I strolled back down the hall and entertained myself by going into one of the storerooms and opening little pots of La Cygnette creams and rubbing them into my skin. I looked in a mirror and could already see an improvement. If I got Evangeline sprung maybe she’d treat me to a facial.
Signor Giuseppe appeared with a plastically groomed Mrs. Dotson. He had shed his barber’s costume and was dressed for the street. I followed them down the stairs. When we got to the bottom I said, “In case you’re thinking of going back to Milan — or even to Kansas — I have a few questions.”
Mrs. Dotson clung to the hairdresser, ready to protect him.
“I need to speak to him alone, Mrs. Dotson. I have to talk to him about bamboo.”
“I’ll get Miss Carlson, Signor Giuseppe,” his guardian offered.
“No, no, Signora. I will deal with this crazed woman myself. A million thanks. Grazie, grazie.”
“Remember, no Italian in your adopted America,” I reminded him nastily.
Mrs. Doston looked at us uncertainly.
“I think you should get Ms. Carlson,” I said. “Also a police escort. Fast.”
She made up her mind to do something, whether to get help or flee I wasn’t sure, but she scurried down the corridor. As soon as she had disappeared, he took me by the arm and led me into one of the consulting rooms.
“Now, who are you and what is this?” His accent had improved substantially.
“I’m V. I. Warshawski. Roland Darnell told me you were quite an expert on fitting drugs into bamboo furniture.”
I wasn’t quite prepared for the speed of his attack. His hands were around my throat. He was squeezing and spots began dancing in front of me. I didn’t try to fight his arms, just kicked sharply at his shin, following with my knee to his stomach. The pressure at my neck eased. I turned in a half circle and jammed my left elbow into his rib cage. He let go.
I backed to the door, keeping my arms up in front of my face and backed into Angela Carlson.
“What on earth are you doing with Signor Giuseppe?” she asked.
“Talking to him about furniture.” I was out of breath. “Get the police and don’t let him leave the salon.”
A small crowd of white-coated cosmeticians had come to the door of the tiny treatment room. I said to them, “This isn’t Giuseppe Fruttero. It’s John Crenshaw. If you don’t believe me, try speaking Italian to him — he doesn’t understand it. He’s probably never been to Milan. But he’s certainly been to Thailand, and he knows an awful lot about heroin.”
4
Sal handed me the bottle of Black Label. “It’s yours, Vic. Kill it tonight or save it for some other time. How did you know he was Roland Darnell’s ex-partner?”
“I didn’t. At least not when I went to La Cygnette. I just knew it had to be someone in the salon who killed him, and it was most likely someone who knew him in Kansas. And that meant either Darnell’s ex-wife or his partner. And Giuseppe was the only man on the professional staff. And then I saw he didn’t know Italian — after praising Milan and telling him he was stupid in the same tone of voice and getting no response it made me wonder.”
“We owe you a lot, Vic. The police would never have dug down to find that. You gotta thank the lady, Mama.”
Mrs. Barthele grudgingly gave me her thin hand. “But how come those police said Evangeline knew that Darnell man? My baby wouldn’t know some convict, some drug smuggler.”
“He wasn’t a drug smuggler, Mama. It was his partner. The police have proved all that now. Roland Darnell never did anything wrong.” Evangeline, chic in red with long earrings that bounced as she spoke, made the point hotly.
Sal gave her sister a measuring look. “All I can say, Evangeline, is it’s a good thing you never had to put your hand on a Bible in court about Mr. Darnell.”
I hastily poured a drink and changed the subject.
Stacked Deck
Bill Pronzini
Bill Pronzini is a prolific writer and editor. Since 1971 he has written over forty novels, including collaborations with Marcia Muller, John Lutz, Barry N. Malzberg, Colin Wilcox, and Jack Anderson. His latest novel, the fifteenth in the “Nameless Detective” series, is Deadfall (St. Martin’s Press, 1986). He has also written some 275 stories and articles and edited over 50 anthologies, most of them in the mystery field. Among Mr. Pronzini’s recent books are: Graveyard Plots: The Best Short Stories of Bill Pronzini (St. Martin’s Press, 1985) and One Thousand and One Midnights, with Marcia Muller (Arbor House, 1986).
1
From where he stood in the shadow of a split-bole Douglas fir, Deighan had a clear view of the cabin down below. Big harvest moon tonight, and only a few streaky clouds scudding past now and then to dim its hard yellow shine. The hard yellow glistened off the surface of Lake Tahoe beyond, softened into a long silverish stripe out toward the middle. The rest of the water shone like polished black metal. All of it was empty as far as he could see, except for the red-and-green running lights of a boat well away to the north, pointed toward the neon shimmer that marked the North Shore gambling casinos.
The cabin was big, made of cut pine logs and redwood shakes. It had a railed redwood deck that overlooked the lake, mostly invisible from where Deighan was. A flat concrete pier jutted out into the moonstruck water, a pair of short wooden floats making a T at its outer end. The boat tied up there was a thirty-foot Chris-Craft with sleeping accommodations for four. Nothing but the finer things for the Shooter.
Deighan watched the cabin. He’d been watching it for three hours now, from this same vantage point. His legs bothered him a little, standing around like this, and his eyes hurt from squinting. Time was, he’d had the night vision of an owl. Not anymore. What he had now, that he hadn’t had when he was younger, was patience. He’d learned that in the last three years, along with a lot of other things — patience most of all.
On all sides the cabin was dark, but that was because they’d put the blackout curtains up. The six of them had been inside for better than two hours now, the same five-man nucleus as on every Thursday night except during the winter months, plus the one newcomer. The Shooter went to Hawaii when it started to snow. Or Florida or the Bahamas — someplace warm. Mannlicher and Brandt stayed home in the winter. Deighan didn’t know what the others did, and he didn’t care.
A match flared in the darkness between the carport, where the Shooter’s Caddy Eldorado was slotted, and the parking area back among the trees. That was the lookout — Mannlicher’s boy. Some lookout: he smoked a cigarette every five minutes, like clockwork, so you always knew where he was. Deighan watched him smoke this one. When he was done, he threw the butt away in a shower of sparks, and then seemed to remember that he was surrounded by dry timber and went after it and stamped it out with his shoe. Some lookout.
Deighan held his watch up close to his eyes, pushed the little button that lighted its dial. Ten-nineteen. Just about time. The lookout was moving again, down toward the lake. Pretty soon he would walk out on the pier and smoke another cigarette and admire the view for a few minutes. He apparently did that at least twice every Thursday night — that had been his pattern on each of the last two — and he hadn’t gone through the ritual yet tonight. He was bored, that was the thing. He’d been at his job a long time and it was always the same; there wasn’t anything for him to do except walk around and smoke cigarettes and look at three hundred square miles of lake. Nothing ever happened. In three years nothing had ever happened.