Collins, Max Allan - Nathan Heller 12 Read online

“Orson Welles?” Rubinski said.

  “That’s right—Martians have landed.”

  “He’s shooting a picture at Columbia, with his wife, only they’re kinda shut down, ’cause of the strikes. I’ll try to track him down.”

  “Today, if possible. This afternoon.”

  “And Orson Welles will just drop everything to talk to Nate Heller?”

  “You did a job for Welles a year or so ago, didn’t you, Fred?”

  He drew in a surprised breath. “Yeah—how did you know that?”

  “Who do you think referred that aging Boy Wonder to you?”

  “You do get around, Nate. Orson Welles—what do you want from that crazy egomaniac?”

  “Not a screen test,” I said.

  Spitting distance from the busy business district of North Highland Avenue, on a dead-ending side street just off Yucca, stood a freestanding stucco building with a gravel parking lot in back. Mine was the only car in the lot, and a sign in the door said CLOSED—OPEN AT FOUR.

  But through the front window, between the neon beer signs and the painted letters spelling out McCADDEN CAFE, I could see—cutting through shadows cast by the blades of ceiling fans—a tall, cadaverous guy in an apron going around the room, cleaning off tables with a rag. He had a cigarette going, and moved with a pronounced limp.

  I knocked on the front door, hard enough to rattle it, peering around the CLOSED sign, and the skinny guy saw me, and scowled and shook his head, yelling, “Can’t ya read, buddy?”

  But apparently he could, numbers anyway, because when I held up a fivespot to the glass, he limped over—twig-thin but towering—and unlocked the door, poking his pockmarked face out at me.

  It was a long, narrow, high-cheekboned Indian-ish face, with brown eyes peeking out of slits, a wide yet pointed nose, and a balled, dimpled chin. His hair was dark brown and widow’s peaked and greased back, and his breath reeked, as if he’d puked last week and hadn’t brushed his teeth since, a notion their yellowish tobacco-stained hue affirmed.

  “What do you want for that fivespot?” he asked, his voice as reedy as he was.

  I had to look up at him—he weighed about as much as a box of kitchen matches, but the bastard must have been six foot four. “Just want to ask a few questions.”

  Somehow those slitted eyes slitted further. “Cop woulda showed me a badge not a fiver. Reporter?”

  “My name’s Nate Heller—I’m a private detective, doing backgrounding for the Examiner.”

  An Adam’s apple worthy of Ichabod Crane bobbled. “What did you say your name was?”

  “Heller. Nate Heller. This fivespot has a brother, if you give me a little time.”

  Frowning in thought, and temptation, he said, “I gotta clean up ’fore we open again—lunch hour was a friggin’ zoo. And I got prep to do in the kitchen—I’m the cook, you know. This about that Short girl?”

  “Yeah. Was she a customer here?”

  He didn’t answer. Instead, he said, “You got a double sawbuck in that pocket of yours?”

  “I might, if you have something worth that much.”

  He swallowed and the Adam’s apple bobbled again. “I don’t want my name in the papers.”

  “It won’t be—you’re what they call a ‘confidential source.’ ”

  Heaving a sigh, he said, “Okay . . . come in.”

  He locked the door behind us and pointed to one of the booths along the left wall. The McCadden Cafe wasn’t exactly the Brown Derby—the walls were knotty-pine, the bar with stools was at the right, the serving window onto the dinerlike kitchen was straight ahead, tables with no cloths and mismatching chairs were scattered about the central area. Like a fat man in a colorful coat, a jukebox squatted in front of the window. The air was about an even mix of stale beer and tobacco smoke, and the floor was piss-yellow, scuffed, cigarette-butt-burned linoleum.

  My instinct: any heist gang operating out of here would be smalltimers. On the other hand, maybe this was just a clever front.

  He brought both of us beers and sat across from me in the knotty-pine booth. The apron was food stained and under it was a threadbare blue-and-white-striped shirt, sleeves rolled up, and faded dungarees.

  Then, suddenly, startling me, he thrust out his knobby hand, saying, “Arnold Wilson, Mr. Heller.”

  I shook his hand—his grip was surprisingly strong, if slimy.

  “Pleased to meet you, Arnold. Ex-serviceman?”

  The acne-damaged face beamed as he nodded. “Got the gimpy leg in the Pacific. Friggin’ Jap bayonet.”

  Obviously his proudest moment.

  “I was in the Pacific myself. Marine.”

  “Army.” He shook his head, grinning. “Best time of my life. Listen . . . bein’ as we’re both vets and all . . . to be honest, I don’t know if I got a double sawbuck’s worth for ya, about Beth Short.”

  Interesting that he referred to her as “Beth” and not “Elizabeth,” as the papers were wont to do.

  “Let’s start with her being a customer, Arnold. When was that?”

  He had a gulp of beer—with that Adam’s apple, it looked like he was swallowing a baseball—and he shrugged. “Well, calling that kid a ‘customer’ is maybe stretching it. I don’t remember her ever spending a dime in here, except maybe on the jukebox—she had a way of finding some guy or other to buy her a Coke or a sandwich or both. She thought I made the best grilled cheese sandwiches anywheres—see, my secret is, I grill a couple slices of tomato right in there with the cheese—”

  “When was she frequenting this place?”

  “In the fall, though there was this stretch, around October, when she was back East or something. See, she lived right here in the neighborhood.”

  “Where in the neighborhood?”

  “Two places—around August, September maybe, she was in this hotel over on North Orange; then in November she was at the Chancellor Apartments, over on Cherokee.”

  I sipped my beer. Smiled. “Arnold—okay I call you by your first name?”

  “Sure, Nate.” He raised his beer glass to me, then had another gulp. “One vet to another, after all.”

  “Arnold, was Beth Short a pro?”

  “Naw, she wasn’t hooking. Al—the proprietor—he wouldn’t put up with that . . . Al likes to steer clear of the cops.”

  If Al Greenberg and Bobby Savarino were using the cafe as their heist crew’s clubhouse, that made sense.

  “But it didn’t hurt,” Wilson was saying, “having a good-looking piece of tail like that sitting on a bar stool. Wasn’t exactly bad for business.”

  “One guy was buying most of her drinks, though—right, Arnold?”

  The Adam’s apple bobbled again. “You mean Bobby.”

  “That’s right—Bobby Savarino.”

  Thin lips twitched in the ravaged mask of his face. “I don’t think I should get into that.”

  “For that double sawbuck, Arnold, I really think you should.”

  A big bony hand pawed the air dismissively. “Bobby was filling her with all that Medal of Honor bullshit—dago bastard, he was never even overseas! But good-looking guy like him, line of bull like that . . . hell, he gets more ass than Sinatra.”

  “I understand he’s a married man.”

  Wilson shook his head, disgustedly. “Yeah, with a nice wife, nice-lookin’ wife, kid on the way . . . I like Bobby, man. I mean, he’s a regular joe, but, shit—that’s friggin’ low.”

  “Did Beth Short know Bobby was married?”

  “Not at first . . . and Bobby told her he wanted to marry her, too. Can you believe this, before she found out he was married, they were engaged for a while—he even gave her a ring.”

  “A diamond?”

  “Yeah. Bobby’s connected to these jewelers—ice is never no problem for the group.”

  “The group?”

  Wilson paused, his deer-in-the-headlights expression indicating he’d spoken too freely. But he continued, anyway, saying, “Yeah, uh—the McCadden Group.
It’s a bunch of guys that hang out here at the cafe.”

  Sort of like the Elks or Kiwanis, except for the part where they went out on heists with guns.

  “What happened to her diamond ring?”

  Wilson shrugged. “I heard she hocked it. She was raising money.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “I dunno. . . . I think maybe she had Bobby’s bun in her oven.”

  “Fertile fucker, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah. He’s a fucker, period—but I like the guy, don’t ask me why. . . . Listen, she wasn’t in here since November, first week of December at the latest. I mean, you could ask Henry’s wife, her and Beth were tight . . . Maybe she could tell you something.”

  “Henry’s wife? Mrs. Henry Hassau, right, the guy who was arrested with Bobby?”

  Now Wilson knew he’d spoken too freely. “Oh—so you know about that.”

  “It was in the papers. It’s no secret, Arnold—or that your boss Al Greenberg is in county lockup, too.”

  Too casually, he said, “Yeah, for that Mocambo robbery.”

  “How tall are you, Arnold?”

  The slitted eyes blinked, several times. “I dunno. Six four maybe.”

  “Funny—that’s just how tall the witnesses said one of the thieves was. He had bad acne scars, too.”

  Wilson thrust out a big hand, palm up. “Let’s have the double sawbuck—I’m through talkin’.”

  I gave him a pleasant smile. “Look, Arnold—I have no interest in turning your skinny ass over to the cops. . . . By the way, how the hell did they miss you, if they’re arresting guys left and right out of this joint?”

  The Adam’s apple jumped again. “I was in San Francisco for a week. Al called me and asked me to come watch the joint while he was in stir. He’ll be out soon—the Ringgolds’ll post bail.”

  “The Ringgolds. And who are the Ringgolds?”

  The eyes widened and rolled and he shook his head, apparently pissed at himself. “I already said too much. . . . How about that double sawbuck?”

  “There’s a Ringgold Jewelry Store in Beverly Hills, isn’t there? Wouldn’t happen to be the jewelry store whose display merchandise at the Mocambo got taken in that robbery?”

  A shooing hand waved the air. “You better get on outa here, now—I got work to do ’fore four.”

  So the Mocambo heist had been primarily an insurance scam: steal jewelry for its owners who can claim the loss and keep the stones. I wondered how many other jewelry robberies the McCadden Group had pulled for the Ringgolds. This little heist crew was definitely more impressive than these meager surroundings.

  “Arnold, a whisper from me in Harry the Hat’s ear would land you in the cell next to your boss.”

  Wilson jerked back, almost hitting his head on the wooden booth. “Are you threatening me?”

  “I wouldn’t do that, Arnold—you and me, fellow vets and all. But this conversation—this private conversation, which goes no further than just the two of us—ends when I say it ends. Understood?”

  He sighed. And nodded.

  I swirled the last of the beer in its glass. “I just want to ask you a question—simple question, obvious question, that just happens to be one nobody’s asking. . . .”

  I looked right at him—hard.

  “Arnold, do you think Beth Short was murdered to send a message to Bobby?”

  Wilson didn’t answer right away, and when he did, it was pitiful: “How would I know?”

  “Just looking for an informed opinion, Arnold.”

  Words tumbled out: “Bobby was blabbing to the cops and the papers about Jack Dragna trying to muscle him into hitting Mickey Cohen. Next day, Bobby’s girl friend turns up dead in a vacant lot in Dragna’s backyard with her mouth slashed, informer style. What the fuck do you think?”

  “You think Dragna did it?”

  Wilson shrugged one scarecrow shoulder. “Had it done. Who else but Dragna?”

  Dragna was the answer I kept coming up with, myself.

  “Arnold, I don’t get this. Why would Jack Dragna go to Bobby Savarino to do this?”

  Wilson shrugged both shoulders this time. “Maybe ’cause Bobby was friends with the Meatball.”

  Benny the Meatball Gamson was a renegade bookie who had been bumped off, not long ago, reportedly at Mickey Cohen’s behest.

  “Still,” I said, “why would a savvy mob boss like Dragna try to enlist the help of somebody in Al Greenberg’s gang?”

  “Which don’t make sense to you,” Wilson said, nodding, “because Greenberg is an East Coast guy and a crony of Ben Siegel’s, whose boy Cohen is.”

  “Yeah!”

  “Well, for one thing, Bobby coulda got close to Cohen . . . Mickey wouldn’ta suspected one of Greenberg’s group. And Al, well him and Siegel were friends, sure, but Al did a stretch in Sing Sing, was one of the handful of them Murder, Inc., guys unlucky enough to do time. Al don’t owe any of those guys nothing.”

  “But in the end, Savarino didn’t want anything to do with hitting Cohen.”

  Wilson was shaking his head, but it was an affirmative gesture. “Bobby’s no hitman. He’s just a thief, knockin’ over scores.”

  I took the last sip of beer, and said, “I’d like to talk to Bobby. You think the Ringgolds’ll post his bail?”

  “Maybe. You want me to set up a meet, if they do?”

  I reached in my pocket and withdrew the twenty and held it up. “There’ll be another one of these in it for you.”

  Wilson took the twenty. I told him where he could find me, and I got out of the booth, thanking him for the beer.

  “Arnold, you got a phone I can use?”

  “Sure—behind the bar.”

  I called Fred.

  “You won’t believe this,” he said, “but Welles wants to see you. How do you know this guy?”

  “He got his start in Chicago.”

  “Well, he’s anxious to meet with you. And it seems he is out at Columbia, strike or no strike. Write down these directions. . . .”

  I did.

  Moments later, ceiling fans churning the stale air, the cadaverous Arnold Wilson was walking me out, the limp not slowing him down appreciably. Perhaps our conversation had got him excited—or that double sawbuck.

  “You know, if Jack Dragna’s the one that had the Black Dahlia butchered,” Arnold said, unlocking the door, “the cops won’t touch it. Nobody’ll do a damn thing about it, a Mafia guy like that responsible.”

  “Arnold,” I said, already halfway out the door, reaching back to pat him on his bony shoulder, “don’t count on it.”

  14

  Horse operas, crime melodramas, horror pictures, comedies, and every other stripe of B-movie were still churned out by the independent studios on Sunset Boulevard, near Gower Street. Despite the ongoing strike by the CSU—the Conference of Studio Unions—the usual parade of featured players was crossing Sunset in full makeup to grab a bite at a hamburger or hot-dog stand; Brittingham’s, the popular eatery in Columbia Square, at the corner of Sunset and Gower, was servicing its usual clientele of actors and extras, including western gunfighters with empty holsters (prop men having confiscated their sixshooters) and starlets in sunglasses and white blouses and dark slacks, freshly waved hair tucked under colorful kerchiefs.

  This lack of support for the strike came as no surprise to me, and was in fact why a bit player like Peggy was getting chauffeured to the studio, daily. The CSU was a militant leftist coalition that included carpenters, painters, and machinists; they were an alternative to the International Alliance of Theatrical and Stage Employees, IATSE having been organized by Nitti racketeers Willie Bioff and George Browne, both currently still in stir. Under the leadership of new Screen Actors Guild president Ronald Reagan, however, the CSU had been left twisting in the wind, and SAG actors—among other union and guild members—were crossing the picket lines.

  Which was how Peggy could be working at Paramount, during a strike, and I could be keeping an appointm
ent with Orson Welles at the giant of Gower Gulch, Columbia. A Poverty Row weed that had blossomed under the firm hand of Harry Cohn, Columbia was now a major force in Tinsel Town, and had been ground zero for the strike last October, when fifteen hundred picketers laid siege to the studio, with nearly seven hundred strikers arrested on charges ranging from unlawful assembly to assault with a deadly weapon.

  But now, several months later, sold out by Dutch Reagan and SAG, the picketers were a halfhearted, signs-on-their-shoulders bunch, a sea of Reds who quickly parted to allow me to check in at the guard gate. My unionist pop would have been ashamed of this lackluster picket line—and ashamed of me, for crossing it.

  I parked and strolled past surprisingly ramshackle-looking offices onto a typically bustling backlot—workshops, cutting rooms, projection rooms, soundstages. But—despite following Fred Rubinski’s detailed directions—I soon found myself wandering amid chattering extras in costume and bored grips and gaffers in work clothes, ducking cars and trucks transporting people and equipment. Finally I was just standing there, scratching my head, a detective who could have used a detective, when I felt something—or somebody—tug at my sleeve.

  I glanced down and a large adult male face was looking up at me.

  “You’re Mr. Heller, ain’tcha?” the hunchbacked dwarf asked. His accent said New York, Lower East Side.

  “Uh, yes.”

  He grinned up at me; he had a pleasant, well-lined face—blue eyes, high forehead, gray hair, late fifties.

  “The boss is expectin’ ya.” He shuffled around in front of me and extended a hand. He was wearing white pants and a white shirt and white shoes, and looked like a little ice-cream man—the shirt, however, was spattered with red. “Shorty Chivello, Mr. Heller—I’m Mr. Welles’ chauffeur and personal valet.”

  I shook his hand, which was of normal size, his grip firm and confident. “Chauffeur, huh?”

  He laughed, saying, “Hey, I’ll save you the embarrassment of askin’ how I manage that, Mr. Heller—I got these special wooden blocks strapped to the pedals.”

  “Cut yourself shaving, Shorty?” I asked, as I followed him toward a nearby soundstage.