number one, but he’s in the top three and he’s moving up. Expanding out of the city onto the Island is part of that move. Ever hear of Johnny C?”
“Johnny Casanova?”
“That’s the one.”
His name was actually Casanove, but he was a pretty boy who attracted dames like flies to sugar, and the lover-man nickname had been around as long as he’d been on the scene.
“This game here?” Bill said, with a head bob back toward the dining room. “This is Johnny C’s action. He was around the first few hours the first day, pressing the flesh, then made himself scarce. He doesn’t gamble himself. He’s too smart for that.”
“That was his casino, outside Sidon?”
“Yes it was.”
“But the Wesley dame inherited big dough. Why would she let a syndicate type like Casanova take over her private mansion, and keep her on to play hostess?”
Bill shrugged. “Word is Johnny C had something on her. Maybe proof she bumped off her rich hubby. Who knows?”
“Could she have been Casanova’s mistress? If she was gone on the guy, she might hand him the keys to that mansion.”
“I can’t answer that. But I’ve sat in a couple of games in the last six months or so where Sharron Wesley was hanging around. She’d show all dolled up, and seem like she was part of the entertainment committee…” He jerked a thumb toward the blonde and redhead sitting in the living room nearby. “…but those two in there? Anybody at the table who wants to grab one by the arm, on a break, is free to do so.”
“Free to do what?”
“What I said! Grab her by the arm. Haul her in that bedroom. But not Sharron. She sat around looking pretty, flirted with players, held onto their arms, cheered winners on, that sort of thing. But she never went off into the bedroom with anybody but Johnny C. And then not for long.”
“Not long enough to… entertain?”
“Not unless the Great Casanova is a thirty-second man. But because she seemed, in some way anyway, to be Johnny C’s moll, nobody tried anything with her, beyond just friendly flirting. Don’t you get it yet? How about this, Mike? She always came with a purse. A great big purse. And I don’t think it had her knitting in it.”
Miami Bull came out and joined us, smoking a stogie that could use the outdoors.
Bill nodded toward me. “I was just catching up Mike here on the Johnny C and Sharron Wesley ‘romance.’”
“Romance my Hungarian balls,” Miami Bull droned, leaking blue smoke. “She was his damn bag man! Good- looking one, maybe, but a bag man all the way. Regular Virginia Hill.”
Pat had told me about Sharron Wesley’s New York visits, and her party-girl hanging-on at poker fetes like this. I should have put it together sooner. But at least I knew now.
“Gents,” I said, with a hand on either of their shoulders, “you have done me a big favor. Much appreciated, and I wish you both many happy hands and one whopping pot after another.”
Miami Bull grunted a laugh and waved his stogie like a magic wand. “Bill here is making hash out of both of them notions.”
Bill chortled and said, “Ask him, Mike, how much he took off me last month?”
I was halfway into the living room when I looked back and asked, “Either of you fellas have any idea where Johnny C might hang out on a Monday night?”
“Almost any night,” Bill said, “you can find him at El Borracho, Nicky Q’s fancy bistro. Johnny’s got a back booth that’s as close as he comes to an office.”
“Thank you, fellers.”
On the way out, I stuffed a sawbuck in the breast pocket of the ex-pug doorman’s spiffy suit.
I was gone before he could figure out whether ten bucks was worth what I put him through.
Nicky Q-short for some convoluted Sicilian moniker I won’t even attempt-was a genial oddball whose East Side wine-and-dinery on 55 ^ th attracted cafe society, theatrical types, and your better class of criminal. The walls were adorned with whiskey bottle labels, losing $100 horse-race tickets, and note cards with lipstick kisses courtesy of female patrons.
El Borracho meant drunkard in Spanish, but no tamales were on the menu, though Nicky’s joke two-headed “Siamese fish” was listed at four grand a serving. If you wanted Nicky to have his pet talking Mynah bird taken off its bar-side perch for frying, that would be six grand. So far no takers on either. You could get a veal cutlet, though, for only ten times what Big Steve would charge you for one back in Sidon.
I got myself a rye and soda at the bar and made my way to Johnny C’s office-a corner booth near the riser- type stage, just off a dance floor actually roomy enough for dancing. But the Latin-styled orchestra was on break.
That meant Johnny C would not be out doing his Valentino routine with one of the baby dolls who sat on either side of him. A redhead and a blonde again, wearing green and white plunging gowns respectively, maybe sent from the same call service as the two at the Waldorf suite. This time it was the blonde who seemed bored and the redhead who looked bright-eyed.
As for matinee-idol handsome Johnny C, he had broad shoulders or anyway the tux did, an average-size guy who seemed taller. Johnny had shiny black curls that sat on his head like a Roman council, and a black beauty mark of a mole near sensuous lips, adding to a generally debauched air. The long dark eyelashes and dark brown blinkers were part of that, too. Then there were the ruffled cuffs and bejeweled fingers, plus that dark complexion-not a tan, a gift from Mommy and Daddy back in Sicily.
Book-ending the booth, seated on the outside next to the redhead and blonde, were two outsize bodyguards. Like the pug-ugly doorman at the Waldorf, this matched pair dressed really well for hoods. Not tuxes like the boss, though, or tweeds either. But decent charcoal suits with sharp dark-blue silk ties, even if their rods did bulge.
One hood, seated next to the blonde, had an interesting decorative touch around his thick neck-purple and yellow bruises, splotchy things. Like the kind that got made when somebody was choking you and really putting some effort into it. I had never seen this boy, a tiny-eyed sort with a hook nose, or his friend, a dimple-chinned specimen with a black burr haircut.
What was interesting was that they were both scowling at me in apparent recognition.
Being a shrewd detective, I deducted more or less immediately that this was the pair who yesterday had rifled my office and scuffled with me in the dark.
“Mike Hammer,” Johnny C said in his smooth baritone, lifting his Manhattan as if in a toast. “Isn’t El Borracho a little rich for your blood? Or are private detectives in demand for divorce work in our glorious post-war world?”
“I don’t do divorce work,” I said, yanking over a chair from a nearby table for four, with a nod to a startled couple who could spare it. I sat facing Johnny and jerked a thumb at the tiny-eyed hood and then his dimple-chin partner. “Maybe I came for the two-headed fish.”
The goons frowned at this, but Johnny chuckled. Speaking of private eyes, the redhead was giving me one, slipping me a wink when Johnny wasn’t looking. You’d think she would prefer the Don Juan who brung her to a rough apple like yours truly.
“What did you come for, Mr. Hammer?” Johnny C asked, his ripe lips smiling but his eyes cold.
I reached in my suit coat pocket and got out the scented hanky and tossed it on the table. It landed right in front of him and he frowned down at it.
“I’ve spent a couple days trying to find out who Sharron Wesley’s silent partner was,” I said, “and all this time the answer was in my pocket. I found that hanky in a money cage at the casino. I figured it for a lady’s because of the delicate work and the scent. But that ‘G’ on it stands for Giovanni… Italian for John.”
Johnny C said nothing. The smile was gone, the cold eyes remained.
I sipped my rye and soda. “Maybe it is a ‘lady’s’ hanky. Maybe you sleep with Frick and Frack here, and the dollies are just window dressing.”
Now the blonde was smiling at me, too. Pay dirt.
“I don’t really give a damn either way,” I said, “but Sharron Wesley sure as hell wasn’t your moll. I don’t think
