Part 4 (1/2)
Warm applause greeted her, and she did ”But Not For Me,” and I sat wondering how I'd managed to m.u.f.f it so bad. Here we'd been having this nice friendly conversation, and I reflexively gave her the vet medicine cover story, before realizing I had no reasonable segue from that to asking her if she'd introduce me to her husband.
She would want to know why, and I couldn't think of anything that made sense. I doubted Richard Cornell was in the market for animal tranquilizers.
By the time she'd started her next song, ”You Do Something to Me,” I'd about given up. I figured I should just disappear before her set was over, though snubbing the boss' wife (separated from him or not) was not exactly a great plan, either.
But I'd pretty much decided on skipping, and was maybe three seconds away from slipping out of the booth, when a six-footer slid in opposite.
He was dark-haired with some white coming in on the sideburns, a dark tan, lazy eyes and a smirky mouth, but handsome enough at about forty, attired in pale yellow slacks and a darker yellow-and-black checked sportcoat over a black s.h.i.+rt open a few b.u.t.tons to display several gold chains and some curly black hair.
”My name's Richard Cornell,” he said, and extended a hand. ”I run the Paddlewheel. Did you and my wife have a nice talkie-poo?”
Chapter Four.
I shook his hand. He smiled across the booth at me in a fas.h.i.+on that I'm sure fooled a lot of people, but I could see the coldness in the aqua-blue eyes, which were half-lidded and made his gaze seem casual when it was heart-attack serious.
”She's a wonderful singer, your wife,” I said.
”Indeed she is.” The British accent was light but there, a touch of cla.s.s that went well with his lilting baritone.
”Friendly, too. But I don't want you to get the wrong idea, Mr. Cornell.”
He leaned back, smiled on half his face. He'd blinked maybe three times since sitting down. ”Angela's a big girl. We're separated. She goes her way and I go mine...though I maintain an interest in her welfare. Didn't get your name.”
”Jack Gibson,” I said.
Cornell folded his arms and the smile widened, though it had no warmth. ”And what brings you to my part of the world, Mr. Gibson?”
Not this this part of the world- part of the world-his part of the world. part of the world.
In about half a second I processed the following: he wouldn't have sat down casually to chat up a stray Paddlewheel patron, and as a nearly ex-husband he had no reason to check up on or protect his wife, meaning he was (for whatever reason) suspicious about me, I'd been noticed somehow, and if I trotted out the veterinary meds schtick right now, I'd soon be dancing in the parking lot with two or three of his satin-vest bully boys before he even got around to blinking again.
”Are you always this attentive to your guests, Mr. Cornell?”
A black waitress in an Afro wig delivered him three fingers of what looked to be Scotch over two ice cubes. He smiled, said, ”Thank you, darlin'...drinky-poo, Mr. Gibson?”
”No thanks.”
”That'll be all, darlin',” he told her, kissed the air in her direction and she smiled and walked off.
He watched with admiration, his smile genuine now. ”b.o.o.bs like cannonb.a.l.l.s,” he said, and shook his head, eyes darting up. ”You believe it? Wants to be a grade-school teacher. Mine were all prunes.”
”Community college student, huh?”
He gave me a sharp look and said, ”You pick up a lot, don't you, Mr. Gibson?...What were we talking about?”
”I was asking what I'd done to deserve the ma.s.sa's attention.”
He chuckled at that. ”You're here alone. You've been here since around nine-thirty. You've had a meal, alone, you gambled alone...about broke even I believe, very modest, very controlled...you spent some time upstairs, but didn't dance, and you haven't been drinking at all, except possibly a beer and maybe a few gallons of diet cola...really, how can you stand stand that bilge?” He shuddered. ”Finally you wound up here in the bar, where you struck up a conversation with my wife. In fact, you struck up a lot of conversations this evening.” that bilge?” He shuddered. ”Finally you wound up here in the bar, where you struck up a conversation with my wife. In fact, you struck up a lot of conversations this evening.”
Either I was getting sloppy, or his security team was smarter than they looked.
”I didn't see any cameras,” I said.
That pleased him so much all his teeth came out to play in a beaming smile. ”I don't have security cameras-I just have a staff that looks out for their boss. The injuns send up smoke signals to their chiefy-poo, if somebody doesn't fit any of the usual molds.”
”More like squaws-with the exception of your noneck squad, it's mostly women here...like Cannonball Katie over there.”
His smile settled down and his eyes almost shut as he sipped the Scotch. He reached over for his wife's purse and helped himself to a Virginia Slims-confident enough in his masculinity to risk the estrogen content. He used her matches and got his going, not bothering to ask me if I wanted one. The reports on me probably said I hadn't been smoking. He knew everything about me. He thought.
”Here's the thing, sport,” he said, and if condescension were a liquid he would have been dripping. ”Casing the joint won't do you any good. I'll be upping my security team and my precautions will go on high alert status, so you can tell your friends that knocking over the Paddlewheel would be a very, very poor idea.”
”Of course it would. You're doing land-office business, sure, which means a good payday for a score. But taking down a place that attracts a Wednesday night crowd like this? Calls for a D-Day Invasion.”
He wasn't sure what to make of that. His eyes tightened as he drew in smoke, held it so long it might have been marijuana, and let it out. Even in the dim nightclub light, you could see his face was as cracked and leathery as it was handsome.
Then he said, ”Whatever you have in mind, mate, ponder this-I am connected to individuals in Chicago who would not rest until anyone who tried anything against this facility was apprehended. And by apprehended, I mean castrated, fed their genitals and dumped in the river.”
”Concrete overshoes?”
”Some fas.h.i.+ons never go out of style.”
”That'd be the Giardelli family, I suppose.”
That surprised him, his nostrils flaring, though the eyes remained half-lidded. He said nothing.
I shook my head, laughed a little. ”I'm not an advance man for a plunder squad. Get real, d.i.c.kie.”
”...Only my friends call me 'd.i.c.kie.' ”
”Oh, we're going to be friends. You see, I've done work, off and on, myself for the Giardellis. Checking up on me would be tricky, though, because I worked through a middleman and he's dead now. But I can give you chapter and verse on mutual acquaintances.”
He set the cigarette in the gla.s.s tray. ”If you're a federal agent, Mr. Gibson, I'm asking you to declare yourself, right now. Or we'll be talking entrapment.”
”Oh, we're talking entrapment, all right. Anyway, the fix your Chicago friends put in must go at least up into the lower federal rungs. You don't open up a casino because you have the county sheriff in your pocket. This has to go way higher.”
”What kind of middleman?”
He'd been thinking. He might even have figured it out.
”I used to do contract work.”
”Used to?”
”Now I'm more in...preventive maintenance.”
”What kind of...preventive maintenance?”