Once a Mutt (Trace 5) Read online

  Only once had anything good ever happened in his life. He had come into some money on a real-estate deal and used the proceeds to buy his way out of his marriage. He left his wife and two children and had gone to Las Vegas to be a professional gambler.

  Just about the time he was tired of gambling for a living, he had met Bob Swenson, the president of Garrison Fidelity Insurance. Swenson had been clipped of a million dollars in negotiable securities by a hooker and Trace had arranged to get the securities back. In gratitude, Swenson had put Trace on retainer as an occasional investigator for Garrison Fidelity.

  About the same time, he met Chico. He had found her, naked, in an apartment-building hallway, after some man had gotten her liquored up, then thought it was cute to throw her out into the hall without clothes.

  Trace got her clothes back, punched the man’s lights out, and then helped her find a job as a blackjack dealer at the Araby Casino. The idea of supplementing her income by turning occasional tricks for out-of-town gamblers was hers alone. He had never been able to ask her why.

  He smoked some more and thought about Garrison Fidelity and realized he was tired of working, scratching around trying to make a living. The restaurant deal was supposed to end all that and free his time so he could devote it to other money-making ideas.

  He thought it was unfair. He was one of the world’s great natural resources, a money-making machine ready to be unleashed. But he was never going to get a chance unless he came up with another ten thousand dollars.

  How to get it?

  Of course. There was a way. A simple way.

  He would beg for it.

  He called Chico in their Las Vegas condominium.

  “Hello, light of my life,” he said when she answered the phone.

  “I’m still not lending you any money,” she said by way of greeting.

  “Did I even ask you for any?”

  “Not yet in this phone conversation. That out of the way, how goes it?”

  “It doesn’t go. So far, this is a dead end. Don’t change the subject so fast. Let’s talk about lending me money.”

  “Let’s not,” Chico said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’ll vanish, poof, up in smoke. I’ve been with you for how long?”

  “Four years. It only seems longer,” Trace said.

  “Four years. I’ve heard every one of your lunatic ideas. Make Tulsa into a parking lot. Backward printed signs for cars, combination combs and toothbrushes for muff divers—”

  “Just a minute. I never invented any such thing,” he said.

  “Then I must just have. It’s yours, free. Take it and run with it, Trace. Just don’t ask me to invest.”

  “I’m not asking you to invest in this restaurant, Chico.”

  “Good.”

  “I’m begging you. I’m here in this awful town, down on both knees, begging you. Save me. You’re all that stands between me and a life of destitution.”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t I quit smoking for you?” he asked.

  “For three hours once. You’re back up to four packs a day.”

  “If I knew it meant that much to you. I would have stayed stopped. I’ll quit again as soon as I get back,” Trace promised.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “And didn’t I quit drinking?”

  “No. You quit drinking vodka. Some of the time. Instead of drinking a quart of vodka a day, now you drink a gallon of wine. Maybe a gallon and a half when you’re going good. All I got out of that big change is that the garbage is heavier now when I have to carry it to the incinerator.”

  “I’ll stop drinking and smoking as soon as I get back. I’ll even start carrying out the garbage.”

  “Don’t do it for me. I won’t lend you ten thousand dollars.”

  “Fourteen thousand,” Trace said.

  “Ho, ho, ho. Maybe you can make that much money writing jokes for Rodney Dangerfield,” Chico said.

  “You’re an ungrateful wretch,” Trace said.

  “Maybe, but I’ve got to watch out for myself,” she said.

  “I’m going to keep drinking and smoking,” he said.

  “Suit yourself. Since you’re going to be poor, you might as well be dead.”

  “And women,” he said.

  “What about women?”

  “I have been straight for the longest time now,” Trace said.

  “You have never been straight.”

  “If I’ve got the name, I might as well have the game. I’m going back to seeing other women.”

  “As opposed to?”

  “In fact, I’ve got a date tonight. With a beautiful redhead,” Trace said.

  “Wonderful,” Chico said. “I’ve got a date too. If we pick someplace between Connecticut and Nevada, maybe all four of us can meet for dinner.”

  “You’re not going to help me, are you? In this moment of need?” Trace said. “That’s what you’re hinting at, isn’t it?”

  “Now you’re catching on,” Chico said. “If you need the money so badly, do a good job on this case. Earn it. The old-fashioned way.”

  “Anybody can earn money,” Trace said. “I want to beg for it.”

  “Well, beggars can be losers,” Chico said.

  “You know, you’re free, piebald, and twenty-one. You can turn me down if you want.”

  “I want,” Chico said.

  “I’ll never forgive you.”

  “I’ll try to endure,” she said.

  “I’ve got to dress for dinner,” Trace said. “With the redhead.”

  “That’s odd. I’ve got to undress for dinner,” Chico said.

  “Don’t go doing anything dirty in my bed,” he yelled, but the telephone went dead in his ear.

  She probably wasn’t going to lend him the money, Trace decided as he replaced the telephone. He smoked some more and killed the bottle of vodka. He thought some more about his resources. This didn’t take much time because his resources were nil.

  All the money he had in the world was tied up in the restaurant at Oceanbright. He had no other savings and he didn’t know anyone who would lend him money. Bob Swenson had consistently refused to lend him a dime. Walter Marks was out. He would only laugh if Trace asked him for money. There was his father, Sarge.

  But Sarge wouldn’t have it. He had his pension from the New York City Police Department, but any secret savings he might have had would have gone to open up his private-detective agency. And even if Sarge had had money, it would all be in joint accounts with Trace’s mother. Hilda Tracy was not ready to lend her son anything except good advice, like Be Thrifty, Don’t Get in Over Your Head, and Walk Before You Run, and a million other stupid homilies all orated in capital letters.

  Who else did he know who had money?

  There was his ex-wife. She might have some. But to borrow money from her, he would have to talk to her and that violated an oath he had made the day they were divorced. His two children, What’s-his-name and the girl, didn’t have any money. At least he didn’t think they did. They were still little. How old were they? They were something and something. What’s-his-name was older. Maybe.

  Trace wished he believed in telepathy. He could send his ex-wife a message to lend him money. Ten thousand dollars, fourteen if she had it. He closed his eyes and concentrated, forming words slowly and distinctly inside his brain.

  “Cora. Are you listening? Please listen, Cora. I’m in the Ye Olde—that’s with an ‘e’—English Motel in Westport, Connecticut, and I am in dire need of…say, fifteen thousand dollars. Fifteen thousand, Cora. You got that? Call me now at the Ye Olde English Motel in Westport, Connecticut. Offer me the loan of fifteen thousand dollars. Are you listening? Hurry. My life depends on it.”

  He stopped concentrating and lay on the bed with his eyes closed, trying to be a receptacle for return messages. Nothing came in.

  The telephone didn’t ring either.

  He looked around the room and saw his suitc
ase in the corner. Maybe he would unpack his clothing. Then he saw the vodka bottle was empty. He would unpack his clothing later.

  He hooked up the microphone tie clip for his tape recorder. The microphone was a golden frog with an open mouth. Mesh that covered the mouth concealed the small microphone.

  As he left the room, he yelled at the telephone, “Cora, you were always a cheap bitch.”

  8

  Richie, the bartender at the motel cocktail lounge, remembered Trace from the night before.

  “You were really flying last night,” he said. “Did you get your ten thousand dollars?”

  “Fourteen,” Trace said. “No. You want to lend it to me?”

  “I’ll make you a drink,” Richie said. He filled an old-fashioned glass with Finlandia, dropped in two ice cubes, and set it on the bar in front of Trace.

  “If I had the money, maybe I’d like to get into a restaurant deal,” the bartender said. “But you need a banker. I’m just a bartender.”

  “Don’t say it like that,” Trace said. “Bartenders are real important.”

  “Somebody’s got to mix the drinks, right?”

  “No,” Trace said. “Bartenders contribute a lot in a lot of ways. Literature, for instance.”

  “Run that one by me again,” Richie said. He was a tall young man with a pleasant face and he looked slightly ill-at-ease wearing the leather tunic that Ye Olde English Motel inflicted on its service employees.

  “Dickens, for instance,” Trace said. “Do you know that a bartender was responsible for Dickens’ success?”

  “I didn’t know that. How?”

  “Dickens was a drinker, a real heavy-duty boozer,” Trace said. “One day, he was stuck on a book, so he walked over to his favorite pub and he asked the bartender to make him a martini.”

  “Did they have martinis then?” Richie asked.

  “Whose story is this? Of course they had martinis then. They’ve always had martinis. Anyway, Dickens couldn’t figure it out about this character in the book he was working on, so he asked for a martini. And the bartender yelled back, ‘Olive or twist?’ And that was how Dickens got the idea for Oliver Twist. Bartenders are real important.”

  “Somehow I don’t believe that story,” Richie said.

  “Imagine what would have happened if the bartender had asked Dickens, ‘Peel or Onions?’ You think there’d ever be a character named Peeler Onions? You think anybody’d do a Broadway show named Peeler? Don’t tell me. I know how important you are.”

  “You’re a fountain of information,” Richie said.

  “That’s because I have an inquiring mind,” Trace said. “Fill this again, will you? Like, other people take things at face value, but I’m always searching, searching, searching.”

  “And now you’re searching for ten thousand dollars.”

  “Fourteen,” Trace said. “And don’t remind me.”

  Just before eight P.M., the bartender handed him the telephone.

  “Your room was empty,” Elvira’s voice said.

  “Obviously.”

  “But I figured I’d find you there. Are you still going to take me out?”

  “You’ve got it.”

  “I’ve got something good for you,” she said.

  “That’s sort of what I was hoping,” Trace said.

  “Not like that. You’re an animal. God, I love it.” She paused and said, “I found out something about Paddington.”

  “Good. Where do we meet?”

  “Too many people know me in town. I’ll pick you up outside the motel in fifteen minutes. Look for a gray Mercedes.”

  “Naturally,” Trace said. “Should I bring my own car?”

  “Whatever for?”

  “In case you make me walk home,” Trace said.

  “I won’t,” Elvira promised.

  Elvira Patrick drank but couldn’t drink. She had had two margaritas, hold the salt, and her voice was already slurred and thickening. On the other hand, Trace realized, he didn’t know how many pitchers of Kool-Aid vodka mix she had consumed during the day.

  They were in a small unfashionable cocktail lounge, just off the Merritt Parkway in Trumbull, Connecticut, about fifteen miles from Westport. There was an unfashionably good piano player working, singing unfashionable old songs about love and tenderness and caring which Elvira seemed to think translated into groping with her hands in Trace’s lap.

  “Easy there. Save some for later,” Trace said.

  Elvira giggled. Trace liked women who giggled, no matter what their age. It always seemed like an act of honesty. When Trace had been in the accounting business, he had worked with a businessman who reached down into his belly to laugh HO-HO-HO at almost everything, and it took Trace a while to realize that the phony laughter was meant to cover up the fact that the man didn’t understand anything that was happening. He had been a personal manager for a lot of professionals, but he left stock certificates in subways and touted his clients into buying stocks in mining companies named after television cowboys. Not one of his clients had ever shown an annual profit in his portfolio, and whenever one complained, they got HO-HO-HO. To add to being dumb, he stole. That’s when he laughed the hardest.

  It had made Trace appreciate spontaneous gigglers. Nobody who giggled ever stole. That was one of Trace’s laws of life.

  Elvira folded her hands primly on the tabletop.

  “So what did you find out today, Mr. Investigator?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “What a shame.”

  “It’s pretty ordinary,” Trace said. “Just your basic, run-of-the-mill, don’t-find-out-a-damn-thing kind of day.”

  “A total waste of a day,” she offered.

  “Not total. I met you,” Trace said.

  “That’s nice.”

  “I meant it to be,” he said.

  “Then I’ll tell you what I found out,” Elvira said.

  “Make my day,” Trace said.

  Elvira took a deep breath, as if composing her rattled mind. It threatened to spill her bosom out of the top of her low-cut cocktail dress. She gripped the stem of her glass between the fingertips of both hands.

  “All right,” she said in a tone meant to be businesslike. “I went into town today after you left and I got my face done.”

  “God did your face. If you paid anybody to meddle with it, you wasted your money,” Trace said.

  “Nice. Don’t interrupt. You know my husband never compliments me?”

  “Send him for an eye exam,” Trace said.

  “It’s not that, it’s just his work. Did you know he’s a marriage counselor?”

  “No.”

  “That’s what he is. He deals all day with impotent men and sappy women and they drain his emotions. When he comes home on weekends, he doesn’t have time for me. In case you’re wondering why I fool around.”

  “I wasn’t wondering,” Trace said.

  “Well, that’s why. That, plus I have hot pants. I always did.” She giggled again. “Anyway, after I was done with my face, I drove over to Wilton to see a friend of mine. Marylou. She’s a writer.”

  “An ink-stained wretch,” Trace said.

  “A writer and a computer nerd,” Elvira said.

  “With pimples,” Trace said. “All computer nerds have pimples.”

  “Marylou doesn’t have pimples, except on her chest. That’s the only part of her that’s small. The rest of her is enormous. She’s plain. Let’s call her plain.”

  “And fat,” Trace said. “Let’s call her fat.”

  “Plain and fat,” Elvira agreed. “That sounds like Marylou. We went to Wellesley together. She was always plain and fat. But she never had pimples and she was always real smart.”

  “Why’d you go see her?”

  “Did I say she was a writer?” Elvira asked.

  “You did.”

  “She writes stuff for the supermarket.”

  “You mean signs?” Trace asked. “Lowest prices anywhere? Buy nin
e and save?”

  “No, not that. She writes for those newspapers they have in the supermarket. You know, Johnny and Liz, Together at Last. John Wayne’s Ghost Rides the Hollywood Hills.”

  “Di’s Tragic Battle with Herpes,” Trace said.

  “You’ve got it. She does that kind of stuff. Anyway, I figured that you people had probably done a lot of research.”

  “That’s true,” Trace said, thinking of the mountain of clippings Walter Marks had sent him.

  “But I figured maybe you hadn’t researched everything. I mean, most libraries don’t carry copies of the Supermarket Tattletale or whatever the hell they’re called.”

  “That’s pretty clever. You’re as smart as you are beautiful,” Trace said.

  “Thank you,” Elvira said, flattered in the way that only a beautiful woman complimented on her brains can be flattered.

  “So what did Marylou say?” Trace asked.

  “I said that she’s into computers?”

  “Yes. My two loves, computers and supermarket newspapers. God, what a fascinating woman she must be,” Trace said.

  “What she does is she puts everything that’s in those stupid newspapers into computers,” Elvira said.

  “That’s a particularly repulsive hobby,” Trace said.

  “It’s not a hobby. It’s her business. You know, how many stories can you make up, and you don’t want to do a Johnny and Liz story when somebody else just did a Johnny and Liz story. You might want to do a Johnny and Charo story instead, if nobody did that. Or Liz and Dick, Closer in Death than They Were in Life. That’s good and everybody does those, but you don’t want to do them too fast, ’cause you want people to forget the last Liz and Dick story. You notice how in all those stories the headlines have question marks?”

  “Right,” Trace said.

  “That’s so that they can’t get sued. Anyway, that’s what Marylou says. If you say Richard Nixon’s got herpes, he can sue you. But if you say Has Richard Nixon Got Herpes? he can’t.”