Crime Takes No Holiday: A Detective Story Novella Page 8

  Before he could express an opinion on this, Armando chuckled and muscled him down the steps.

  Waldheim then got vocal.

  Grinning maniacally, “This’ll never stick, heh heh. I’ll own every one of you cops. My lawyer has a perfect record.”

  Mando asked, “Oh, yeah? Who’s that?”

  “Jerry Geisel. I got him on retainer.”

  Mando froze, almost clotheslining Waldheim, stopping so abruptly.

  Geisel was the most famous lawyer ever in the entire state, and he did indeed get nearly every client off, including Clarence Darrow, Busby Berkeley, Charlie Chaplin, Bugsy Seigel, Errol Flynn, and Rudolph Valentino. He’d go on to represent Zsa Zsa Gabor, Barbara Hutton, Shelley Winters, and Marilyn Monroe.

  For cops trying to put a bow on a case for the prosecutors, a mega-famous lawyer like Geisel can change how they approach that. This boast by Waldheim meant the wheels of justice might not turn smoothly enough for him to be motivated to give up Elle. Now we needed a confession, at whatever cost.

  I shrugged towards Mando, who growled under his breath. I made the ‘finger-thumb’ gesture of holding a telephone receiver to my ear, mouthing the word ‘hello’, then I made a cutting motion, as if my two fingers were a pair of scissors. Mando grinned again and chuckled.

  “Alright, then let’s try some frontier justice, instead. Take this pissant back inside, boys. He needs to make his one phone call.”

  Mando then looked at me and made a ‘throat-cutting’ motion. I nodded. We’d been in this situation before. As they stomped Waldheim back into the house, I looked up at the telephone poles, followed the wire down, pulled out my Leatherman, and snipped it right at the junction box where it entered Waldheim’s fancy estate. Out of order.

  We figured if we could get a confession, regardless of how, then no lawyer could get him off if it involved him giving up Elle. Getting a confession, inadmissible or not, was not the point. Finding Elle was.

  “OK, you got’cher one phone call.”

  “It didn’t go through. The line went dead.”

  “Mmm, such a pity. But one’s all you get, fudge nozzle.”

  “Oh, my lawyers will crucify you!”

  Mando rubbed his palms together and grinned. Then it got ugly. Armando escorted Waldheim into his library. Dooley and Pyle tried to follow, but Mando put his hand on Andy’s chest and pushed him back out the door.

  “Lauro, not again. The captain’ll have your ass.”

  “That’s why you can’t be in here to be a part of this.”

  “But–”

  “Shh, shh, shh,” as he placed a finger to his lips, muscled them out, and locked the door.

  At the time Waldheim had interviewed Kate and Professor Thorne, he’d invited them here, into his den/drawing room/library, or whatever he calls it. That they weren’t interviewed instead at his giant corporation offices was the first thing that felt off to them. But Waldheim didn’t want their faces associated with his, because he had plans for both of them.

  He’d had them sitting on straight-back wooden chairs just to ratchet up the uncomfortable tension and dominate the meeting. Today, Armando spotted one of those chairs.

  “Perfect.”

  The next thing Waldheim knew, he was cuffed and seated.

  Mando then dusted off this old effective technique of his where he would repeatedly reintroduce a suspect during ‘questioning’ to an eleven-pound copy of the LA white pages, at about 30 MPH. Possibly the least fun Waldheim ever had in his classy drawing room den, and it was also the last time he would ever draw a breath there.

  Captain Janks would be less than amused that the rich and powerful suspect Armando and Chang hauled in later this morning would appear as if he’d been run over by a Mack truck.

  “He tripped and fell on the stairs, Cap’n.”

  Tragic, only in that Armando stepped up and took the rap for our pressure tactics. Had he not ‘questioned’ Waldheim quite so vigorously without his lawyer present, Armando might still have his shield. But we wanted Elle, and we wanted her right now.

  Still, his captain would circle the wagons with Armando outside looking in, kowtowing to Waldheim’s powerful lawyer like the toady he is. Made sense. I never trusted him. He never backed me in ’47.

  But Mando’s ‘questioning’ didn’t work well at first. The phone book technique was proving ineffective. Although he’d fainted earlier, Waldheim was proving to be one tough psychopath. He just laughed at Mando.

  “Give it up, flatfoot, heh heh. I don’t feel pain.”

  “Oh. Really.”

  “You’ll never find her, because I’ll never tell.”

  That classic slow-burn grin again began to cross Armando’s face.

  “… You do realize you just implicated yourself in a capital crime, right?”

  All laughing ceased as the color drained from Waldheim’s face. The rest of the cops were waiting outside the library door. I, however, was cringing as I watched this all go down through a window. Then it got uglier.

  “Do you bleed? I bet you can bleed for me.”

  He grabbed the other wooden chair and sat facing Waldheim, then he snicked open his illegal switchblade as Waldheim’s face fell even further. Mando started cutting at the crotch of his silk pajamas as he chuckled maniacally.

  “What the hell are you … what are you doing?”

  Gesturing with the knife inches from his face, “Here’s what I’m doing, I’m thinkin’ I’m gonna slice a quarter-inch off the end of your pecker for every time you don’t tell me where she is. That means you’ve got five whole chances before it’s gone completely, forever.”

  Mando jammed the knife into the chair seat to accentuate his point as Waldheim jumped. Then he moved to the window and drew the blinds as he winked at me. Thank you. I don’t need to see any more. He opened the window a crack. No, Mando, I don’t need to hear this, either.

  Standing again in front of Waldheim,

  ‘First, I’m gonna need to fasten your little dick to this chair, here.”

  He opened the library doors.

  “Lou. Bring me the Spruce Goose.”

  Chang’s eyebrows knitted, but he nodded and headed for the Packard. Mando turned, crossed his arms and grinned at Waldheim.

  “Now the fun begins, heh heh.”

  Waldheim didn’t grin back. Louie tapped on the door and handed a mysterious case to Mando, who set it down in front of Waldheim and opened it, then brandished an ominous weapon. He sat on the chair and held up a 22-gauge cartridge, finger and thumb, about a foot in front of Waldheim’s eyes, then inserted the slug into this contraption.

  “What the … what the hell is that?”

  “Nail gun. Invented by my friend Morris, up in Playa Vista while he was working on the Spruce Goose. Goes on sale next month. He loaned me the prototype.”

  “Nail … gun?”

  “That’s right, Einstein. It’s a gun that shoots nails. So. Where is she?”

  “You’re fucking insane!”

  “Now you got the idea. That’s one wrong answer. You got four left.”

  “But … but … wait a minute!”

  Armando did not wait a second.

  “I’m done waiting.”

  He grabbed Waldheim’s junk, stretched all three inches towards him on the chair seat, then theatrically brandished the nail gun and placed it right next to Waldheim’s stretched pecker.

  “No, no, no! Stop!”

  “Too late. Hope I don’t miss. Here we go!”

  He gave Waldheim an evil grin, closed his eyes, and opened his mouth as he smiled at him, and after a pregnant pause, pulled the trigger.

  POW! A ten-penny nail fired into the chair seat, splitting it clean in half, just half an inch to the right of Waldheim’s favorite thing. Not even a scratch, but one chair-splitting nail was all it took.

  All that I and the other cops outside the door had heard was this loud pop, followed by a wail. Followed by an evil laugh. What in the world? Had Man
do lost it?

  “Next time I won’t miss. So. Where is she?”

  OK, check, please. I’d had about enough. I wandered back inside as Armando exited the den, nail gun in hand. Was that sobbing I heard behind him?

  “I got her location. Let’s go, Jack.”

  His face was vacant.

  Glancing down at the nail gun, “Mando, you enjoy your work way too much.”

  “Are you kidding? I hate having to do this stuff. I really do.”

  He sounded like he meant it, but this was belied by his gesturing with the giant nail gun.

  “But we got her. Barney, you guys hold the fort. Chang, you’re with Jack and me. Let’s move. Dooley, this is my collar. Mine. You keep Waldheim on ice for us right here, or you’re next,” waving the nail gun at him.

  “Fuck you, Lauro.”

  Mando turned to me. “That’s three people who’ve said this to me today. And it’s only seven a.m.”

  I just laughed. “Let’s roll, partner.”

  I guess the evil laugh was just for show.

  ◆◆◆

  But why Elle, anyway? On the way to where we hoped we would find her, Mando was driving, Chang was shotgun, I was in back. One of the squad cars was leading the way, sirens blaring.

  “Why this girl, Jack? I still don’t get it.”

  I leaned towards the front seat.

  “I think I figured it out, Mando. The photos I showed you of her?”

  “Yeah, at first I thought it was that other girl. That one that you …”

  Detective Lauro’s wheels were turning. The slow-burn grin was returning.

  “So … you think that maybe …”

  "That’s right. A classic case of mistaken identity.”

  “Oh, shit! He snatched the wrong girl!”

  I slapped him on the shoulder and laughed.

  “Nice work, Jack. Freakin’ brilliant.”

  Wait. Who said that? It was Chang, surprisingly enough.

  “Thank you, Louie,” so happy we were probably going to find Elle that I slapped his shoulder as well.

  PART TEN

  Yep, I Had Some ‘Splainin’ To Do

  Elle, as it turns out, was originally hottie-napped right outside Kate and Elle’s duplex on her way home from her Thanksgiving Eve lunch date by Waldheim’s now-departed henchmen, but as a foiled attempt to kidnap Kate. Mando pegged it … they snatched the wrong girl. Boy, did they ever.

  Long story short, not long after Mando ‘questioned’ Waldheim, about 40 hours after she was snatched, Elle was found slightly worse for wear but safe and sound, locked inside an old bunker/fallout shelter on Waldheim’s other, resort estate in Santa Monica. A supermansion that she could now afford to buy if she wanted to. It’s on the market.

  As we approached the bunker,

  “Back off, guys. Let Jack handle this one.” Gesturing, “Lou, do your thing.”

  Chang popped the padlock with a bolt cutter. The heavy doors creaked as our two unis swung them open. Inside, a young blonde woman, shaking in fear.

  “Elle, I’m a friend of Kate’s. My name is Jack, and we’ve come to take you home. It’s OK. We’ve got you now.”

  I pulled the scarf from my pocket and handed it to her.

  “I think this must belong to you, dear.”

  Elle took the scarf and held it to her chest, then looked up at me. I could see in her eyes that now she knew she was going to be safe. I smiled, then led her by the hand to the medics and stayed with her.

  As quickly as we could, we shuttled her over to my place to reunite her with Kate. I wasn’t going to miss that for anything. She hadn’t spoken much. I sat with her in the back of Mando’s car.

  “Step on it, guys.”

  Elle grabbed my hand and held it all the way there. A few blocks in, she nestled her head against my shoulder. My heart melted a bit. This was going to be a very good day.

  “Did you see the men who took you, Elle?”

  “I saw them all.”

  During the kidnapping, Waldheim had made the rookie bad-guy mistake of showing his face to Elle, thinking at the time that it wouldn’t matter. Found imprisoned on Waldheim’s property, Elle became the ‘smoking gun’ that broke his famous lawyer’s perfect record.

  As Waldheim’s thugs had presented Elle to him that afternoon,

  “What the … you … you idiots! This isn’t her! You brought me the wrong girl!”

  Kate hadn’t slept, was watching the sunrise on our little veranda, and she ran out the door to meet us as we climbed out of Mando’s black Packard.

  Turns out Kate and Elle were quite a bit more than only ‘best friends’, but this was something often kept in the closet in 1949. Armando and I gave each other puzzled clueless looks this morning as we noticed their reunion included an awful lot of kissing. On the lips.

  Detectives, yes. Good ones? Maybe not so much, at least not in this one instance. Kinda hot, though.

  It was a pretty glorious reunion, but my and Mando’s puzzlement was interrupted by a familiar voice.

  “Jack, who are these women? What are they doing here?”

  A Yellow Cab was puttering away in the background. Cabbie had dumped off the luggage and had his hand out towards me. And there was Parker, even more gorgeous than when she’d left. Kate who?

  Parker couldn’t bear to be away from me, and that previous Thanksgiving evening, about the time Kate and I were done shooting up the neighborhood, she’d hopped an eight-hour redeye back, to surprise me. Night flight service from Weir Cook Airport to LAX had only begun a few months ago.

  She gave a squint at the crowd, which included some bedraggled cops, a very-bedraggled me, and two very friendly college-age young ladies, and finally she just shrugged. Then she threw herself at me. The smell of her hair made tears come to my eyes. Just for a second.

  So she goes away for three days, and when she returns, old rascal Jack has two gorgeous young chicks over who are making out with each other under a palm tree, at seven in the a.m. And we all looked as if we’d been rolling around in the parking lot, in the rain. Yep, I had some ‘splainin’ to do.

  But Parker was wearing a sly little smile, which convinced me she knew I’d never do anything to hurt her, and that she knew I’d have some fantastic story I’d stumble through comically, trying to convince her of this.

  She’d seen this sort of behavior before, and she was totally going to enjoy my squirming, from an entertainment point of view. She had no idea. God almighty, do I ever love this girl. Now, to show her this.

  Standing back a bit, “Jack, don’t you tell me another one of your ‘fish’ stories,” as she crossed her arms, still smiling, and did that weight-shift thing this puts her in charge.

  “Oh, never! When would I ever have not been true to you, honey?”

  Armando chuckled, shook his head, and turned away.

  Kate and Elle didn’t want to ever go back to the duplex, and I couldn’t blame them after all that had happened. Parker made up the guest room and they stayed with us for a few days, and we got to know the girls pretty well. Then we arranged for them to rent the apartment across the hall, so they almost became like family. Kate’s pretty focused on her professional career, but Elle and Parker spend a lot of time together, and they’ve become the best of friends.

  So, what became of this cast of characters, the jokers, the good guys and the bad? The next couple of years looked like they might be lean, but word of mouth has a funny way of bringing in business, even if the local police were a bit perturbed by our exploits.