When Elephants Forget (Trace 3) (18 page)

Sarge squinted his eyes, and Trace knew that under the bandages his brow was furrowed. He thought for a full minute, then shook his head. “No. Nothing there meant anything. It was just another bachelor’s apartment. A lot of copies of
Playboy
. I was going to steal the centerfolds for my office wall.”

“All right. Keep going,” Trace said.

“I had the address of his family in Jersey. It’s down near Freehold by the harness track, so I decided to drive out there just to check it out. I talked to his mother. She said they hadn’t heard from him in a month. They didn’t know where he was.”

“Were they lying?”

“No,” Sarge said. “I checked some neighbors and the gas station on the corner, but he wasn’t around. I would have known if she was lying anyway. Dev, he just vanished. One day he was around and the next day he wasn’t. And somebody came and went through his apartment right after that.”

“Complicateder and complicateder,” Trace said. “Then what’d you do?”

“I was in Jersey when I called the restaurant and missed you. Then I just nosed around some more. Nothing important.”

He seemed ready to let the matter drop there, and after a moment’s hesitation, Trace said, “Hey, Dad, are you afraid to tell me you were with Martha Armitage? That you two have an affair going?”

Sarge’s eyes looked startled at first, then narrowed to hide all expression.

“What’d you say?”

“You and Martha, you heard me.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“Hey, Sarge, this is Devlin, your son. Don’t give me that answer-a-question-with-a-question routine. I’ve done it too many times myself. Who told me? Who told me was the look in your eyes when you two met in your office. Who told me was your going out and borrowing plants and cleaning the joint. Who told me is all of a sudden you’ve very busy at night. Who told me…well, who told me was Chico. She figured it out without ever seeing the lady.”

“I told you that woman’s eerie,” Sarge said. “Okay. I was with Martha the last couple of nights, but it’s not like you think.”

“Where were you with her?” Trace asked.

“Jesus,” Sarge said. “This is real tacky crap, trying to talk to my son about what he thinks was an indiscretion.”

“We’re talking, maybe, about your attempted murder. Where’d you meet her?”

“There’s an apartment near Columbus Circle, belongs to a friend of Martha’s. The friend’s out of town and we met there.”

“Any chance Armitage found out?” Trace asked.

“I don’t think so,” Sarge said.

Trace noticed that his father had his head turned away and was keeping his eyes averted. “How’d Martha get there?”

“By cab,” Sarge said.

“How’d she get home?”

“I dropped her off.” He shook his head quickly. “Not at her house. Near her house.”

“Near enough to be seen,” Trace said with a sigh. “Pop, you know she’s a drinker?”

Sarge nodded. “She’s on a lot of pills too. She isn’t a well woman.”

“The sauce is enough. It was something she said one night to a maid, a freaking maid, mind you, that led us to the kidnapping. You know damned well she probably dropped your name around too when she’s in her cups.”

“I don’t think so,” Sarge said.

“I know so. Last night, Armitage and his sister-in-law both knew you were working with me. But nobody knew that except Martha. You can’t trust a drunk, Sarge. Why’d you meet with her?”

“I don’t know. Dev, it was her idea, but then we’d get together and we’d just talk. I thought maybe it was doing her some good, but I never could figure out why she wanted to talk.”

“Maybe she was trying to build up her courage to tell you about her son’s kidnapping. She hasn’t been playing square with you, Sarge.”

“I know that. I’m sorry, son. She’s not all there anymore. She was once, well, she was a helluva woman.”

“Is that when you two got it on?”

“You make it sound shabby,” Sarge snapped angrily. “It wasn’t like that. It was just once, a lot of years ago, and it wasn’t like that. You want to know how it was?”

Trace was silent for a moment. “No,” he said, “I don’t.”

He looked down and saw that his hands were gripping the rail on the side of the bed so hard, his knuckles were white. With an effort, he relaxed, then reached over and squeezed his father’s shoulders.

“When do you think you’ll get out of here?”

“Tonight, if I’m lucky,” Sarge said.

“Should I call Mother? Run interference for you or tell her about the accident?”

“Don’t say that or you’ll see me die before your eyes. She doesn’t have to know anything and I’ll have the car fixed before she gets home. I’ll call her tonight myself.”

“All right,” Trace said. “Then I’m going to be moving along.”

“What have you got planned?”

“Chico’s out. I want to check on her, and then…well, I don’t know, I’ve got some other business.”

“You think you know who put me here?” Sarge asked.

“Yes.”

“Don’t do anything dumb,” Sarge said.

“I won’t,” Trace said. He started toward the door. “I’m your son.”

“Devlin.”

When Trace turned around, Sarge said, “With Martha, it wasn’t like you think. It wasn’t cheap or dirty.”

“I know that, Pop. It couldn’t have been.”

“Why not?”

“Because you were involved in it,” Trace said.

“Thanks, Dev. Be careful.”

Trace had been back in his hotel suite only a few minutes when the telephone rang.

“Is this Devlin Tracy?” asked a man’s voice that he had never heard before.

“Yes.”

“If you’re wearing boxer shorts, I’ll give you a million dollars.”

“Huh?”

“If you have a birthmark on the inside upper part of your right thigh, I’ll double it.”

“Who is this?”

“If you live with a Eurasian beauty who is the picture of sweetness and grace and all that is good in life, you will be happy forever,” the man said. “Unless you try to poison her with Veal Surprise.”

“This must have lost something in the translation,” Trace said. “Who are you?”

“I’ll be right up,” the man said.

Three minutes later, there was a knock on the door. When Trace opened it, Chico stood there, grinning obscenely, holding a plastic bag in her hand.

“I give up,” Trace said. “What was that all about? Who was that?”

“I cannot tell a lie,” Chico said as she breezed into the room. “
C’est moi
.”

“The man who called, I mean,” Trace said.

“Me. Don’t you understand? That was me.”

“Your voice changed,” he said, still not understanding what she was talking about, but she nodded and said, “And I can change it anytime I want. Here.” She handed him the plastic bag.

“What is it?”

“Look,” she said.

He looked inside and saw a gray plastic device that looked like a small telephone-answering machine.

“What is it?” he said.

“The answer to the Armitage kidnapping,” Chico said.

“I expect you’re going to explain all this,” Trace said.

“I am. Did you hear from Sarge?”

“Yes. Somebody tried to kill him, but he’s all right. He found out that the kid bought the mask himself,” Trace said.

Chico nodded. “I know,” she said. “And now I know why.”

When Trace answered the knock at their door shortly after midnight, Armitage, Anna, Martha, and the two bodyguards stood there. Trace had an impulse to jump through the doorway, grab the two goons, and smash their heads together, and he restrained it only with effort.

Armitage’s face was flushed. “You got a hell of a nerve, Tracy, ordering us to be here. It better be important.”

“And you came anyway, not knowing,” Trace said. “What a friend. Come on in.”

They began to come through the door into the living room, where Chico sat at a writing table in the far corner, near the windows that overlooked Central Park.

“Just you three,” Trace said. “Bonzo One and Two can wait in the hall.”

Frankie the Singer and Augie the Hand snarled in unison in Trace’s direction, then looked at Armitage for instructions.

Armitage paused in the doorway, then nodded.

“All right, boss,” one of them said. The other one nodded.

Trace slammed the door in their faces. “Sit down, won’t you all?” he said. “I’d offer you a drink, but I ordered a case of Polish beer and it hasn’t arrived yet. Sorry about that.”

“Can the chatter,” Armitage said. “What do you want?”

For the first time, Trace noticed that Martha Armitage was wearing a hat with a veil. She kept it on as she sat on the couch. Her sister sat at the other end of the sofa, and finally Armitage sat in the middle.

“This is my assistant, Miss Mangini. You’ve met her, Armitage, but the ladies haven’t.”

“I’m going to take a nap,” Armitage growled. “Why don’t you call me when all the introductions are over and you’re ready to tell us what you want.”

“I thought you’d want to know what I found out about Tony’s kidnapping and murder. Before we tell it to the police,” Trace said.

“You’ve figured it out?” Anna Walker said.

Trace nodded. Martha Armitage moved forward in her seat. The veil was heavy and he could not see her eyes, but he knew the woman was staring at him.

“Well, go ahead,” Armitage said. He lit a cigarette and sprawled back on the sofa.

“I won’t bother you with a lot of the details,” Trace said, “because I don’t think you’d be impressed by how much effort I put into this, Armitage. So I’ll just hit the high points.”

Armitage stubbed out the cigarette.

“The rubber mask was the key,” Trace said. “It didn’t make any sense when this was just a murder, and then when we found out it was a kidnapping, it made even less sense. Why would kidnappers put that mask on him if they were going to kill him? A Richard Nixon mask? It sure wasn’t the sort of thing not to draw attention to him. That was the big question. Why the mask?”

“All right, why?” Armitage asked. He started to fumble in his shirt pocket again for another cigarette.

“We found out that Tony bought the mask himself in a store near the school.”

“That still doesn’t answer why,” Anna said.

“It didn’t for us either, at first,” Trace said. “But when we figured out that Tony planned his own kidnapping, then it made all the sense in the world.”

“Ohhhh.” The sound came from Martha Armitage.

“Quiet,” Armitage snapped at her. “That’s horseshit, Tracy. Why the hell would he do that?” He had an unlit cigarette in his hand and he rolled it between his thumb and index finger while waiting for an answer.

“No, it’s not horseshit,” Trace said. “We found the person who helped him pull it off.” Trace had been standing and now he pulled around an easy chair to face the sofa, and sat down. When he glanced at Chico, she nodded encouragement to him.

“Think about it, Armitage. You were always pushing the kid. You wanted him to be a lawyer and he didn’t really want to. He was having his romance up on the campus and you made him split with Jennie.”

“Jennie?” Anna Walker said.

“The black girl he roomed with,” Trace supplied. “So Tony was ticked at you. He went around telling people, a lot of people, that he was going to get even with you. You didn’t know it, but he rented an apartment near the campus and was living there with Jennie.”

Armitage’s eyes narrowed and he searched Trace’s face.

“And he started dealing a little drugs on campus to help make the rent money,” Trace said. When Armitage began to speak, Trace said, “Don’t argue. We know his partner and we know his supplier. You ought to be flattered, Armitage. You know, imitation is the sincerest form of, and like father, like son. That kind of thing.”

“I’ve about listened to all of this I want to,” Armitage said. He rose to his feet.

“You’re going to leave without knowing who killed him?” Trace said. “But that’s right. You’re really not terribly interested in knowing that, are you?”

“Sit down, Nick,” Martha Armitage said suddenly.

Armitage hesitated, then sat and lighted the cigarette he had been holding.

“So back to the mask. It was part of Tony’s kidnapping plan. He must have hated you, Armitage, because he planned to beat you out of a lot of money. The mask was so that nobody would identify him when he went to pick up the ransom money.”

“Why Richard Nixon?” Anna Walker asked, and Trace shrugged. “Why not? He was just a kid. Kids do funny things.”

“This is still crap,” Armitage said.

“No. We found his accomplice, I told you. The one who called you at exactly nine o’clock that night in your office. With the private number that came from Tony and exactly when you were expecting your son to call. The accomplice gave you the ransom message, then called Tony and said it had been done. Ten minutes later, Tony called you and said it was true.”

Armitage pursed his lips in disgust.

“Who else would know that you had access to a quarter of a million dollars in cash, at night, on short notice?” Trace said. “Tony did. He knew that you kept your money up at Anna’s place and that you could get it right away. That’s why it was all done at such short notice. He knew you didn’t need a lot of time.”

“You keep saying ‘accomplice,’” Anna Walker said. “Who was this accomplice?”

“Jennie Teller,” Trace said.

“Boy, are you stupid,” Armitage said. “I told you, it was a man who called.”

“You should have paid more attention to what your son liked,” Trace said. “He was a tinkerer with electronic things. He had this gadget that changes a person’s voice on the telephone. We found the advertisement for it in Tony’s room, in his junk. It made Jennie sound like a man.” He nodded across the room. “It even made Chico sound like a man,” he said.

“
Star Wars
,” Armitage said in disdain.

“Don’t forget. Jennie’s admitted it. She
was
in Atlantic City that weekend for a convention, but she called you from a pay phone. She just basically read the script that Tony wrote for her. Then she called Tony and told him it was all right for him to call you. And he did.”

He stopped to light a cigarette and Martha Armitage said, “Go on, Devlin.”

“Tony must have figured that the tight time limits would make it impossible for you to try anything,” Trace told Armitage, who again snubbed out his cigarette. “I guess he just didn’t understand you. You got the money and sent Anna and your two dimwits to go guard Martha. Then you called Dewey Lupus and made plans for him to go to Connecticut with you.”

He paused as if waiting for Armitage to comment, but the man was silent.

“The way I figure it is that you took two cars up. First, you went up and parked near that place—on the Merritt, there’s an exit just a couple of hundred yards away—and then went back and hid in the bushes right near there, so you could see what happened. Then, at the regular time, you had Lupus drive up, drop the money in the basket, and drive off, probably back to New York. And you waited. When Tony showed up, he was junked up. He had taken some Quaaludes. I figure he showed up, wearing the Nixon mask just in case, picked up the money, and you jumped out of the bushes and fought with him. And then you killed him.”

Martha Armitage’s face swiveled toward her husband as if on a tight spring. Trace stopped for a moment. Armitage stared at him and Trace said, “Any comments?”

“Keep going,” Armitage said. “This fairy tale is getting good.”

“Nick?” his wife said. “Did…did you?”

“Of course I didn’t. Let him talk. He’s full of shit.”

The woman stared at him a moment, then relaxed and sat back.

“The next day,” Trace said, “Dewey Lupus must have figured out what happened. Probably he finally realized that he could blackmail you into taking care of him forever. That’s when he started talking a lot about moving up in the world. I guess he didn’t figure that you’d put him away. He should have known. But that’s why you weren’t any help to the cops and why you got so upset with my nosing around.”

“Anyway, you shot Tony and then you took the money back and gave it to Anna, and she’s probably still got it in your little love nest…oops, her apartment.”

“That’s vicious, Tracy,” Armitage snapped.

Martha looked at Trace through her veil, and Trace said, “Sorry, Martha. But I think you knew that these two were an item.”

“You’re very cruel,” she said.

“And
you
jerked my father around for a couple of days and you never told us the truth about the kidnapping and you damned near got him killed when he was seen taking you home. Probably by Nick’s two goons. What’s under that veil, Martha? Take off the hat.”

The woman paused, then slowly complied. There was a large bruise around her left eye. Both eyes were bloodshot from drinking.

“At least it’s nice to know he beat it out of you,” Trace said. “Last night, Nick was complaining that my father and I were getting on his nerves. But he’d never met my father and didn’t have any reason to know he was helping me on this case. Did you set him up last night? Is that the way it was?”

She shuddered and closed her eyes. “Is Patrick all right?”

“No thanks to you,” Trace said.

“I didn’t know it. I didn’t know they would try anything on him,” she said.

“You seem to have forgotten. You married a vicious man,” Trace said.

“What are you going to do with all these stupid theories?” Armitage said.

“I’m going to the police,” Trace said. “What did you expect?”

“Go ahead,” Armitage said. “They’ll laugh in your face about all this. You don’t have a shred of evidence. Nothing. Zero.”

“No, you’re right,” Trace said. “But that’s the nice thing about my job. I don’t have to. I’ve got enough to give the cops. I can prove there was a phony kidnapping that Tony engineered. His accomplice will swear to that. I’ve got that you got the ransom demand. You and Anna both told me that you went up there with the money and left it—when you told the cops you’d never been near the place—and that Tony was found dead there the next morning. That’ll be enough to start the cops looking. And then there’s Dewey Lupus. The cops probably have an up-to-date list of lime pits and things like that; they’ll find his body pretty quick.

“And then you’ve got the Happiness Boys out in the hall. They’re pretty stupid. The cops won’t have to talk to them too long to find out anything they know. After Lupus vanished, his apartment was broken into and searched. That was their handiwork, and the cops’ll find that out pretty soon and start asking you interesting questions about why you sent them there and what they were looking for. And why they tried to run my father off a bridge last night. And then there’s Anna’s records. There’ll be a warrant and people will go through the records of both of your joints and they’ll find out you two were cooking the books to hide your drug income, and that should lead to a lot of interesting questions from the feds, the IRS, the Justice Department, everybody else. Maybe somebody’ll want to know how you were able to get your hands on two hundred and fifty thousand in cash in just a few minutes. I’ve got enough,” Trace finished.

Armitage was silent a long time and Martha turned her head to search his face with dull, confused eyes. But he looked at Anna before speaking.

“It doesn’t have to be that way, Tracy,” Armitage finally said.

“What do you mean?”

“Look. This is a closed case. Tony’s dead and nothing will bring him back. Why do we need the cops looking into a phony kidnapping? Why do we need the cops at all?”

“You have something in mind?” Trace asked.

“We’re due to get a half a million from your insurance company,” Armitage said. He tried a smile that involved only his mouth. “It doesn’t have to go to us, you know. It could go to you just as easily. In advance.”

“Nick,” his wife said, “what are you saying?”

“We don’t want trouble, is all,” Armitage said. He looked at Trace again. “What do you think?”

But Martha spoke before Trace could answer. “Is it what he said? You killed Tony? Is that how it happened?”

“No, it’s not like he said. What about it, Trace?”

“Don’t talk to him,” Martha said. “Tell me. What happened, Nick? What happened?”

Armitage shook his head as if the memory pained him. “I was there. This guy came with the mask and got the money and I jumped out and I said, ‘Where’s my boy? Where’s my son?’ And he looked at me, with that stupid mask on, and his voice was all muffled, and he said, ‘Your son’s gone, Armitage. You’re never going to push him around again. He’s gone. Dead and gone.’ And he laughed. He laughed like a maniac and I saw red and I shot him. And then I started to take the mask off and it was Tony. And he was dead.” He buried his chin on his chest.

“You killed him. You killed our son,” Martha said.

“It was an accident. I didn’t mean it.” He stopped speaking and the silence hung in the room.

Anna Walker looked at her sister and brother-in-law, then turned to Trace and said coolly, “What about it, Mr. Tracy? I think Nick has an offer on the table.”

“And you knew too, didn’t you?” Martha Armitage snapped at her sister. “You knew that Nick had killed Tony. You knew and you never told me.”

“Shut up, Martha. Stop your whining. We’ve listened to it all our lives, and it’s about enough. You can go home soon and drink yourself unconscious and forget everything.” Anna looked again at Trace and raised her eyebrows quizzically.