Gaita whispered, “Jaimie Halaquez....”
“At least he’s consistent,” I said. “Give him that much.”
Bunny, still on the edge of the bed near me, said, “But the Cuban boys that were tracking him—in Missouri, Arkansas and Mississippi...they didn’t die that way.”
Gaita said, “Halaquez used a blade. They die slow and painful, those boys, with their insides in their hands.”
“Two different kinds of kills,” I said, clinically. “Those brave kids were made to suffer—to make them examples, and to send a message back to Little Havana. And they may not have been killed by Halaquez at all.”
“What?” Gaita snapped.
It was Gaita’s question, but I aimed the answer at Bunny. “They may have been killed for him by the Cuban assassin who died in your apartment house lobby. Fitting, he died by the blade.”
“You’re a cold-blooded bastard,” Bunny said with a shiver.
“A breathing one,” I said, then went on: “The old man and this Richard Best required efficient kills, not so messy, not so noisy.”
The Mandor’s madam had a glazed, dazed expression. “So he’s still around, our Jaimie....”
“Well,” I said, “more like he’s back. Bunny, you said first things first. First, was finding out from the cops how Dick Best bought it. What’s second?”
Now she smiled; now her eyes took on a twinkle. “Finding out who Dick Best really was.”
I leaned forward. “Who, Bunny?”
“A businessman I was introduced to years ago...but not as Richard Best—different last name...Parvain.”
Meant nothing to me.
She continued: “Now this goes back a good twenty years, Morg. I thought Dick Best looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him—and he looked more than twenty years older. Anyway, after seeing the poor S.O.B. stretched out on the morgue tray, well, I came back here and sat down for a good think. Best and I had talked lots of times, in the last year or so—had anything of it meant anything, I wondered?”
“Had it?”
“Maybe. It came back to me that one day, a couple years ago—Best and I were sitting in the bar downstairs, and he gets to telling me about a business of his called Possibilities, Inc. And how it was too bad my husband wasn’t around to get in on the ground floor with him again.”
“Again?”
“Yes, again, he said. Morg, at the time, I wondered what he meant by that. But I didn’t ask, because you don’t pry with clients, or maybe I just got distracted...but at any rate...I never asked him about it.”
“Understandable,” I granted.
“Then seeing him dead like that, suddenly something jarred loose. I remembered something. I remembered that when my husband kicked off, I went through some papers he left, and there was a notation about this Possibilities, Inc.”
She gestured with the yellowed packet that she had been holding onto like the railing at a sharp drop-off.
“So I dug them up again,” she said, “from my old box of souvenirs from back when we were rich and infamous.”
Bunny tossed the moldy sheaf my way, and I picked it up, wondering what answers it might hold.
“They may not make much sense to you,” Bunny said. “That old fox I was married to wasn’t much for making notes that the income tax people might follow. But you’ll see that he invested ten thousand in a gimmick Parvain invented that was supposed to detect uranium ore from an airplane, instead of working at ground level.”
“When was this?”
“Oh, back in those days of all the big strikes in Canada. Up north, everybody and his brother was inventing these gizmos that claimed to sniff out the stuff.”
“What are we talking about here,” I asked, “glorified Geiger counters?”
She nodded and tendrils blonde and purple bounced. “Exactly right—least as far as I understand it. Nothing ever came of Parvain’s deal, or I would have heard about it. My dear departed reprobate husband liked to brag about his scores, but if something didn’t pan out, it became a dead issue.”
I leafed through the pages, which dated to the mid-1950s, and found the phrase “Possibilities, Inc.” twice, among a couple of rows of abstract figuring, and a half-paragraph in an almost illegible scrawl. A heavy check mark went through the whole page, like a memorandum to forget it. “Bunny, you said Best mentioned that it was too bad your husband wasn’t in with him again. Maybe those Possibilities panned out after all.”
She shrugged grandly. “If they did, why didn’t Best have a pot to piss in? Unless him living like an old fart on a fixed income was just a front.”
“Maybe he was hanging around your club because he eventually planned to hit you up for a touch—to refinance a business your husband had been part of.”
Bunny shook her head thoughtfully. “No, the conversation in question goes back a good couple of years, and Best never mentioned the subject again.”
Something wasn’t adding up.
I asked, “Where the hell did Best get the kind of money it takes to hang out at the Mandor Club? And how did a nebbish like that even gain entry?”
That stopped her. “Be damned if I know. Somebody on our approved list must have brought him in as an invited guest.”
“Is that something you can track?”
“Probably not. Why?”
“Because he was murdered. And anything to do with nuclear physics can be important enough to get somebody killed. It’s the only damn lead we have.”
Bunny gave me a funny look then, then shook her head.
I said, “What is it?”
“Oh, just something Best said to me, not too long ago. Couldn’t be anything important.”
“Damn it, who the hell knows what might be important, in this damn mess? Spill.”
“Well,” she said, and paused, thinking back, “I had a birthday party a few weeks ago. Best wasn’t here for it, but he called to wish me happy returns. He sounded half in the bag, and I was a little potted myself, so...”
“So?”
“So he said he was sorry he didn’t have a present for me, but he’d stop by with something when he got a chance. And then what he said after that was weird....”
“Weird how?”
“Weird and then some—Morg, he said that if anything happened to keep him from visiting the Mandor Club again, I should expect to receive a late birthday present.”
I frowned. “Has anything shown up? In the mail, or from a shipping firm?”
She shook her head. “Nothing.”
“Well, keep a goddamn sharp eye out. Do you think Best thought his life was in danger?”
Her shrug was almost comically exaggerated. “I don’t know. Like I said, he sounded drunk. And I was drunk. I’m really not sure I should be trusting my memory on this subject....”
“Perhaps,” Gaita said from her seat on the sidelines, where she’d been quietly taking it all in, “Tango might know something of this.”
“Tango, kitten? Who’s that?”
But it was Bunny who answered. “Just one of the girls, Morg. Real name’s Theresa Prosser. Gaita’s right—this Best character, or Parvain or whoever he was, was pretty smitten with Tango. Even took her out to supper a few times.”
“Is she here now?”
“No! Look, Morgan, the last thing we need to do is get anybody else involved in this mess...”
“Let me worry about that. Tell me about Tango. How special was she to Best?”
Bunny was rolling her eyes. “Christ, Morg, don’t make more out of it than what I’ve already told you! Best just seemed to prefer Tango’s company, if she was available.”