But Not For Me Page 6

She offered a perplexed smile. “How’d you know my name?”

  “I’m a detective, doll.” I gave her a wink and strolled down the stairs. On the way, I decided to ask Virginia for her phone number when I left.

  Dom met me at the bottom of the stairs. “Welcome to the morgue, Phil.”

  “Morgue?”

  Dom nodded to his left and I trailed him through rows of stacked file cabinets. “Yeah,” he said. “We call this room the morgue. It’s where old newspapers go to die. We cut them up and cross reference them by subject and file them for future reference.”

  We reached an open area with several desks near the middle of the rows. He stopped and sat at one covered with old clippings. Dom motioned to the chair across from him.

  “I’m doing a background piece for the Kansas–Missouri basketball game coming up in two weeks. Did you know it’s the oldest basketball rivalry west of the Mississippi?”

  I told him that I didn’t, and he said that he would begin his article with the border war back in the 1850s that led up to the Civil War and then he’d transition it into basketball.

  “Baseball was my game back in the day,” I said.

  “Oh, yeah, I played some ball too, second baseman. So what can I do for you, Phil?”

  “Well, it’s funny I should find you down here.” I paused. “Say, is it okay to smoke down here with all of this paper lying around?” He nodded, and I lit up.

  “I was going to ask what the Star had on a couple of people.”

  Dominic pulled a cheap cigar out his shirt pocket, and I struck a match on the sole of my shoe and held it out. Dom leaned in, puffed up a good ash and then leaned back again. “Shoot.”

  “I’m wondering what you got on both Tom Holloways, the Junior and the Senior, and also on Tony Palmisano.”

  Dom boomed a horselaugh that echoed around the room. “Hell, it’d take both our interns two days just on old Holloway alone. You know our paper’s stand on him?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “The paper’s not presenting him any Citizen of the Year awards.”

  “That’s right, and if there’s a legitimate way to ruin his life, the Star will find it. Who’s this Tony Palmisano you asked about? I’m not familiar with him.”

  “He’s a high-up in Lazzeri’s mob.”

  “Any ties with Holloway that we here at the Star should know about?”

  “Don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  With his tongue, Dom swung his cigar over to the side of his mouth and held it in place with yellowed teeth. Gap-toothed and slurring his s’s, Dom spoke. “I’d say this’ll take a least a day for our interns to round up. If he asks, I’ll tell the old man we’re looking at a piece on the mob’s influence in local sports.” He looked square at me, chewing on the cigar. “But if he turns on the heat, I’m gonna have to give you up. You’ll be persona non grata around this rag.”

  “That’s fair, Dommy. And if you get backed into a corner, tell him that I might just hand-deliver a sweet exclusive to the city desk in a few days, okay?” I ground out my butt. “But don’t bring it up unless you need it. And tell your interns just the last four years on big Tom if that’ll help. But anything they can find on the young Tom and on Palmisano, okay?”

  “Sure thing. Why don’t you call or come by after ten tomorrow morning?”

  “Will that give your interns enough time?”

  “Phil, the newspaper never sleeps. And we don’t pay our interns shit. We’re letting them stick their proverbial foot in the door. They’ll stay late and like it. He tapped his cigar ash. “Seriously, Phil, they’ll like it. They’ll pretend they’re investigative journalists. It beats the shit out of obituaries and wedding announcements.”

  “Right you are. Who do I ask for in the morning?”

  “Me.”

  I left Dom in a cloud of cigar smoke and skipped back up the steps. A matronly broad sat at the front desk. I asked about Virginia and was told that she was upstairs handing out the mail. Did Virginia work tomorrow? I asked. The broad gave me a Medusa look, and I headed for the door. I’d sweet-talk that phone number tomorrow if our paths crossed.

  On the way to my car, I remembered Rusty and pulled my watch chain. The watch popped out of my vest pocket and I clicked it open. Shit. We were supposed to meet at Nick’s in ten minutes.

  I lead-footed it down Southwest Trafficway, rapping that inline four cylinder like a jockey raps his mount in the home stretch. As I drove, I tried to mentally fit together the puzzle pieces already gathered, but my mind kept returning to Colleen, the hard feel of her back in my hands, all muscle and bone, the soft pressure of her lips and the electricity of her tongue in my mouth. Damn her.

  My Plymouth gasped into the sole remaining parking space on the Trafficway, about a block from Nick’s. The old girl sputtered after I shut her off as if she didn’t want to stop there, or more likely as if she had commenced her death throes. Either way, I slid my .38 into an overcoat pocket, grabbed the packet Hannerty’d given me and hoofed it up the sidewalk. Behind me, my Plymouth finally quieted. Nick’s was crowded. Rusty sat facing the door in a booth about mid-way back. He was a good friend and a damned good PI, almost as good as me. Rusty grinned and waved. He had the KC Star open to the sports page and a cup of coffee in his right hand. Another cup, already filled, sat on my side.

  “You’re late.” He waved his cup in the direction of mine as I slid into the booth. “It might be cold.”

  It was. I finished it in three gulps. Magically, Rosemary appeared beside me and took the cup from my hand.

  “Hi ya, handsome.” She filled the cup and placed it on table in front of me. “How’s my favorite private dick?”

  Rusty slapped his cup on the table with resultant sloshing. “Aw, gee, Rosie, I thought I was your favorite dick?” He managed a hurt expression over his perpetual grin.

  Rosemary set down the coffee pot, raised Rusty’s cup, blotted it with her towel and then wiped away the underlying sepia splotch. She dropped the towel next to the pot, took Rusty’s head in her hands and pulled his face into her massive bosom. “There, there, little one, love hurts.” She patted his back, kissed his forehead and then released him from her pillowy prison.

  Rosemary recaptured her pot and towel and loudly popped her gum. “Now kiddies, what’ll you have?”

  While Rusty feigned bedazzled stupor I ordered the Friday special, open-faced beef sandwich with mashed potatoes. Rusty followed up with the same, and with a sigh asked, “And Rosie, dear, could I get a stiff drink?”

  Another pop of her gum, this one stern, and then her expression warmed. “Why, you sweet boy, you know we don’t serve liquor. But maybe you are my favorite after all.” She swiveled lightly like a burlesque dancer, and then offered a view of her ample backside and an impressive stripper’s gait back to the counter. The magic moment faded when her truck-driver’s voice bellowed “Order up, Joey.”

  Rusty slid the newspaper aside. “So what’s up, Phil? Why you going around dropping hoodlums?”

  I filled him in on the case and what had gone down since I first visited Holloway two days ago including my meeting with Colleen Holloway the night before. Then I plopped Hannerty’s packet in front of him. He opened it and began to read while I took a moment to check out Nick’s clientele.

  I watched Rusty as he read. He wore his usual rumpled brown suit, the one that was a little too big. Accompanied by his boyish face, the loose suit made him look like a kid playing grownup, or like one of KC’s depression jobless who got their wardrobes from the Salvation Army. But Rusty did all right. Kansas City had no dearth of cases for investigators to investigate in 1934.

  “I know this kid,” Rusty said, pointing at the sheet.

  “Who?”

  “This one, Brad Shea, one of that Holloway kid’s pals.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah, he hangs out at Mickey Doyle’s Tavern over on Locust. Nice place. You remember Mickey? He was a pretty fair welterweight.”

  “Sure, n
ice guy,” I said. And he was a nice guy outside of the ring. Inside, he had terrorized people in his heyday, and I had won a pile of dough the night he floored Ricky Martin. “Never been to his place, though.”

  Rusty flipped to Hannerty’s letter. “Shea seems to be at Mickey’s place damn near every time I drop in. Probably there now.”

  “Maybe we should stop by after lunch, say hi to Mickey and have a chat with the kid if he’s there,” I said.

  “Okay,” Rusty closed the packet. “What do you make of the Holloway debt angle?”

  “Worth looking into.”

  “And this Tommy kid throwing all that money around?”

  “That’s gotta have something to do with Palmisano, I figure. If the kid works for him now, Palmisano’s a guy worth talking to.”

  Rusty nodded. “If he’ll let you near him.”

  “I’ll tell them Holloway has me looking for Tommy. If they don’t already know, that is. And if Palmisano won’t sit down for a gab, that’ll tell us something too.”

  “Somebody sure as hell knows you’re looking for Tommy, and they’re not happy about it,” Rusty said.

  Rosemary brought our meals and refilled our cups. She asked about the shooting. Was I okay? Were the badges bothering me, any charges filed? Who was the bum? Why was he after me? I gave her the short answer version, anxious to dig in to the beef—Yes, okay. Yes, cops make a living bothering honest Joes. A dropper named Colin Hardy: we think he was part of a case Rusty and I are working. Sorry—details are confidential. She nodded and made the rounds with her pot.

  The food shut us up for a while. Nobody makes beef gravy like Nick and his kid Joey.

  Rusty eats like a puppy afraid the big dog will show up and snarl him away. “Gobbles” might be the closest word for what his fork and mouth do. He finished up, everything but lick the plate, and he wore that look on his face—the one he got when he didn’t know whether to say something or let it be. His strawberry blond brows scrunched way down low and his mouth tightened like he was working on a painful bowel movement.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Bullshit. Give. What’s cooking in that pea brain of yours?”

  Rusty shook his head. “It’s Colleen Holloway. You said that you met with her at the Krazy Kat last night. You got her story there.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Phil, that dame is bad news.” He looked me square in the eyes. “You be careful. She’s so bad her hair smells like brimstone.”

  But he was wrong. It smelled like gardenias.

  “What’re you driving at, Rusty?”

  “She plays men like she plays the piano—which I hear is pretty damned good—and she’s left bodies strewn all over town. She’s a black widow, sucks ’em dry and tosses ’em away.”

  “Sounds like you know first-hand, Russ.”

  “I didn’t say that. I hear things.”

  I downed my coffee, and for once, Rosemary wasn’t there to fill it. “Colleen really seems to care about the kid brother, though,” I said.

  “No doubt. Just be careful is all I’m saying. Verify what she tells you. She’s only on the level when it suits her. And she uses all her equipment to play the game, if you get my meaning.”

  Rosemary came with the coffee pot and the check. Rusty and I simultaneously covered our cups.

  She pulled the pot away, slapped the check down and said, “Thanks, gents,” before swishing on to her other customers.

  “Ever known a dame to play me, Rusty?”

  “Not yet, pal, but that doesn’t mean it can’t happen. Samson handled the babes before Delilah.”

  “I just had my hair cut, Russ.”

  He laughed at that.

  “I do appreciate your concern,” I told him. “But I can handle her, and her father.”

  Rusty raised his palms in submission and made a half-hearted attempt to grab the check, but I snatched it away. He took his overcoat, started to rise and then sat back down.

  “Oh, yeah, Phil. That Hardy guy you dropped in the alley next door? He’s been freelancing to the highest bidder since he left Mike Leary last year. Sort of like us, only instead of a private investigator, he was a private head knocker.” He shook his head. “I hear he was doing all right and making some important friends—and also a shitload of enemies.”

  “That so? Well, I guess Hardy’s important friends are now my enemies.” I fished my keys and grabbed my coat and hat. “I’ll meet you in front of Mickey’s. We’ll go in together.”

  Rusty was waiting for me in front of Mickey’s. He leaned against his jalopy, tapping his toe, then pulled out his watch.

  “I know, I’m late. But my Plymouth happens to like Nick’s and didn’t want to leave, didn’t even want to start. We came to Jesus and we’re here now, all right?”

  Rusty snapped his watch shut with great drama, rolled his eyes and sighed. He turned toward the entrance. Right before he reached the door he turned, looked back at me over his shoulder and let me catch up.

  We stepped inside. The place was dark, the lights dim except over the pool tables. It took a bit for our eyes to adapt from the afternoon October sun. Rusty grabbed a table up against a nearside wall, slid out a chair, looped a leg over the back, cowboy style, and plopped down. I took the chair opposite and sat like a normal human being.

  We cased the place. There were six young men playing pool, and about a dozen old-timers scattered around. Someone headed over from the bar. It wasn’t a pretty young waitress; it was Mickey himself.

  “Rusty!” Rusty stood and they locked in a vicious handshake that looked like it might be to the death. I took in Mickey during their struggle. His face looked like he’d been beaten by a mob of women with rolling pins; his hair was thinning and speckled with gray around the ears. His nose went east, then west and finally south to finish somewhere near where it was supposed to. Save for a hint of a paunch, Mickey’s body was chiseled under his tight white shirt, and it looked like he might still acquit himself well in the ring.

  They wrapped up their handshake war and hugged like a couple of dames. Then they chatted like them. I enjoyed Mickey’s Irish lilt. He’d come over on a boat in his teens, so his accent was the real deal.

  “You remember my friend Phil Morris don’t you, Mickey?” Rusty pointed me out, but Mickey looked bewildered.

  “Probably not, Russ,” I said. “Mickey and I only met a couple of times about eight years ago. You were the famous boxer Mickey Doyle, and I was just a friend of a friend.” Rusty shot me a quick look of thanks.

  “Oh, yeah, I think maybe I do,” he said without a hint of recognition. “These days I don’t remember things so well. My head’s turned to mush.”

  Only the Irishman turned the phrase into “Moy had’s tarned to moosh.” We chatted briefly, and Mickey asked if we were going to the big fight tomorrow night at the auditorium.

  Rusty shrugged his shoulders. “Bryant’s a palooka. Shull will destroy him.”

  Mickey nodded his head. “Smart money says. Smart money ain’t been watching Bryant work out.”

  It was Rusty’s turn to nod. “You know something, Mickey?”

  “I know I been helping out with Bryant’s morning workouts before I open up. Brownie’s working wonders with him.” Mickey went into his old stance and shadowed a couple of combinations. “I already got two Jacksons on him at five to one. I hear it’s six to one now.”

  Rusty smiled. “You’re not dancing with me are you, Mick?

  “No, sir. I swear on me mother’s grave.”

  “Sounds like something we shouldn’t miss,” I said. Rusty agreed.

  “You’ll be in Bryant’s corner Saturday?” Rusty asked.

  “That I will.”

  “We might have a sawbuck or two to lay on Bryant ourselves, right, Phil?”

  “That you are, Russ.”

  Mickey retreated to the bar. He had the other barkeep pass him over a bottle and two glasses. Mickey returned and set down a bott
le of Tullamore Dew. I’m partial to good American bourbon whiskey, but as far as foreign distills go, Tullamore Irish Whiskey’s as good as they come. He poured us two glasses, winked, and left the bottle.

  We downed the contents of our glasses and Rusty poured us another. He gulped half his second down. Rusty’s one of the few who men can drink me off my bar stool.

  “The Shea kid’s not here?” I asked.

  “Oh, he’s here. That’s his butt leaning over the corner pool table, the butt in the navy blue pinstripes.” He tilted his head in the direction of the far corner. Beyond him, the table’s light illuminated a Schlitz beer sign on the wall. Under the same light, the lithe body attached to the butt circled the table and lined up a shot. Balls clacked, and a loud “Fuck” erupted from Shea. His opponent laughed and surveyed the table.

  “Let me see if I can get him over here,” Rusty said. He finished his drink and strolled over to the players. I downed my second and poured us another.

  The kid grinned when he saw Rusty approach and they shook hands—seemed everybody liked Rusty. They talked a minute or two, and the kid laughed and gave Rusty a friendly whack on the back. Rusty reciprocated and returned to our table.

  “It’s his table now, four bits a game, and he holds it until he loses. He’ll come say hello once that happens—‘if it happens,’ is what he told me.”

  Rusty raised his glass. “It’ll happen.” He winked at me. “The kid’s lousy.”

  I asked him if he told Shea why we wanted to talk.

  “Nope,” he said. “I told him that I had a friend over here who wanted to meet him and buy him a drink. “You take from it there, and I’ll mediate.”

  “You think I’ll need a mediator with that wet-eared kid?”

  Rusty produced a sly grin. “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”

  We didn’t talk about the case. We talked about the fading Yankees and how Babe Ruth had dipped under .300 and seemed washed up. And Rusty wondered aloud if the local Negro team, the Monarchs, could beat the Yankees if they had Satchel Paige on the mound. Another loud “fuck” followed by our young friend tossing his cue on the table ended our discussion. The kid came over.