"The money will be better, and we'll get you out of Vegas, set you up someplace else. Maybe we can get you out of the business, if you want out."
Vicky nodded. "Want out. Second time I've been busted up."
"Are you really sure you don't want to see a doctor?"
The girl shook her head firmly. "Teeth okay," she said. "Just fat lip, cuts— Like new in a couple weeks." She seized the glass Angie handed her and drank three big swallows of gin. '"Gain," she mumbled, handing the glass back.
"Can you tell me what you saw and heard?" Jonas asked.
"Heard nothing," said Vicky. "Saw ... Three guys came first. One of them was Chandler. Another one was Jimmy Hoffa, I think. I'd seen the third guy before, remembered him for his big cigars. Chandler left before the fourth guy — the one — came in."
"Set up a photo array," said Jonas to Angie.
Angie laid out half a dozen pictures. She identified the photo of John Stefano as the man she remembered for his cigars. None of the pictures was of the man who had beaten her.
Jonas's security men had located Chandler the day after he abandoned his office in The Seven Voyages. Thereafter they tailed him. He made no great effort to hide himself, and it was easy enough to keep track of him. They heard a rumor that Chandler was to be the manager of a big, new, as-yet-unnamed casino-hotel that was to go up next year. When he went to the airport, it was certain he was meeting somebody important.
Having used the private airport himself, Jonas knew the private club in the old house off the ramp was a meeting place for a variety of men coming into Las Vegas for a variety of reasons. Some months ago he had managed to place one of his men in the club as bartender. That man had recruited Vicky as a spy, at five hundred dollars a month whether she did anything or not. Jonas's men had installed a hidden tape recorder and camera that could be activated by a button in the girl's bed. Until now Vicky's tapes and film had produced what Jonas had described as "high entertainment" but nothing significant.
The bartender had given Vicky instructions to work especially hard to sell her services to anyone who came to the club with Morris Chandler. This was the first time she had earned the bonus Jonas had authorized if she got pictures and tapes of a Chandler associate.
"Did he say anything worth hearing?" Jonas asked.
Vicky shook her head. "You can listen, but— "
"You can sleep in Mrs. Wyatt's suite tonight," said Jonas. "Have a bath and some soup or something. Like I said before, we'll work something out for you. You don't need to go back to the airport, ever. Do you know who I am?"
"I know ... Mr. Cord."
"Then you know that when I say I'll take care of you, I'll take care of you."
6
Half an hour after Vicky, now a little wobbly from gin, went to Angie's suite, the lab men brought the photographs she had taken.
The equipment was good, and Vicky had known when to press the button to take a picture and advance the film. From 35-mm negatives the darkroom technicians had produced 8 x 10 prints of a middle-aged, muscular, well-hung naked man.
"I want to know who he is," Jonas said grimly. "Send a set of these to Bat. Somebody take a set to Lieutenant Dragon at LAPD, and somebody show them to Detective Baker, Manhattan North. Show a set to Ben Parrish. That hustling idiot knows everybody. Any other ideas?"
"Send Bat two sets," Angie suggested. "He can send a set to Toni. Maybe somebody at The Washington Post will recognize the man. She might— "
"Good thinking," said Jonas. "Put two sets in the New York courier bag."
They listened to the tape. They heard the sounds of the punches Vicky took, of her screams and grunts and coughing and begging; but from the time he entered her room until he left the man had said nothing that suggested who he was — except that he was a vicious bastard.
7
Lorena Pastor lifted her veil and peered intently at the bland face of Ben Parrish. He smiled faintly at her and took a sip from his vodka martini. His left arm hung in a sling, and she had driven the car to bring them to this restaurant in Malibu.
"I really can't believe you, Benjamin," she said. "I really cannot believe that you threw in the towel and went to work for Jonas Cord."
"I don't work for him, Lorena. But I think you know that Jonas has a way of getting people to do what he wants them to do. Anyway, I'm married to his daughter."
"You two are naughty," said Lorena. "She married you to spite her father. I can't imagine what your reason was."
"If she married me to spite her father, it didn't work," said Ben. "He was furious at first, but he seems to have accepted it."
Lorena had ordered a vodka martini, too, to see if she would like them, she said. She lifted her glass and drained the last of her drink, and by a nod to the waiter she ordered a second round. "You say you have something for me," she said. "I can't imagine your motive. Why would you want to feed me a story? I have to know the truth, Ben. Is it really from Jonas?"
Ben nodded.
She smiled and for a moment closed her eyes. "I have a fond memory of that man. I was just making the transition from would-be actress to columnist, and he pumped me full of energy. He's ten years younger than I am, you know. I was all but forty, and to have a handsome rich young stud after me was a marvelous boost to my sagging self-confidence. He took me flying and nearly scared me to death."
"He's a scary man in some ways."
"Nevada Smith introduced me to Jonas," she went on. "Talk about studs, there was another one?"
"You didn't miss many, did you, Lorena?"
"In my day," she said. "If I wasn't so damn old and hadn't got so damn ugly, I'd want a go with you. You could at least let me have a look at what you're reputed to have."
"In the car on the way back," he said.
"Promise? Look and touch?"
"Promise. Look and touch." He laughed.
Their second round was delivered. She took a sip, then asked, "Well, what've you got for me?"
"A piece of tape. And some pictures. Of the new Glenda Grayson nightclub act that opened in Havana. She's been going out on the stage all but naked. And wait till you hear some other monologue. She's kissed television good-bye."
"Okay. I get it now," said Lorena. "What she kissed good-bye to was Cord Productions. So Jonas wants her ass."
"She's doing the show," said Ben. "The pictures and tape are real."
Lorena sighed. "I don't think I can do anything with it, Ben."
"Why not, for Christ's sake?"
"I don't think Walt will publish it. He's got something against Jonas. He wanted the Margit Little story. Off the record, he ordered me to use it. I don't think he'll want this one. I don't think he'll help Jonas hurt Glenda Grayson."
"I think I know why," said Ben.
"Then you know more than I do," she said. She sighed again. "Take the story to Edna. She won't have my problem."
"She doesn't have sixty-eight newspapers either," said Ben.
"She's got forty-six. That's enough to break a story. After she breaks it, Walt may have to let me do something with it. Let me see the pictures, anyway."
Lorena Pastor opened the big brown envelope that Ben handed her and glanced through the photographs of Glenda's nightclub costumes. "This is the end of her in television," she said. "The papers that won't publish pictures like this will publish descriptions. And if her monologue is raunchy the way you say, the guardians of our public morality will go into a frenzy."
8
Bat brought the FBI fingerprint report to Las Vegas. He checked the distant rooftop through the telescope while Jonas read the document Toni had obtained.