Operation Bamboozle Read online

  1

  Next morning, Luis emptied the Chrysler, drove it to Juárez and dumped it in a sidestreet where the only spectator was a little girl in a dress made from a flour sack. She had round brown eyes as big as English pennies. She watched as he removed the license plates, and she asked a long Mexican question. He gave her a quarter. “I met your brother in San Carlos,” he said, and walked back over the bridge to El Paso. He bought a big and only slightly used Packard convertible, cream with red trim, for cash, and drove it to Cliff Boulevard. Julie had taken the pictures from Daniel’s walls. Everyone was ready. They mailed the keys to the real estate agency and drove north.

  Trailed by the FBI. Brennan’s men had searched the body and found a Texaco payslip in the name of Floyd Boyd. The Bureau office in New Mexico had for some time been interested in knowing Floyd Boyd’s whereabouts; well, now El Paso PD could help. He was in the morgue.

  A Special Agent drove down and had breakfast with Brennan. Boyd was Blanco, a Mob informant on the lam from Chicago: that explained Tony Feet’s presence. Pity about the heart attack. No crime, no charges. And Murphy? A loose cannon with an itchy finger. File and forget.

  But the collection of oddballs at the Cabrillo residence had not assembled to discuss Republican politics, not with the daughter of an East Coast Mafia boss plus the sidekick of Sam Giancana in the mix.

  Brennan had men watching them. They knew when Luis lost the Chrysler in Juárez and when he bought the Packard. They were browsing the dealer’s forecourt as Luis went into the man’s office to sign the paperwork. Took five seconds to fix a bug to the back axle. Its transmitting radius was only 10 miles, but that was enough to make the tail a whole lot easier; and when the Packard loaded up and headed north, El Paso PD made a gift of the receiver to the FBI.

  Brennan roasted Fitzroy for his lies, kicked him out and closed the case. The freaks were elsewhere. Let some other jurisdiction bust their balls over them.

  2

  Agent Fisk liked to be the bearer of good news; it gave him a warm feeling in the cardiovascular system, much like the effect of twenty brisk press-ups. “I didn’t call New Mexico,” he said. “New Mexico called me.”

  Prendergast was standing by the window, looking down at the snarled traffic on 54th Street. “What a mess,” he said. “I knew when they started tearing down the good old Third Avenue El, this is what we’d get instead. So: astonish me.”

  “Sudden death strikes two by night in the grounds of chez Cabroy, El Paso. First, local punk gets shot in self-defense by retired police chief. Nothing for us there. But second … ex-Chicago Mob hitman turned FBI informer, Frankie Blanco, found dead of a massive heart attack.”

  Prendergast was amused. “Blanco? Natural causes? The Mob will never live down the shame. So: two punks on ice. Only question worth asking is: where were Cabroy when the bodies fell?”

  “Indoors, chewing the fat with Tony Feet from Chicago plus a former Mob bookkeeper named Lutz, and—someone who needs no introduction—Stevie Fantoni.”

  “Uh-huh.” Prendergast sipped cold coffee. “Low-lifes exercising their First Amendment Rights of Assembly. Unsavory, yes. Illegal, no.”

  “They didn’t stick around. Lutz went to bed, Feet took the plane, the rest switched cars and left town. The Bureau is tailing them.”

  “And what do you make of all this, Mr. Fisk?”

  “A pattern’s emerging, sir. A sort of network.”

  “You see a network. I’ll tell you what I see. I see a plate of cold spaghetti, all loose ends with nothing leading anywhere and who needs it anyway?”

  As a boy, Fisk had often eaten cold spaghetti. He liked it. But he said nothing. Prendergast was not the kind of man you could swap metaphors with.

  3

  Feet chose a coffin, size XXL, and Blanco traveled in the plane with him. A hearse was waiting at Chicago airport. They drove to St. Luke’s. Sam Giancana was there. A back-hoe had just finished excavating the original grave, as far down as the rotting coffin of the drunk who reckoned his pickup could beat a freight train to a crossing. A few birds, attracted by fresh earth, watched. Blanco was lowered. The boxes met with a dull clunk. The straps were withdrawn and the men stepped back. Tony Feet glanced at Giancana. “Who’s a pretty boy, then?” Giancana said softly. He took a packet of birdseed from his raincoat pocket and tipped some into his palm and scattered it over the coffin and put the packet back in his pocket. The men stood like statues. They knew their manners. Mr. Giancana gave a lot of business to this funeral parlor. It might be birdseed to him but it was bread and butter to them. Feet put his hat on and turned away. The backhoe operator pressed the starter, and the engine fired and panicked the birds. They never learned.

  Later that afternoon, a memorial mason brought a new headstone, a fast job to please Mr. Giancana and anyway only three words had to be carved:

  When the St. Luke’s priest saw it he didn’t like it; but the Catholic church wasn’t famous for challenging the Mob. Did you ever hear of a Mafiosi getting badmouthed by the Pope in St. Peter’s Square? Well, then.

  4

  Konigsberg was a very small castle in the mad Bavarian style, high in the foothills of the Santa Monica mountains. It was vacant because the owner, screen actor George Parr, had shot dead his mistress, torch-singer Brandy Dix, in the master bedroom. Miss Dix had just returned from the night club where she was resident chanteuse. His attorney argued self-defense. Parr was being repeatedly threatened by a demented fan who wanted to bear his children, and when he awoke suddenly at four in the morning believing an introducer to be in the room, he feared for his life and fired the fatal shot before he turned on the lights. The prosecutor asked him why he didn’t turn on the lights first. “And expose myself to that madwoman?” Parr said. The prosecutor then asked how he had succeeded in hitting a moving target, first shot, in total darkness? “I didn’t mean to kill anyone,” he said. “I only fired to scare her off.” He was trapped. The jury knew the lights had been on. He knew what he was doing. So it had to be murder. On the other hand he was a good actor, had served as a Navy lieutenant in the Pacific war, which made him a hero and he was halfway through shooting a picture which everyone wanted to see; whereas Brandy Dix had been photographed kissing a black jazz musician. On the lips. That fact was irrelevant yet the image loitered in every corner of the courtroom. The verdict was not guilty. George Parr finished the picture, which was only so-so, and then he was found skinnydipping with a fifteen-year old Girl Scout and got two years in the slammer.

  Julie and Luis signed a six-month lease on Konigsberg. By that time Parr would be out. “It’s cheap because we’re looking for tenants who are good caretakers,” the agent said.

  “We’ll try not to spill blood on the carpets,” Julie said.

  “The architect is a different matter,” Luis said. “I may have to shoot him.”

  “He shot himself,” the agent said. “Gardener comes twice a week. Dog’s called Othello, worth keeping on, he’s earthquake early-warning. If he hides under the billiard table, join him.”

  By LA standards, Konigsberg was in the clouds. The canyon road switchbacked up through the mountains, and the house looked down on the canyon. On a clear day you could see almost all of Los Angeles, twenty-or thirty miles of it, spread as flat as a blanket. On a not so clear day what you didn’t see was ten million suffering bastards breathing the carbon monoxide they made as they drove. There were compensations. Oranges were cheap, and hey, isn’t that Humphrey Bogart buying flowers? No, forget it. Nothing like him.

  The new tenants made a leisurely tour of the house. It was plastered with turrets and spires and suchlike pixie-shit, but the rooms were spacious. They lost Stevie in the master bathroom; it had a tub big enough for two; hot water foamed from a lion’s-head spout and already she was peeling off her t-shirt. “You scrub my back, I’ll scrub yours,” she offered Luis, but he was leaving with the rest. She stroked the lion’s head. “Luck’s gotta change,” she whispered. “It’s gotta.�
�

  The roof had a belvedere. The architect, fearing attack from the Philistines, had added battlements and put arrowslits in the corners, but from the inside it was just a lookout.

  Othello had followed them up. He was an elderly basset hound and the stairs were tough on his stumpy legs. He looked at the battlements and knew when he was beaten. Julie picked him up and showed him Los Angeles. “MGM built all this in a week and a half,” she told him. “It’s for a movie called Sodom and Gomorrah and All That Jazz. Ain’t that something?” He licked her face.

  “Where is anything down there?” Princess asked. “All looks kind of samey. Where’s the center?”

  “LA hasn’t got a center,” Julie said. “It’s all suburbs. Slice it where you like, everything always come up suburb. Nobody knows why. See all those highways? The natives drive everywhere, night and day, searching for the soul of LA. Futile quest. Ain’t no soul to be found. It’s a medical miracle, this city. All pulse and no heart. Jeez … this pooch is heavy.” She put Othello down.

  “It’s too flat,” Luis complained. “I want rivers, hills. What do they all do down there? Don’t tell me they drive.”

  “Right now, they’re eating tuna salad sandwiches,” Princess said. “With or without pickle. Is that the ocean?” She pointed. “I never saw an ocean before.”

  “It’s a waste of space,” Luis said. “No money in it.” But the fridge was empty, so they drove down the canyon, turned onto the Pacific Coast Highway and ate tuna salad sandwiches in a café at Topanga Beach, just to test Princess’s idea. “The pickle was the best part,” she said. “We should’ve had steak sandwiches.” They went down to the beach and showed her the surf, which was small. It disappointed her. “I expected more pizzazz,” she said. “This stuff ain’t tryin’.” They went home.

  Luis and Julie took Othello for a walk around the grounds. “Every prospect pleases, and only man is vile,” he said. “That squalid actor got away with murder. I despair of justice.”

  “No, you don’t. You’re pissed off because Jimmy de Courcy conned you out of ten grand. Relax. We’re not broke.”

  “Irrelevant. You should know by now, money means nothing to me.”

  She lightly kicked his foot and he tangled his ankles and fell. “Con artists are all the same,” she said. “You can con yourself better than anyone. Money means absolutely every bloody thing to you, Luis.”

  He sprawled on the grass and stared up at her. The dog came over and sniffed his head. “Stay away from women, Othello,” Luis said. “They’ll eat you alive and send you the bill plus twenty percent service.” He stood up. “By Jove, that rest has done me a world of good.”

  “Why can’t you just come out and say it? You want sex.”

  “Do I? By God, you’re right, I do. Stay close to women,” he told Othello. “They have magical powers.”

  They walked back to the house, arms around each other’s waist. “We’re not broke,” she said, “but we’re not rich any more. De Courcy, the Packard, this house …”

  “It’s only lettuce,” he said. “Somebody out there is itching to give us big bundles of it.”

  The days passed peacefully. A pleasant climate, a comfortable house, three interesting women around him: any normal man would consider himself lucky. “Another bloody awful blue sky,” he said. “It’s not weather, it’s wallpaper. I’d give a fiver for a dirty English cloud.”

  “So stay indoors,” Princess Chuckling Stream said. “Look at the real wallpaper. Twenty bucks a roll, it cost.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Real estate agent told us forty.” Julie said. “Men always lie.”

  “Four times I been stiffed by men,” Steve said. “Maybe stiffed ain’t the word.”

  “I’m getting out of here,” Luis said. “My poor brain can’t take this fierce intellectual pace.”

  He went swimming. The surf was low, the beach was empty, the sea was salty. Even as he walked into the water, he began to feel this was a waste of his energy, one man making a tiny dent in the sleek sprawl of blue Pacific. He plowed on, swam out, turned onto his back and floated. Small waves arrived and washed through him, a wet roller-coaster ride to nowhere, and went on their way. The Pacific didn’t give a damn about Luis Cabrillo. Nor did the colossal stainless-blue sky. Why should they? He wasn’t making any difference to anything. “You’re bored,” he said aloud, “because you’re boring.” Okay. Agreed. For the sake of argument. And the answer was?

  “Don’t I know you?” a man said.

  Luis turned his head. A face that was mainly chin and cheekbones, underneath black goggles and inside a brick-red rubber helmet. “I’m the king of Siam,” Luis said. “Heading for home. Who are you?”

  “Charlie Foster. Saw you out here, came to say hello. Volunteer lifeguard.” They shook hands, an awkward act, done head-high. “Not my real job. Just filling in. Between movies. Weren’t you in that pirate thing? Broken Cutlass?”

  “Still trying to live it down,” Luis said.

  “Yeah, well, Paramount, what can you expect?”

  “I thought it was Warner Brothers.” Luis took a mouthful of the Pacific and spouted it at the sky. “All studios look alike after a while.”

  “Sure. I’m between movies, me. Used to be a stuntman. Ever see Pony Express?”

  “Who hasn’t?”

  “That wasn’t Gary Cooper fell down them stairs. Yours truly did it. Three flights, I fell. One take.”

  “I do my own stunts. Trained British Commandos in the war. Seven ways to kill a man with your bare hands. I invented five.”

  A wave surged softly through them while Foster thought about that. “Gee whiz,” he said, and swam back to shore. Luis didn’t like the way he said it: too flat. Sounded bored. He followed Foster, not hurrying, using an easy crawl, and waded through the remains of the surf. Foster was toweling his head.

  “Perhaps unarmed combat isn’t your cup of tea,” Luis said.

  “Paramount never made a pirate picture called Broken Cutlass,” Foster said. “Neither did Warners. Gary Cooper never made anything called Pony Express, with or without a stunt double falling down three flights.” He worked the towel on his arms and legs.

  “Well, you dreamed them up. You should know.”

  “It’s a game I play. You’re not Hollywood. My guess is …” He stopped drying himself and looked at Luis as if he’d just seen him. He exhaled and made his lips vibrate. “Chiropractor. You got the shoulders for it.” Luis laughed. “You’re not military, anyway,” Foster said. “Seven ways to kill a man? Garbage. I was in the US Rangers, we knew a dozen ways to kill a Jap barehanded. Any half-assed chiropractor would know that.”

  “The trouble with us chiropractors is we don’t know our own strength,” Luis said. “I killed a patient yesterday. Name of Brubaker.” Too late. Foster was striding up the beach. “I told Mrs. Brubaker it was a heart attack,” he called. Foster ignored him.

  The incident stuck in Luis’s mind for days, annoying as an itch he couldn’t scratch. He was eating dinner with the women, pork chops, mashed potato, broccoli, cooked by Stevie, when he said, “I got conned by a guy on the beach. No money, nothing like that, he just mistook me for a movie actor so I played along, but all the time he was playing me along. Wasn’t even a pro. Just a joker. Pathetic. I’m getting too old for the con game. Time I went straight. Find a university, get a degree.”

  “Ma always told me to marry a doctor,” Princess said. “You got a nice smile, you could be a brain surgeon.”

  “Or you could spend your life lancing a boil on someone’s butt,” Julie said.

  “I got a mole you can practice on,” Stevie said. “Never seen it myself, but …”

  “Go straight?” Julie said to him. “You couldn’t go straight on a tightrope, kid. You were born crooked. You came down the birth canal tap-dancing for dimes.”

  “I have a penchant for biology,” Luis said.

  “Yeah, don’t we all?” Julie said. “Just k
eep it in your pants while Stevie’s hot. Which is always.”

  “Maybe I should start painting nudes,” Princess said. “Nudes in the rain, maybe.”

  “Me and Luis together,” Stevie suggested. “Double value.”

  “You never quit, do you?” Julie said.

  5

  Fisk found Prendergast at the water cooler and said: “Cabroy are shacked up with the Fantoni broad plus one, in an LA love nest hideaway owned by acquitted slayer screen heartthrob George Parr, currently in the slammer for playing hunt the salami with a Girl Scout, both naked as jays.”

  “That’s appalling,” Prendergast said. “It’s squalid. Don’t you know that Mr. Hoover has vetoed the use of cheap slang in the Bureau?”

  “Pity. This report would be a lot shorter if the LA office learned to write like Damon Runyon.”

  Prendergast read it, twice.

  “Horsefeathers,” he said. “Nothing connects. Where’s the crime? Nobody’s making a dirty dollar. Californication, that’s all this is.” He stuffed it into Fisk’s breast pocket.

  “Dirty dollar. That’s good. Can I use it?” Fisk asked. “Has it been passed by the Director?” He left while Prendergast was thinking about it.

  Princess made some quick sketches of Stevie standing nude and shiny in the bathtub while the hot water made clouds of steam, until the heat got too much and they called it a day. Stevie pulled on a robe and they went downstairs to get a drink and an opinion.

  Julie looked at the sketches. The paper was bent and stretched and the charcoal line was often smeared, but the message was unmistakeable. She held up the best sketch and glanced sideways at Stevie, sprawled on a davenport, much of one breast and most of the opposite leg exposed. “Three husbands and no joy,” Julie said. “Where did they sleep, in the Frigidaire?”

  “Medical problems,” Stevie said. “One died on me.”

  “Literally on you?”