Maybe I could.
“Well,” I said, “she was pregnant- somebody fucked her.”
“She never said she was pregnant. But I figured she was, since she needed money for an operation.”
“Around five hundred dollars, the going abortion rate.”
“That’s right. Saving for it, hitting everybody up. And I told her, after this Mocambo score, I’d fix her up with whatever cash she needed. That’s when she got… weird on me.”
“Weird, how?”
Savarino shook his head, dark curls dancing. “She was an odd duck, man. She seemed so… worldly, is that the word? Like she’d been around, like she knew the streets, she was almost a goddamn hooker the way she’d work a guy for drinks… I got a feeling I’m not the only guy she went down on, to buy her dinner.”
“What’s your point?”
“Still, there was this, whaddayacallit, naive side to her. Yeah, she wore black, and she was in show biz and hung out on the fringes of society, with lowlifes like me. Man, you should have seen her, dolled up in those black outfits, seamed black stockings, with that sweet, innocent face, glowin’ in the night, like a fuckin’ angel.”
“Your point?”
“She had no idea what I did for a living-no clue that she was hanging out, there at the McCadden Cafe, in the middle of a nest of goddamn thieves. When I told her I’d give her the rest of the money she needed, outa my share of the heist, she wigged out-blew her friggin’ top, man, scratchin’ me, clawin’ at me, slappin’ me.”
“And you got a little rough with her.”
His dark eyes flared. “Well, I grabbed her by the arms and threw her ass offa me, yeah! Wouldn’t you?”
“Is that when she took off for San Diego?”
He blinked in surprise. “How did you know-oh yeah, it was in the papers, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah. You and Helen and Henry went down there, after her, didn’t you? To the house where she was freeloading?”
“Sure we went lookin’ for her… She’d sent a telegram to Helen, askin’ for money… still trying to raise money. So we had the address.”
“Why did you go all the way down there, Bobby? Why didn’t you let sleeping dogs lie?”
“I guess… I guess maybe I was afraid, as bad as she needed money, she might sell what she knew to somebody… about the Mocambo score we was plannin’. You know, tip ’em off.”
“But she didn’t.”
“No. And after the score, she come back, and she started stayin’ with Helen. Hiding out.”
“Why hiding out? Hiding from whom?”
“The cops. Beth figured she was an accomplice to the Mocambo score, since she knew about it, and didn’t do nothing to stop it.”
She’d been right about that: she would have been considered an accomplice.
“Anyway,” Savarino was saying, “we fight, get back together, fight, get back, bust up… back and forth like that. I kept thinkin’ I was gonna get in her pants, but I never made it past her mouth.”
“And your wife never got wise?”
“Naw. Women believe what they want to believe. Anyway, I’m well rid of that crazy cunt. I’m happy with the one I got.”
I savored the ambiguity of that for a moment, then asked, “You don’t have any doubt, Bobby, that Dragna had Beth Short killed, as a warning to you?”
“None. Oh, that sex-crime angle, that’s a good one-keepin’ those dumb-ass cops busy. But when I heard about her face, how it was cut ear to ear, I knew what that meant. And I clammed, man-I clammed.”
I stood. So did he.
I gave him the fifty bucks, and said, “Give this to your wife. If you don’t, she’ll come looking for me.”
He laughed. “Yeah, she is a pistol.”
“I saw her on stage, Rialto, back in Chicago. She was something.”
Beaming proudly, he said, “She sure was. Amazing how she could make them tassels go in both directions.”
“Bobby, you have any idea how lucky you are? Beautiful wife who loves you? Kid on the way?”
“I know,” he said. He shook his head, curls flouncing, and his sigh started down around his shoes. “Now if only I wasn’t facing no twenty years in stir.”
And he went inside.
19
Of the jewels in the glittering bracelet of the Sunset Strip after dark-the Trocadero, the Crescendo, La Rue, and Ciro’s, to name a few-the Mocambo was the brightest, and the gaudiest. The epitome of a Hollywood nightspot, with record-breaking attendance unfettered even by the post-VJ Day slump, the Mocambo sported a deceptively simple exterior. The two-story building’s lower story was red with its name emblazoned in bold stylish white, the upper floor white with red-shuttered windows and a modest neon sign, with only the oversize canopy’s red-and- white-striped awning to suggest anything remarkable might await within.
The club had a wildly eccentric South American motif, the inside of Carmen Miranda’s mind as depicted by Salvador Dali. Oversize baroque tin wall sculptures of flowers and harlequins and dancing girls mingled with flamboyant terra cotta and soothing shades of blue, the latter perhaps intended to tone things down a bit in a room where striped patterns were everywhere, from draped walls to candy-cane columns wearing chrome crowns with oversize ball fringe dangling, invoking a demented gaucho’s sombrero. An exotic aviary-a cockatoo, several macaws, a quartet of love birds, a couple dozen parakeets-added constant punctuation to the Latin music of house-band leader Phil Ohman (lured from the Trocadero).
The tariff at the Mocambo was steep-ten bucks a head-but a tourist’s bargain, considering the parade of stars the joint attracted. With Eliot trailing after us like a high-priced bodyguard, Peggy and I were escorted through the packed club by maitre d’ Andre (stolen from New York’s “21”). Along the way we passed Judy Garland and her escort, Myrna Loy and hers, Lana Turner with Tony Martin, Marlene Dietrich with Jean Gabin, and Rosalind Russell and an old gent my wife informed me via whisper was Irving Berlin. If a bomb dropped on this place, the only thing left of American show business would be the Ritz Brothers.
My wife and I were holding hands. I was in a dark suit with a black-and-gray tie and looked pretty snappy; Peggy was a vision in black crepe, her shoulders and midriff bare beneath misty black lace, her dark hair down and flouncing, mouth lushly red-lipsticked. She may have only been a bit player, but every male eye found her, as we wound through the tables. Partly it was her beauty-but some of it had to be her resemblance to the dead girl whose picture had been so prominently in the papers.
We had already had a fight, a little one back at the hotel, and had kissed and made up, after a bigger problem had taken centerstage.
The little fight had been over this late-night (our reservation was 11:30 P. M.) engagement to go dancing and drinking with several old friends. One of those old friends was Barney Ross, as Peg-without me knowing-had set this up with Barney’s soon-to-be-ex-wife, Cathy, who was seeing him for the first time since his release from the drug rehabilitation hospital.
When Peggy informed me of this, I had already agreed to go out, and we were getting ready in the big bathroom in the Beverly Hills Hotel bungalow, me in my shorts, at the mirror, shaving, with Peggy in the tub, also shaving-face and legs, respectively.
“Barney’s going to be there? Does he know I’m going to be there?”
“No. Cathy thinks it will be good for him.”
“You can’t spring me on Barney like this! We haven’t spoken in years.”
She shrugged and then returned her attention to her soapy, nicely formed calf, stroking it with her Lady Gillette. “I know he was a little put out with you…”
“Put out! He was a dope addict, and I dried up his hometown street supplies!”
“But he’s well, now,” she said.
