Читать книгу A Time for Murder - John Glasby - Страница 5

CHAPTER ONE

It was a little after six in the morning when I turned off the freeway and swung the old Merc towards downtown LA. A misty November morning with a thin drizzle smearing the windscreen, making it difficult to see clearly.

The telephone call that had woken me nearly an hour earlier had come from Sam Rizzio, Carlos Galecci’s right-hand man, and I knew better than to ignore it.

I’d met Galecci for the first time three days before in a little Italian restaurant well off the main thoroughfares, with two of his bruisers sitting a couple of tables away. They’d made themselves as inconspicuous as possible, but they still stood out like sore thumbs.

Galecci was still one of the top men in the Organization if you believed everything you read in the papers. But to look at him you’d scarcely credit it. Short, going to fat in middle age, he looked mister average nice guy until you looked into his eyes. Cold and hard like those of a snake, they drilled right through you.

The conversation, which had lasted no more than fifteen minutes, was mainly one-sided. He did the talking and I did the listening. The gist of it was that he believed somebody was out to kill him, and he wanted me to dig into things and find out who it was.

I knew that with his money and connections he could have hired the best private eye in town, maybe the best in the state. The fact that I’d been a small-time hood myself, until I’d got a lucky break and went straight, didn’t seem to bother him in the least. In fact, it seemed to make him more determined to hire me.

When he’d offered a thousand dollar retainer plus generous expenses, I’d figured—what the hell? At that rate, I’d take the Devil’s money so long as it didn’t land me in jail again. After all, I had my license to think of.

Now this unexpected phone call and here I was, driving up to Galecci’s place at this ungodly hour of the morning and wondering what I’d let myself in for.

I’d never been in this part of town before, but it looked just like hundreds of others I’d known all my life. Sleazy bars, nightclubs and girlie shows: all blue, red, and yellow strip lights still showing through the mist and rain. Shadows moving silently along the sidewalks; the night people you never saw during the day.

I gunned the Merc a little until I’d left that area behind. In front of me there were now fewer cars parked in the streets and I knew I was entering the more residential area. Here, the big, flashy Cadillacs and Pontiacs were either stashed away in lock-up garages or parked on wide driveways behind locked gates. The houses were all set back from the road, discreetly out of sight from other residents behind screens of trees.

I deliberately drove past the address I’d been given and parked on the opposite side of the road. Switching off the ignition, I got out and pulled up the collar of my overcoat. Lighting a cigarette, I drew on it while I gave the Galecci place the once-over.

There were a couple of big iron gates facing the street and a wide gravel drive leading up to the house. It had been built in the old Colonial style, with white stone columns on either side of the front door. Lights still shone in several of the windows and there were four cars parked directly in front.

It looked about as impregnable as Fort Knox.

Tossing the cigarette butt into a puddle, I watched it wink out, then walked across. Just as I drew level with the gates, a couple of guys appeared out of nowhere and stood looking at me. The expressions on their faces said I’d better be there on business and not some nosy pedestrian.

The taller of the two said, “You Johnny Merak?” His voice sounded like metal being sharpened on stone.

“That’s right,” I replied, trying not to look as nervous as I felt.

“Mister Rizzio wants to see me. Said it was urgent and I was to come over right away.”

A pause and then the other guy pressed something at the side of the entrance and the gates slid aside. Once inside, the big guy frisked me like a professional and relieved me of the .38 nestling in my shoulder holster.

“Hey, is that necessary?” I asked. “I feel naked without that.”

“You’ll get it back when you leave,” he grated. “Now follow me.”

There seemed no point in arguing any further. So long as I was on that side of those gates, I did as I was told if I valued my health.

What I couldn’t figure out was why it had been Rizzio who’d made that phone call. Galecci had made it perfectly clear he wanted any information I got given to him personally.

The way I saw it, if it wasn’t some other mob in the Organization that wanted Galecci dead, the most logical suspect had to be Rizzio. That was the way these people normally operated. After a while, men like him would get tired of playing second fiddle and want the top job for themselves, and it was seldom they had the patience to wait until the boss died of natural causes.

Then there wasn’t much time to consider such possibilities. We had reached the imposing front door. When it opened, I expected Rizzio to be there to welcome me, but instead it was a flunkey, one of the house staff.

Without a word, he led me along a wide corridor. Here, the walls were lined with paintings, all of which appeared to be originals. Evidently, Galecci was some kind of art collector and he certainly knew his stuff. None of this was trash. I figured there wasn’t a single painting there which hadn’t set him back less than a hundred grand.

The guy in the monkey suit showed me into a room at the far end of the corridor. There was a massive colonial desk in the middle of the room, but there was nobody sitting behind it. I’d thought Rizzio would be there to give me the lowdown on why he wanted to see me in such a goddamned hurry. That, and the fact that apart from the manservant there didn’t seem to be anyone else around, made me nervous.

Something was clearly going on here that I didn’t understand, and I certainly didn’t like the feel of. I took the opportunity to examine the room.

If this was Galecci’s office, like the pictures on the walls, it showed he had real taste. I had to give him that. Rich, thick carpet, hand-carved chairs, heavy plush drapes across the windows. He probably claimed it all back from taxes as expenses for entertaining his rich business clients, I reckoned.

Just at that moment, the door at my back opened. I turned quickly. It was Rizzio and he didn’t look too pleased.

“Merak,” he acknowledged with a slight inclination of his head. He made no attempt to shake hands or motion me to a chair.

“I gather you want to see me,” I said. “You got something on your mind?”

He brushed a hand over his black, slicked-back hair. He seemed even more nervous than I was and that was a bad sign.

“I understand Mister Galecci hired you to do a job for him,” he said smoothly. “Do you mind telling me what it is?”

“I’d sure like to tell you,” I said. “But client confidentiality, you know. All of that is between Mister Galecci and me.”

“No; it’s between you and me now.” His voice seemed to snap little sparks. “Things may have changed. At the moment, we’re trying to find out if anything has happened to Mister Galecci. Now, I’m asking you again. What is it you’ve to do for him?”

I had the funny feeling in my bones that something really drastic had happened to my client and I wasn’t sure just how much Rizzio was prepared to tell me. At the moment, he was calling the shots. There seemed nothing to do but go with the flow and hope to pick up some information on the way.

Shrugging, I said, “Okay. He had this idea that somebody no longer wanted him in this world. He’d no idea who it was, which is why he hired me to poke around a little and see what I could come up with.”

“And have you come up with anything?”

“Not much so far. A man like him makes a lot of enemies on the way to the top. It’s a case of narrowing down any suspects. A process of elimination.”

He seemed to be turning that over in his mind, studying me closely to see if I might be holding anything back from him.

Then he shrugged and seemed to reach a decision. Jerking his head, he said, “You’d better come with me.”

I followed him out of the room, wondering what was coming next. Through another large room and then he took me down a flight of stairs and here there were plenty of people milling around, and a whole hive of activity. There was also a sharp smell in the air which I didn’t recognize until I’d taken in everything that was going on.

Set in the far wall was a massive steel door, exactly the kind you’d find in a bank vault. A guy was crouched over an oxy-acetylene torch and was using it to burn through the six-inch thick steel around the lock. Several others were crowded round him,

“Just what the hell’s going on?” I asked Rizzio. I didn’t really expect any answer but he gave one.

“That’s Galecci’s private vault. It’s where he keeps most of his cash and also his collection of antique clocks,” he explained. “That’s another hobby of his, like the paintings.”

From the way he said it, I gathered Rizzio didn’t think much of either of these pastimes.

He went on, “He goes in there every night at precisely eleven-fifteen and comes out again a couple of hours later. Everything precisely on the dot. But this time he hasn’t.”

“You reckon he’s still in there?”

“That’s right.”

“How do you know he hasn’t come out sometime ago and locked the place up again?”

“Because there’s no sign of him anywhere in the buildings. If he’d gone out, I’d have known about it.”

“So you figure something’s happened to him. Doesn’t anyone else have the combination?”

Rizzio stared at me as if I’d just uttered something blasphemous. “No one else has it. That’s why we had to call in this guy to burn a way through.”

The guy with the torch suddenly snapped it off and stepped back. “We’re through, Mister Rizzio,” he said.

“Good. Everybody stay right where they are,” Rizzio ordered. He turned to a small, white-haired man. “I want you to come in with me, doctor,” he said.

“And you as well, Merak.”

Grabbing the handle of the door, Rizzio pulled hard. Nothing happened for a few seconds, then the door swung open on well-oiled hinges. I followed him and the doctor inside, blinking in the harsh glare of the overhead strip lights.

The vault was bigger than I’d anticipated, and the first thing I noticed were the clocks of all sizes and shapes ranged around the walls. There must have been hundreds of them.

The second thing was the table near the middle of the room with the solitary chair and its occupant. I knew right away it was Galecci and that he would no longer be needing my services. The handle of a knife protruded from between his shoulder blades, and he was very dead.

I said nothing while the doctor examined him. But my mind was suddenly whirring inside my head like an overloaded engine. What I was seeing here didn’t make any sense.

Rizzio moved towards the body and put one hand out towards the knife, then jerked his head around as I stopped him. “Don’t touch that. The police will want to dust it for fingerprints and you don’t want yours all over it.”

There was a large metal box on the table directly in front of the body. Even from where I stood, I reckoned it contained a few hundred thousand dollars. Obviously whoever had killed him, robbery wasn’t the motive.

But right at that moment, motive was the last thing on my mind. It was how the murder had been committed that I couldn’t figure out.

Rizzio had been absolutely certain that Galecci came here alone around eleven-fifteen and left some two hours later, regular as clockwork. Even if someone had been waiting for him with a knife inside the vault, where was the killer now? Galecci would have locked the door immediately he was inside and I’d seen enough to know it would need the combination to open again from the inside.

There were certainly no places I could see where the killer might hide.

No windows through which he could have gone. The only exit was through that massive door, and he certainly hadn’t gone out that way.

Maybe it was a good thing that Galecci had been the one to hire me. I certainly didn’t want to have to investigate this particular murder. It just didn’t seem possible that anyone could have done it, inside a locked vault with only one way in and out, and only the dead man knowing the combination.

Rizzio waited impatiently until the doctor had finished his examination, then asked, “Any idea when he died?”

“As near as I can put it, somewhere around midnight. Certainly not much later.”

“But how?” For once, Rizzio seemed at a loss for words.

“You tell me,” muttered the doctor. I had to hand it to the little guy, he didn’t let Rizzio scare him. “I’m just telling you the obvious. Someone stuck that knife in his back around midnight. Death was virtually instantaneous. Now the rest is up to the police. If they want me to make a statement, I will. But don’t ask me how anybody got in and out of this place in order to kill him.”

Rizzio swung on me. “You got any ideas, Merak?”

I shook my head. “None right now. But there are a couple of questions. Did anyone actually see him go into the vault last night? And has it remained closed all night?”

Rizzio signaled to one of the guys standing in the vault doorway, beckoning him in. Tersely, he asked him the same questions. The man nodded each time.

“Keller stays on guard outside the vault all the time the boss is in there. Nobody has gone in or come out since Galecci went in alone some seven hours ago.”

I could see that Rizzio was just as puzzled as I was. Unless you believed in the invisible man who could walk through six-inch-thick steel walls, Galecci should have been as alive we were!

I made a move towards the door. “It looks as though Galecci won’t be needing me any more,” I said. “And unless you want to hire me to—”

He cut me off quickly. “There won’t be any further need for your services, Merak,” he said tonelessly. “This is obviously a matter for the police now. And if any more has to be done in the light of their findings, I can take care of that myself.” Almost as an afterthought, he added, “You know your way out.”

I shrugged. If that was the way he wanted it, it was fine by me. Frankly, I had the feeling that a certain Lieutenant Charles Donovan wouldn’t be too pleased with this case either.

I pushed my way through the guys blocking the vault entrance and made my way back to the front door. All in all, it seemed I had just wasted my time coming here. The only reason that stood out in my mind at that moment, was that Rizzio had wanted me there as an independent witness once they discovered Galecci’s body. It seemed odd he hadn’t asked me in detail about anything I’d uncovered over the past three days. Maybe, now that Carlos Galecci was dead, that didn’t matter any more.

I’d almost reached the front door when someone called my name. My hand went automatically for the .38 and then stopped as I remembered it was no longer there. Besides, I suddenly realized it was a woman’s voice, and when she stepped out of the shadows of the side corridor, I knew I wouldn’t be needing my gun.

I recognized her right away. I’d seen pictures of her in the glossy magazines around the time she’d married Galecci. She’d been Gloria Benton then, I recalled. Some kind of model, small-time, posing for the usual run of photographers and trying to get into the movies. A statuesque blonde with vivid blue eyes, standing over six feet in her nylons, with a body to match.

Now she was dressed in a white sweater and shorts, and certainly not looking like the grieving widow to me.

“I have to talk with you, Mister Merak,” she said in a low, husky voice. “It’s important.”

After what I’d seen in that vault, I figured this might provide a pleasant diversion, and followed her along the short corridor into the room near the end.

The place was fitted out as a gymnasium with all of the usual gimmicks; exercise machines, weights, climbing bars. I guessed it had been done for her benefit. Galecci hadn’t looked the kind of guy who took much trouble over his physical shape. She closed the door behind us.

“Okay,” I said. “What is it you want to see me about?”

Without answering, she walked towards the middle of the gym. There was a barbell on the floor and she came to a halt a little way from it, her back to it. Smiling a little, she performed a graceful back bend, hooking her hands under the bar. She held the pose for several seconds as I stood there, wondering what was coming next. Then she drew in a deep breath that did wonders for the sweater and straightened up, seemingly effortlessly, until she was standing, holding the weight over her head.

Somehow, I managed to pop my eyes back into their sockets.

She stood there for a full minute, the faintly supercilious smile on her full lips, before lowering the barbell slowly to the floor.

Standing back, she motioned towards it. I got my hands around it and tugged hard. I only managed to get it to my knees. It was the real McCoy all right and I guessed it weighed close on a hundred and fifty pounds.

Straightening up, I said harshly, “Okay, Mrs. Galecci. But you didn’t ask me to come here just to show me how strong you are.”

She sobered instantly. “No, you’re right. I know my husband’s been murdered. One of Rizzio’s men told me just before I met you. Has Rizzio hired you to find his killer?”

“No,” I shook my head. “He’s leaving it in the hands of the police.”

“Good. Then you’re hired.”

“Hey, hold on a minute,” I said. “I’ve seen what’s in that vault. This isn’t the kind of case I’m interested in. Finding errant husbands is one thing, but a murder that’s impossible is another. Rizzio made it clear he only wants the police in on this. He’s already been in touch with Lieutenant Donovan of Homicide, I gather.”

“I’m not interested in Donovan or the police. Most of them are fools, and the others will do exactly as Rizzio tells them. Whatever Carlos offered you, I’ll double it.”

“You want me to find out who killed your husband? Is that it?”

“That—and something more. I have good reason to believe that whoever did it wants me dead too.”

“Now why should you think that?”

“Because Carlos left a will before he died. He left everything to me. Everything. I own all of this as of now, the whole operation. I’m asking you to help me because I need someone I can trust implicitly.”

I could see Rizzio wasn’t going to be too pleased when he heard this. I wondered if he’d known about the existence of this will beforehand. If so, it put him a little lower on my list of suspects. It also put Gloria Galecci right at the top.

Even though she’d only just been told of her husband’s departure from this world, her obvious lack of grief certainly didn’t seem like the result of shock. And somehow I doubted if she had the ability and know-how to run an organization like this. Galecci had had his finger in every racket in LA.

“There’s one thing worrying me,” I said. “Why me? I’m just a one-man team, apart from Dawn Grahame, my secretary. You could surely afford one of the biggest agencies in town. They could put several men on the case, get results a lot quicker.”

She shook her head vehemently, the long blonde hair dancing across her bare shoulders. “That’s not what I want. All of that means organization, someone doing this and someone else doing that. I want a one-man team, someone personal I can contact at any time of the day or night.”

There was a double meaning to her last words and I saw something in her eyes that told me it was deliberate.

“So you’re offering a two thousand dollar retainer plus expenses,” I said. “And Gloria Galecci thrown in for good measure.”

The faint smile came back onto her lips as she said. “That too, if you want it.”

“I may take you up on that sometime,” I replied. “But right now, I’d like to ask you one question. It’s personal. Where will Rizzio fit in now that Carlos had gone and you intend to take over?”

“If you’re asking me whether there’s ever been anything between Sam and me, the answer’s—no.”

She sounded neither indignant nor mad, at the question so I figured she might just be telling the truth.

“Okay, I’ll take the job,” I told her. I knew it was a stupid thing to do and I’d probably regret it later.

“Somehow, I thought you would. I know your office number. I’ll ring you sometime every other day to see if you’ve found out anything.”

“And if I should ever need to get in touch with you?”

“I’d rather you didn’t—not for a couple of weeks, until I’ve got everything sorted out. You know how these lawyers are.”

I could guess. Rizzio wasn’t going to take this lying down. He’d doubtless get some slick city lawyer to try to break the will. Things could turn really nasty.

From her tone, I guessed this meeting was at an end. She accompanied me to the front door. Rizzio was already there with a couple of his henchmen. He gave me a funny look but said nothing, although I could almost hear his thoughts whirring away inside his head.

The rain had stopped and it was just getting light when I left. Just as I started along the drive, the gates opened and a police car drove in. It stopped in front of the house a couple of yards away and Lieutenant Charles Donovan got out. His official title was Lieutenant of the Homicide Division, a big-sounding name and one he tried to live up to.

He saw me right away and the permanent scowl on his face deepened still further. “Just what the hell are you doing here, Merak?” he demanded.

“You’d better ask Sam Rizzio that,” I replied calmly. “He phoned me a couple of hours ago and asked me to get out here right away. Guess he knew that something had happened to his boss.”

Donovan snorted. “Rizzio ain’t your usual kind of client. You’re getting a little outa your league, ain’t you?”

I ignored the sarcasm. “Matter of fact, it was Carlos Galecci who hired me in the first place three days ago. Reckoned then that someone was out to get him.”

His lips curled back in what was meant to be a humorous smile, showing his teeth. “Seems you weren’t all that good at your job then, from what I’ve just been informed. If Galecci is dead, I reckon your part in this case is finished.”

“Now that would’ve made your day, Lieutenant,” I said. “But I’ve just been rehired.”

“Oh.” Donovan looked hard and inquiringly at Rizzio, who shook his head.

“So who’s hired you?”

“It’s no secret, I guess. Mrs. Galecci.”

That shook him a little, but he swiftly regained his composure. “Well just keep out of my hair, that’s all. And you uncover any real evidence, you pass it on to me right away. Got that?”

He brushed past me, said something in a low voice to Rizzio, then went into the house with Sergeant Kowolinsky trailing after him.

I picked up my gun from the guy at the gate, checked it was still loaded, and slipped it into its holster before walking back to my car.

Getting in, I settled behind the wheel for a while, turning things over in my mind. I still wasn’t sure I’d done the right thing, agreeing to work for Gloria Galecci. From what I’d seen, there was no possible way anyone could have killed Galecci. Unless he’d somehow managed to stick that knife in the middle of his back himself, the whole thing looked impossible.

What Donovan would make of it, I didn’t know. He wasn’t the most imaginative of men when it came to solving murders like this.

Give him some body stretched out in an alley with plenty of prints and clues lying around, and he was in his element. But with an impossible murder, like this seemed to be, and with Rizzio breathing down the back of his neck, I couldn’t see him making much of it.

I drove back to my office slowly, hitting the early morning traffic for most of the way. Dawn Grahame was just opening up when I got there. She eyed me curiously. Normally I arrived no earlier than nine, and it must have been obvious to her that I’d been up for some time.

“Don’t tell me you’ve been out all night on a case, Johnny,” she said as I slumped down in my chair behind the desk.

I nodded. “Get me some coffee, Dawn. Black and as strong as you can make it.”

She came back with it five minutes later. After seating herself on the edge of the desk, she asked, “This got something to do with Carlos Galecci?”

“Carlos is dead,” I told her, sipping the coffee. It burned my tongue and the back of my throat, but it brought some of the warmth and feeling back into my chilled body. “They found him this morning. The doc reckons he died some time around midnight.”

“But not of natural causes?”

“Not exactly. We found him inside a locked vault with a knife in his back. They had to burn through the lock to get inside.”

Dawn whistled faintly through her teeth. She brought out a small file and began working on her nails. After a moment’s reflection, she said. “And you’re absolutely sure he died inside that vault?”

I could see what she was getting at; the same possibility had occurred to me when I first saw the body. Had someone knifed Galecci just as he’d opened the vault, carried him inside and set him up in that chair, before letting themselves out, closing the door behind them?

“I see what you mean, Dawn. The same idea had occurred to me. But he was seen going inside at his usual time and there was nothing out of the ordinary then.”

She thought that over for a moment before pronouncing her considered verdict. “Then I guess you’re faced with something that couldn’t possibly have happened.”

“Just what I told Sam Rizzio.”

“All right. So where do you fit in now that Galecci’s dead? Has Rizzio hired you to find the killer?”

“Not Rizzio. Mrs. Galecci.”

Dawn gave me an enigmatic look. “You’re working for her?”

“That’s about it.” I finished the coffee. “The trouble is, I don’t even know where to start. I’d like to get a good look around that vault, but I reckon that’s out of the question. And I’m damned sure Donovan won’t talk to me. The guy hates my guts.”

“Is there no one else on the case who’ll talk to you?” Dawn got up and walked across to the window.

I mulled that over. I knew a few of the officers in the Homicide Squad. A few of them were decent guys. But they all took their orders from Donovan, and whether any would give me any information was problematical. Still, it was worth a try.

“There’s Jack Kowolinski,” I said. “He was with Donovan this morning. Once he’s off duty, I guess I know where to find him.”

Kowolinski was unmarried, and he’d helped me on a couple of cases before. A decent cop, but a little too addicted to the hard stuff. He’d been in the force almost twenty-five years, and would certainly have made promotion a long time ago had it not been for his drinking.

“Anything you’d like me to do?” Dawn asked.

“Find out anything you can on Galecci. Somebody wanted him dead, and whoever it was, they certainly picked a unique way of doing it. They must have known his routine and somehow they had access to that vault.”

“I’ll get on to it right away.”

“And run a check on Sam Rizzio, though I doubt if you’ll find much.”