In A Bind, page 9
part #19 of Cherry Delight Series
“I have an idea, Willie,” I suggested.
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“Maybe I could scout around, try and find out when that Vermont meeting of Augie with his capos is going to be.”
He sat up straighter. “Jeez, that would be a big help! Think you can do it?”
“Well, I owe him for killing Gobbo. Salami Sam was just the hand that held the gun. Augie is the real murderer.”
“How can you find out?”
“I haven’t the faintest notion. I’ll think about it. Oh, by the way, I left my car parked down near the Pizza Tree. Think you can drop me off there?”
Willie gave his driver the orders, then reached out to pat my arm. “You do this for me, kiddo, you won’t have to worry about a thing the rest of your life. Willie Ciabatta is grateful to them that do him favors.”
He thought for a moment, then reached into his hip pocket and brought out a wallet that positively bulged with greenbacks. He peeled off half a dozen of them and pushed them into my fingers.
“Willie, I can’t take this money,” I protested.
There was six hundred bucks in my hot little hand.
“Sure you can. Besides, that’s peanuts compared to what I can and will do for you. You did me a good turn. I’ll never forget, Eva. I don’t take favors for nothing.”
We left it like that all the way down to the Pizza Tree. I gave Willie a hug and a kiss before I let myself out and walked to my Mercedes-Benz.
It was close to dawn. The city was filled with that hush that has the air of abandonment, as though there were no life at all in the high buildings past which I drove, or in the huge apartments towering upward on either side when I left the downtown area. It was a time when men and women slept, when only a stray tomcat might be about, prowling for uncovered garbage cans.
Augie Impiccato would be asleep, too.
I was almost there myself. It had been a long day, plus night. Should I go home and go to bed myself, be fresh for whatever tomorrow might bring? I yawned and yawned again.
I thought about my bed. It seemed almost to beckon to me, in some weird and ghostly way. I decided not to fight the feeling.
I parked the car below my apartment and went up in the elevator. I undressed in a dream-like state, smiling at my bed from time to time. I finally slithered the bod into pajamas and threw back the covers. I beat all known records for falling into dreamland.
It was early afternoon when the phone rang, from the night table. I opened one eye and shoved an arm out from under the covers.
“Cherry, I found it!”
It took me more than a few seconds to focus on the fact that it was Mark Condon. “Congratulations,” I mumbled.
“You idiot! I mean the bullet.”
“What bullet?”
Just shows you how tired and sleepy I was. I thought about bullets. Mark had said the bullet. I sat bolt upright. “Mark, you haven’t!” I squealed.
“Sure did. I’m downstairs. You must still be in bed. I’m coming right up.”
I hung up, threw back the covers, and ran for the bathroom. I showered fast. I was just turning off the faucets when my door shook to a thunderous knocking.
“Hey, open up,” Mark yelled.
I grabbed for a big towel and wrapped it around my wet nudity. I opened the door and Mark stood there, grinning like a dope. I reached one bare, wet arm about his neck and plastered my mouth over his.
I guess I got the collar of his smart gray suit jacket wet, but Mark is a gentleman. He didn’t reprove me. He didn’t even reach up to drag away my arm. Maybe he needed kisses, I don’t know. But I gave him kisses, even while he inched me back inside my room with his body, then reached behind him to close the door. His arms wrapped about me, he gave me his complete attention, even sliding his hot hands under the towel and moving them around over my buttocks.
“That’s what I call gratitude,” he laughed when we broke apart.
“Was it the bullet from Martin Obermayer’s gun? That’s the bullet you meant?”
“It is. It was buried in the opposite wall, in a bit of decoration that has holes as part of it. Just dumb chance that drove that bullet into one of those holes. I used a flashlight and a steel pick, going over that wall. It took me two hours, maybe a little more than that. I knew you were telling the truth. The apartment door was open and you were standing in the doorway. I figured the bullet went past you and it had to hit the far wall. It did.”
He took it out of his pocket and showed it to me. I could have wept.
I blew my nose with a Kleenex from my night table, and sat down on my rumpled bed. Relief washed all through me, draining me of any energy I might ordinarily have.
I managed a smile at Mark. “Now all I have to do is get that gun, Mark, so you can have a ballistics man tie it in with that bullet.”
His face fell. “Sounds good, but you don’t know where the gun is.”
“Oh, but I do.”
Mark looked stupefied. He came over and sat beside me on the bed. “Tell me about it,” he said quietly.
I explained about meeting up with Willie Ciabatta and what I had done. I made a face. “I felt sorry for Salami Sam, but he was a hit man, and I guess he knew that when he went to earn his contract against Gobbo Ragusi, he might have Ciabatta on his neck.”
“A risk of the trade.”
I said, “Salami Sam talked about the gun, but Willie didn’t pay any attention. Why should he? He wasn’t involved in Martin Obermayer’s death, nor were any of his boys, and what should he care about a N.Y.M.P.H.O. agent’s problems.”
“Augie may not be gung ho for the idea of turning over Obermayer’s gun to you.”
“I don’t give a hoot in hell whether he is or not. I intend to take it away from him.” I eyed Mark. “You don’t think I’m going to let Augie Impiccato stand in my way, do you?”
“Not you.”
I stood up and wrapped the big towel a little more securely around me. “If you want to wait while I get dressed, I’ll have breakfast with you. Or brunch. Or whatever in the line of food.”
“Can I watch?” he grinned.
I dropped the towel. “Why not? I’m not going into action until tonight.”
His eyeballs sort of popped when he saw me nude. I do have a great body, if I don’t say so myself. My breasts are big and firm, my belly is soft and rounded and my legs are terrific. I paraded around the room, wondering whether Mark would forget his normal caution and throw me on the bed. I guess he would have except for the fact that he thought I was so concerned about my peril that I couldn’t be bothered.
Anyhow, I got myself into some mod garments while Mark sat there and stared for all he was worth. I was a little intrigued by his lack of response. Somewhat piqued, I turned to him, posing. “Like it?”
“I liked it better before, when you were in the buff. Or even in the garter-belt and stockings.”
I smiled faintly. “Why didn’t you do something about it, then?”
He jumped to his feet, arms out. I held out my arms, palms toward him. “I’m not in the mood anymore.”
He said a few naughty words, but wryly. I giggled and kissed him.
Mark muttered, “I figured you were so worried, you wouldn’t feel like it.”
I blew him a kiss and linked my arm in his. “I’ll let you treat me to brunch. How’s that sound?”
“Not as much fun as the other, but it’ll have to do.”
We feasted on club sandwiches and coffee after a cocktail each. Mark was full of ideas and plans as to how I should go about getting back the gun. He wanted to help me, reminding me that he was still on that vacation Avery King had given him. “I want to do something else, Cherry. It’s plain hell, knowing you’re offering yourself to the lion’s mouth and not being able to do anything but stand by and wait.”
I patted his hand. “I’ve always been a solo worker, you know that. I don’t like to be responsible to anyone. I have to be free to come and go as I want, respond to any ideas I might get, on the spur of the moment.”
Gloomily he nodded, then brightened. “But if you do need a back-up man or something like it, you will call me?”
“I sure will.”
We parted company on the sidewalk, Mark to go with his bullet to the ballistics department of N.Y.M.P.H.O. where he would leave it until I laid hands on the gun, and me to go back to my pad.
I took off my clothes and went back to bed to doze for a few hours. I wouldn’t be able to do anything about Augie Impiccato until long after nightfall.
My alarm went off about six.
I dressed myself in an evening gown and slid my mink wrap about my shoulders. Ordinarily, on jobs like the one I was setting out on, I would wear black slacks and a black sweater, but Augie Impiccato was a bachelor. He lived in a posh apartment in the upper Eighties on the East Side and no doorman in his right mind would let me into that building dressed in any such manner.
I ate a light supper, soup and a sandwich, and then drove around town for a while until I found a parking slot about three blocks from Augie’s apartment. I walked back to his place and went in as if I owned the joint.
The doorman saw me, and hesitated.
“Good evening,” I murmured.
I didn’t look like trouble. A casual glance at my mink wrap and original De La Renta evening gown assured him of that. I guess he figured I might be a high-priced call girl, summoned by a lonely man, and that it might not be the best idea to interfere.
While he hesitated, I swept past him to the elevator and pressed the button. I had to wait a few moments, which I employed by glancing at my wrist-watch and looking vaguely annoyed. The doorman took it all in, still hesitating.
The elevator doors slid open. I stepped in.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the doorman give a shrug, as though this were none of his business. I guess he didn’t interfere with call girls, he got bigger tips by winking an eye occasionally.
I walked out onto thick carpeting and moved down the hall toward the Impiccato apartment. My fingers fumbled in the Gucci handbag for a special tool that would let me into his place. My eyes raked the corridor. Nobody around.
My pick-lock went into the lock. I fiddled around, turning it this way and that. In moments I heard a click.
A door opened. A man came out. He was looking in the opposite direction so I quickly opened the door and stepped inside into darkness. Well, not complete darkness. There was a light on in another room, and some of its radiance came out into the living room that formed part of Augie’s suite.
It was then that I heard a groan.
My hand shoved the pick-lock into the Gucci and yanked out my Gold Cup Colt. The groan came again and I tensed. Had Willie Ciabatta already gotten to Augie Impiccato? Had a hit man come and done a job on him? If so, I’d better get the hell out of here fast before I was arrested for a second murder!
I moved forward on silent feet, tempted to kick off my evening slippers, but knew that the rich carpeting muffled any footfalls I might make. I came to the arched doorway that showed the way into a small inner hall.
There were two rooms off this hall, one a bathroom. The other, of course, was the bedroom. The light was coming from the bedroom. So were the groans. I risked pushing my head around the edge of the doorway.
A naked woman lay on her back on the bed. A naked man was crouched down, his black hair visible between her widespread thighs. I heard a slurping sound. The woman moaned.
I had never seen Augie Impiccato in the flesh. Not even dressed. All my eyes had ever beheld was a mug shot of him, and I couldn’t see his face. Still, I felt reasonably confident that this man doing lip and tongue service to the woman was the capo di tutti capo I was after.
“Oh, God, darling. That’s wonderful.”
The man didn’t speak. He couldn’t.
I stepped back, thinking hard. Augie and the dame were just starting out on their night’s fun. At least I judged so, having seen the length and breadth of his tumid organ between his somewhat slightly parted thighs as he knelt there. It wasn’t like Augie Impiccato to show so much attention to a woman and not get his own jollies. They would follow, but they would take time.
Time! It was just what I needed.
I raced back into the living room and began my search for the gun. I figured that Augie wouldn’t keep it in his bedroom, it wasn’t very conducive to romance. Nor in the bathroom, for that matter.
Methodically, I went around that living room, opening drawers and peering under sofa and chair cushions No gun. I walked about, studying the pictures on the walls.
Mafia men, like a lot of businessmen, like to boast wall safes. You usually don’t have them in apartments, but if you have enough money, you can get damn near anything you want in a city like New York.
I lifted picture after picture. At last, behind a huge watercolor, I found the safe dial. I lifted off the picture.
Somebody screamed and I damn near let the picture drop from my fingers. Its clatter would surely be heard in the bedroom, even falling on that thick carpet. Sweat came out on my face and I clung to that frame as I might to life. Which was what it equated to, maybe.
It was the dame who had yelled. Now I heard voices.
“Got to you, did I?”
That would be Augie.
“My God, darling! I’ve never felt anything like that!”
A virgin? Or a good actress?
It really made no never-mind It told me Augie hadn’t started in with his own jollies as yet. I put my fingers to the safe dial and twirled it while my ear was glued to the face plate. I heard tumblers faintly clicking.
I had been taught this almost forgotten art of safe-cracking by a man who was a locksmith, having formerly served time for opening safes that didn’t belong to him. I had been a good pupil, intrigued by the fascination of the inner workings of these safes.
In the bedroom, I heard the creak of bed-springs and froze with my hand on the safe dial. If Augie came out here into the living room and found me, I was going to have to knock him galley-west.
He didn’t. They were just changing positions on the bed. I gathered that Augie was now the recipient of the woman’s mouth, for he moaned deeply in his throat and I heard a different sort of slurping sound.
“Easy, Marie. Easy, now. And no biting.”
She must have lifted her head. “But I get so excited, Augie. You’re so big. It really sends me.”
“Yeah. Well, I’m sensitive down there.”
Giggles. Then silence.
I pictured Marie’s head going up and down, also Augie’s contorted face as pleasure raced through his flesh. I started to get hot and wriggled a little, wishing more than ever that Mark Condon had thrown me down on my rumpled bed and had me.
It took a definite effort of will to force myself back to the task at hand. The safe dial twirled amid images of what Marie was doing. I concentrated harder. I heard a number of faint clicks.
I took a deep breath and pulled. The safe door swung open. Inside, there was a roll of greenbacks that would have choked a cow. My eyes popped at the sight of it. There were thousand dollar bills on the outside, yet.
The greenbacks didn’t tempt me as much as what I saw lying to one side of the money. A Smith & Wesson .38 revolver. My heart slammed away like crazy.
Was this Martin Obermayer’s gun?
CHAPTER TEN
It had to be his gun!
There was no reason for Augie Impiccato to keep any other rod locked away like this. I kicked myself for not having looked to see if his own gun were in a shoulder holster in the bedroom. Did I dare risk discovery by tiptoeing in there and finding out?
I decided I did.
Actually, I ran in there after kicking off my slippers. I peeped around the edge of the doorway. If Augie’d had his eyes open, he’d have seen me. He didn’t.
They were squeezed shut as Marie worked on him with her mouth. He was lifting and lowering his hips steadily, like a metronome, as her hand lifted and fell. She was a good-looking doll, but then I expected that, men like Augie Impiccato have high standards when it comes to females.
She was sprawled half over him, with her butt end and the backs of her firm white thighs facing my way. Her thighs were slightly open. I could see the crimson folds of her genitals and the dark brown curls clustering there.
I sighed softly. They were having such a good time!
My eyes finally tore themselves away from Marie and Augie to stare around the room. His and her clothes were tossed helter-skelter. But Augie had hung his shoulder holster and harness over the bedpost where it was within reaching distance. Careful Augie! There was a gun in that holster, which I was damned glad to see.
It practically shouted at me that the gun in my hand was the gun Martin Obermayer had fired at me. Nothing else made any sense. Why should Augie keep any other gun inside the safe? If he carried a spare, just in case, it would be in his night table drawer where he could get at it easily.
I ran back to the living room in my stockinged feet, closed the safe dial and gave it a whirl. I replaced the picture. I slid my feet back into my slippers and started for the door.
Before my hand touched it, I paused. An idea was sliding into my brain. I turned back and walked to the arched doorway leading toward the bedroom. I sauntered to the bedroom door and watched.
Augie was gasping and cursing under his breath, his arms down and hands out to push Marie’s face away from his upstanding attraction. She was out of her skull with lust and the need in her to go on doing what she had been doing. Her hands went out to catch hold of him, to bring him back into her open mouth.
“Cut it out, Marie. You’ll drain me.”
“I want to drain you, Augie, I love it.”
“Yeah, I love it too, but I want something else now.”
“Anything at all, honey. You know that.”
“On your back.”
She got to her knees and smiled at him. She was a well-built girl, her breasts were huge but firm, her pubic hair was a mat of brown curls. Her breasts jiggled and her buttocks danced as she moved across the bed to lie down.
