Il Beso Di Morta
by Miles Archer
She paused for a moment after opening my
office door. Let me get a full
gander of
the cashmere sheath dress that
packaged her
goods. I let my eyes have their
fun for a
few seconds. My libido thanked
me.
"I'm looking for a private detective."
Her voice poured out like warm
oil from a
hot motor. Smooth and steamy,
promising heat
and frictionless movement.
"You've found one. Have a seat."
I put on my professional listener
face and
ignored the primitive urges tickling
the
underside of my cortex. I tried
not to swallow
visibly, although for some reason
saliva
was building up in my mouth.
"I don't know what to do about this..."
She waited for the word she wanted.
"...situation."
"Well, why don't you begin at the beginning."
I usually want my clients to
cut to the chase,
but she was a multimedia treat
for eyes and
ears, so I let her take her time.
She took that kind of deep breath people
take when they're about to dive
under water.
Or tell a long story. In this
case, it was
the latter. The inspiration caused
the dress
to expand in places that were
already pretty
pneumatic anyway. My pulse pounded
in my
temples.
"My name is Monica Grant." She
said it like she'd had a lot
of practice
introducing herself.
I stood, like Mom taught me, accepted the
fingers she offered and did my
best to create
an affable smile. I don't get
a lot of practice
being affable in this line of
work. She continued.
I'll summarize:
Seems hubby was in the investment business,
ran a company that advised union
pension
funds where to put their dough.
All those
nickels and dimes coming out
of the workers
checks, clink clink clink. Seems
they add
up to a pretty nice chunk of
change and plenty
of people would like to have
some of it.
I have an economic theory. Didn't need to
read a book for this one: I figured
it out
all by myself. When you've got
control of
a lot of money, people will want
to be your
friend. Her story supported that
theory.
"This person, this Dominic Abbruzio,
thinks he's a business partner
of Don's."
Don is hubby. I hadn't heard
about him, but
the name Dominic Abbruzio flashed
like a
Hamms Beer sign.
"Thinks he's a partner or is a partner, Mrs. Grant?" I wasn't disappointed
that she was married. Monica
Grant is not
the kind of woman that goes out
with private
detectives. She wouldn't like
bourbon and
I couldn't see her eating greasy
burgers
at the corner cafe.
"Well, that's just my point. I can tell
that Don is unhappy about this..."
she
liked to fish for words, "...situation,
but he won't talk about it."
She snapped
open a cigarette case. It glinted
yellow
in the pale fluorescent light.
She held it
out to me. I didn't really want
one of her
cigarettes, but I took the case
from her
just to feel its weight. Yeah,
it was gold
all right. I took one of the
black cigarettes.
Gold lettering on it: "Monica.".
I knew they made personalized
cigarettes,
but I admit it was a first for
me. It was
a Dunhill, but it tasted like
any other cigarette.
She snapped a gold lighter and
leaned over
the wooden barrier of the desk
to light me.
The angle offered me a view and
I wasn't
so much of a gentlemen as not
to look. She
wasn't so much of a lady that
she seemed
to mind.
"So your husband has a business partner
that you don't like. And your
husband ain't
too crazy about him either. I
can understand
why."
"You can?" She seemed surprised
that I understood her problem
without her
finishing the story.
"Sure. Mr. Abbruzio is one of many our
fine Italian-American citizens. And, to coin
a phrase, some of my best freinds are Italian.
He's a successful businessman. Well diversified
in his interests. Booze, slots, broads, unions...he's
a truly catholic in his interests."
"Oh, Mr. McCool, you're very clever.
That was quite good, really."
My ego
purred. I know it's wrong to
let her looks
affect me, but I couldn't do
anything about
it. Okay, I'm a sucker for beautiful
women
with lots of money. Somehow I
don't think
that's unusual.
"So, if I were to guess, I'd say that
there's something up with the
union pension
fund."
"That's what I don't know. And I'm worried
about Don."
"Well, you should be. Working with Razor
can be hazardous to your health."
"Razor?"
"Dominic's nickname. The Razor. Old-fashioned
guy, used to carry a straight
razor when
he was a kid. In fact, he lost
the first
knuckle of his index finger with
the thing."
"Oh, I always wondered about that. It's
not the kind of question you
can ask, though,
is it?"
"I wouldn't ask Razor about it. Seems
he accidentally cut it off and
the guys teased
him about it for years. Then
one day a guy
who'd been ridin' him turned
up dead. With
his, uh, how can I put this delicately?
With
a certain appendage stuffed in
his mouth.
Nobody teased Razor about it
again. But the
name stuck."
She didn't give me an "oh goodness"
look, like I was expecting. That
story isn't
usually one that I would tell
in polite society,
but I thought it indicated a
lot about Mr.
Abruzio's temperment.
"So you think Don is in a lot of trouble?
I mean, that this Abbruzio fellow
is dangerous?"
"As long as your husband does what's
expected of him, I'm sure he's
fine. But
there's no two weeks notice in
the Mob. You
don't quit 'cause you get a better
offer.
There's only two ways out: you
can get old
enough to retire or you can die.
Even retired,
you're not out, you're just not
as busy.
Hell, why do you think those
guys that run
the families are so old? They're
scared shitless
to retire. Figure once they don't
control
the power someone will whack
'em just to
get them out of the way. It's
a tough line
of work, Mrs. Grant."
"Please call me Monica."
"Monica. It's still a tough nut. Mr.
Grant is between a rock and hard
place."
"Can you help us? Please Mr. McCool?"
I liked it when she said "please."
"I assume you realize that this is going
to cost." I may have liked
her looks,
but I can't pay the rent with
it.
She unfastened the clasp of her purse. She
had kept it on her lap, like
it somehow wasn't
safe on my floor. She may have
been right.
If Barbara hadn't been at lunch
then, she
would have picked her clean.
Secretaries
who haven't been paid in a month
get like
that.
She opened the tooled leather checkbook and
raised her pen. Her green eyes
skewered my
soft brown ones. "Five hundred
is the
customary retainer, Mrs., uh,
Monica."
Damn, I hate it when I stutter.
Her pen glided across the check and she pulled
it free. I didn't reach for it
so she had
to let it fall onto the blotter.
I watched
it float to the surface. For
a second I thought
it was going to wind up on the
floor and
then I would have had to chase
after it,
but I trapped it against the
tan cardboard
as gently as possible. Don't
like to appear
greedy.
"What can you do?"
"Well, the first thing I can do is see
just what the deal is with your
husband and
Dominic."
"Oh, you musn't let Don know. He'd simply
die if he thought I'd told anyone
about this."
"Well, you're right. He'd die all right,
although I don't know how simple
Razor would
make it. I plan to be very discreet,
Mrs.,
uh, Monica." Again, Dammit!
She graciously
overlooked my inability to use
her first
name. Then I realized I hadn't
invited her
to use my given name. Geez, could
I get any
more stupid?
"Do you think you'll be able to help?
I love Don. I wouldn't want to
have anything,"
pause, "happen."
"In that case, why don't you take your
check back and just forget about
it. I wouldn't
want to be responsible for your
husband getting,"
I paused, "hurt." I
was going to
say "killed," but decided
there
was no point in being dramatic.
Or accurate.
Barbara breezed in just as Gorgeous was leaving.
She caught me holding that manicured
hand
and I may have inclined slightly
from the
waist, unconsciously. As soon
as the door
banged shut, she gave me a look.
"And what was that?" She had a
way of looking at me that spoke
volumes.
I didn't need to hear it again.
"That, my dear, was the rent. And dinner.
And even a couple of cocktails."
I waved
the check like a battle pennant.
Or white
flag.
Barbara's ruby-tipped fingers snatched my
prize out of thin air. She studied
the amount
then blessed me with a smile.
"Let's
get this in the Goddam bank right
away. Then
you can buy me a double!"
I filled her in over spaghetti and garlic
bread at the US Restaurant on
Columbus and
Broadway. They've got a way of
steaming zucchini
that seems like magic. The squash
is al dente but suffused with garlic and oregano. The
marinara sauce is the color of
day old blood,
still has the taste of chianti
hidden behind
it and chunks of mushroom, shrimp
and clams
that dance in your mouth. We
sucked it up
and washed it down with a bottle
of the house
red. Best Damn Dago red in the
City.
"What are you gonna do for them? Can
you really help him with Razor?"
"Shhh! Geez, don't use that name in
here." Just then the Broadway
side door
opened and a young man entered.
He gave the
place a careful look, then stood
to one side.
The man behind him was older,
probably forty
, maybe forty five, but his hair
was still
dark and his figure trim. He
walked into
the crowded little place like
he owned it.
At a table against the wall another
man stood
and raised his hand, not a wave,
not a salute,
but a little of both.
When the new fellow arrived at the table
I was startled to see the greeter
bow his
head quickly and take the proffered
hand
to his lips. It was so fast it
was over almost
before I realized what he'd done. You don't see that kind of thing too often
anymore, even here in North Beach.
North Beach is the Italian neighborhood of
San Francisco. It's so Italian,
they got
a bar there that has opera on
the juke box.
That's right, E24 will get you
Pavarotti,
not Elvis. Even so, you didn't
see too many
guys who got the old respect.
The young bodyguard took his patron's coat
and hung it up, then slid into
the outside
chair, where his right hand could
be free.
They wore nicely cut black suits
with deep
lapels and white-on-white shirts,
with French
cuffs held together with cuff
links big enough
to choke a large dog.
I murmured to Barbara. "Ixnay on the
afiamay stuff." She looked at me for
a second but worked it out.
The three wise guys ate their dinner. There
wasn't anything interesting about
that, they
just ate their veal parmigiana or osso buco like good little boys and drank bottled
chianti instead of the house stuff that comes
in a carafe. I only mention it because the
old-fashioned salutation caught my eye.
Monica Grant had agreed to let me into her
husband's home office after he
left in the
morning. A short, round, middle-aged
Latin
woman in a maid's uniform opened
the door,
her face as carefully blank as
the Sphinx.
I introduced myself and gave
her the hundred
watt smile. Her smile flashed
and those obsidian
eyes warmed up.
"Ms. Gran' 'specteen ju." She stepped
back from the door. "Ms.
Gran' din'
say wha' a beeg man you were."
She eyed
me up and down in a frankly appraising
way.
I felt my face get warm. Her
laugh chortled
up out of her belly and caused
her bosom
to quake. "Don' be shy!
I tell her ju
here. Hov a seat in dere."
She pointed
to a room off the entry hall
big enough for
a decent game of basketball.
At least, big
enough the way they used to play
the game.
Leaded glass windows with that
Old-World
crosshatch pattern revealed a
million dollar
view of the City from the Tiburon
peninsula.
The maid clumped down the hall,
muttering
something in Spanish about "...un
hombre
muy macho."
A fire burned in the round hearth occuping
one corner. The firebox could
have held a
calf. I wasn't used to seeing
a fire going
in daylight, although the damp
weather called
for one.
Across from the fireplace loomed a mahogany
bar, black with age; beveled
glass mirrors
doubling the shelves that held
cut crystal
glasses and rows of bottles.
I pulled up
a stool and hoped that Mrs. Grant
would take
the hint.
I was studying a solid chuck of polished
green alabaster with a bowl carved
in it
for butts. The outside was jagged
uncut stone.
It was heavy. I was thinking
what a great
murder weapon it would make when
she spoke,
startling me. Thank God I didn't
drop the
thing on the polished wood.
"Mr. McCool! I'm so glad you came."
You'd have thought I was stopping
by for
tea.
"Uh, I suppose you should go ahead and
call me Doug." I wanted
to make up for
my lapse the previous day.
"Of course. Now, can I get you something,
Doug, or do you want to get right
to work?"
"Well, how about if I do what I've come
to do and then maybe we can have
a drink.
Your husband's gone for the day?"
"Oh yes. He won't be home until late.
But I do have a Junior League
luncheon, so..."
"Of course. I won't be long."
"If you would follow me." She turned
into the hall. Hell yes, I'll
follow you
to the ends of the Earth. At
least she didn't
say "Walk this way"
or I would
have had to glide across the
floor like a
runway model.
We trekked down the marble hall. I took in
the wide staircase, the paintings,
the statue
on a pedestal by the fountain.
I'm not much
on art, but I was pretty sure
I'd seen that
figure somewhere once. Maybe
in a book. Then
she opened a raised panel door.
"My husband's office. That Abbruzio
man meets with him here when
he comes over."
She said the mobster's name like
it left
a bad taste in her mouth.
"Thank you. I can manage on my own.
Would you like to meet me somewhere
when
I'm done?" I was trying
to think of
a nice way to say "Scram
lady."
"Of course. Just ring the bell here
and Hermosia will show you where
to find
me." She started to go.
"By the
way, you seem to have turned
Herme's head.
Whatever did you say to her?"
"Nothing. Just being polite." That's
me, friend of the workingman.
Or woman. A
regular Karl Marx. She closed
the solid door
behind me.
What I had to do would only take a couple
of minutes, but there's no point
in letting
clients know how easy it is to
bug a room.
I put one bug in a lamp, on the
top of the
finial where it wouldn't be conspicuous
and
then unscrewed the mouthpiece
of the phone
and popped in my other little
friend. Unless
he swept the place he'd never
know they were
there. I doubted Razor would
worry about
bugs. He might have worried about
his own
telephone, but he probably didn't
think the
FBI would bug this room. Of course,
I wasn't
working with the restrictions
of warrants
and the Constitution. But then,
that's why
people hire me.
"Okay, sexy. This is test. Can you read
me?"
The pager on my belt vibrated after a minute,
telling me that Barbara had heard
my voice.
She was in the van parked in
the driveway.
And not very happy about it,
but someone
has to be on the other end to
check the equipment.
I cased the office for a few minutes but
the desk drawers were locked
and they were
good enough that I would have
had to make
marks on them to get them open.
The file
cabinet was also locked. Nothing
like a thorough
man to make a private I's life
hell.
I buzzed for Hermosia. She appeared magically
and led me back to the front
room where Monica
waited.
"Well, that didn't take long. It's a
little early, but would you like
a drink?"
"Sure." I returned to my perch
on the stool while she walked
around the
back of the bar. "Got any
Scotch?"
"Would some single malt do?"
"Of course."
"Up or over?"
"Over."
She poured a generous splash into a heavy
highball glass filled with ice. While her back was turned I reached into
my pocket and pressed another
bug onto the
underside of the bar, back in
the joint where
the counter met the front panel.
That blue
sticky stuff 3M makes held it
in place. The
miracle of modern science.
"Here you go." She had thrown together
a quick vodka gimlet for herself.
Up, not
over.
"Confusion to the enemy." We touched
glasses. She held my gaze with
her own. I
tried not to stare at her eyes,
her lips,
that stray lock of blonde curl
that touched
her jaw. The lobes of her ears
were decked
out with diamond studs the size
of quarter-fine
gravel. I realized that it's
baubles like
that women like her expect.
"I hope you can help us, Doug."
I was surprised to hear the way
my name sounded
on her lips. She said it as though
she had
called me "Doug" forever.
"Let me see what Abbruzio's up to. Then
we can figure out where to go
from there."
The cold single malt slid down
my throat,
finer lubricant than this old
engine was
used to. But I could develop
a taste for
it.
She settled on the stool next to me and placed
one hand on my thigh. High enough
to get
my attention. "I so thankful
you're
here to help me." She exhaled
lime.
I inhaled deeply. Her other hand
came up
to my face and guided me into
her lips. I
tasted the gimlet and the flavor
of lipstick.
Her lips moved around like she
was eating
a peach. Her tongue was cold.
I was running
out of air when she released
me. We made
arrangements on how I would contact
her.
Barbara gave me a look when I got in the
van. Of course she had been monitoring our
client and I as soon as the bug activated
"You and Mrs. Gotrocks certainly seemed
to get along just fine."
I gave her an innocent "who me"
look. I was going to add a verbal
denial,
but decided that would be protesting
too
much.
We set up the receiving gear in a fake fire
hydrant and left it on the curb.
You know,
fire hydrants are something people
never
pay attention to. If one appears
on the street
no one bothers to think about
it. Ours was
a real hydrant (don't ask how
we got it)
with a waterproof box inside.
The damn thing
weighs a ton and I thought I'd
bust a gut
getting it out of the van and
onto the curb.
The cool thing is we could access
the tapes
from the top, so at least I wouldn't
have
to hoist the bloody thing up
and down a lot.
Back at the office Barbara ran a credit check
on Grant and Abbruzio. You'd
be surprised
at how much you can find out
about someone
with a credit check. Hey, even
Mafia Dons
use credit cards and checking
accounts these
days. I mean, it looks pretty
strange to
pay the electric bill with a
wad of C notes,
know what I mean? We also obtained
their
driving records.
The Grant's report, for example, showed that
they were stretched pretty thin
and were
late payers. But most of their
recent bills
were on time and they looked
like they were
catching up. I assumed this indicated
a recent
upsurge in their cash flow.
Hubby's DMV record was clean, but Ms. Monica
had two moving violations this
year and was
pretty regular with them in the
past as well.
Drove a Jag. I could have lived
on what she
had to pay for insurance each
year. I noticed
that she had gotten quite a few
of them on
101, heading up to Marin from
the City. Running
late from a visit in San Francisco?
Abbruzio's credit check was revealing in
the sense that it gave us the
name of his
"employer" and from
that we could
run a Dun and Bradstreet on the
company.
Everything seemed perfectly fine,
his personal
and corporate credit was great.
But we did
find a chain of interlocking
companies. I
can tell you that when you start
finding
that a fellow's company is owned
or connected
to another company, and that
company to another
company, and so on, what you've
got starts
to smell pretty bad. The old
shell game,
in other words. All the companies
had innocuous
names containing the word "credit"
or "financial" in them.
My next goal was to bug Grant's office, but
that was going to be a little
trickier. I
decided to use the telephone
repairman gag.
Only once in five years has someone
actually
wanted to see my ID, and the
laminated card
with my picture on it worked
fine. I don't
stick around very long and no
one is the
wiser.
I put one bug in his handset and another
over by a little conference area
at one end
of his office. I didn't stop
to admire the
ultramodern blonde wood desk
(I guess this
guy had a thing for blondes of
all types)
and although tempted to give
his filing cabinets
a try I needed more time than
the phone man
gag would afford me. I try not
to use B &
E tactics unless absolutely necessary.
"Don't
do the crime if you can't do
the time."
I put our recorder into the crawl space in
the hallway outside his door.
Nobody pays
attention to a guy in khakis
on a ladder
either. I wish I could put guys
in the basement
or have the really good gear
that the FBI
uses, but my clients don't have
that kind
of budget.
Now that I had the bugs in place all I had
to do was service the tapes every
couple
of days. Listening to the tapes
is tedious
as hell and Barbara helped out.
Between the
two of us we could keep up with
the job,
but it involved a full day every
week listening to calls to the dry cleaners, chit
chats in the living room and
detailed conversations
about investing from Mr. G. Nothing
interesting
and no calls from Abbruzio to
Grant.
Once a week Monica and I got together for
a report and another check. We
would meet
at the Hoffman Grill and take
a booth in
the back. The joint is busy and
noisy enough
that we could have nice chat
without worrying
about anyone overhearing.
I had told her what we had learned about
Abbruzio. I did not tell her
what we had
learned about them. I don't like
to let my
clients know that anytime they
hire me, I
investigate them as well. Can't
be too careful
in this line of work.
Week four we finally got something interesting.
Abbruzio called Grant, returning
Grant's
earlier call:
"Don. What's up?" Abbruzio had
a raspy voice, no trace of accent.
After
all, he'd been born in California,
not Sicily.
He didn't sound tough, like a
New York hood
with a Brooklyn accent, just
like a successful
businessman without a lot of
time. Age had
roughened it up a bit and he
coughed a lot.
"Dom. Look, we need to get together
and talk about Capital Consultants."
"What's the matter?"
"Well, with interest rates going up
we're losing a lot of money these
days."
"How much?"
"I'm not sure, it changes weekly, but
at this rate-three million a
month."
Abbruzio was silent for a moment.
"You can't fix it?"
"Dom, I need you authorize Western Financial
to start making payments on that
loan."
"That ain't gonna happen, my friend."
It was a statement of fact.
"But Dom, you don't understand. If this
keeps up my investors are going
to take a
bath."
"Well, you win some, you lose some.
You know how it is."
"I wouldn't want someone to go over
the accounts too carefully."
"Hey, that ain't gonna happen, Don.
Relax. Things will pick up again.
Look, you
get together with Al and the
two of you see
if you can't work out some interest-only
payments for a few months. You
know, take
the heat off. You just need to
ride this
thing out."
I turned off the recorder. Barbara looked
at me and I her.
"Sounds like someone's nuts are gonna
get squeezed." She has a
delicate way
of expressing herself.
"Yes dear. I'd say that there's trouble
on the horizon for the good ship
Grant."
"What ya gonna do for Monica baby?"
"I don't know. I think the only thing
that's gonna keep old Don out
of the pokey
is a run to the Feds. If he agrees
to set
up the Razor and give them the
whole enchilada
they might keep his ass out of
jail. Do the
whole WPP thing for him and that
tasty squeeze
of his."
"She doesn't look like the kind of gal
that wants to live in Scottsdale
under the
name 'Smith'."
"Well, if they don't do that she'll
be the Widow Grant."
There was one other conversation that held
our interest. Well, actually
it wasn't a
conversation, exactly. The bug
under the
bar picked up the blonde bombshell
and another
guy talking. It was just chit
chat, nothing
very significant. But then there
were faint
noises on the tape that sounded
like...well,
the sounds people make when they're
doing
something more physical than
talking. Barbara
ran her tongue over her lips
and smiled.
When the man gave a shout toward
the end
of the tape, she laughed. "I
always
wondered what a blow job sounds
like."
I said nothing, but my imagination was talking
a mile a minute.
I called Monica and we arranged to meet.
She insisted that she attend
her Save the
Whales luncheon first, so we
agreed to meet
in the Top o' the Mark bar around three.
I was already on my second bourbon and branch
when she walked in. Every pair
of eyes followed
her progress. The women looked
envious; the
men, well it's just that mid-brain
thing
Nature gave us that says: "Nail
that
one!"
She wore a green silk dress that clung to
her like cobwebs. Her ass looked
like two
cats fighting in a sack. Judging
by the distinct
outline of her nipples I judged
her not to
be wearing a bra. She had a chunk
of apple
green jade dangling between those
breasts
that must have weighed six ounces,
suspended
from a thick gold chain, the
kind the Chinese
use to carry their wealth out
of the country.
The emerald on her finger matched
her eyes.
My radar went up along with something
else.
She ordered a Grasshopper. Must have been
on a green kick. I started on
bourbon number
three.
"What have you got to tell me?"
She had a way of looking into
a man's eyes
so that you felt like she was
hanging on
every word.
"We have some tapes that would arouse
the interest of the US Attorney's
office
and the SEC. The question is:
do you want
to see hubby go to jail or rat
out Razor
to the Feds? That's about the
only choice
he's gonna have."
I saw a flicker of something in those cool
eyes.
"What should Don do?"
"I'm not really in a position to advise
a man I've never met, Mrs. Grant.
Don't you
think the three of us ought to
get together?"
She rejected that idea. "Don would be
furious if he knew I were meddling
in his
affairs." I thought she
was trying to
save his ass, myself, but she
lived with
him, I didn't. "Could you
turn your
information over to the authorities?
Without
involving Don?"
I shook my head to emphasize the ludicrous
innocence of her idea. "I
don't think
I can call the USA's office and
tell them
I have tapes but I'm not going
to identify
who's on them. This is a black
and white
deal, Monica. You've got to choose."
"I want to save Don from himself and
those repulsive people. Please
contact the
authorities. They can protect
him, can't
they?"
"Yeah, they can try. But things are
going to be hot for you and Mr.
Grant."
"Yeah," she almost smiled. "They
probably will be."
"And there isn't a damn thing I can
do for you once they get involved."
"Oh, you've been a guardian angel, Doug.
How much do I owe you?"
She wrote me
a check with a large number of
zeros.
I thought things over for a day or two and
then called the United States Attorney's
office in San Francisco. The nice young AUSA
listened to the tapes and my story. He rubbed
his palms together in a most unappetizing
gesture. I guess he smelled a promotion.
I left our files there and went back to trying
to find ways to pay the rent Barbara walked in late and tossed the Chronicle
and a bag of Danish on my desk.
I went for
the Danish first.
"You might want to look at the front
page, piggy." I love it
when she insults
me first thing in the morning.
It sort of
frames up the whole day for me.
With this warm invitation I opened the paper,
leaving the Danish gently clamped
between
my teeth. The headline made me
open my mouth
and thus the Danish fell onto
the newsprint,
sticky side down of course.
"SF Financier Killed in Car Bomb Blast".
He got four columns on the left
hand side,
not bad for a non-international
story. Seems
Don Grant, late of Capital Consultants,
went
out to start his Mercedes the
previous evening
and took a trip to a place he'd
never been
before.
I saw the grieving widow on the tube that
evening, while I sucked down
soft fried noodles
and char shiu bao, chased them with Tsing Tao beer. She looked
fine in black.
A couple of weeks later the Feds indicted
Razor Abbruzio for racketeering,
stock fraud,
extortion and murder. He looked
a little
stunned when the cameras caught
him entering
the court house.
Six months later he was sentenced to twenty
five to life.
A couple months after that Barbara and I
were dining at the Poodle Dog, courtesy of a client who didn't know any
better and thought that PI's deserved the
same kind of class treatment as his business
pals.
I saw the young hood from nearly six months
ago come in the front door and
do his looking-around-for-guys-with-guns
bit and then stand aside so that
a fantastic
blonde could enter. The former
Mrs. Grant
moved into the room and then
stood there.
The dim lights grew dimmer in
the presence
of her radiance.
Behind her came the other guy. The guy I'd
seen getting his hand kissed
like he was
the Pope.
All of sudden I felt a bad feeling. I nudged
Barbara's foot and nodded in
their direction.
"Oh yeah." She smiled at me. "What?
You thought she was looking out
for hubby?"
Our client looked at us as though we'd left
him behind, because of course,
we had. "You
mean she used me to set him up?"
"Sometimes you get screwed without the
kiss." Table of Contents
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