“A Magnum? I’ll bear that in mind,” Mathieson said dryly.
Vasquez flipped a page. “Seems to patronize one call girl with some regularity …”
“Name and address?”
“They’re here but it wouldn’t be a worthwhile angle of approach.”
“Why not?” Roger said drowsily. “Catch him with his pants down.”
“Your jokes are bad.” Vasquez returned to Mathieson. “Catch him and do what? You’re determined not to kill him.”
Roger said, “We could have him worked over by experts. Break a few arms and legs.”
“No. If he’s beaten up he’ll only call in six friends to get even for him. No. He’s got to be taken right out of the game. The way Gillespie was.”
“Tall order. Very tall,” Vasquez observed.
“He can be framed,” Mathieson said. “Anybody can.” He looked at his watch. “I’ve got to go. I’ll be back in an hour.”
2
When he returned to the hotel from his errand he found Homer in the room with Vasquez and Roger. Mathieson hung his coat in the hall closet and rubbed his hands together.
Roger said, “Right. Us Californians get thin-blooded. I’m still not thawed.”
Vasquez didn’t rise from his chair. “Homer’s been talking to Nick D’Alesio.”
“The reporter?”
“The same,” Homer said. “Very interesting guy. He knows the New York mobs as well as anybody alive outside the mobs themselves.”
Mathieson opened one of the ginger ales on the room-service tray. He scooped a handful of ice cubes into a glass. “What did you find out?”
“First you ought to know what I had to give him in trade. Detectives and reporters—we’re all in the same business, you know. Information.”
“So?”
“I gave him a nice scoop. Told him how the Benson shooting in Oklahoma and the bomb attack on your house in California were connected.”
Mathieson looked at him sharply. “How much did you tell him?”
“I didn’t tell him anything that Pastor doesn’t already know. Relax. I didn’t say anything about Gillespie. The only time your name was mentioned was in connection with the explosion in Sherman Oaks and the sniper on the motorcycle. It’s a bit of news that hasn’t been reported anywhere else. He’ll have to attribute it to an informed source or something like that. I told him he couldn’t use my name.”
Vasquez said, “But don’t be surprised if you see the name Edward Merle in the newspapers tomorrow. They’ll probably go back into the morgue files to dig up a summary of your testimony against Pastor.”
Mathieson said wryly, “I always like to see my name in the papers. OK, what did you get in return?”
“A lot of detail about Pastor and Martin. I’ll type up my notes in the morning.”
“What about George Ramiro?”
“A little. Not very much. He’s not a complicated sort. Too stupid to be devious.”
Roger said, “He got many friends?”
“Not many. Mostly he cares about showing off his new Cadillac and smoking Cuban cigars and driving his big power boat around Long Island Sound. A typical suburban citizen.”
“He and his wife live on the same premises with the Pastors?”
“Yes. Three sets of premises. In Manhattan they’re in the Park Avenue building, same floor. Next door apartment. In Brooklyn it’s a semidetached, one of those big old Victorian houses that go for a quarter of a million nowadays. The Ramiros have the top floor. Summers they all go out on Long Island. The Ramiros live in the gatehouse.”
“Well we’re not concerned with what they do in the summertime.”
Vasquez said, “Perhaps what we need to know is who his enemies are.”
“He’s rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. It might be a long list.”
“I’m talking about serious enemies,” Mathieson said.
“D’Alesio didn’t mention anything specific. Ramiro’s not too well liked—but mortal enemies? No, I pass.”
“We may have to do some excavating,” Vasquez said.
Mathieson shook his head. “Take too much time.”
Vasquez said, “We’ve got to find an opening, haven’t we. If it takes time then it takes time.”
“If we can’t find one we’ll make one.”
“How?”
Mathieson poured more ginger ale. “He’s a man who’s obviously done a few things that must make him nervous in the middle of the night.”
Roger said, “You’d spend half of forever rooting them out.”
“We don’t need to. All we need is the assumption that something exists that might cause trouble for him if word of it leaked out to other hoodlums. Something that might even turn Frank Pastor against him.”
Homer said, “He seems to be reasonably loyal. Anyway he’s married into the family. He wouldn’t pull anything that would make Pastor come down hard on him.”
“Somewhere along the line he’s probably slipped a little off the top for himself,” Mathieson said. “That’s all it needs—just the wedge of something that could make him feel guilty. Or nervous. Anyhow we’ll want an update on Ramiro’s movements. Find his patterns—then we’ll move.”
Mathieson swabbed his dry throat with ginger ale; he was trying not to think about Jan, the way she’d sounded on the phone when he’d called her. He tried to force her out of his mind. “Roger, how’d you get into the hotel without being recognized?”
“Fake beard and motorcycle shades.”
Homer said, “His own mother wouldn’t know him. He looks like a forty-year-old hippie.”
“As long as he doesn’t talk,” Vasquez said. “The voice is a dead giveaway.”
Mathieson said, “Anything you can do about that? Fake an English accent or anything?”
“I reckon not. It’s the only way I know how to talk.”
“I thought you were an actor.”
“Old horse, I never said I was.” But then Roger screwed up his outdoor eyes in concentration. “But oi suppews oi moight be able to troy. It’s me dewty, innit?”
“That’s the worst Cary Grant imitation I ever heard,” Homer said.
Mathieson said, “But it didn’t sound like Roger Gilfillan, did it. Can you sustain that accent?”
“If oi must, old chep, but I should think it could become bloody tiahsome.” Roger lapsed into prairie twang. “What you fixin’ to have me do?”
“We’re going to need some movie equipment. Sixteen millimeter, I’d think.”
“Silent or sound?”
“Sound. Preferably sound-on-film. We won’t want to have to monkey around with a separate tape-recording system.”
“What’s it for?”
“We’ll get to that,” Mathieson said. “What we need is a sound camera, a microphone, color film—the new fast kind that can be used indoors under ordinary artificial light. We’ll need a projector and a screen. Now we’ll want the most compact equipment that’s available. Oh, and a tripod camera mount.”
“What kind of lenses?”
“A normal zoom should do it. We don’t need telephoto.”
“How fast you want it?”
“No hurry. We’ve got other things to take care of first.”
“Old horse, that ain’t much of a chore. Anybody could do it.”
“I’ve watched you on the set, Roger. The other actors play poker and swap lies. You hang around the cameramen and the sound engineers every chance you get. You’re probably more of an expert than they are by now. This equipment has got to work well and it’s got to be manned by a professional. You’re in charge of it.”
Vasquez said, “What’s the next step?”
“Glenn Bradleigh,” Mathieson said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
New York City: 7 October
1
ANNA WAS LATE GETTING BACK TO THE PARK AVENUE apartment. In her euphoria she nearly forgot to pay the taxi driver. The doorman’s surly face changed when he opened the door for her: She decided it must be the infectiousness of her radiance. It was the first time she’d ever seen a real smile on his face.