Джо Горес: Cases

“Did you make your record?” asked Penny.

“Not yet, but thanks for remembering.”

She shook a finger at him in mock severity. “If you stayed in one place — maybe L.A. — you’d get a contract for sure.”

He laughed. “You got me, Penny — I can’t stay in one place.” He turned to Dunc and Drinker with twinkling eyes. “Private eyes! Maybe you guys can find me a record contract.”

They chatted, drank more bubbly. Finally Pepe looked at his watch and sighed and stood up from the table.

“I’d better get back. After the grand opening in May, the piano lounge becomes a show lounge; they’re bringing in Vegas headliners, and then where will I be?” He bent and kissed Penny on the cheek. “Long life and every happiness, beautiful bride.”

They were staying at a downtown hotel with a garage next door because Drinker had insisted on indoor parking. The two couples rode up to their respective rooms together.

“Where’d you meet the piano player?” asked Drinker.

“Las Vegas,” said Dunc.

“Then again on the Sunset Strip,” said Penny.

“Now here.” Drinker was thoughtful. “Lad gets around.”

Sherry’s head was on Drinker’s shoulder, she was almost asleep, but Penny looked more alive and sparkling than she had all day. Dunc realized all over again how much he loved her, how her vitality energized him. They parted outside the elevator.

Lad gets around, Dunc thought. The guy was a musician, musicians had to go where they got the best offer. Or maybe, the way his mind worked, Drinker thought Pepe was connected with the big boys. But anyone who lived around gambling at least brushed up against mob guys, that didn’t mean they were connected.

Despite the champagne, both he and Penny were ready. He entered her tentatively at first, awed at the expanded context of then lovemaking since they’d last been together.

“It’s okay, darling,” she said. “We can’t hurt anything.”

He was a piston driving their love, then Penny was bucking under him, her incoherent cries of climax bringing on his own. He gasped, “Move... over little... man. Make room for... Daddy.”

Daddy. He was going to be a father. Of a boy, of course.

Pepe closed down his piano at 2:00 A.M., went to the bar to sip cold white wine and stare sightlessly at the backbar mirror.

Dammit, the man had to know. Or suspect. He was a natural-born observer, made even sharper by months as a private investigator. Running into Dunc twice could be accidental, but at some point the kid would figure it out. Unless...

Could Dunc be that sly? Hiding what he knew behind that open midwestern face, biding his time for the moment to act?

Maybe, maybe not, but Pepe couldn’t take the chance anymore. For his own peace of mind he had to act first.

Sometime into Dunc’s head would pop the sequence of events during that last night in Vegas. Some night he would sit bolt upright in bed, beside that new bride of his — she had known there was significance in Pepe’s sudden disappearance from the Strip, he had seen it in her eyes tonight — and Dunc would remember . And, remembering, he would go back to read the Las Vegas newspapers for last July 5, and then he would know ...

The hell of it was, Pepe really liked the kid. He wasn’t small-minded or mean-hearted, and he was a genuine fan of Pepe’s music. Pepe could count his fans on the fingers of one hand.

But survival came first. He didn’t want to have to move on as he had in L.A. Keep ducking out before the job was done, and word would go out he’d lost his nerve. Guys like Mr. David had people like Pepe, who had not only fronted for the mob but carried out hits on face-to-face orders from the bosses, retired with flowers the minute it looked like they were losing their nerve. That was the only way someone in his line of work was ever retired. With flowers.

Look what had happened to Jack Falkoner just because a couple of kids maybe had seen a body being carried away.

Uh-uh. Not for Pepe that little stutter-step to the coffin. Time to make another phone call about Dunc; not, as it had been in L.A., just to have someone check him out. A careful voice answered the phone in San Francisco.

“Give me Mr. David,” Pepe told it. “Right now.”

On Sunday they didn’t even pry their eyes open until noon; it never occurred to Dunc to go to Mass. What with one thing and another, they were lucky to join Drinker and Sherry in the hotel casino at three in the afternoon.

Drinker looked them over critically. “Married life agrees with you,” he said to Penny, then to Dunc, “You look like hell.”

Penny did look ravishing, her hair full and soft around her face, her eyes sparkling as she laughed at Drinker.

“I love my husband.”

Sherry took Penny’s hand. “And he loves you, sweetie, make no mistake about that. Come on, let’s win a lot of money.”

“I’m a killer at blackjack,” said Penny.

She had a system, right pocket/left pocket. You bought chips with the stake in your right-hand jacket pocket, played at a dollar table. Winnings went back into that pocket until the original stake was replaced. After that, winnings went into the left-hand pocket. If you lost your original stake, you quit for the night. Penny didn’t have to quit, except, finally, to eat.

They’d just started their salad when a bellhop came to their table and said Drinker had a phone call.

“Must be Sherry, calling me from the office.”

“Very funny,” said Sherry.

They were on dessert and coffee when he finally came back with a troubled face. “That was Wee Jimmy Haggerty,” he said.

“He’s a cop, Drinker’s ex-partner,” Dunc told Penny.

“There’s been a break-in at the office, I have to go back.”

“We’ll go with you,” said Dunc, half rising.

Drinker shoved him back down again. “It’s your goddamn honeymoon,” he growled. “Sherry and I can handle it.”

Dunc had his hands resting lightly on Penny’s shoulders from behind as she played blackjack, aware of her body heat the way you were aware of the heat from the fire on a cold night out in the woods. The same kind of comfort, the same kind of warmth. But his thoughts followed Drinker back to San Francisco. Had the files been rifled? Was it something to do with one of Drinker’s private clients whose names were never spoken? Had he left some loose end in one of his own files?

Penny looked back to turn that brilliant smile on him.

“I’m going to pay for our honeymoon, sweetheart.”

She was his lucky Penny. When her luck turned at midnight, she cashed in and gaily stuffed the neat fold of her winnings into Dunc’s inner jacket pocket. Up in their room, neither of them seemed able to stop making love. Finally they fell asleep from sheer exhaustion, tumbled together on the bed like puppies.

The front desk woke them at 9:00 A.M.: Dunc was needed in San Francisco. He didn’t really mind. They were now man and wife, they could do their loving wherever fate might take them.

When he went down to settle their account, he was told their bill had been paid. “Compliments of Mr. Cope,” said the clerk. His face was wreathed in smiles. “A wedding gift.”

That Drinker, he could always surprise you. What did they call it? A real beau geste.

It took him twenty minutes to find the Grey Ghost — he hadn’t been drinking when he parked it originally, so why... Then he saw it about ten spaces up on the other side of the garage. Well, he’d had other things on his mind. A wedding, for instance.

It was a sparkling day, bright blue sky and temperatures up into the forties. He got the car warmed up and the heater working, he didn’t want his pregnant Penny facing the cold.