Mickey Spillane - Kiss Her Goodbye

"When was this?"

"Four, five months ago." She cocked her head and her eyes narrowed as she regarded me. "We need to tell each other our stories, Mike. You want to go first?"

I did.

I told her how Doolan had been found in his apartment with the night latches undone. How whoever killed him was close to him, a girlfriend maybe. How a young would-be dancer got herself mugged and killed in a war zone near McCormick's Funeral Home the night we gave Doolan his send-off. How the dancer's apartment had been searched, and how a boyfriend of hers had been killed. And when I mentioned Basil's pebble, her eyes flared and her nostrils, too.

"You know something about that, baby?"

"I do. But go on, Mike."

I told her about Dulcie Thorpe getting run down because some amateur got sloppy making a try for me. I told her about Assistant D.A. Angela Marshall's interest in the case, but did leave a few details out—why spoil a great homecoming? I explained how Anthony Tretriano wasn't really deserving of his reputation for going straight, and how his Club 52 was a degenerate's Disneyland that was about to go the big-time franchise route, like McDonald's. Cocaine with that?

I told her everything. Almost.

"Okay, doll. Tell me about your spring break vacation."

There was something wistful in her half smile. "I have to give you credit, Mike. You came back to the city and in a few days gathered enough information to come to the same conclusions that Doolan and I had worked for over many months. But we had gone the second step—we had a strong lead on who and where Little Tony's coke connection was."

"In Colombia."

She nodded. "Let me dispense with one false assumption you made—those fabled stones of Basil, that unpolished pebble of yours? There are no others. It's the last one."

"The last? Why?"

"Because despite the legend, Basil did not escape the Holocaust, not really. He was betrayed by a high-level Nazi who had agreed to help smuggle Basil into Switzerland in exchange for the stones as well as a handful of precious gems already cut and set in rings and other jewelry. The exchange was made, all right, and the Nazi got the pouch of pebbles ... but Basil escaped the gas chamber only in the sense that he died under a gun."

"Why has a stone turned up now?"

"After the war, a small cadre of Nazis hiding out in South America used the gems to build their new lives. This included the predictable cover stories and lavish estates, not to mention top-notch tutors to teach them a new language and culture ... but eventually the need to create a new, ongoing income became imperative. This group of Nazis—three of them, two ranked just below Goebbels, the other was two notches under Himmler—used the stones and cut gems over the years ... parceling them out to discreet, wealthy, very private collectors ... to become the masters of the Colombian drug cartel."

"Gems were a perfect way to fund their activities," I said.

"Yes—your theory about the mob using them for money laundering was essentially correct, only it wasn't the mob. It was the cartel."

I was nodding. "And Doolan sold two valuable paintings, which he neglected to remove from his will, to fund your South American trip. What the hell did you do down there, doll?"

Her chin went up, proud of herself. "I landed a job as the executive secretary to one of the three masters of the cartel. They have also built up legitimate businesses over the years, in part for cover and money laundering, but some are very successful in their own right."

"How did you and Doolan swing getting you in that close to the top guys?"

Her smile had an impish quality, which in such a big sleek cat of a woman should have been silly, but wasn't. "I have contacts that even Doolan doesn't have ... that even you don't have, Mike. You know I worked for Military Intelligence during the war."

"And did a C.I.A. stint in the Cold War. Which I could hardly forget. So they helped you with a cover story?"

"They call it a 'legend' these days, Mike. See? You're not the only legend in this partnership." She stroked my cheek. "Through those contacts, I got tight with some D.E.A. agents. They are anxious for this information."

"Bet they are. So your federal friends paved the way?"

"Yes."

"So what did you learn?"

"Plenty. I have microfilm of financial records and extensive photographs of all three former Third Reich bigwigs—they have been discreet over the years about having their pictures taken, as you might imagine. And I have confirmed their relationship with Anthony Tretriano. He'll be taken down by the D.E.A. and I.R.S. within days."

Old Alberto had been right—he'd had contacts, too.

"Doll, what was the photography bit? Why did Doolan want those pictures of Chrome, and where does she fit in? He wasn't really shooting photos for some L.A.-based reporter, was he?"

She laughed lightly. "Doolan was no photographer, Mike. You knew that."

"That was you taking the shots of him posing with Chrome, right?"

"Right. And as for Chrome, I don't know where or even if she fits in, Mike. She's an entertainer, and a very rich, successful one, and apparently Tony Tret really is crazy about her. Which surprises me, because I always thought he leaned the other way. But these days, you never know. The pictures weren't of her, anyway."

"Sure they were—I saw them. They were in Doolan's files."

"Well, she's in the photos. But we were after shots of the three guys in her band."

"Her band?"

"Yeah. So-called band. They're phonies. My friends in the D.E.A. suspected those three might be connected to the Colombian bunch, and they are. They're not musicians, not really—they're bodyguards with a long association with the cartel."

I snapped my fingers. "I knew they weren't playing those instruments on stage. Chrome was singing to a prerecorded track—they were just faking it, miming it."

Velda shrugged. "It may be as simple as Chrome needs protection. She's a big star in South America, and the word is that she's primed for superstardom here as well. Those three bodyguards are the only direct connection between her and the cartel."

"So who was the pebble for?"

She frowned. "What do you mean, Mike?"

"I mean that kid Ginnie Mathes—she was an innocent, manipulated into being a delivery girl. Somebody mugged and killed her before the handoff was made. Who was supposed to get that last stone of Basil's?"

Velda shook her head. "No clue. But it sounds like you think the mugging really was a mugging...."

"I can't prove it, but I can tell you what makes sense to me. I think Ginnie Mathes got back together with Joseph Fidello, maybe not steady again but just saw him a few times when he was between cruise-ship gigs. And I think sailor-boy Fidello, who had been around, saw that unpolished gemstone and knew what it was. Knew that his dumb little ex-girlfriend had temporary possession of an object of untold value."

"So he mugged her?"

I nodded. "But Ginnie wasn't as dumb as Fidello thought—the pebble wasn't in her purse, it was tucked in the sleeve of her blouse."

"Then who killed Fidello?"

"Whoever sent Ginnie to make that delivery. That's who went to Ginnie's apartment looking for the stone, and that's who went to Fidello's apartment to look for it there."

She was nodding slowly, following right along. " And to tie him off as a loose end, when the stone wasn't found in his flop ... or when Fidello claimed he never had it."

"Right. The problem with this case, doll, is that I have been viewing a whole scattering of puzzle pieces and trying to make one picture out of them. This is not one puzzle. It's two or three or even four puzzles, and each one is simple."