Leavy and Bad Bob bopped back to the Barbara Graham case. Dot Rothstein ran with them. Liz Scott scoffed at the skinny that Linda and Frank were fresh stuff. She tattled the truth to me. She said, “Linda and Frank had innings going back to ’52″/”Linda had some dirt on him, and she used it.”
Barbaric Barb murdered Mabel Monahan. The date of doom: 3/9/53.
?????
I bent down to Bad Bob’s level. I waved my cable hooks. I caught a wiff of scorched skin.
“Does the dirt that Linda has on Frank pertain to the Barbara Graham case?”
Bad Bob nodded No and went knock-kneed. My internal lie detector measured him as mendacious. I hitched my hooks to his nose.
He danced. He did the Voltage Voom and the Convoluted Convulsion. He did the Stultified Stomp and the Sinful Sizzle and the Gyroscope Gyration. He did the Tijuana Termination Tango–
I unhitched the hooks.
Bad Bob blubbered, blathered, and bled. I renamed him Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
Sammy said, “Dig it!”
Frank squirmed and squealed, “Mommy!”
Bad Bob almost bought it. I couldn’t kill him yet. He played into my Pedro Pimentel plan.
I said, “Lay out the rest of it.”
Bad Bob noodled his nose on the floor and fluffed out a follical flame. He ffipped away from me and laid it out largo:
“Linda Lansing runs shakedowns on politicians in L.A. with Dot Rothstein. Pedro Pimentel–the Police Chief down here– he bankrolls them. The spic we shot in the parking lot was Pedro’s kid brother–he was a plant at the Dining Car–but I didn’t know that. Lots of lawyers and politicians eat at the Car and talked around him because they thought he didn’t speak English–and Miller Leavy picked up lots of tips that way. Getchell you fuck– you pulled that fucking reefer number and flicked things up–and Frank fucked things up by insisting that we kick your ass at the Car–and I don’t know where Linda is–and her and Dot are into all kinds of shady shit–and all this started because we didn’t want Linda to spill what she had on Frank–and I came down here to frost you out and frost things out with Pedro ’cause we killed his fucking brother by accident and. . . and. . . we.. . tr-tr-tr . . .”
His traumatized transmission trailed off into trills. He passed out from aftershock affliction.
He didn’t know that Linda Lansing slid off to Slice City. He didn’t label Linda as an heistress hot to move millions in mink. He refused to reveal the ripe revelation now ripping me:
Frantic Frank and Barbaric Barb.
?????
Frantic Frank squirmed and squealed, “Mommy!” His eyes: blurred blue and dialated from diethylamide.
Sammy said, “Dig it!”
Frank Sinatra:
Uncontrollably uncool. Umbilically unattached and hopelessly unhip from here to Hoboken.
He moaned for his mama. He mewed for his Mafia mentor “Momo” Giancana. He pounded his pillows and petitioned Raymond L. S. Patriarca–the prize prick with the Providence Mob.
Sammy tortured and tormented him. Sammy shanked him for the shit he shot his way. Sammy shucked him on his wives and the way they wanted it wild and blasphemously black. Frank moaned for mama and made mea culpa motions and put out papist pleas to Pope Pius.
I dipped over to the Diablo Club. I downed some Dos Equis and bought some boss burro act artifacts. A cook cooked me up some cat-meat carnitas to go. A burro handler hipped me to Pedro Pimentel’s private number.
I called the taco-phile Tojo of T.J. and told him I had Teitelbaum’s furs. I tantalized him and told him I took down ten times Linda Lansing’s take. Tojo told me to meet him tomorrow. I said I’d slide by his slave camp and move in my mountain of mink. Tojo told me he’d measure the mound and meet me with mucho money.
I moseyed back to the motel. Frank was moaning for mama. Sammy was making like the Marquis De Mau-Mau. I booted Bad Bob into the bathroom and fed him the cat-meat carnitas. He went at it carnivorously. I didn’t want him to die. I had to toss him to Tojo before he purchased a pass on Pancho the Pedophile.