Columbo: The Hoffa Connection Read online

  “So. You want my news first?”

  “Sure. What ya got for me?”

  “Erie National Bank in Cleveland. I have a friend there who pressed the question of who bought the cashier’s check you asked me about. She had to tell the vice president it was an unofficial police inquiry involving the Regina murder. That opened him up.”

  “So—?”

  “The cashier’s check was bought with another cashier’s check, this one drawn on a bank in Detroit. I haven’t got to the bank in Detroit yet. I’m not sure I can. That bank has a reputation for keeping its clients’ confidences.” She shook her head. “We may have come to a dead end.”

  “Yeah, but somebody went to a lot of trouble to conceal the source of the money that bought Johnny Corleone’s Ferrari. I’ve been interested in the question of who Vittorio Savona—or Angelo Capelli—really was. Now I’m beginnin’ to wonder who Johnny Corleone really is.”

  “Let me make a suggestion,” Adrienne said. “You ought to talk to Maude Ahem. She’s written several articles about Regina and knows more about her entourage than anyone besides Regina herself.”

  “Maude Ahem…” Columbo pondered. “Oh, yeah. She was at the party. Her name was on the list.”

  “I haven’t given up on finding out who Angelo Capelli was, or is,” said Adrienne. “He showed the police in Marino di Bardineto an Italian passport. They didn’t check on its validity. They had no reason to. But it was not a valid passport. It was a forgery. What is more, the Italian government never issued a passport to Vittorio Savona.”

  “Which means,” said Columbo, “the man was somebody and not nobody. You have to know your way around to know how to get a forged passport.”

  “The common term for that is that he was ‘connected,’” said Adrienne. “As was apparent in Marino di Bardineto.”

  “The whole deal makes sense. All that cash. The big money from very early on, when she hadn’t made any yet. The connection. No wonder she was a success, considerin’ what she had behind her.”

  “What you got to tell me, Columbo?”

  He ran his hand through his hair and tipped his head to one side. “Well, that’s gonna be tough. I could tell you one or two things, but it’s obvious nobody knows but me—or at least LAPD—and it’d be obvious I’d given you the information. I don’t hardly need tell ya how much pressure we’re under. If the idea got around that I was feedin’ you information the other media guys can’t get—”

  “I protect my sources, Columbo,” Adrienne said forcefully.

  “Well… I guess I can tell you some things. But this is— How they say? ‘Strictly in background.’ ”

  7

  “Hiya, Dave,” Columbo said as he walked into the office of Sergeant David Gould. “Glad to find ya in. I got something I’d like for you to look at.”

  For this shift, Sergeant Gould was in charge of the fingerprint unit. A veteran officer, with maybe thirty years on the force, Gould was a chain-smoker. A yellow nicotine stain streaked his right eyebrow and his hair where a constant stream of cigarette smoke rose through them.

  “Columbo,” he said. “When you going to put the cuffs on the guy that drowned Regina?”

  Columbo shrugged and did not tell him he didn’t have any handcuffs.

  “Watch out the FBI doesn’t jump in, make a collar, and nab all the credit.”

  “Whoever makes the arrest, it’s okay with me,” said Columbo. “Look what I got for you.”

  He fished the handkerchief and shot glass from his raincoat pocket.

  “Have you brought me a souvenir of Italy, or has it got prints on it?”

  “Let’s hope it’s got prints on it,” said Columbo. “Prob’ly yours,” Gould muttered as he accepted the glass and peered at it critically.

  “Yeah, mine,” said Columbo. “I had to take a drink from it. But some others, I hope.”

  “Let’s see.” Gould dusted the glass. Because his hands were busy, he spoke with his cigarette wobbling up and down in the comer of his mouth. “Oh, yeah. Yeah— Here.” He handed Columbo a glass slide. “Put your middle finger, right hand, on that.” ,

  “Can you lift anything good enough to send to the FBI?”

  “Yeah. I want to get yours off the slide, so I don’t send them to the FBI. We’d prob’ly find out you’re wanted in seven states back East.”

  “Eight,” said Columbo.

  “Oh, yeah. I got a good impression or two. Where you want ’em sent?”

  “Local check,” said Columbo. “But FBI for sure. If nothin’ from that, then Interpol.”

  “Interpol? Say!”

  “Just a hunch. How soon can I know?”

  Gould glanced at his watch. “Tomorrow,” he said.

  8

  Martha Zimmer came in to sign out for the day. Columbo was waiting for her.

  “Got a question,” he said to her. “When you got to the house, had they pulled the body out of the pool already?”

  Martha nodded. “And covered it.”

  “Covered with what?”

  “Covered with an officer’s jacket. Also, they’d put a handkerchief over her face.”

  “Where was the terry-cloth robe?”

  “Lying on the deck beside the chaise longue.”

  “What happened to that robe?”

  “I had it picked up and put in a plastic bag. Forensics checked it for strands of hair and so on. It’s in the property room, tagged as evidence, but I guess it’s got no particular significance.”

  “What about the people in the house at that point? Where were they?”

  “In bed. They’d had a big night. I went upstairs and knocked on their doors to wake them up.”

  “They couldn’t have seen the terry-cloth robe, then.”

  “By the time I woke them up, it was gone. On its way to be examined by forensics.”

  “Besides which,” said Columbo, “if one of them had got up early and looked down and seen the robe lying there, they’d have also seen the body in the pool, wouldn’t ya think?”

  “Absolutely. How could they have missed her?” Columbo nodded. “Thank ya, Martha. That’s interestin’. That’s very interestin’.”

  Fourteen

  1

  Maude Ahem favored pink, apparently, as she also favored wearing tight clothes over her ample figure. As she received Columbo in her pink living room, she was wearing pink silk pajamas that impressed Columbo as being a couple of sizes too small. She had been taking coffee off a white wicker tray that sat on a glass-top coffee table. Without asking if he wanted any, she poured Columbo a cup and pushed it across the table toward him.

  “Frankly, I’d begun to doubt you would ever call on me,” she said. “I gather it means you’re desperate, that the usual techniques have not turned up the murderer.”

  “Well now, I wouldn’t put it quite that way, ma’am.”

  “No. You wouldn’t. Have you by any chance read my articles on Regina?”

  “Afraid not.”

  Maude Ahern softened and showed a faint smile. “I imagine you don’t often read Rolling Stone and Vanity Fair, ”she said, her smile widening.

  “As a matter of fact, I don’t. Mrs. Columbo brings home Vanity Fair once in a while, but I have to admit I don’t find much in it that interests me.”

  “Immaterial,” she shrugged. “Wouldn’t you like to take otF your raincoat?”

  “Well… I guess. Indoors—”

  “Yes. Do you smoke?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do favor a cigar now and then.”

  “Well, I’m going to light a cigarette, so you light a cigar if you want to. We have a few things to talk about, and we may as well be comfortable.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I don’t want to take too much of your time. Y’ see. I’m no genius. The only way I know to figure out who killed somebody is just to get all the information I can, then work at trying to put it together.”

  “I can’t think of a better way, Lieutenant. And don’t apologize for n
ot being a genius. I’m not sure there are any. I’ve been around a long time, to a lot of places, and I haven’t found a genius yet. I sure as hell didn’t expect to find one in the Los Angeles Police Department.” Columbo accepted her lighter, offered as soon as she saw he didn’t have one of his own. “Well,” he said as he held the flame to his cigar, “we do have a lot of very bright people in the department. They get what you might call insights and can skip steps I gotta take. I gotta figure things out by sweat.”

  “I’ve heard better of you.”

  “I thank ya, ma'am, but I—”

  “You want to know what was going on in that house,” she interrupted. “Okay, I can tell you a few things. Regina’s home was a strange menage. Nothing was what it seemed. Have you figured that out?”

  “Well, I’ve figured out a few things,” said Columbo. “I mean, like—”

  “That the old man was not her grandfather and that Johnny was not her houseboy.” Maude smoked her cigarette in the European manner, holding it between her thumb and index finger instead of between her index and middle finger, and she sucked hard on it, burning a great deal of it at once.

  “Right. He was not her grandfather. For sure. And the houseboy was somethin’ besides a houseboy.”

  “That was obvious. It was also obvious that Johnny was her lover. What I could never understand is, why? I always took him for something of an oily character, more egomaniacal than any household servant should have been. Anyway, Regina could have any man she wanted—and did. She distributed her favors democratically and ecumenically. So why should she have been keeping Johnny and giving him money and presents? There was more to the situation than met the eye.” Columbo nodded. He sipped his coffee. “This is very good coffee, ma’am,” he said. “Exceptional. How do you manage to make it so good?”

  “My companion does that. She’s out doing grocery shopping right now. She does the cooking. She’s a real treasure.”

  “Well… getting back to the old man. Who was he? Do you know? You got any ideas?”

  “Ha! Try and find out. When I interviewed Regina for my articles, she was open about everything. She told me more about her sex life than I could publish. But when I asked about her ‘grandfather,’ she clammed up.”

  “She lived with him in his villa in Marina di Bardineto.”

  “So I read in this morning’s paper. Have you seen the piece by Adrienne Boswell?”

  “I did see that. She and I were together part of the time, in Italy. She found out more than I did.”

  “The second time I asked Regina about her grandfather, she got quite huffy. She stalked off and came back in a couple of minutes with his passport. Sure enough, it was an Italian passport in the name of Vittorio Savona: her grandfather. Yet, Adrienne Boswell says she met and spoke with Vittorio Savona in Marina di Bardineto and that he told her he had never been outside Italy in his life.”

  “The passport was a forgery,” said Columbo. “The Italian government never issued a passport in the name Vittorio Savona.”

  “Well, I can tell you something about that forged passport,” Maude said. “I flipped through it, looking at the visas stamped in it. There was one in it indicating that Savona had entered the States through Kennedy Airport in 1988. There was another one. In 1992 he paid a visit to Brazil.”

  “The stamp showing when he entered the States had to be part of the forgery,” said Columbo. “Maybe the Brazilian visa was, too. Even so, I sure would like to know what date it indicated.”

  Maude Ahern grinned. “I’m a journalist, my man. I take notes.” She reached for a little steno pad lying on the coffee table. “I didn’t write these dates down while Regina was looking, but Savona entered Brazil on February 18. His visa was stamped in his passport at Galeao Airport, Rio di Janeiro. He returned to the States through Miami on February 21.”

  “Doesn’t sound like a winter vacation,” said Columbo. “More like a business trip.”

  Showing her lacquered pink fingernails to advantage, Maude smiled and closed the notebook. “You see? You should have come to me sooner.”

  “Yes, ma’am. I guess I should have.”

  2

  FBI agent Robert Brady shook hands with Columbo and pointed at a chair. “I’d say you’ve got a real tough one on your hands. Wouldn’t you?”

  Columbo nodded. LAPD and the FBI were friendly and worked cooperatively; still, there was a reluctance on both their parts to draw each other into investiga-

  tions. Columbo had taken the precaution of calling Captain Sczciegel and asking for permission to ask for FBI assistance in anything more than checking fingerprints against their vast Washington file. Even so, he had known Bob Brady many years and knew him well.

  Brady was of the old FBI, when J. Edgar Hoover was still in charge and required every agent to wear a felt hat in winter, a straw hat in summer, dark suits, white shirts, conservative neckties, and well-shined lace-up shoes; and Brady had never changed styles. He had a pistol hanging in a holster inside his jacket, but he’d had his suit cut so the weapon could never be noticed— particularly in view of the fact that he always kept his jacket buttoned. Bob Brady was a buttoned-up guy, Columbo had once remarked at Burt’s and had gotten a laugh.

  There could hardly have been greater contrast between two men.

  “The news media aren’t making things easier,” said Brady. “I saw the Adrienne Boswell story this morning.”

  “Actually, Adrienne’s been helpful. She gave me some information that’s been useful.”

  “I wouldn’t think of telling you how to do your business, Columbo, but beware of red-haired news gals offering to exchange confidences—or more.”

  “Nothin’ like that, Bob. Nothin’ like that.”

  “Okay. What can I do for you?”

  “One Vittorio Savona entered Brazil on an Italian passport on February 18, 1992. I figure he’d flown to Rio di Janeiro from L.A., though maybe from somewhere else. Anyway, he returned to the States through Miami on February 21. Some quick trip for a man in his eighties. I was wonderin’ if Brazil could give us a list of other Americans who landed at Rio on February 18 and if the FBI could run the names to see who they were.”

  “A minor diplomatic problem, but it shouldn’t be too difficult if Brazil cooperates.”

  “It could answer a whole lot of questions.”

  “You got it,” Brady said crisply. “Since this is Saturday, it will take a little time.”

  3

  At noon Columbo went to Burt’s for a game of pool, a bowl of chili, and a Dr Pepper. The crowd that played on Saturdays was tougher than the weekday crowd, and he lost two dollars.

  Annoyed—not at having lost but because he felt he hadn’t played well—he decided to go home. Maybe he and Mrs. Columbo would take in a movie this evening. Maybe he’d take Dog to the beach. He wondered if there was anything good on television tonight. He wondered if there was stuff in the house to make fettucine carbonara, for which he suddenly had a hankering. Maybe he’d call and ask, and if there wasn’t, he could pick up the necessaries on the way home. Plus a nice bottle of Chianti.

  First he’d call headquarters and tell them he was going off duty for the rest of the day.

  Yeah. The best-laid plans.

  “Columbo? Glad you called in. Listen, you ought to pop down here. We’ve got a couple of people in custody that ought to interest you. The maid. Rita Plata. And her husband.”

  Rita sat in a small conference room, with a uniformed woman officer.

  “What?” Columbo asked.

  “She took a knife to her husband,” said the officer. “You can see why.”

  “Yeah.”

  Rita’s left eye was swollen almost shut. Her nose was bloody, maybe broken. Blood had dripped on her white T-shirt and on her white knit shorts.

  “Domestic disturbance,” said the officer. “The husband’s gonna be short an ear but otherwise will survive intact. Captain recognized the name as the name of the maid at Regina’s house and
thought you’d want to see her.”

  “Thank ya. Lemme talk to her alone, okay.”

  The officer left, and Columbo sat down across the table from the teary Rita.

  “We’ve only seen each other once,” Columbo reminded her. “I meant to get to you, to ask you some questions, but—”

  “I know nothing.”

  “That’s what I figured. What happened at home?”

  “He beat me. Too much. I take the knife and—”

  “Why’d he beat you, Rita?”

  “None you business.”

  “Afraid it is my business. Police business, anyway. You don’t want us to have to lock you up, do you? Now, tell me why your husband beat you.”

  “He calls me una puta. He think I have done el adulterio with Hohnny.”

  “With who?”

  “With Hohnny. Hohnny Corleone. I have not done this thing. I let him kiss, kiss— He touch tetas one time. But no more. I make big mistake. I am honest woman, and I told Julio these things.”

  “Julio’s your husband?”

  "Si.I told him, and he decide I have done more.” Columbo put his hand in his hair and shook his head. “He thinks you—”

  “I tell him. I am not done this thing. I do not go in bed with Hohnny. I am honest woman. I say, kiss, kiss, touch tetas maybe, just for fun. With laugh. But Julio go crazy. He say he kill Hohnny.” She stopped and shook her head. “He get killed.”

  “What makes ya say that?”

  “Hohnny has gun.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “I clean house. Sometime I see gun, una pistola, in Hohnny’s room. Little gun. Very little. Hohnny is a bad man. Bad men come to house to see him. They think I don’t know. I had left house but had to go back to get keys I had left in kitchen. I saw. Three men. Not nice men. They had come to house before, to see the old man.”

  “When was this, Rita?” Columbo asked.

  “Day after murder.”

  “Like a Coke?”

  “Yes.”