'And you've got some local support.'
I cast my eyes down modestly.
'Dalton Becker has spoken to me about you.'
'That is local support,' I said.
'He asked me to be as helpful to you as possible. Said of course he wouldn't want me to violate any ethical standards, but that he'd be grateful for any support I could give you.'
'Dalton and I have always been tight,' I said. 'Did Walter Clive ever talk to you about changing his will?'
Vallone twiddled with his cigar some more. He seemed preoccupied with getting the ash exactly even all the way around.
'He talked about it with me once,' Vallone said.
'When?'
'Before he died.'
'How long before?'
'Well, you are a precise devil, aren't you. Maybe a month.'
'What did he say?'
'Said he might want to change his will in a bit, would that be difficult? I said no, it would be easy. I said did he want me to get a start on drafting something up? He said no. Said he wasn't sure if he was going to. Said he'd let me know.'
I drank a little from the draft beer I had ordered. 'Did he ever let you know?'
Vallone took the cigar out of his mouth and shook his head. Had he left the cigar in his mouth when he shook his head, he would probably have suffered whiplash.
'Do you have any idea how he would have modified his will?'
'No.'
'Or why?'
'None. Walter wasn't talkative. I think the only person he ever trusted was Penny.'
'She say anything to you?'
'Penny?' Vallone smiled. 'Sure-charming things, funny things, sweet things. Anything that gave you any information? Not ever.'
'She understand the business?' I said.
'Recent years, she ran it. He was the front man mostly, since she got old enough. He'd shmooze the buyers, drink with the big money in the clubhouse, he and Dolly would take them to breakfast at the Reading Room in Saratoga. They could always get a table at Joe's Stone Crab in Miami. That sort of thing. Penny stayed home and ran the business.'
'And the other girls?'
Vallone smiled.
'How'd they occupy themselves?' he said. 'In the business?'
'Yes.'
'They didn't. They had nothing to do with the business that I could ever see,' Vallone said.
'So how'd they occupy themselves?' I said. 'Besides boozing and bopping.'
Vallone took out his cigar and smiled again. 'They didn't,' he said.
'So, boozing and bopping was all there was.'
He nodded.
'Bopping and boozing,' he said. 'Boozing and bopping.' He flicked his perfect ash into an ashtray on the bar.
'Well,' I said, 'there's worse ways to spend your time.'
'And ain't that the by-God truth,' Vallone said.
FORTY-FOUR
AFTER I LEFT Vallone, driving back to the motel, I noticed that I had picked up a tail. He wasn't very good at it. He'd get too close, then drop too far back, then have to drive too fast and pass too many cars so he wouldn't lose me. When we got to my motel I pulled into the lot and parked. He pulled in behind me, and went to the far corner of the lot, and just in case I hadn't noticed him, he turned the car around and backed into a slot where he could come out quickly if I took off. Pathetic. I sat in my car with the motor running and the a/c on high and thought for a minute or two. Then I got out and walked over to his car and rapped on the window. The window slid down and the cold air from the interior slipped out and wilted in the heat. The tail was a slim young guy with curly blond hair and aviator sunglasses. He was wearing a plaid summer-weight sport coat and he looked at me with an expression so studiously blank that it made me smile.
'Yeah?'
'Where's your boss?' I said.
