“Then you get a word, Robbie. Come on back. How’s San Diego’s famous detective?”
He’s a round-faced, chipper fellow, early sixties, grandson of one of San Diego’s more vivid mob figures, Leo the Lion Gagnas. Leo and his L.A. partners ran this city’s gambling and loansharking. Back in 1950, two men out of Youngstown tried to get in on the Gagnas rackets, and they both washed up in Glorietta Bay one morning with bullets in their heads. Leo and company opened Napoli back in ‘53. He was tight with Bebe Rebozo, who was a big Nixon fundraiser. Beginning in 1966 Leo did two years for tax evasion and that was it. He never saw the inside of a prison before or after.
We sat in his dark little office. There were no windows and it smelled heavily of cigar smoke and cologne. The bookshelves were stuffed with well-read paperback crime novels—plenty of Whit Masterson and Erle Stanley Gardner and Mickey Spillane. A floor safe sat in one corner and the walls were covered with framed photographs of Dom’s ancestors and the people they entertained at Napoli—Sinatra, Joey Bishop, John Wayne, Nixon, Ted Williams.
I looked at the pictures. “Where’s the new celebrities, Dom?”
He looked at the pictures too. “They don’t come around here so much anymore. A time for everything, you know? It’s good. Business is good. What do you need, Robbie?”
I told him about Sal—his alleged New Jersey outfit ties, his bad attitude and slick black Beamer, his fix on a young dancer at Skin named Farrel.
Dom nodded. “Yeah. I heard. My nephew, he’s a manager at Skin. I got some friends checking this guy out.”
“Ever had any trouble out of Jersey?”
“Never. Not any trouble at all, Robbie. Those days are long gone. You know that.”
“What if he’s what he says he is, trying to move in?”
“In on what?”
“On business, Dom.”
“I don’t know what you mean,
“I wonder if he’s got help.”
“He better have help if he wants to shoot off his mouth. I’ll let you know what I find out. And Robbie, you see this guy, tell him he’s not making any friends around here. If he’s what he says he is, then that’s one thing. If he’s not, then he’s just pissing everybody off. Some doors you don’t want to open. Tell him that. You might save him a little inconvenience. How’s that pretty redhead wife of yours? Gina.”
“We divorced seven years ago.”
“I got divorced once. No, it was three times. You know why it’s so expensive, don’t you?”
“Because it’s worth it.”
“Yeah.”
“You’ve told me that one before, Dom.”
“And I was right, wasn’t I?”
I met Farrel at Skin that night before she was set to perform. We sat at the bar and got good treatment from the bartenders. Dom’s nephew, a spidery young man named Joey Morra, came by, said hello, told Farrel the customers were liking her. I took down Farrel’s numbers and address and the name of her daughter and hometown and parents. And I also got everything she could tell me about Sal Tessola—where he lived and how they met, what he’d done for her and to her, the whole story. I told her she’d need all these things in order to write a good convincing complaint. We talked for a solid hour before she checked her watch.
“You going to stay and see me perform?”
“Not tonight.”
“Didn’t like it much, then?”
“You were good, Farrel.”
She eyed me. “I don’t want Vic trying to get me the money. I didn’t ask him to. I asked him
“You’ve got a point.”
“How come you’re not married? You must be about legal age.”
“I was once.”
“I’d a found a way to keep you.”
“You’re flattering me now.”
“Why don’t you flatter me back?”
“Center Springs took a loss when you packed it in.”
She peered at me in that forthright and noncommittal way. “It sure did. And there’s no power in heaven or earth strong enough to drag me back there.”
I saw the black triangles of dread and the yellow triangles of fear hovering in the air between us.
I followed her from Skin. I’m not suspicious by nature but it helps me do my job. The night was close and damp
