The Big Kiss-Off of 1944: A Jack LeVine Mystery (20 page)

“You want to know about the briefcase?”

“Boy, you’re smart. What was in it?”

“Nothing much. Just twenty-five big ones.”

He whistled. “Holy Mary. He try and buy you?”

“You’re close.”

“And you told him to get fucked.”

“Kind of.”

“So he got crazy in the head and tried to shoot you. You knocked the gun out of his hand, sapped him, and it was like taking candy from a baby, right Mr. LeVine?” Eddie was smiling like a fat pussycat belching feathers next to an empty canary cage. He had a right to.

“Eddie, in about two weeks why don’t you come by and we’ll have a little talk. You shouldn’t be an elevator jock.”

“That’s what I keep telling my old lady. She says I got plenty of time to be a big shot.”

“Nobody’s got that much time.”

“You’re right, Mr. LeVine. I think I got the nose to be a grade A dick.”

“I think so too.”

Eddie’s smile was so wide it practically hung off the sides of his face. “You mean that?”

“I don’t kid around about the big things, jockey, only the little ones. Give me two weeks, then we’ll talk.”

“I’ll knock the door down.”

“You going to tell your mother?”

“I guess so.” He was jiggling up and down on the balls of his feet.

“What’s she going to say?”

“Her?” He laughed. “She’s gonna hit the ceiling, but that’s all right. She’ll have to learn. My old man was a barber for twenty-five years and every year he talked about opening his own shop. When he died he was still third chair at Tony’s.”

“He a good barber?”

“I loved my father, Mr. LeVine. He was a great guy. But he was the worst fuckin’ barber in Brooklyn, no two ways about it.”

We smiled at each other. It was nice to talk to a human being for a change.

“I got to go before Vito has a fit. Thanks again for the twenty.”

And he was out the door, leaving me with my problems. I called Kitty Seymour and moved a dinner date we had made up a couple of hours, then pulled a beer out of the office tub. I locked the outer door, took the phone off the hook, and lay down on the musty brown couch that gets used maybe a dozen times per year. Somebody faints; I need to do some deep thinking. It’s usually the former, but this afternoon required some high-grade cerebration.

It was just past one when I began. By two I felt a little better about things, and at three I started to smile.

At four o’clock I put the phone back on the hook and departed the office, feeling very good about myself.

I had an idea and it was pure genius.

If Thomas E. Dewey thought so, too, I had an even chance of living out the year.

My dinner with Kitty would have been delightful, had I been able to keep my mind in the same room with my body.

“Jack?” Kitty asked, looking a little puzzled.

“Hmm?”

“You’ve been holding that lobster tail in your hand for about five minutes.”

“What am I supposed to do, eat it?”

She laughed. “Sounds like the suppository joke. The man buys suppositories and comes back to the druggist to complain. ‘They don’t work at all,’ he says. The druggist’s a funny guy and he says, ‘What’ve you been doing, chewing them?’ The other guy has a sense of humor, too. ‘No,’ he says, ‘I’ve been shoving them up my ass.’”

I liked that joke a lot and laughed enough to turn some heads in the restaurant, The Blue Marlin.

“It’s not
that
funny, Jack. You must be under a little pressure these days.”

She was the smartest woman who ever lived.

“I just like suppository jokes. Always did.”

“Still the chorus girl case?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“We’re back to ‘mmm-mmm.’ The case is why you have to be somewhere at nine-thirty?”

“You’re murder tonight.”

“You coming over afterward?”

“If I can still walk.”

“Jesus Christ. Jack?”

“What?”

“Be nimble.”

H
E WAS SMALLER
than I had guessed: newspaper photos had led me to believe that Governor Thomas E. Dewey, the Republican candidate for president of nine hours, was about my height. I put him at around 5’9”. This Wednesday night he must have felt a lot taller. His cheeks were flushed, literally, with success, his mustache was very black and sleek and neatly trimmed; his eyes were bubbling with triumph.

A Pinkerton had met me at the desk and ridden the elevator up to eighteen, then walked me to the door and disappeared. It was a little like the Waldorf set-up, except there was less officiousness and pomposity. The Waldorf aspired to class; the Sherry had it and didn’t have to keep shoving it in your face. There was no butler in 1807: Savage opened the door himself. He smiled.

“Mr. LeVine, please come in.”

Dewey was sitting in a corner of the living room, holding a half-filled brandy glass, looking radiant but composed. It was when he rose to greet me that I noticed the height differential.

“Jack LeVine, I’d like you to meet the next president of the United States.”

“Congratulations, governor,” I heard myself saying. “You must be a very proud man tonight.”

“Not proud really. More awed.” His voice was incredibly mellow and resonant. I had heard Dewey on the radio but that instrument couldn’t capture the rich velvet of his tone. “I was telling Eli on the plane that I’ve never felt so humbled.”

There wasn’t too much I could say to that, so I didn’t say anything. There was an awkward little silence which Savage filled, kind of.

“You had no trouble getting here, I hope?”

“Oh, no. Fine.”

“They had your name at the desk then?” Dewey resonated.

“Oh, yes.”

I couldn’t quite convince myself that I was speaking with candidate Dewey and not with some stooge made up to look like him. When you come down to it, a nice chunk of the slam a public personality carries comes from his inaccessibility. You never see the guy. Carried all the way, the ultimate public figure is someone who you suspect may not exist at all. The Pope, for example, wouldn’t be quite so majestic if you ran into him at Bickford’s every Wednesday. Dewey wasn’t all the way up there, not yet, but he was getting pretty close.

“Can I offer you a drink, LeVine?” asked Savage.

“Scotch and soda would be fine.”

“Scotch and soda it is.” He was Mr. Conviviality tonight. I didn’t quite trust it. A show for Dewey.

“Let’s sit down, shall we?” said the candidate, pointing toward the living room.

The room—drapes, rug, chairs, couch—was all cream and powder blue, with a nice discreet chandelier up on the ceiling. The white marble coffee table was covered with congratulatory telegrams and adorned by a simple vase that held about two dozen freshly cut long-stemmed roses.

“You find it a bit warm in here?”

“Not really, governor.”

“Well, I do.” Dewey chuckled, each chuckle weighing in at about forty kilocycles. He went to the window and opened it a bit wider, then stood looking out for a few seconds. This guy could be president. I didn’t really think he had a Chinaman’s chance, but sitting in the room with the guy, all I could think was White House. It’s a funny thing, but being physically close to a man of that stature somehow puts you on his side. I think it’s called seduction.

“Look at that,” Dewey said.

I got up and went to the window. He put his arm around my shoulder.

“Can you see the hansom?”

Down there was Central Park and a horse was clopping along the road pulling a hansom cab, its driver perched motionless in top hat and tails. The hansom passed under the street lamps. It was a warm and breezy night, and couples were promenading around the duck pond.

“It’s like something out of
The New Yorker
, isn’t it, Jack?”

I just shook my head, trying to come up with a zinger. “A hell of a town, governor.”

Dewey looked me straight in the eye, very happy. “That’s right. It’s a
hell
of a town, isn’t it. God, how I love it.”

Savage waltzed over and stuck a tall drink in my hand.

“Some view, eh, LeVine?”

“You know, Eli, standing here with Jack I just thought I couldn’t put up anywhere but this suite. After the election, I’ll only stay here.”

“Will it be large enough, Tom?”

“Goodness, I should hope so. Two bedrooms. Secret Service can have the suite next door.” He stopped and laughed. “Jack must think we’re pretty cocky.”

I just smiled. “It’s nice to dream, I guess.” It wasn’t the smartest thing to say. Dewey’s smile wavered for a second, but revved back up to two hundred watts after he decided the remark was innocent.

“It’s no dream, LeVine,” Savage said with an edge to his voice.

“No, no, I know exactly what he meant, Eli. He’s right. We’ve got more important things to do than chatter about where President Dewey is going to stay.”

The nominee returned to the couch and Savage took an easy chair. So did I. My palms were sweaty and the moisture level increased when Dewey gave me a long, searching look.

“Eli tells me you think we’re making progress in this dreadful matter,” he finally said.

“Some.”

“Would you care to tell us where you think we stand at this moment? You know I’m an old prosecuter so don’t feel you have to pull any punches with me.”

“Tom’s seen it all,” Savage said, taking a long swallow of his drink.

I nodded respectfully. “The latest news I can report is that an agent of the blackmail group visited me this afternoon and offered twenty-five thousand cash if I got off the case. When I turned him down, he was kind enough to take a shot at me. Luckily I spun out of the way a second before he fired or he’d have had me. I managed to shake the gun loose and knock him out.”

There was a brief silence. I heard people walking past the suite: a few ladies, a few gentlemen. They were laughing politely.

“Well, that’s quite a story, Jack,” Dewey said. “Who do you think is pulling the strings in this operation? Eli seems to think the Syndicate might be involved. Sounds quite logical to me. As you know, I made it very hot for that crowd when I was in the D.A.’s office.”

“It doesn’t wash with me,” I told him. “For one thing the mob doesn’t go around sending one man with twenty-five grand and no one to back him up. Those boys usually do things in twos and threes.”

Dewey smiled.

“I was testing you, Jack. It doesn’t wash with me either.”

Then Dewey turned to a door in the rear and said, “Come on out, Paul.” The door opened and I wanted to get the hell out any way I could.

“A friend of yours?” Savage said, as Detective Paul Shea, Homicide, sauntered out of a rear bedroom.

“You gentlemen know each other?” asked the governor.

“We met under unfavorable circumstances.” I stood up and shook hands with Shea, who kind of grunted. He was a red-haired fireplug of a man whose neck was measured in feet rather than inches. He had the blue eyes and stub nose of an Irishman, and the nicks and facial scars of a cop who al ways went for the fight. A couple of the teeth in his mouth were his. Paul Shea had risen in the police force on the sheer strength of his brains and muscle; he had as much Irish charm as a bagel.

“Please sit down,” Savage said cheerily. “You look surprised, Jack.”

“I guess I feel you don’t have too much faith in me.”

“Oh
really
, LeVine.” Savage was taken aback by my anger. People weren’t supposed to get angry at him. “It wasn’t our intention to make you feel this way. Tom knows Detective Shea from his years in the D.A.’s office and called him up for a little assistance. Detective Shea raised a few questions and we thought it best to get you two together.”

“The last time Shea and I got together I had double vision for a week.” Shea smiled. That was his sense of humor. “And why were you hiding him in the back?”

“We weren’t hiding him at all, LeVine, but we did want the chance to talk with you alone for a while.”