The Big Kiss-Off of 1944: A Jack LeVine Mystery (24 page)

“Warren Butler was part of this, Mr. Savage, and he was named ambassador to Paraguay today. That looks suspicious.”

“Suspicious isn’t enough.” He paused. “Butler the producer?”

“The producer of Anne’s show.”

“Incredible.” Savage shook his leonine head. “LeVine, my name is money. Literally. Even to brush it with scandal would have the gravest economic and monetary repercussions. I just can’t have it.”

He was starting to fly off the handle and I had to get him back on, if we were going to survive the night.

“Okay, forget it. I understand your position completely. You’re right.”

“It’s not just me, LeVine. If we can’t prove this thing beyond a shadow of a doubt, then Tom looks like a damn fool. He has to be a statesman.”

“Not a rackets prosecutor.”

He permitted himself a small smile. “Exactly. I assure you we talked this all out yesterday. Tom realizes that making blackmail charges would cast him in a role he played six or seven years ago. But now he’s running for president, and in wartime. He’s going to be dealing with Churchill and Stalin, for God’s sakes. He can’t go around making wild charges.”

“He can’t make a gangbusters play is what you’re saying.”

“Precisely so.” Then his eyes went sad and his jaw slackened. “What do we do, then?”

I lit up a Lucky and inhaled for as long as I could.

“We go to Radio City, take the elevator up to the twenty-sixth floor and proceed to studio 6H. We stand in back of a microphone and wait until 10:00
P.M.
By which time, I believe, the films will be in our possession.”

“Why haven’t they been returned before now?”

“Because these guys are apparently playing chicken. They can’t believe you’d actually go on the air and expose your daughter. They figure the ‘political broadcast’ to be just a puff for the governor. When they see you go in, that’s when it’ll hit the fan.”

Savage puffed on his pipe and gazed into its smoke, as if searching for guidance.

“Do you think they might try to prevent us from entering the studio?” His speech was slow and thoughtful.

So was mine.

“Yes. Definitely.”

He didn’t blink. “I see.”

“What kind of physical shape are you in, Mr. Savage? No heart condition or anything? I ask because we might have to do some running tonight.”

“I work out daily and my physician says I have the body of a forty-year-old man. You know I’m fifty-two,” he concluded, proudly.

“Fine, then we average out. I’m thirty-eight and have the body of a fifty-year-old.”

He permitted himself a genuine belly laugh over that. I was glad to see him loosen up a bit.

“Oh, I’m sure you’re jesting, LeVine. I saw you come flying through my window that day. You seemed very fit.”

I stood up. “I’ll manage.”

“We ready?” he asked.

“I think we’d better go. You have a car here?”

“Of course.”

“Tell your driver to get lost for a while. At five past ten he’s to meet us in front of Radio City, that’s 50th just east of Sixth. Tell him to keep the doors open and the motor running.”

“And for now we’ll walk?”

“It’s only a couple of blocks. And I think we should stay on our feet from here on in.”

It was a warm evening, but the sweat that streamed off my body and formed little pools in the hollows above my BVD’s was more than the heat warranted. We left the building at around 8:30, with the sky just beginning to darken. I had memorized the evening radio schedule on WEAF:

         7:30—Dick Haymes Show

         8:00—Ginny Sims

         8:30—“A Date with Judy”

         9:00—Mystery Theatre: “Bunches of Knuckles”

         9:30—World at War: Carl Van Doren

       10:00—Pepsodent Show: Charlotte Greenwood, with Marty Malneck, his band, and the famous “Hits and Misses”

If we had time, I’d like to hear “Bunches of Knuckles.” It had a nice ring to it. I mentioned the show to Savage and he smiled wanly. His jaw was set and a little vein in his temple was more prominent than it had been before.

The sidewalks were thick with people and kids. The children, many of them holding little flags, were starting to yawn. The sun had vanished for keeps, day was yielding to night.

And we were two blocks from Radio City. Neither of us was speaking now. No little jokes or tension-breakers. Everything was at stake. Savage almost stepped in front of a cab and I had to pull him back.

One block and Savage’s nerves were stretched tighter than bridge cables.

But he had nothing on me. Not after I stopped on the west side of Sixth Avenue, looking east.

The entrance to Radio City was surrounded.

“Jesus H. Christ,” I said, nearly to myself.

“What is it, LeVine?” asked Savage.

“Take a gander at the animal life in front there.”

Some very familiar thugs, heavies, and free-lance muscle were crowding the doors leading to the studio building. I recognized the Rover Boys who had waited for me on that afternoon in Sunnyside, and the tall and silent men who had infested the lobby of the Waldorf. All stood looking up and down the street, their eyes peeled, their hands stuck deeply and ominously in their pockets.

They were waiting for us.

I pulled Savage into the entrance to a Blarney Stone corned-beef-and-booze joint.

“You see someone you recognize?” he asked me.

“There’s an army of thugs nesting outside the doors. Some of them I know, the others I don’t want to know.”

He removed a handkerchief from his handsome navy blue suit and mopped that elegant brow. “This, as they say, is the cutting edge.”

“Whatever,” said the detective.

“What’s their game, LeVine? Kidnap?”

“Too much possible publicity. They’ll try and detain us.”

“Do we turn back or make a run for it?”

“Neither. If we run, we’re as noticeable as camel drivers. Not to go is out of the question.”

“If we hold flags,” Savage said with a grim smile, “perhaps they’ll mistake us for tourists.”

It was fantastic.

“You’re a genius, Mr. Savage.”

He shook his head. “I was joking, Jack. It was an idiot idea.”

“The flags were, but not the tourist bit. We’ll get on a sight-seeing bus. They all stop at Radio City.”

“How do we get one from here?”

“Don’t move from this spot until I wave you over.”

I pulled my hat low over my brow and fought past the crowds. It wasn’t such a long shot: the buses stopped at Radio City every half-hour or so, so the hicks could tour the radio studios and see a show. We would blend right in. The problem was time.

And then it wasn’t. When I peered down 50th Street, I immediately saw a big beautiful Gray Line Special with lots of glass and SIGHT-SEEING and fifty rubes craning their necks for a glimpse of Walter Winchell crossing the street with a “Press” card in his hat and a notebook in his hand. The bus was moving slowly down the block as the light turned green. No good. I could never flag it down.

The light wasn’t a very long one, but the Gray Liner was only six cars away from it and moving. Five cars. Three cars.

Suddenly a cab, bless its miserable driver’s heart, stopped dead in the center of the street to pick up a fare. The fare took his own sweet time as the bus driver leaned on his horn. The hackie got the fare, turned off his roof light and moved up. The bus followed.

Still green. Now green and red. Turning. Now red. The cab ran the light and the bus jolted to a stop. The driver’s window was open.

“You stopping at Radio City,” I called to him.

He turned his head and stared at me, a toothpick jutting from the side of his face. Except for the lumber, he looked well-groomed, even theatrical.

“Last stop, bud.”

“Let me on.” I whipped out my inspecter’s shield. “Police business.” I started sweating the green light again.

“Sorry, can’t.” He turned away.

“One block, official business. Me and the lieutenant.”

“I don’t understand. You on the level?”

I decided to get angry.

“I’m on the level and there’s nothing to understand, not when it’s official police business.” Light was still red. “You double-park these boats all over town and we give you more breaks than you’re worth.”

He grinned. “I guess you guys have done me some favors.” Then he leaned over and the door squeaked open on the other side. The light turned green. I ran around the front and waved over Savage. He came over double-time. Cars started honking.

“Hurry up, eh?” said the driver.

Savage got in, I followed, and the driver slammed the door shut.

A bus full of hayseeds gazed at us. Savage and I went to the back and grabbed a couple of seats.

“Christ almighty,” he whispered.

“It’ll work. It’ll work.”

The bus rolled across Sixth and slowly came to a stop outside Radio City. The driver pulled down a little hand mike.

“Ladies and gentlemen, your last stop on the Gray Line Blue Ribbon Tour of Manhattan is fabulous Radio City in Rockefeller Center, where many of your favorite radio programs are broadcast each and every night. We’ll have the pleasure of touring the actual radio studios.”

Oohs and ahs from the hicks—mainly middle-aged and dressed to floor the big city. I took a peek out the window. We were parked right at the entrance.

“Take a look,” I told Savage.

They were in raincoats, bulging raincoats, these men with the bent noses and cauliflower ears, the palookas, the schtarkers. Others were less obvious: clean-looking, if thick-necked, candidates for the G-Man Training Center.

“How do we get off?” whispered the banker.

“Slowly, and in the middle of the group. When we go through the doors, we accelerate and go for the first open elevator door.”

“Tonight, for example,” the driver went on, “we’ll have the special privilege of attending a live broadcast of none other than that sixty minutes of music and fun, ‘The Pepsodent Hour.’” This guy thought he was Harry Von Zell, and the explosion of noise that followed his announcement was incredible: a din and babble and chatter of such force that a couple of the uglies looked up into the bus.

“Get down,” I hissed.

Savage and I hunched over in our seats. A couple across the aisle stared at us like we were Loeb and Leopold.

“Police business,” I whispered to them. “Please act naturally.”

The couple turned and faced forward, little smiles fixed on their faces. Husband, a fat baldie of about fifty, whispered to Wife, a garden rake of the same age, and she chuckled and shook her head. Big doings in the Big Apple.

“Seats for these broadcasts are hard to come by,” said the driver, “but your Gray Line ticket includes a reserved seat—front row center—for ‘The Pepsodent Hour.’ So, if you will, we’re running a little late, step lively out of the bus and follow me into the lobby. We’ll tour the fabulous Radio City broadcast facilities and then air time, Pepsodent time, is ten o’clock.”

Everybody started scrambling out of their seats, including the president of the Quaker National Bank and myself. We elbowed our way into the middle of the group, in back of an obese and varicose-veined lady of around sixty.

“How come you come in so late?” she demanded of me.

“Police business,” I said, lips barely moving. “Face front and you don’t know me from Adam.” I bit the words off. Her eyes got a little crossed and she turned toward the front.

“Jesus Christ,” Savage whispered into my ear.

“We take it nice and easy,” I told him from the corner of my mouth. The group started forward. We got near the front.

“Anyone looking?” the banker murmured as we neared the doors.

“Not that I can see. They don’t even see these buses, take them for granted.”

Savage and I got off and kept our faces held rigidly to the front. The thick-necked men were either scanning the street or whispering into each other’s ears.

We followed the other tourists like elephants plodding around a circus ring, trunk to tail. It took maybe three seconds to reach the doors and we were a half-second away when I heard a hoarse bellow: “THAT’S THEM—WITH THE RUBES!”

“Move it,” I snarled at Savage, and we pushed hard through the revolving doors. I knocked the fat lady over and reached out to guide Savage around her fallen carcass. When I looked over my shoulder, four or five of the gorillas were frantically groping their way through the three sets of doors.

“They’re coming, LeVine,” gasped the banker.

“Time to use that forty-year-old body. Straight ahead!”

We sprinted across the black marble floor at full tilt, heading toward a bank of elevators that stood thirty yards away. The lobby at Radio City consists of a lot of small shops divided by long corridors broken by regularly spaced banks of elevators, eight to a set.