When the Bough Breaks (14 page)

Maurice Bruno had come up in the world since his file had been compiled. He was now a vice-president, in charge of sales. He was also unavailable, we were told by his secretary, a lissome brunette with arched eyebrows and a mouth meant for saying no.

“Then give me his boss,” barked Milo. He shoved his badge under her nose. We were both hot and tired and discouraged. The last place we wanted to be stalled was Burbank.

“That would be Mr. Gershman,” she said as if discovering some new insight.

“Then that would be who I want to talk to.”

“Just one second.”

She wiggled off and came back with her clone in a blond wig.

“I’m Mr. Gershman’s secretary,” the clone announced.

It must be the poison in the air, I decided. It caused brain damage, eroded the cerebral cortex to the point where simple facts took on an aura of profundity.

Milo took a deep breath.

“We’d like to talk with Mr. Gershman.”

“May I inquire what it’s about?”

“No, you may not. Bring us to Gershman now.”

“Yes, sir.” The two secretaries looked at each other. Then the brunette pushed a buzzer and the blonde led us through double glass doors into an enormous production area filled with machines that chomped, stamped, bit, snarled, and smeared. A few people hung around the periphery of the rabid steel monsters, dull-eyed, loose-jawed, breathing in fumes that reeked of alcohol and acetone. The noise, alone, was enough to kill you.

She made a sudden left, probably hoping to lose us to the maws of one of the behemoths, but we hung on, following the movement of her swaying butt until we came to another set of double doors. These she pushed and let go, forcing Milo to fall foward to catch them. A short corridor, another set of doors, and we were confronted by silence so complete as to be overwhelming.

The executive suite at Presto Instant Print might have been on another planet. Plush, plum-colored carpets that you had to bargain with in order to reclaim your ankles, walls paneled in real walnut. Large
doors of walnut burl with names made of brass letters tastefully centered on the wood. And silence.

The blonde stopped at the end of the hall, in front of an especially large door with especially tasteful gold letters that said Arthur M. Gershman, President. She let us into a waiting room the size of an average house, motioned us to sit in chairs that looked and felt like unbaked bread dough. Settling behind her desk, a contraption of plexiglass and rosewood that afforded the world a perfect view of her legs, she pushed a button on a console that belonged at NASA Control Center, moved her lips a bit, nodded, and stood up again.

“Mr. Gershman will see you, now.”

The inner sanctum was as expected—the size of a cathedral, decorated like something conceived in the pages of
Architectural Digest
, softly lit and comfortable but hard-edged enough to keep you awake—but the man behind the desk was a complete surprise.

He wore khaki pants and a short sleeved white shirt that needed ironing. His feet were clad in Hush Puppies and since they were on the desk the holes in their soles were obvious. He was in his mid-seventies, bald, bespectacled, with one of the sidepieces of his glasses held together with masking tape, and potbellied.

He was talking on the phone when we came in.

“Hold the wire, Lenny.” He looked up. “Thanks, Denise.” The blonde disappeared. To us: “One second. Sit down, fix something.” He pointed to a fully stocked bar that covered half of one wall.

“Okay, Lenny, I got cops here, gotta go. Yeah, cops. I don’t know, you wanna ask em? Ha ha. Yeah, I’ll tell em that for sure, you
momzer
. I’ll tell em what
you
did in Palm Springs the last time we were there. Yeah. Okay, the Sahara job in lots of three hundred thousand with coasters and matchbooks—not boxes, books. I got it. I give you delivery in two weeks. What? Forget it.” He winked at us. “Go ahead, go to someone local, see if I care. I got maybe one, two more months before I drop dead from this business—you think I care if an order drops dead? It’s all gonna go to Uncle Sam and Shirley and my prince of a son who drives a German car. Nah, nah. A BMW. With my money. Yeah. What can you do, it’s out of control. Ten days?” He made a masturbating motion with his free hand and beamed at us. “You’re jerking off, Lenny. At least close the door, no one will see. Twelve days, tops. Okay? Twelve it is. Right. Gotta go, these cossacks are going to drag me away any minute. Good-bye.”

The phone slammed down, the man shot up like an uncoiled spring.

“Artie Gershman.”

He held out an ink-stained hand. Milo shook it, then I did. It was as hard as granite and horned with callus.

He sat down again, threw his feet back up on the desk.

“Sorry for the delay.” He had the joviality of someone who was surrounded by enough automatons like Denise to ensure his privacy. “You deal with casinos they think they got a right to instant everything. That’s the mob, you know—but what the hell am I telling you that, you’re cops, you know that, right? Now, what can I do for you, officers? The parking situation I know is a problem. If it’s that bastard at Chemco next door complaining, all I want to say is he can go straight to hell in a handbasket, because his Mexican ladies park in my lot all the time—you should also check how many of them are legal—if he wants to get really nasty, I can play that game too.”

He paused to catch his breath.

“It’s not about parking.”

“No? What then?”

“We want to talk to Maurice Bruno.”

“Morry? Morry’s in Vegas. We do a lot of our business there, with the casinos, the motels and hotels. Here.” He opened a drawer of the desk and tossed a handful of matchbooks at us. Most of the big names were represented.

Milo pocketed a few.

“When will he be back?”

“In a few days. He went on a selling trip two weeks ago, first to Tahoe, then Reno, end up in Vegas—probably playing around a bit on company time, not to mention the expense account—but who cares, he’s a terrific salesman.”

“I thought he was a vice-president.”

“Vice-president in charge of sales. It’s a salesman with a fancy title, a bigger salary, a nicer office—what do you think of this place—looks like some fag fixed it up, right?”

I searched Milo’s face for a reaction, found none.

“My wife. She did this herself. This place used to be nice. There was papers all over the place, a couple of chairs, white walls—normal walls so you could hear the noise from the plant, know something was going on. This feels like death, you know. That’s what I get for taking a second wife. A first wife leaves you alone, a second one wants to make you into a new person.”

“Are you sure Mr. Bruno’s in Las Vegas?”

“Why shouldn’t I be sure? Where else would he go?”

“How long has Mr. Bruno been working for you, Mr. Gershman?”

“Hey, what’s this—this isn’t child support or something like that?”

“No. We just want to talk to him about a homicide investigation we’re conducting.”

“Homicide?” Gershman shot out of his chair. “Murder? Morry Bruno? You got to be kidding. He’s a gem of a guy!”

A gem who had been excellent at passing rubber checks.

“How long has he been working for you, sir?”

“Let me see—a year and a half, maybe two.”

“And you’ve had no problem with him?”

“Problem? I tell you he’s a gem. Knew nothing about the business, but I hired him on hunch. Hell of a salesman. Outsold all the other guys—even the old-timers—by the fourth month. Reliable, friendly, never a problem.”

“You mentioned child support. Mr. Bruno’s divorced?”

“Divorced,” said Gershman sadly. “Like everyone. Including my son. They give up too easily nowadays.”

“Does he have family here in Los Angeles?”

“Nah. The wife, kids—three of em, I think—they moved back east. Pittsburgh, or Cleveland, some place with no ocean. He missed ’em, talked about it. That’s why he volunteered at the Casa.”

“Casa?”

“That kids’ place, up in Malibu. Morry used to spend his weekends there, volunteering with the kids. He got a certificate. C’mon I’ll show you.”

Bruno’s office was a quarter the size of Gershman’s, but decked out in the same eclectically elegant style. The place was neat as a pin, not surprising, since Bruno spent most of his time on the road. Gershman pointed to a framed plaque that shared wall space with a half-dozen Number One Salesman commendations.

“You see—’awarded to Maurice Bruno in recognition of voluntary service to the homeless children of La Casa de los Niños’ blah blah blah. I told you he was a gem.”

The certificate was signed by the Mayor, as honorary witness, and by the director of the children’s home, a Reverend Augustus J. McCaffrey. It was all calligraphy and floral intaglio. Very impressive.

“Very nice,” said Milo. “Do you know what hotel Mr. Bruno was staying at?”

“He used to stay at the MGM, but after the fire, I don’t know. Let’s go back to the office and find out.”

Back in Office Beautiful, Gershman picked up the telephone, punched the intercom and barked into the receiver.

“Denise, where’s Morry staying in Vegas? Do that.”

A half-minute later the intercom buzzed.

“Yeah? Good. Thanks, darling.” He turned to us. “The Palace.”

“Caesar’s Palace?”

“Yeah. You want me to call there, you can talk to him?”

“If you don’t mind, sir. We’ll charge it to the Police Department.”

“Nah!” Gershman waved his hand. “On me. Denise, call Caesar’s Palace, get Morry on the phone. He’s not there, leave him a message to call—”

“Detective Sturgis. West L.A. Division.”

Gershman completed the instructions.

“You’re not thinking about Morry as a suspect, are you?” he asked when he got off the phone. “This is a witness thing, right?”

“We really can’t say anything about it, Mr. Gershman.” Milo paid lip service to discretion.

“I can’t believe it!” Gershman slapped his head with his hand. “You think Morry’s a murderer! A guy who works with kids on the weekend—a guy who never had a cross word with anybody here—go ask around, I give you permission. You find someone who has a bad word to say about Morry Bruno, I’ll eat this desk!”

He was interrupted by the intercom buzzer.

“Yes, Denise. What’s that? You’re sure? Maybe it was a mistake. Check again. And then call the Aladdin, the Sands, maybe he changed his mind.”

The old man’s face was solemn when he hung up.

“He’s not at the Palace.” He said it with the sadness and fear of someone about to be torn from the comforting warmth of his preconceptions.

Maurice Bruno wasn’t at the Aladdin or the Sands or any other major hotel in Las Vegas. Additional calls from Gershman’s office revealed the fact that none of the airlines had a record of him flying from L.A. to Vegas.

“I’d like his home address and phone number, please.”

“Denise will give it to you,” said Gershman. We left him sitting alone in his big office, grizzled chin resting in his hands, frowning like a battered old bison who’d spent too many years at the zoo.

Bruno lived in Glendale, normally a ten-minute drive from the Presto plant, but it was 6
P.M
., there had been an accident just west of the Hollywood—Golden State interchange, and the freeway was stagnant all the way from Burbank to Pasadena. By the time we exited on Brand, it was dark and both of us were in foul moods.

Milo turned north and headed toward the mountains. Bruno’s house was on Armelita, a side street half a mile from where the boulevard ended. It was situated at the end of a cul-de-sac, a small, one-story mock Tudor fronted by a neat, square lawn, yew hedges and sprigs of juniper stuffed in the empty spaces. Two large arborvitae bushes guarded the entrance. It wasn’t the kind of place I would have imagined for a Vegas-haunting bachelor. Then I remembered what Gershman had said about the divorce. No doubt this was the homestead left behind by the fleeing wife and children.

Milo rang the doorbell a couple of times, then he knocked hard. When no one answered he went to the car and called the Glendale
police. Ten minutes later a squad car pulled up and two uniformed officers got out. Both were tall, beefy and sandy-haired and wore bushy, bristly, strawlike mustaches under their noses. They came over with that swagger unique to cops and drunks trying hard to look sober, and conferred with Milo. Then they got on their radio.

The street was quiet and devoid of visible human habitation. It stayed that way as the three additional squad cars and the unmarked Dodge drove up and parked. There was a brief conference that resembled a football huddle and then guns were drawn. Milo rang the bell again, waited a minute and then kicked the door in. The assault was on.

I stayed outside, watching, waiting. Soon the sound of gagging and retching could be heard. Then cops began running out of the house, spilling out on the lawn, their hands to their noses, an action sequence in reverse. One particularly stalwart patrolman busied himself puking into the junipers. When it appeared that they’d all retreated, Milo came to the door, a handkerchief held over his nose and mouth. His eyes were visible and they made contact with me. They gave me a choice.

Against my better judgment I pulled out my own handkerchief, masked the lower part of my face and went in.

The thin cotton defense was scant defense against the hot stench that rose up against me as I stepped across the threshold. It was as if raw sewage and swamp gas had blended into a bubbling, swirling soup, then vaporized and sprayed into the air.

My eyes watering, I fought the urge to vomit, and followed Milo’s advancing silhouette into the kitchen.

He was sitting there at a Formica table. The bottom part of him, the part in clothing, still looked human. The sky-blue salesman’s suit, the maize-colored button-down shirt with blue silk foulard. The dandy’s touches—the breast pocket hankie, the shoes with tiny tassles, the gold bracelet that hung around a wrist teeming with maggots.

From the neck up he was something the pathologists threw out. It looked as if he’d been worked over with a crowbar—the entire front part of what used to be his face was caved in—but it was really impossible to know what the swollen bloody lump attached to his shoulders had been subjected to, so advanced was the state of decay.