“I’m sorry. I’m in no position to help out. First off, I don’t live out here, not fulltime, anyway. Second, I have a reputation of mob connections that I’m trying to live down.”
“You’re disappointing me….”
“I’m trying to get my branch office established out here, and you and Fred being friends-you hanging out at Sherry’s-that’s as far as our relationship, personal or professional, can go.”
He thought about that. Then he nodded and shrugged. “I ain’t gonna twist your arm…. Two grand a week, just for the next two weeks?”
That might have tempting, if Cohen hadn’t already narrowly escaped half a dozen hit attempts.
“You say you got friends in the Attorney General’s office?” I asked.
“Yeah. Fred Howser and me are like this.” He held up his right hand, forefinger and middlefinger crossed.
If the attorney general himself was on Cohen’s pad, then those wire recordings the vice cops had might implicate Howser….
“Mick, ask Howser to assign one of his men to you as a bodyguard.”
“A cop?”
“Who better? He’ll be armed, he’ll be protecting a citizen, and anyway, a cop to a hoodlum is like garlic to a vampire. Those triggers’ll probably steer clear, long as a state investigator is at your side.”
Cohen was thinking that over; then he began to nod.
“Not a bad idea,” he said. “Not a bad idea at all.”
I stood. “No consulting fee, Mick. Let’s stay friends-and not do business together.”
He snorted a laugh, stood and went over and shut off the radio, cutting off Mel Torme singing “Careless Hands.” Then he walked me to the steel-lined door and-when I extended my hand-shook with me.
As I was leaving, I heard him, in the private bathroom off his office, tap running, as he washed up-removing my germs.
I had a couple stops to make, unrelated to the Cohen appointment, so it was late afternoon when I made it back to the Beverly Hills Hotel. Entering my bungalow-nothing fancy, just a marble fireplace, private patio and furnishings no more plush than the palace at Versailles-I heard something…someone…in the bedroom. Rustling around in there.
My nine millimeter was in my suitcase, and my suitcase was in the bedroom. And I was just about to exit, to find a hotel dick or maybe call a cop, when my trained detective’s nose sniffed a clue; and I walked across the living room, and pushed the door open.
Didi Davis gasped; she was wearing glittery earrings-just glittery earrings, and the Chanel Number Five I’d nosed-and was poised, pulling back the covers, apparently about to climb into bed. She looked like a French maid who forgot her costume.
“I wanted to surprise you,” she said. She was a lovely brunette, rather tall-maybe five nine-with a willowy figure that would have seemed skinny if not for pert breasts and an impertinent dimpled behind. She was tanned all over. Her hair was up. It wasn’t alone.
“I thought you were working at Republic today,” I said, undoing my tie.
She crawled under the covers and the sheets made inviting, crinkly sounds. “Early wrap…. I tipped a bellboy who let me in.”
Soon I was under covers, equally naked, leaning on a pillow. “You know, I run with kind of a rough crowd- surprises like this can backfire.”
“I just wanted to do something sweet for you,” she said.
And she proceeded to do something sweet for me.
Half an hour later, still in the bedroom, we were getting dressed when I brought up the rough crowd she ran with.
“Why didn’t you mention you used to date Frank Niccoli?”
She was fastening a nylon to her garter belt, long lovely leg stretched out as if daring me to be mad at her. “I don’t know-Nate, you and I met at Sherry’s, after all. You hang around with those kind of people. What’s the difference?”
“The difference is, suppose he’s a jealous type. Niccoli isn’t your average ex-beau-he’s a goddamn thug. Is it true he smacked you around?”
She was putting on her other nylon, fastening it, smoothing it; this kind of thing could get boring in an hour or two. “That’s why I walked out on him. I warned him and he said he wouldn’t do it again, and then a week later, he did it again.”
“Has he bothered you? Confronted you in public? Called you on the phone?”
“No. It’s over. He knows it, and I know it…now you know it. Okay, Nate? Do I ask you questions about your ex-wife?”
Didi didn’t know my wife wasn’t officially my ex, yet; nor that I was still hoping to rekindle those flames. She thought I was a great guy, unaware that I was a heel who would never marry another actress, but would gladly sleep with one.
“Let’s drop it,” I said.
“What a wonderful idea.” She stood, easing her slip down over her nyloned legs, and was shimmying into her casual light-blue dress when the doorbell rang. Staying in a bungalow at the Beverly Hills, incidentally, was the only time I can recall a hotel room having a doorbell.
“I’m not expecting company,” I told her, “but stay in here, would you? And keep mum?”
“I need ut my make-up on-”
The bell rang again-pretty damn insistent.
I got my nine millimeter out of the suitcase, stuffed it in my waistband, slipped on my sportjacket and covered it. “Just sit down-there’s some magazines by the bed. We don’t need to advertise.”
She saw the common sense of that, and nodded. No alarm had registered in her eyes at the sight of the weapon; but then she’d been Niccoli’s girl, hadn’t she?
I shut her in there and went to answer the door.
I’d barely cracked the thing open when the two guys came barging in, the first one in brushing past me, the second slamming the door.
I hadn’t even had a chance to say, “Hey!” when the badge in the wallet was thrust in my face.
“Lieutenant Delbert Potts,” he said, putting the wallet away. He was right on top of me and his breath was terrible: it smelled like anchovies taste. “L.A. vice squad. This is my partner, Sergeant Rudy Johnson.”
Potts was a heavy-set character in an off-the-rack brown suit that looked slept in; hatless, he had greasy reddish-blond hair and his drink-reddened face had a rubbery softness. His eyes were bloodshot, his nose as misshapen as a blob of putty somebody had stuck there carelessly, his lips thick and plump and vaguely obscene.
Johnson was thin and dark-both his features and his physique-and his navy suit looked tailored. He wore a black snapbrim that had set him back a few bucks.
“Fancy digs, Mr. Heller,” Potts said, prowling the place, his thick-lipped smile conveying disgust. He had a slurry voice-he reminded me of a loathsome Arthur Godfrey, if that wasn’t redundant.
“I do some work for the hotel,” I said. “They treat me right when I’m out here.”
“You goin’ back to Chicago soon?” Johnson asked, right next to me. He had a reedy voice and his eyes seemed sleepy unless you noticed the sharpness under the half-lids.
“Not right away.”
I’d never met this pair, yet they knew my name and knew I was from Chicago. And they hadn’t taken me up on my offer to sit down.
“You might re-consider,” Potts said. He was over at the wet bar, checking out the brands.
“Help yourself,” I said.
“We’re on duty,” Johnson said.
“Fellas-what’s this about?”
Potts wandered back over to me and thumped me on the chest with a thick finger. “You stopped by Mickey Cohen’s today.”
