CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Grotto originally opened as the Empire Club in 1929, the last year of the Roaring Twenties. Since then it had known several different owners, but no one had seen fit to alter its Art Deco interior. It was built with expensive materials and beautifully furnished, just as you’d expect from a place planned back in those heady days before the Great Crash brought the boom of the twenties to an abrupt halt. The lighting was dim and subdued, but I could see walls of inlaid wood with stylized chrome and art glass decorations. The bar, a long, curving sweep of chrome-trimmed fruitwood, lay just beyond the mezzanine. Behind the bar, etched into the mirror, the Roman war god, Mars, kept company with a gaggle of helmeted warrior nymphs and one lone and rather lonely-looking swan. An ivory-colored grand piano dominated the bandstand at the other end of the room. When we entered, a four-piece combo was accompanying a tall blonde crooner who was doing a good job of “White Cliffs of Dover.” One more reminder of the war I wasn’t fighting.

Klevenhagen turned out to be a slim man of about thirty with dark hair and intense eyes, dressed in khakis and a worn leather jacket. Right after we shook hands he lighted the first of a string of Pall Malls he chain-smoked that evening. I was later to learn that he practically lived on coffee and cigarettes.

The bartender told us that Salisbury was late that evening. He also mentioned that there was a cover charge. Grist told him where to put his cover charge and ordered coffee for the three of us. We took a corner table near the bar and didn’t have to wait long. Ten minutes after we’d sat down the door to the mezzanine opened and three men entered. Two were big men, obviously bodyguards, both dressed in dark suits and unbuttoned raincoats, and both with noticeable bulges under the arm. The third man was smaller, probably about five-nine, and small-boned, with a trim body wrapped snugly in a belted camel’s hair overcoat that sported a fur collar. On his head sat a cream-colored fedora with a dark hat band, while an unlighted cigarette slanted down from the corner of his lips. His mouth and nose were small and delicate, and his face was molded into an expression of utter nonchalance that was obviously studied. I immediately noticed that his movements were curious. His head didn’t bob up and down a bit as he walked; instead he seemed to glide soundlessly as though he were on rollers.

Sidling up to the bar, he tilted his head toward the bartender, who spoke for a moment into his ear. Then he answered the man briefly, gave him the barest of nods, and glided on toward the office door at the side of the club without even a glance our way, his unlighted cigarette still dangling down from his cherub’s lips.

“Well,” Grist said, smiling for the second time that day. “We don’t seem to rate very high with this boy. Let’s go see if we can’t raise our standing a little.”

As we approached the door the bartender came out from behind the bar and blocked the doorway. He was a big, beefy dullard who carried about thirty years and close to two hundred pounds, with a weight lifter’s arms and a face full of self-importance. “Mr. Salisbury wanted me to tell you that he’s not seeing anybody tonight,” he said.

“Okay, you told us,” Grist said. “Now are you going to push it further, or do you want to let it lie where it fell?”

The bartender stared at the old man’s face for a few seconds, then stepped back out of the way and raised his hands placatingly, palms outward. “Just doing my job,” he said.

“Then get the hell out of my way and I’ll do mine,” Grist growled.

Behind the door loomed a short, dimly lit corridor. At its end stood a fancy double doorway manned by one of the bodyguards. As we approached we fanned out so that Grist was in the center with Klevenhagen on his right and me on his left. The guard’s eyes darted back and forth between us a time or two, and he raised his hand palm forward like a traffic cop stopping an oncoming car. Then he opened his mouth to speak, but before he could utter a word Klevenhagen had his big Smith & Wesson out and its muzzle poked in the man’s left ear just as smoothly as silk. The guard froze and stayed frozen while Grist reached under his coat and pulled out a Walther P-38 nine-millimeter automatic.

“Turn around and face the door,” Grist said.

As soon as the guard had turned, Klevenhagen pulled the door open and Grist put his foot in the man’s rump and gave a mighty shove. He shot headfirst through the doorway and the three of us were right behind him, guns drawn. The second bodyguard was on my side of the room, just inside the doorway. His reflexes were pretty good, but not good enough. He had his hand halfway to his weapon when I threw down on him and tripped the safety off my .38 Super. “Naughty, naughty!” I said, grinning right in his face.

Klevenhagen disarmed him, and then he and Grist quickly cuffed the pair. I turned to look at Salisbury. Now shorn of his coat and hat, he sat calmly in a great, high-backed leather executive’s chair behind about a half acre of polished mahogany desk. Dressed in an exquisitely tailored double-breasted suit of brown silk with faint gold striping, he appeared utterly calm. His head was sleek and seal-like, with jet black hair that was combed down so tightly against his scalp that it appeared to have been painted on. His hands, which were in the process of cupping a kitchen match to his cigarette, were fine-boned, with long, tapering fingers. But his eyes were his most memorable feature. Dark and small and completely void of any emotion, they looked like nothing so much as a pair of tiny, spent coals. “Yes?” he asked, lifting his eyebrows a little, an expression of pure boredom on his face.

“I’m Virgil Tucker,” I said.

“Congratulations.”

“Ahhh, bullshit,” Grist growled in his cement mixer voice. “Any more of your smart-ass mouth and you’re one little piggy I’ll be taking to market.”

This bought a slight widening of the eyes from Salisbury.

Grist indicated me with a nod of his head. “This man needs to talk to you,” he said. “And you better give him your time and attention.”

Salisbury stared at the old man for a few moments, then shrugged and gave him a faint nod. “Sure. Why not?”

“We’ll be outside in the hall, Virgil,” Grist said.

He and Klevenhagen herded the bodyguards out the door and closed it behind them. Salisbury took a long pull of his cigarette, then blew the smoke my way. “What’s on your mind?” he asked.

“Madeline Kimbell.”

“What about her?”

“I’m going to be straight and simple with you,” I said. “And you’d better listen and take me seriously no matter who you’re connected with down in New Orleans. We both know that Madeline saw Arno and Luchese strangle Henry DeMour. We also know that you were behind it, but I’m aware there’s no way to connect you to it. They worked for you, but I seriously doubt that they were ever on the official payroll. As for Madeline, you know her story and what happened at my ranch as well as I do. And if you have any sense you should realize that with DeMour’s killers dead she’s no threat to you. As things stand now, I’m no threat to you either. But if you push the issue…”

I let my voice taper off while I looked him right in the eyes.

“Yes?” he asked.

“Just be aware that my family is a part of an organization that’s ultimately far more formidable than your uncle’s gang of cutthroats. Did you make the inquiry I suggested?”

“I asked a few questions,” he said offhandedly.

“And?”

There came a long pause before he gave me a brief, acquiescing nod and said reluctantly, “I heard about your friend George Parr and the setup down in South Texas, and about his connections in Washington.”

“And?” I repeated.

He wriggled around in his fancy chair for a few moments before he spoke. “Well, as I told you on the phone this is all very interesting, but…” He tried to smile sardonically, but it didn’t come off. I continued to stare at him until finally he asked in a soft voice, “What do you want?”

“I want my life back. I want to be able to go home and not have to worry about a crew of goons kicking my door down some night. I want to be left alone. And I want the girl left alone, too, since there’s no way she can harm you.”

He finally managed a coy little smile. “If I were to agree, I’d be virtually admitting—”

“Cut the crap. I’m not a lawyer or a prosecutor, and Beaumont’s problems aren’t my problems. I think it’s unfortunate that Henry DeMour is dead, but I’m not on a crusade to right all the wrongs of this world. All I want is to be left alone. Now what’s it going to be?”

He gave me the barest of nods. “Okay. Go on about your business.”

“How about Madeline?”

“Sure,” he said. “But what’s with you and that girl that you’d go out on such a limb for her? Was she that good in the sack?”

I shook my head in mild annoyance. “That’s the way it always is with guys like you, Salisbury. Money and sex. You can’t imagine anybody being motivated by anything else.”

This didn’t even buy me a shrug. He just continued to stare at me impassively with his dead, dark little eyes.

“Before I leave I’ll give you one piece of free advice. If Charlie Grist was as pissed at me as he is at you, I believe I’d pack up and leave town.”

“Who the hell is Charlie Grist?”

“That old Ranger waiting out in the hallway.”

He curled his upper lip a little in contempt and waved his fingers at me like a man herding chickens. “Shooo,” he said. “I don’t need no cow cop’s advice.”

“Have it your way. But if my family or the girl either one is bothered, I’ll be back with the heavy artillery and you won’t like it.”

I turned around and left then, thinking I’d said enough. I didn’t really have any heavy artillery. Or at least none beyond my friendship with Grist and whatever pressure George Parr and the South Texas machine might be able to mount with the Feds. But Salisbury didn’t know that.