Columbo: The Hoffa Connection Read online

  “That sounds ominous,” she said. “When do I get the cuffs slapped on?”

  Columbo smiled: mouth and eyes. “The blood may eliminate you as a suspect, just as much as the other way. You don’t have to do it, of course.”

  “We’ll do it. You said you were looking at two things. I guess we’ve been talking about motive. What’s the other thing?”

  “Well, ma’am… Christie, I’m curious to know who was the old man that lived on the second floor. He wasn’t her grandfather. I guess nobody thought he was. Whatta you know about him?”

  “Regina was afraid of him. I can tell you that. She used to pass up fun times, saying, ‘I gotta get home to Grandpa.’ I mean, we’d finish a rehearsal or something, and somebody’d suggest we get something to eat and maybe go to some fun spot, and lots of times Regina’d say, ‘Not for me. Gotta get home to Grandpa.’ He had some kind of hold on her.”

  “Yeah…”

  “I’ll tell you something else. I’ve seen bruises on her. I can’t say he slapped her around, but somebody did.”

  “You say she was strong, had good muscle tone. The old man was eighty, if he was a day, and sort of feeble. I mean, could he… ?”

  “If he did it, she let him. I don’t know. I wondered if he didn’t have something on her.”

  “Three people say she slept with him.”

  Christie shrugged. “Maybe. Not recently, I don’t think. But when I first met her, first danced for her, maybe…”

  “We haven’t released the word yet, but the old man has disappeared. Friday night.”

  “That would explain a lot, wouldn’t it?”

  “How d’ you mean?”

  “He killed her, or had her killed. That old son of a bitch was a menacing presence behind Regina. There was something strange about her, Columbo. Things weren’t what they seemed.”

  Columbo nodded and rose from his chair. “Well— I thank ya, Christie. I better be on my way.”

  She walked through the house with him, to the front door. “Shall I tell Bob to call you?” she asked.

  “I’d appreciate that. My, I hope it doesn’t rain. My car’s got so the top leaks, and I have to put a sheet of plastic over it, and that sometimes blows off.”

  “Time for a new car, do you suppose?” she asked playfully. She stood in the doorway in her bikini, her head cocked to one side, grinning.

  “I don’t know what I’d do with this one,” he said. “I couldn’t just let it go to the junkyard. It’s like an old friend, y’see. I couldn’t let somebody crush it just ’cause it’s got one or two minor problems. Anyway, it’s got lots of good miles left in it.”

  “I can see that.”

  “Oh, Christie, there is one little thing I’d like to clear up.” He turned away from the car and took a couple of steps back toward her. “I’m curious about the way you said you were so dead drunk that night. You explained about how you got your lenses out. But— Well, you see, you and Mr. Douglas didn’t go straight to sleep like you said, I don’t think.”

  “No?”

  “No. I hate to have invaded your privacy like this, but we sent the sheets off your bed down to the forensics lab to be examined. It seems you and Mr. Douglas left something on the bed that shows you had a pretty vigorous time during the night.”

  Christie shook her head. “When you’re around a murder, you lose your privacy, don’t you?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “Well, we did it in the morning, after we woke up.”

  “No, ma’am. I’m afraid that doesn’t explain it. Y’ see, your sheets were dry when Sergeant Zimmer and I looked at your bed. The lab boys say that particular fluid takes some time to dry up. Besides, you said you had an awful headache that morning. That doesn’t seem consistent with—”

  “So I lied,” she interrupted curtly. “I was trying to make you believe I couldn’t have had anything to do with the murder. No, I wasn’t as drunk as I said. And Bob and I did make love before we went to sleep.”

  “Then why’d you crawl up the stairs?”

  “I was drunk enough that it seemed funny. It was a little act. C’mon, Columbo.”

  “Well, miss… Christie, I suggest you don’t lie to the police during a murder investigation. You might make somebody draw a bad conclusion.”

  “I’ll be a good girl from now on, Columbo. I didn’t kill Regina. And I didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  3

  Columbo’s next visit was to First Central Bank, where he was ushered into the office of William O’Casey, vice president. A small, precise-looking man who wore rimless eyeglasses, O’Casey shook hands warmly enough but was unable to conceal his astonishment that this unkempt man in a stained and rumpled raincoat was the police detective he had talked to on the telephone on Friday.

  “Well, Lieutenant, the deputy district attorney had the order served on us this morning, so I have your information ready. I hope you understand I could not release it except on a court order.”

  “Oh, of course not, sir,” Columbo said. “I understand entirely. And I’m sorry to have to put you to so much trouble.”

  “You did say you could accept the information on a computer disk?”

  “Yes, sir. Me, I don’t know how to manipulate those machines. Mrs. Columbo tells me I could if I’d just set my mind to it, but electronic gadgets just sort of defy me. I guess I don’t have the mindset for them. Anyway, we have experts at headquarters who can make computers stand on their heads… figuratively speaking.”

  “Well, then. This disk contains the bank’s complete record of Miss Savona’s personal account from 1990 to date. It records every deposit and every check. These six disks contain the same information for Regina, Incorporated.”

  “Oh, I appreciate this, sir,” said Columbo. “This is gonna be very helpful.”

  “I made a preliminary search and didn’t find the check you mentioned as being interesting to you. She did not write a check to Sunset Classic Cars. I checked the yellow pages for the names of other agencies that sell Ferraris, and there is no check to any of them, either from her personal or corporate account.”

  Columbo frowned. “Now, that’s very strange, because the title for the car I’m interested in says it was transferred to the man who now owns it by Sunset Classic Cars. I guess I’m gonna have to go see Sunset.”

  4

  Columbo stood among the shiny new cars in the showroom at Sunset Classic Cars. “One of the things I like best about new cars is that they smell like new cars,” he said to the salesman.

  “Will that be your trade-in?” the salesman asked, skeptically eyeing the Peugeot parked just outside. “I guess I could probably give you something for it.”

  “Trade-in? Oh, no, Mr. Cohen. I’m not ready to trade my car in. No, it’s got lots of good miles on it. I’m here about somethin’ else. I’m Lieutenant Columbo, LAPD homicide. I’m investigating the murder of Regina.” Cohen shook his head. “A hell of a tragedy,” he said. Columbo judged Cohen was of the generation that would have appreciated Regina. “I bet you enjoyed her,” he said.

  “I have every one of her discs.”

  “You ever meet her?” Columbo asked.

  Cohen shook his head. “I wish I had.”

  “Well, I thought maybe she was in the agency here, like about a year ago.”

  Cohen shook his head again. “No way. If she was ever in here, I’d have known it.”

  “Well, let me show you the copy of an automobile title. This is a copy of the title to a red Ferrari. You see, it was transferred from this agency to a Mr. John Corleone a year ago.”

  “Sure,” Cohen said. “I sold that car.”

  “You— What a lucky coincidence for me! Do you remember Johnny Corleone?”

  “Absolutely. You don’t sell a $78,000 Ferrari very often. I remember him very well.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  Cohen paused for a moment, then said, “He was a young man. I remember thinking how lucky he was
to have enough money to buy a Ferrari at his age. He was a handsome fella. Actually, his face was more like pretty than handsome. Dark hair…”

  “How did he pay for the car?”

  “I don’t know. We can ask the cashier.”

  Standing behind the glass window of her office, Mildred Barnes pulled a manila folder from a file cabinet. “Here we are,” she said. “The car was paid for by a cashier’s check on Erie National Bank, in Cleveland.”

  “A check on whose account?” Columbo asked.

  “It’s a cashier's check, Lieutenant. It’s a check on the bank itself. Someone paid for it, obviously, but it’s not a check on any individual account.”

  “The bank in Cleveland can tell me—”

  “Probably,” she interrupted. “Not necessarily. I remember the transaction. The young man handed over the cashier’s check for the price of the car, then paid the tax and title fee in cash.”

  Columbo nodded. “I thank ya. Thank ya very much.”

  Ten

  1

  Carlo Lucchese drew his right hand back over his left shoulder and swung, slapping Johnny Corleone hard across the right cheek with the back of his hand. “Buffone! Idiota!” he yelled. “You’re lucky the old man went to the bottom of the ocean! He’d have— He’d have seen to it you got a serious headache.”

  They were in the warehouse where they had stuffed the body of the old man into a drum and poured concrete over it.

  “Carlo, it wasn’t my fault!” Johnny pleaded, wiping blood from his lips. “I did what the old man said! I did it when he said and where he said, and—”

  Carlo glowered. “There’s one thing you’re supposed to know if you don’t know anything else,” he said darkly. “Don’t make excuses! You a man, you not a man? You a wiseguy, you not a wiseguy? You was made, you wasn’t made? If I decide you get a headache, what you gonna do, Johnny? Beg? You gonna get down on your knees and beg?”

  “Carlo… I was made. I’m a man!”

  “Yeah. You came recommended. Johnny Visconti. Johnny Discount. Cleveland said we could depend on you.”

  “My mistake was doing what the old man said.”

  “Your mistake was doing it bad! First, that stupid Englishman put a cut on her. Then you didn’t get the fixed powder into the Englishman’s veins, so he’s still walking around. Now you tell me there was an witness! You got one chance, Johnny. You got twenty-four hours to come back here and tell me there ain’t no witness. An’ you wanta know why? ’Cause we don’t trust you anymore, Johnny. You get busted, you’ll talk. That’s not gonna happen. You’re not going to get busted. You understand why?”

  “I understand why,” Johnny said quietly. “Will you help me?”

  “What do you want?”

  “I need a biscuit, a clean biscuit. I can’t figure any other way to do it.”

  “Sal,” said Carlo. “We got a safe biscuit around? Get Johnny a safe biscuit.”

  Sal didn’t have far to look. He reached inside his jacket and withdrew a .38 snub-nosed revolver. “This one is clean,” he said. He handled it carefully, not letting his fingers touch the bare metal. The trigger and grip were wrapped in rough surgical tape that would not take fingerprints. “Never fired in anger, as we could say. No ballistics record of it.”

  “How about a car?” Johnny asked.

  “How about an airplane?” Carlo asked. “Okay, we’ll get you a car. I guess since it’s California and not Ohio, you don’t know your way around.”

  “And some speedball with somethin’ in it,” Johnny added. “Mickey’s the dangerous witness. The others—”

  “Get rid of all of ’em, Johnny,” Carlo said. “You got a lot ridin’ on it.”

  2

  Mickey Newcastle lay in a dreamy state on his couch. He had not shaved since Saturday, and his clothes were only a sleeveless undershirt and a pair of tattered slingshot underpants. Johnny stood over him.

  “You’re in a hell of a nice condition,” Johnny grumbled. “You aren’t going to be of any help to me at all, are you?”

  “I didn’t know you needed any help. What ya got in mind, man?”

  “Never mind. You’re in no shape to do me any good. Look—I gotta use the bathroom.”

  Mickey tossed a lazy arm toward the door. “Be my guest,” he said. “Want a beer?”

  Johnny shook his head as he went to the bathroom door. Inside, he closed the door and shot the little bolt.

  He found what he expected: a needle, a vial of white powder, and a bottle of what had to be distilled water. He poured the contents of the vial into the toilet, then poured the contents of a vial of his own into Mickey’s vial. He wiped off his fingerprints and replaced the little bottle precisely where he had found it. Finally, he flushed the toilet.

  “See ya, Mick,” he said airily as he left the flat. “You figure on coming down off the ceiling anytime soon? You do, gimme a call.”

  3

  Bob Douglas’s studio filled a one-time radio studio in Culver City, a facility where famous quiz and comedy shows of the 1940s had originated. The building was ideal for him. It had been built to keep street sounds from intruding on the radio broadcasts, and it was equally good at keeping Bob Douglas’s electronic sounds from escaping to the street. Almost the entire space was filled with electronic equipment, the whole completely mysterious to Columbo. The officious young woman who had made him show identification before she would believe he was a police detective had told him emphatically he could not smoke a cigar in the presence of these sophisticated electronic devices.

  “Sort of like a shrine here, hmm?” he asked her. “Have to behave ourselves in its presence?”

  “The voltages inside the cabinet attract any kind of dust or fumes, Lieutenant,” she said. “Tobacco smoke collects in the form of a sticky grease, on thousands of components.”

  “Like in the lungs, huh?”

  She smiled faintly. “Just like that. Anyway, have a chair. Mr. Douglas will be with you in a moment. Would you like me to hang up your raincoat?”

  “Oh, no. No, thank ya. It’s my office, ya might say. I mean, I carry a lot of stuff in my pockets.”

  “Mr. Douglas will be with you in a few minutes,” she said again.

  Columbo stared at a board that must have included a thousand small switches and wondered whatever they were for. Two keyboards were less enigmatic; they made music. But—

  “Lieutenant! What can I do for you?”

  Columbo’s first reflection on seeing Douglas again was that he and Christie Monroe were just possibly the bestlooking couple he had ever seen. Bob Douglas was an exceptionally handsome man, conspicuously intelligent and personable. If he had a flaw, maybe it was the pride that kept a replica of his Olympic gold medal always visible on his chest—this afternoon under a green shirt unbuttoned just enough to show it.

  “Well, sir,” said Columbo, “I don’t like to take your time, but you’re the only one of the people who were in the house that I haven’t yet interviewed privately. I will appreciate your goin’ over with Miss Monroe and giving the blood sample, incidentally.”

  “Have a chair,” Douglas said amiably. “Like a cup of coffee? Pepsi?”

  “A Pepsi would be nice,” said Columbo.

  Douglas picked up a telephone and ordered two Pepsis. “So,” he said. “Do you know who killed her yet?”

  “Sir, if I knew I wouldn’t be here botherin’ you.”

  “No bother. Can I be of any help?”

  “Well, sir, I’m the sort of fella that, when he gets some idea in his mind, he can’t get it out.” Columbo slumped in his chair and grinned and shrugged. “You know how it can be sometimes. Right now, I’ve got two ideas. One is, who was that old man that lived upstairs? I don’t suppose you can shed any light on that?”

  “Probably not. He wasn’t her grandfather, I can tell you that. Or if he was, they had an odd, incestuous relationship.”

  “How d’ya know?”

  Douglas sighed. “You know. I’m
sure, that for a while I slept with her. There in the house sometimes. In her bedroom. Sometimes she’d tell me to come after midnight. She’d let me in at the front door, and we’d go up the stairs quietly. She said she didn’t want to wake her grandfather. Well, one night we were in bed, three or four in the morning, and he came banging on her door. With his cane. He yelled there had better not be a man in there with her. He’d kill him.”

  “He said this in English?” Columbo frowned.

  “Oh, yes. Without even an accent. If there was an accent, it was a Midwestern accent.”

  “So what happened?”

  “She sent me out on the balcony. She let him in. And she… she settled him down. I remember what she said.

  Vividly. She said, ‘Hey, Gran’dad, don’t I always take care of you? Nobody but Regina knows how.’ She spoke very softly, but I could hear. ‘Gran’dad, you were snoring and tossing in bed. I couldn’t sleep. I gotta work tomorrow. Now, take it easy. Getting in a hot temper is not good for you.’ Speaking of accents, she had one: Italian.”

  ‘‘Italian.” Columbo turned down the comers of his mouth. “Well… figures. Of course, that the old man didn’t—”

  Douglas grinned. “Dumb situation, huh? At least, I wasn’t under the bed.”

  “So, did he go back to his own rooms?” Columbo asked.

  “After another minute or so. He said something more to her. I’ve been thinking about it. It may be significant. I didn’t think of it as particularly significant at the time, but maybe it was. He said, ‘You been cheatin’ me, Regina. You’ve got somebody cookin’ the books.’ ”

  “What’d it mean?” Columbo asked.

  Douglas shrugged. “Sounds like it could be a motive, though, doesn’t it?”

  “So. Did you come back in?”

  “Oh, yes. She locked the door, and we picked up where we’d left off. I didn’t think I could, but— Lieutenant… I don’t know how to describe it. Regina was— I don’t know how many guys would have given up everything for an exclusive and permanent relationship with her.” He shook his head. “She was incapable of it.”