The Big Kiss-Off of 1944: A Jack LeVine Mystery (27 page)

Read The Big Kiss-Off of 1944: A Jack LeVine Mystery Online

Authors: Andrew Bergman

“Look like you’re about to make a speech,” I snapped at Savage.

The banker gawked. “Lee Factor!” The color returned to his cheeks. He whipped off his jacket, undid the bow tie and leaned toward the mike. He looked very good. In fact he thought he was going to make a speech.

“I’m going on, Jack. The hell with it. We’ll wreck them.”

Factor started beating on the glass. The Pinks tried to restrain him.

“You’re going on now or not?” wailed Feigenbaum, waving the telephone receiver.

“Yes, I want to,” insisted the banker.

“No!” I yelled at Feigenbaum. “Under no circumstances.”

“Jack, I must! I want to!”

“You want Anne to become a national dirty-joke? Are you completely nuts?”

Minus twenty seconds.

“What? What?” Feigenbaum was asking the wall.

“NO, NO, NO!” I bellowed, waving my arms.

“Jack,” Savage said desperately. “
Lee Factor.
We can sew this election up. He’s standing right here, FDR’s boy. It’s all ours now.”

“He’s got the films, you schmuck.” I ran to the door and pulled Factor away from the Pinks. He was a trembling puppy of a man. Tears welled in his eyes.

“In here?” I knelt by the film case.

He nodded blankly.

I opened the case and pulled out a reel of film. I un-spooled a few feet and held the film up to the light.

Ten o’clock.

And so it was the witching hour of ten when I beheld the loveliest, fullest breasts ever to adorn a banker’s daughter. Anne Savage daintily removed her panties and wriggled her hips. She lay down on a bed.

I cleared my throat.

“It’s Anne,” I told Savage.

“Don’t show it to me. Destroy the reel.”

I turned to the presidential aide.

“The negative. Give.”

He stared at me for a long moment and shook his head heavily, like a horse. Factor’s mind wasn’t working at all now. It was coming loose in bits and pieces, like branches caught in a swiftly moving stream.

I knelt down again, as “The Pepsodent Show” started coming in through the speakers.

“Ladies and gentlemen, it’s ‘The
Pep
-sodent Show.’”

“Please,” said the trumpeter, who had been sitting quietly. “I got to get back.”

“Sure,” I said. “Thanks a million.”

He got up and slowly went out the door, his trumpet dangling from his left hand. He hadn’t the foggiest notion of what he had done or who was involved or why he had done it. All he had was a hundred bucks and enough raw material for a year of nightmares.

I looked through the case.

“No negative here, Factor.”

I straightened up and stood inches from Factor. He looked at me and moved his lips. A bubble of saliva formed at his mouth.

“Turn around,” I told him. He didn’t, so I walked in back of him for a frisk. The negative was in a hidden raincoat pocket. I removed it and held it up.

Factor passed out.

T
EN DAYS LATER,
Eli and Anne Savage and detective Jack LeVine, of Broadway via Orchard Street, sat around the Savage swimming pool in Aspen, Colorado, clutching highballs and staring out at the Rockies. Kitty Seymour floated lazily in the pool. The sky was as blue as the future.

“Mr. LeVine,” said Anne, “I still don’t understand why
I
was blackmailed.”

“You weren’t supposed to be. That’s where the whole plan got queered. Fenton’s job was to shake down your father, but when he got the films his instincts took over and he realized he could do a little business with you on the side. It was a very dumb play. Butler found out and had him killed, then hired me to put me off the track.”

“And Rubine?”

“Rubine’s the saddest story of all. They could have let him go and he wouldn’t have stopped till he reached the North Pole. But he worked with Fenton and knew the whole story, so they iced him just for insurance.”

“It is simply unbelievable,” said the banker, sipping reflectively at a Tom Collins. “And what news of Factor?”

“Factor suffered a stroke, a bad one. He’ll probably live, if that’s what you want to call it. In a few years he should be able to make ashtrays.”

Kitty called to me from the pool.

“Jack, the water is delicious. Stop the shop-talk and come in.”

“In a second.”

“You know Tom and I were talking about you last night, LeVine,” said Savage. “About the skill and personal courage you showed throughout this whole affair. He suggested you come on over and join our side.”

“Side?”

“The campaign. Help us out with logistical problems. Plus you have a common touch that would help us immeasurably.”

“Be the house prole, you mean. Translate what the dumbbell on the street means when he moves his mouth.”

“LeVine, you’re being extreme.” Savage finished his drink with a swallow.

“Father thinks the world of you,” said Anne. She lay across an air mattress, wearing a bathing suit that just barely covered the treasures revealed on celluloid. When I looked at her too long, I had trouble with my trunks.

Savage continued his pitch. “LeVine, hasn’t this episode revealed to you the moral bankruptcy of the Democratic party?”

“I knew it all along. Listen, Mr. Savage, I’m strictly for LeVine. For your sake, I hope Dewey wins. For my sake I don’t care. Let’s leave it that way.”

“If you say so.”

“It’s the only way that works.”

I got up and took a couple of steps toward the pool. I stuck in my toe.

“Play with me,” said Kitty. Her hair streamed water and the drops gleamed in the sun like a crown.

I stepped back, then ran forward and took a long, cool dive, deep into the blue-green water. Down. Down. Away from the noise and the guns and the cheap hotels.

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This edition published in 2011
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