Columbo: The Hoffa Connection Read online

  Columbo went to the door, opened it, and asked the waiting officer if she would mind bringing a couple of Cokes.

  He sat down again with Rita. “Whatta ya know about the old man?” he asked.

  Rita shook her head. “Muy malol” she snapped. “He was… He was wicked old man.” She shook her head again, almost convulsively. “He was Miss Regina’s grandfather, but he make her do dirty things… grandfather!”

  “Do what things?” Columbo asked.

  “She go to bed with him! I smell her perfume when I make his bed. On sheets. Bad old man.”

  “These men who came to see him,” said Columbo. “Could they have taken him away?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Did he have other visitors?”

  Rita nodded solemnly. “Sometime. He have friends. Old men some. Like him. One of them speaks espahol to me. He sees me, he speaks español. Mexican.”

  “Are you sure he was Mexican?” Columbo asked. “How could you tell?”

  “He speak like me. Mexican. He see Hohnny, he say, Este mozo me cae gordo. ’ It mean he no like Hohnny, but only Mexican say it that way.”

  “Did he come to the house once or more than once?”

  “He come again. Sometimes. Old man come down.

  They sit by pool. Old man swim. He swim every day, much. When old man come out of pool, they sit and smoke cigars and drink whisky. Friends.”

  “But you don’t know who he was?”

  Rita shook her head.

  “Okay, Rita,” said Columbo. “Domestic Relations will work out your problems for you and your husband. You listen to what they tell ya.”

  4

  Johnny sat in a blue Chevy, parked across the street and a little up the block from the house in Van Nuys where Bob Douglas lived with Christie Monroe. He’d stolen the car an hour ago. He hadn’t grown up a Cleveland wannabe wiseguy for nothin’, and there weren’t many cars he couldn’t lift if he wanted to.

  He was worried. No, he was worse than worried—he was terrified. He’d told Carlo that Mickey was dead, and Mickey wasn’t dead. How long before Carlo found out? What was more important, getting rid of Mickey or getting rid of Bob?

  Carlo would never accept his own share of responsibility for what went wrong. Mickey’d shot the stuff Carlo’d sent. Hadn’t he? Was Mickey so far. gone that he could take the toxic chemicals in the stuff and survive? Or hadn’t he shot it? Or had Carlo provided weak stuff?

  And what about the biscuit? If it had been tough enough, the slugs would have gone where they were supposed to. A stupid .38! If it’d been a .357 magnum or a .44 magnum, forget the steel in the back of a car seat; the slug would have gone through.

  But— Carlo would lay it all on him. Everybody would lay it on him. He didn’t have time to think out something smart. He had to do it!

  Everything was fouled up. It was all fouled up! They’d given him a tough job, but he’d taken it on and done it right till the old boy lost his temper.

  This time, no biscuit. The gun he carried tonight was a goddamned cannon: a .44 magnum Desert Eagle automatic, capable of cracking an engine block and stopping a car, capable of throwing a man on his back, as dead as if he’d been hit by a cannonball. Marty, who’d bought the underwear, had provided it. Marty would hear on TV what it had been used for, and he’d be too scared ever to talk.

  There wasn’t going to be anything subtle about this hit. He was going to take both of them out if he could. Then he’d finish off Mickey. Then he’d disappear.

  Friends would take care of him after all that. The way they’d taken care of the old man for twenty years. Guys took care of guys who had taken risks to do something right. With Bob and Christie out, Mickey out, and ! himself disappeared, guys would take care of him. It was a shame it had to be so messy. Nobody liked that. But it would be done—that was the point—and he’d have been a sharp guy, who’d done what was necessary.

  The only thing he was sorry for was that he couldn’t take out Carlo while he was at it.

  He wasn’t good at waiting. Sitting in the car was too suspicious. Some citizen might come along and wondered why a guy was sitting in a car at night. Some citizen might even call the cops. Johnny got out and walked. He did not amble; he walked briskly, as if he knew exactly where he was going. He rounded the block and returned. Three times. The house remained dark.

  Dammit! He wanted to catch them as they came in, not have to bang on their door.

  Then the car came. He was still driving the Mercedes, even if it did have bullet holes in the seat. Actually, she was driving it. She turned off the street and into the driveway.

  The garage door went up. Damn! A radio-controlled garage door. Christie drove into the garage, and the door closed.

  Johnny hurried across the street. He ran to the front door. The lock was not simple. He rang the doorbell and knocked. They didn’t answer. But the lights came on, over the door and on the front lawn. A moment later a siren began to scream.

  Johnny ran. He left the stolen car sitting on the street and walked out of the block. A black-and-white came. The cops inside didn’t see him. He was just far enough away. He walked six blocks and caught a bus.

  5

  He recovered the Ferrari from a parking lot where the attendant knew how to appreciate a car like that. He drove home. His night wasn’t over. His telephone was ringing when he entered his room. He let it ring and didn’t answer. He sat down to watch television. Fifteen minutes later the phone rang again.

  “Johnny? Carlo. I wanta talk to you. Be here in fifteen minutes.”

  So. Summoned. They didn’t even come for him, weren’t waiting in the dark outside the garage. They called him, confident that he would come, like an obedient dog, to take whatever punishment they had for him.

  So, okay, Carlo. Johnny Discount is no dog. Live or die, by God, Johnny Discount is no dog.

  He fortified himself with half a tumbler of whisky, then drove downtown, jump-started a Dodge van, and drove to the warehouse. He pulled up to the door and honked the horn.

  The doors swung back, and he drove inside.

  Frank was waiting.

  “Where’s the man?” Johnny asked.

  Frank smirked. He pulled a pair of handcuffs from his pocket. “Strip down, Johnny,” he said.

  As Johnny stepped down from the van he shoved the muzzle of the Desert Eagle toward Frank and pulled the trigger. The huge gun roared and spat twelve inches of flame as muzzle flash. The enormous slug blasted Frank’s torso wide open. Shock energy lifted him from the floor and threw him backward.

  Johnny turned the gun toward the office. He fired three times. The big slugs tore through the wall and through whatever was inside.

  Sal ran out of the bathroom, pistol thrust forward. Johnny fired and missed, fired and missed, but caught him in the leg with his third shot. With his leg all but tom off, Sal writhed and screamed on the floor. Johnny stepped closer and finished him with a shot in the back.

  He opened the door of the office. Carlo lay in a spreading pool of blood.

  Johnny Visconti—Johnny Discount—smiled. So. “Greetings from Cleveland,” he muttered.

  He backed the van out of the warehouse and drove back toward another lot where he had left the Ferrari. Cleveland didn’t need to know what happened to Carlo. No one would guess that Johnny’d whacked him out.

  Fifteen

  1

  The next day was Sunday, and Columbo decided to take a day off. A man needed time to think, to try to match things together. He couldn’t be on the run all the time.

  Anyway, he wanted to work on his car. He’d bought another can of the plastic stuff that was supposed to be good for patching up a car body. You took a file and went around the rusty edges of a hole, then put tape over it, then smeared the plastic on with a putty knife. When it set, you could sand it smooth and match it in with the steel, so when you painted over it, it would look smooth, so that you really couldn’t tell where the patch was. Anyway, that was the theory, w
hat the instructions said. Of course, he’d never had the car painted, so the patches remained gray. What was more, the plastic stuff developed pits, making the patches look something like golf balls.

  He decided to wash the car first. Also he wanted to patch a hole in the canvas top, where rainwater had been leaking in.

  Mrs. Columbo had gone to church, and afterward she was going to stop by a market and pick up a few items. That was fine. He’d have time to do all this work before she suggested they go to the beach or for a drive.

  Casual in a pair of wash slacks and a shirt that had gotten so scruffy he guessed he couldn’t wear it to work anymore, he puffed on a cigar as he taped the rent in the top and sang quietly to himself:

  This old man, he played one.

  He played nick-nack on my thumb.

  With a nick-nack patty-whack,

  Give a dog a bone.

  This old man came rolling home.

  Well… nothin’ ever went the way you expected. He’d got the tape on the canvas and had just dragged out the hose to wash the car when Martha Zimmer pulled into his driveway.

  “Hey, Columbo, why don’t you answer the phone?”

  “Day off. Besides, most of the calls are for Mrs. Columbo. People’d expect me to remember whatever they said and tell her when she comes home, or write it all down, which is a nuisance. Anyway, out here I can’t hear it ring.”

  “What you doing?”

  “Takin’ care of my car. You know my idea: if you take good care of a car it’ll take care of you. There was a hole in the top. Can’t have rainwater drippin’ on the seats. Also, after I wash it, I’m goin’ to patch that hole in the fender.”

  “Why don’t you have it painted, Columbo?”

  “I oughta. I really oughta.”

  “I’ve got something for you.”

  “You on duty today, Martha?”

  “Oh, no. I always drive a department car and carry a gun, like to the grocery store. Passing by your desk, I saw you had an envelope from Dave Gould. I figured you’d want it toot dee sweet.”

  “Right,” said Columbo. “Even on my day off.”

  She handed him the manila envelope. Inside was the FBI report on the fingerprints lifted from the shot glass handled by Johnny Corleone.

  FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

  Fingerprints Records Division Notice: This confidential report is offered to the requesting law-enforcement agency for its exclusive use.

  Requesting agency: Los Angeles Police Department

  The fingerprints submitted with your request, wire-photoed to this office, are those of one Giovanni Visconti, aka Johnny Visconti, aka Johnny Discount.

  The subject was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on June 1, 1966. He completed eight years of public schooling, one year of which he completed at the Fairfield County Industrial School, an institution for juvenile offenders.

  He has a criminal record as follows:

  Arrested Cleveland, Ohio, August 8, 1985, aggravated assault. Pleaded guilty to simple assault and was incarcerated in the Cuyahoga County jail from August 8 to September 7, 1985.

  Arrested Cleveland, Ohio, December 10, 1985, grand larceny. Charge dropped.

  Arrested Cleveland, Ohio, February 11, 1986, aggravated assault. Convicted May 3, 1986, entered Mansfield Reformatory May 12, 1986, paroled January 21, 1988. Granted final release from parole, May 5, 1989.

  No subsequent arrests.

  The subject is regarded by the Cleveland Police Department as a “made” member of the local crime family, allegedly headed by one Don Antonio Samenza.

  The subject holds a United States passport and visited Italy in 1987 and 1988.

  Columbo handed the report to Martha, and she scanned it. He began to run water on his car.

  “Tell ya what, Martha. As long as you’re on duty, why don’t ya wire this report to Castellano in Milan? Also, don’t we have a photo of Johnny? If we don’t, ask Cleveland to wire us a mug shot. Wire that along to Castellano, too.”

  Martha smiled over the report. “Interesting,” she said.

  “We’re bein’ beat up in the papers, for not cornin’ up with Regina’s murderer. You see this morning?”

  She nodded. “Hey. Be glad we don’t have that triple homicide that came down last night. Be glad we’re tied up with the Regina case, or we might have got that Lucchese shooting.”

  “I’m glad I don’t have to look at those bodies,” said Columbo. “Kinda thing that happens when people carry guns.”

  Martha grinned. “Speaking of which, where’s your Beretta?”

  “It’s in the house. Am I supposed to have it on me while I’m washin’ my car?”

  “Just so you haven’t lost it.”

  “I haven’t lost it. I know exactly where it is.”

  2

  Adrienne Boswell had driven all the usual players away from the pool tables. The Monday-noon customers at Burt’s had decided they would rather sit and watch her play. Their interest was not subtle. When she leaned over the table to make a shot, she presented a rounded bottom to them—covered only with well-stretched white slacks.

  Besides, she was a good player. She chose shots they would not have attempted and was giving the skilled Columbo a challenge.

  “You were right about the chili,” she said. “I’ll never forget it. Not within the next seventy-two hours, anyway.”

  “Not everybody appreciates it,” Columbo said. “Anything interesting happening?”

  “Well, one thing. You bein’ a journalist and all, what do the dates February 18 to February 21, 1992 mean, if anything? I mean, if we’re talkin’ about something that happened in Brazil.”

  “My God! Don’t tell me something connects the meeting in Brazil with—”

  “What meeting in Brazil?” he asked.

  “Maybe no meeting in Brazil. It may not be anything at all. It may be a rumor. But the story is—Well, you’ve heard of the Appalachian meet in 1957. I mean the time the godfathers of Costra Nostra all got together and the cops descended on them. Okay. They never risked that again. But the rumor is that they do meet from time to time. The last time is supposed to have been in Brazil in February of 1992.”

  “That’s interestin’,” said Columbo. “Looks like that nine-ball shot is pretty near impossible, stuck on that rail like it is—unless I can kiss the cue ball off the eight when I shoot the seven and…” He squinted at the layout of balls and shook his head.

  “Five dollars says you can’t.”

  “Well, now… Five dollars is a lot of money.”

  “Five dollars to your two,” she said.

  “Ma’am—I mean, Adrienne. You tempt me. I guess I have to try it.”

  He chalked his cue, letting blue chalk dust drift down on his raincoat. He bent close to the table, sighting his shot down the length of his cue. He shot, gently, sending the cue ball slowly toward the seven. It struck the seven, then took its English, struck the eight lightly, caromed toward the nine, hit it, and drove the nine off its impossible position frozen on the bottom rail.

  “Brr-inging in the sheaves, brr-inging in the sheaves,” Columbo sang happily as he sank the eight and nine easily. “Here we go rejoicing, brr-inging in the sheaves.”

  “You bastard!” Adrienne laughed. As she handed him a five-dollar bill, she bumped her hip against his. “I should know better than to play a hustler.”

  “I cheat,” said Columbo. “I practice.”

  Burt and his regulars laughed.

  3

  When they emerged from Burt’s, into the midday sunlight, Adrienne reached impulsively for Columbo’s hand. She drew him closer to her and planted a quick but firm kiss on his mouth.

  “Columbo… Why don’t you come to my place tonight? For dinner. I cook meaner than I shoot pool. We ought to have got to know each other better when we were in Italy. But— Tonight? Say about seven?”

  He ran his right hand through his hair, as if to smooth the unruly mop. “Jeez, I’d sure like to, Adrienne,” he said
regretfully. “But, y’ see, Mrs. C. has asked her brother to come over to dinner tonight, bringin’ his wife, of course, and she drinks too much, and it’d just be awful awkward if I wasn’t there. Besides, she’s makin’ her special lasagna, with a lot of Greek olives in it, which is her particular way of makin’ it. And—”

  “Sure,” said Adrienne. “ Hala vista, baby. Another time maybe.”

  “.Hey! Listen, I can call and ask her to add another person to the party.”

  Adrienne smiled. “Columbo, you’re something else again. We’ll keep in touch, huh?”

  “Oh, absolutely. Wouldn’t think of doin’ anything else.”

  4

  Mickey Newcastle walked on the beach at Santa Monica. He’d asked Joe Fletcher, the agent, to meet him there because he didn’t want Joe to see his shabby flat. For the moment his step was springy, and he walked happily in the sand. My God! Some young people still recognized him! Two even asked for his autograph.

  “You see? Not everybody has forgotten me,” he said to Fletcher.

  “Nobody said you were a has-been,” said Fletcher.

  The wind off the ocean lifted Fletcher’s fine white hair, so that it undulated like a field of grain in a summer breeze. That annoyed him. He didn’t like the beach.

  “What do you think of my proposition?” Mickey asked.

  “I talked to four possible publishers. I’m a little surprised, but they’ll buy. Regina: /”

  “ ‘By the man who knew her best,’ ” Mickey added.

  “Did you really know her best?” Fletcher asked skeptically.

  “I knew her in every possible way.”

  “Did you know who her ‘grandfather’ was?” Fletcher asked, putting an inflection on the word that was not quite a sneer but conveyed his meaning clearly: that the old man in the house was not Regina’s grandfather.

  “I knew he wasn’t her grandfather,” said Mickey. “The old boy had money, I mean a lot of money. He—”

  “Are you going to tell who he was in the book?”