o o o
They fired it up in the day room. Goddard hooked up his machine, changed spools, pushed buttons–tape-recorded tape.
Static, a dog yipping, “There, there, bubeleh”–Mickey Cohen’s voice. Goddard said, “They let him keep a dog in his cell. Only in America, huh?”
Cohen: “Quit licking your schnitzel, little precious.” More yips, a long silence, a click-off sound. Goddard said, “I was timing it. Voice-activated mike. Five minutes and it goes off automatically.”
Jack brushed plaster off his hands. “How’d Goldman get in to change the tape?”
“He must have had some kind of hook thing, like that pole I gave you. The grate on his heat vent was loose, so we know somebody was poking around in there. Jesus, this thing has been in there how long? And Goldman had to have help, this is no one-man operation. Listen, here that click?”
Another click, a strange voice: “For how much? I’ll have that guard place the bet.” Cohen: “A thousand on Basilio, that little guinea is mean. And take a run by the infirmary and see Davey, my God a goddamn turnip those goons turned him into, I swear I will live to see them in a vegetable puree.” Overlapping voices, mumbles, Mickey cooing, his dog yipping.
Nail the time: Goldman and Cohen had been attacked; Mickey laid down an early bet on the Robinson-Basilio fight last September, he was probably out by then–he got down before the odds dropped.
Click off, click on, forty-six minutes of Mickey and at least two other men playing cards, mumbling, flushing the toilet. The used tape almost gone; click off, click on, the fucking dog yowling.
Mickey: “Six years and ten months here and to lose Davey’s redoubtable brain right before I leave. Such tsurus to go home on. Mickey Junior, quit licking your putt, you faigeleh.”
A strange voice: “Get him a bitch, and he won’t have to.”
Cohen: “My God to be so nimble and so hung, like Heifetz on the fiddle with his shlong that dog is, and hung like Johnny Stompanato to boot. And on the topic of boots, I read Hedda Hopper’s column and see Johnny’s putting the boots to Lana Turner, such a crush he’s had for so long, she must have a cunt like chinchilla.”
The strange-voice man cracked up. Cohen: “Enough already, you brownnoser, save some for Jack Benny. Johnny I need now, Johnny I can’t locate ’cause he’s playing bury the brisket with movie stars. My franchise guys keep getting clipped and I need Johnny to put an ear down for who, but that big dick dago cunt-bandit is nowhere! I want those cocksuckers clipped! I want those shitbirds who hurt Davey to cease residence on this earth!”
Mickey cough, cough, coughed. Strange Voice: “How about Lee Vachss and Abe Teitlebaum? You could put them on it.”
Cohen: “Such a shmendrik you are for a confidant, but you do play cribbage good. No, Abe has grown too soft to work muscle, too much grease noshed at his deli, such grease clogs the arteries that inspire mayhem, and Lee Vachss loves death too much to be discerning. Lana, what a snatch she must have, like cashmere.”
The tape ran out. Goddard said, “Mickey sure does have a verbal style, but what did all that have to do with the Nite Owl case?”
“How’s ‘nothing’ sound?”
CHAPTER SIXTY
One wall of his den was now a graph: Nite Owl related case players connected by horizontal lines, vertical lines linking them to a large sheet of cardboard blocked off into information sections–events culled from Vincennes’ deposition. Ed wrote margin notes; his father’s call still hammered him: “Edmund, I’m running for governor. Your recent notoriety may have hurt me, but put that aside. I don’t want the Atherton case resurrected in print and tied to your various cases, and I don’t want Ray Dieterling bothered. I want you to direct all your queries along those lines to me, and between the two of us we’ll work things out.”
He agreed. It rankled. It made him feel like a child–like sleeping with Lynn Bracken made him feel whorish. And too many Dieterling names were popping up on the graph.