Kill Me Tomorrow (5 page)

Brizante smiled slightly. “He didn't mean any disrespect, he only swore like that, in Spanish, when he was excited. Gil's Mexican-American, not Catholic, but religious, very religious, didn't mean anything the way he said that.”

“Suits me. What brought on the attack?”

“He was staring out the car window on his side. ‘Stop, stop the car,' he said. I pulled over. Didn't know what the hell had got into him, but it looked like he was staring at a guy, a big fellow, standing in front of a house. So I asked him what was the matter and he said, ‘That looks like Civano.'”

I blinked. “He say anything else?”

“No, that was all. But it didn't make sense to me—he'd already told me about this Civano getting blown up in Tucson. Been talking quite a lot about it. Natural enough.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Anyhow, Gil just looked a little more, then got out of the car and walked over and spoke to them for a few minutes.”

“Them?”

“This big heavy fellow was talking to a woman in front of the house. Turns out it was her house, but I didn't know that then. Well, Gil spoke to the two of them for a minute, then he and this big guy walked a few feet off and stood there talking for another couple minutes. When Gil came back to the car he looked funny—like he was puzzled—and he said something about he guessed maybe he'd made a mistake. It'd been sixteen years since he left Gardena, and people change, something like that.”

“Did he actually tell you he thought the guy was Joe Civano? The man he'd seen killed in Tucson?”

“He didn't say any more to me about the killing in Tucson. But he'd already told me about that. And you'd think if he
saw
the man killed, he'd know he couldn't be walking around here at Sunrise Villas, wouldn't you?”

“Yeah. My understanding is the guy was turned into hamburger. Blast threw the engine nearly a block away, sent half the car's hood up on the roof of the house across the street. And, of course, scattered bits of the other hood, Joe Civano, untidily all over.”

Brizante stroked his moustache. “Seems funny as hell to me, but I found out later Gil really
did
think the man was Joe Civano. He did, sure enough. Only thing that makes sense to me—because Gil was plenty smart, nothing wrong with his brain, or his eyes for that matter—is he must've figured it was somebody else got killed in Tucson.”

I shook my head. “No matter how badly the body was chewed up, I can't see the Tucson police making a mistake in identification like that. Not with a known
mafioso
. If they say it was Joe Civano, a hundred to one that's who it was.”

“Sure. I'm just saying what I figure Gil must have thought. Hell of it is, I know Gil would have talked more to me about it, but it was only a minute or so later I dropped him off at his store—and that was the last time I saw him.”

Tony was silent, frowning, for a few seconds. “Well, let me give you the rest of it. When I was driving back up Claridge on my way home, I saw this big guy again. He was just leaving the house there where Gil had been talking to him, getting into his car, so when he drove off I followed him. He turned on Palma Drive and I saw him pull into a drive-way about half a block down the street, so I turned on Palma myself—”

“Tony, you mean you
tailed
this guy?” I knew the man couldn't really have been Joe Civano—at least, there was only about one chance in a thousand that it could have been—but even the fleeting thought of Brizante tailing that kind of murderous hood gave me shivers.

“Tailed him, followed, call it anything you want to,” Tony said with apparent unconcern. “Anyhow, I saw him take out a key and open the front door of his house and go in. I was going pretty slow. Way Gil acted, I wanted to know more about the guy, where he lived, and all that.”

“Uh-huh. Did this chap maybe sort of eyeball you curiously as you crept by?”

“He didn't even look around, don't think he noticed me.”

“Back up a little. You said you found out, later, Gil
did
think the man was Joe Civano. Found out how?”

“Well, Gil was supposed to come over here Tuesday night at eight o'clock—after supper—for some cribbage. We'd play cribbage two, three nights a week. He didn't show up. So I phoned and talked to his wife. She said all he'd told her was about seeing somebody he thought he recognized from Gardena, and Anna said he seemed upset, like he was puzzling over it. Finally he told her he had to get it settled in his mind, and was going to go talk to the Reverend about it. Only he'd been gone two hours already and she was wondering what was keeping him. Especially since he left before supper.”

“Reverend?”

“Yeah, Gil and Anna belong to the Universalist Communion Church. It opened up just a couple months before they moved to the Villas, and when they got here they joined up. That's Reverend Archie's church.”

“The guy I met at the council meeting, huh?”

Tony nodded. “I went right over to the church and talked to him. Gil had been there, all right, and told Reverend Archie flat out he'd seen Joe Civano here at the Villas. At least he
thought
he'd seen him. Well, the Reverend got what information he could from Gil, then phoned and asked both the man Gil had talked to and the woman the man had been with to come over to the church. Reverend Archie told me when Gil left he was convinced he'd made a mistake, even apologized for the trouble.”

“Archibald had these two come to the church, huh? Who were they?”

“Man's name was Yarrow. Henry Yarrow. Turns out he's head of a real estate agency here at Sunrise Villas, been in business here more than three years. Woman's name is Blessing, she's a widow. Yarrow was a salesman for her husband's agency till Mr. Blessing died a year or so back—Mr. Yarrow told me about that himself.”

“Wait a minute. This guy you saw Gil talking to, then tailed, peeked at when he went into his house—while, I presume, your car was practically parked in the middle of the street—you met him? Talked to him?”

“Yes, while I was at the church that night.”

“This was the same guy?”

“Sure it was the same guy. Hell, I saw him three times.”

“OK. What's this about talking to him at the church?”

“Well, I was pretty much—disturbed, you know. So the Reverend had the man come on over again and I talked to him ten, fifteen minutes. This was just a little while after Gil had talked with him there at the church. Yarrow claimed he didn't know what in the hell was going on.” Tony shrugged. “Appears Gil just made a plain ordinary mistake, probably this Yarrow looks something like the way Gil remembered Civano. It'd been sixteen years or so since he'd seen Civano, remember. Except—except Gil never came home that night. Hasn't come home yet.”

When we'd first come into the den Tony had told me I was hired, he wanted me to take over the job he'd been “working on” himself. I was a bit concerned about the way he'd been “working on” it, so I said, “All right, Tony, there are several things I want to do right away. Tonight. But first I've got a couple of questions.”

“Sure, sure. But …” Tony looked across the room, for the first time appearing ill at ease. “One more thing I've got to tell you about,” he said. “All this was Tuesday. But Wednesday night Anna phoned me here and said Gil
still
hadn't come home, no word from him, nothing. So I
knew
something must've happened to him.”

He paused, then went on rapidly, “A little while after talking to Anna, I phoned a friend of mine and he came over. I told him about Gil, and this fellow he'd seen, and the rest of it, Gil just—disappearing. We both figured the only thing made sense was this fellow Yarrow must've had something to do with it. My friend worked twenty years in the phone company, knows about telephone equipment and how to listen in on lines, even everything that's said in a room or a whole house.”

I was getting an uneasy feeling. It was a feeling that I knew what Brizante was leading up to.

“We talked a while,” he said. “Drank a little wine, talked, had a little more wine. The way it wound up, Fred—my friend, Fred Jenkins—said it'd be easy to fix it so we'd know anything Yarrow said, who he might talk to. I don't know much about that sort of thing myself, but Fred—”

“Are you trying to tell me your friend
bugged
Yarrow's
home?”

Brizante seemed relieved. “That's what he did. Seemed like a good enough idea at the time.”

“He put a bug in the house? What'd he use, a transmitter? Are you talking about bugging or just wiretapping—”

“Wait a second. I don't know for sure. I told him I figured we ought to know about it if this Yarrow
did
happen to say anything about Gil. But Fred just told me he'd take care of it. So he did. In fact, he's still got it set up—whatever he's doing—and getting everything that goes on in Yarrow's house recorded on tape. But I don't know how he set it up. All I know is he'll phone me here if anything important happens.”

I shook my head. “This Jenkins actually bugged Yarrow's place Wednesday night? That is, before sunup Thursday morning?”

“I don't know exactly when he did it, either. He was here with me till maybe three, four o'clock. Then when Fred and I started figuring we'd listen in on what he said there, I just drove Fred by and showed him the house. He told me he'd watch it till Yarrow left, then do whatever he was planning on. Fred came by early today to tell me everything got set up OK Thursday morning.” Brizante paused. “Struck me he was maybe a little bored with the whole idea.”

I almost felt like smiling. There are few things in life more unbelievably dull than a stakeout, even an electronic stakeout allowing the eavesdropper to sit around in relative comfort, when nothing's happening. And if, as I suspected, Henry Yarrow was a decent run-of-the-mill citizen whose idea of excitement was watching old movies on television, I gave Fred Jenkins a maximum of twenty-four more hours at his post before he became totally rigid and had to be carried away.

“All right, Tony,” I said. “Do you have any more intriguing revelations for me? I mean, while you and Fred were guzzling all this wine, you didn't decide to investigate organized crime in the entire United States, did you?”

“Now, goddammit, I told you it struck us as a good idea at the
time
. Maybe there was some better way to go at it—why in hell you think I want you to take over from here?”

“Relax, Tony. Now, I know what Joe Civano looks like—I saw him up close three years ago when he was being booked on an ADW rap—which he beat, by the way—at the L.A. Police Building. Let's start with the sensible assumption that Joe Civano
is
dead, therefore Gil did not see Civano Tuesday morning, but instead saw some harmless old duck named Henry Yarrow. OK?”

“OK. So what?”

“You've talked to the guy. Describe him for me.”

“Well, like I said when I told you about first seeing him with Gil that morning, he's pretty big, six feet anyway I'd guess, and a good two hundred pounds, maybe more, a lot of stomach on him. Not like a potbelly, just a big chest and stomach kind of running into each other. Brown-haired, little gray, plenty gray at the temples. Fifty years old or so.”

“Did he have a moustache?”

“No. Clean-shaven.”

“You notice any scars or marks? Anything unusual about his face, way he was dressed, the way he moved?”

Brizante shook his head. “He had on a gray suit, all three times I saw him. Nothing unusual, business suit. And he looked fit, tanned. Real deep tan. I can't think of anything else.”

Among other things I knew that Joe Civano had been six feet, two inches tall, weighed between two-ten and two-twenty pounds, and had been a few months shy of his forty-seventh birthday when blown into oblivion Sunday
A
.
M
. There'd been a couple of noticeable scars on his face, he'd worn a heavy moustache and let his sideburns grow long, and was very dark-skinned.

“OK,” I said. “Now, about Jenkins. I take it you don't know how he's set up, but unless he's a pro or had easy access to some pretty good equipment, I'd guess he's using a little mike, or maybe a short-range radio transmitter. In which case he's very likely staked out quite near Yarrow's house. Do you know where Fred's—listening post is?” Brizante shook his head, looking a bit fierce, and I asked him, “Jenkins married?”

“Was. Divorced. Lives alone now.”

I asked Tony if I could use his phone, and called Jenkins' home, but there wasn't any answer. So I then phoned the Universalist Communion Church on Palos Verde Drive, caught the Reverend Stanley Archibald there in what he referred to as his “sanctum,” and arranged to visit him in fifteen minutes.

When I sat down near Brizante again I said, “It looks like we'll have to wait till you hear from Jenkins to find out where he's sitting, getting more and more bored. In the meantime I'm going to call on the Reverend, then talk to Yarrow and this widow—what did you say her name was?”

“Blessing. Mrs. Blessing.”

The Widow Blessing. It conjured up a picture of a kindly old lady in a faded old gray dress wearing black shoes and stockings, and with knitting needles in her old gray head. Probably she wasn't like that at all. Names can fool you.

So I asked Brizante, “What does she look like?”

“Tell you the truth, I didn't pay much attention to her. I was thinking about Civano then, you know. What Gil had just said. And after the first minute or so Gil walked out on the lawn with Yarrow, and I was looking at them instead of the woman. She was still standing in front of the door.” He squinted, thinking. “All I remember is she was wearing shorts. And something white on top. Blouse or shirt, maybe, but it was white.”