dejected and Kearny shoveling in a wedge of cherry pie. Every now and then, working a case and forgetting to eat, he got a sudden craving for sweets.
“I would have been surprised if he had registered here, Larry.” Kearny made his points with the tines of his fork against the rim of the plate. “He doused Bart’s tail at eight thirty-seven on Monday morning, right?”
“Right.”
“Even if he drove like hell, he couldn’t have gotten here much before three on Monday afternoon. Three hours later he calls for a cab to take him to L.A. — so why would he have needed a room? He gets into a brawl with his cabby...”
It was Ballard’s turn to wave silverware. “Which doesn’t make sense, either.”
“No? The key is the fact that Christie thought he was drinking vodka because he couldn’t smell it. What else can’t you smell besides vodka?”
“I don’t...”
“Water. He didn’t even hit Christie — just scuffled with him before the cops showed up. Docile when the fuzz arrive, you follow me? They couldn’t even give him an alcohol-level test, because he wasn’t driving. The clincher is the hundred-dollar bill in Christie’s pocket. Christie was paid. The cab company was paid. Everything carefully set up to make sure it was just a minor misdemeanor rap that could at worst net him a fine.”
Ballard capitulated with a shrug. “Okay. So?”
So they drove south through the afternoon sunlight, hitting several bars in the stretch to Oxnard — where they quit. At four bars he was remembered, because he had been drinking plain ginger ale in each.
“His first real screw-up,” commented Kearny thoughtfully as they emerged from the Neon Jungle. The sun was close to the horizon. “He didn’t figure anybody to get this far, so he didn’t bother to fake it by buying drinks with booze in them.”
“Dammit,” said Ballard, “if it was all one big damned charade, why? He had to have a reason, he didn’t just...” He stopped with an odd look on his face.
Kearny nodded at him over the car roof. “You finally got it, huh? Fazzino took the cab to L.A. and faked getting drunk so he could get into a fight and get busted on a misdemeanor. He wanted to get busted because he wanted Wendy Austin to come down and bail him out.”
Nineteen
The living room was forty feet long and thirty feet wide and sunken three steps below the rest of the house. The carpet was a Bokhara, although neither Heslip nor Giselle knew that. Windows twelve feet high stretched from floor to ceiling, really a row of tall narrow glass doors with wrought-iron handles. Although the sun was low enough to be into the trees, swimming-pool reflections still danced against the glass.
They hadn’t found out shit. Heslip was letting it build. The old woman was overweight and fiftyish and dressed in stiff black cloth fifty years out of date.
“I don’t know anything about that,” she said thickly.
“You said Flip Fazzino was an evil man,” persisted Heslip. He was sunk in a soft chair but his hands were empty. They had been offered neither coffee nor a drink. Let it build.
“That was soon after my husband died...” She made an excited gesture. She had a heavy Italian face and accent.
“You used the words ‘damned’ and ‘murder’ in talking about him.”
“Bart,” said Giselle, “take it easy. Mrs. Padilla is...”
It burst out. Heslip was on his feet. His voice was thick with scorn. “Why are we wasting time with this dried-up old bitch? She knows goddam well her goddam husband was a cheap goddam hood who—”
“Bart!” cried Giselle, her face slack with shock.
The old woman was also on her feet, eyes flashing. “Get out of my house.” When neither of them moved, she cried, “Get out of my house!”
“I hate the goddam guineas,” snarled Heslip. “They come into the black community, screw our women, peddle dope... anything for the buck. Look at her!” He jabbed a furious finger at the old woman. “She’s got it all now. The house, the business...”
“That’s enough!” Giselle’s eyes were flashing.
A very good-looking youngster, about twenty, with very black hair curling down to his shoulders in the current style, appeared at the head of the three marble stairs. He wore skimpy swimming trunks and was dripping water on the floor. His eyes were black, liquid, filled with intense emotion. Heslip gave a coarse laugh.
“So that’s the way it is,” he said to the old woman.
Her eyes went from him to the boy and back again. She suddenly paled as she caught his implication. “Madre di Dio,” she breathed, “you cannot believe...”
Giselle cried, “The boy’s her nephew!” Her face was very white.
Heslip had his back to the side windows. The sun had faded from the pool outside, leaving its surface like lead. His face was nearly in silhouette, congested with blood, the cords of his throat swelling dangerously. “I see. Okay for spooks to screw in the family, but when whitey—”
“Stop it, right now, you ni— Just... Leave her alone!”
“Since when do you give me orders, honky?”
“Since right now.” Giselle’s lips were bloodless, her eyes burned like flames. “Get out of here you... you...”
The old woman was crying. The boy had backed away from the naked emotion in the room.
The veins stood out on Heslip’s temples. “Go ahead, you were going to say it!” he panted. All his attention was on Giselle now. “It almost came out, didn’t it?”
“All right, you... nigger! There! Nigger nigger nig—”
Heslip seized a handful of her heavy blond hair. He jerked her head back, and with his lips drawn back to show pink gums, snarled down into her face. He hurled her sideways against the arm of the chair. At the head of the stairs he checked as if about to strike the slender Italian boy. “You want some of that, wop?”
The boy backed away from the madness in his eyes. Heslip stormed out the heavy oak front door. When he was gone, there was only the sound of the old woman’s sobs.
Giselle got wearily to her feet, crossed the room to put a comforting arm around the aged meaty shoulders. She stared dully in the direction the black man had gone. “And they wonder why,” she said in a tired voice.
The sun was dying redly behind the clouds ruffled across the edge of the Pacific. Ballard rolled up his window. He scowled into the gathering darkness ahead of their head-lights. “So all the way down here she knew I was behind her.”