Recap of Part 1:
Readers met Jack Wilcox, a somewhat-down-on-his-luck private investigator who needs a new case and needs it now. But he doesn’t have to wonder for very long how he’s going to make the rent and play Santa for the kiddies for long, because a client shows up at his doorstep with an intriguing case—and he’s willing to pay.
Pedrosian’s tenants—“those girls,” as he repeatedly called them, spitting the words out with all the contempt he could muster—were Betty and Judy Haynes. They had lived at the Sunset Apartments for the past six months. Where they had come from, Pedrosian didn’t know; he had never bothered to ask. As to where they might have run off he was equally clueless.
“That’s your job, isn’t it?” he asked unhelpfully. “They had just gotten a gig at the Florida Inn a few weeks ago as part of the floor show— at Novello’s restaurant, that is. That’s where I found them and showed up with the sheriff. They were in the middle of their act and that sheriff wouldn’t arrest them right away. The owner didn’t help things by letting the sheriff stuff his pudgy face with free food.”
Looking at Pedrosian, Jack didn’t think he was in a place to call anyone else pudgy. The buttons on his seersucker suit must have been screaming given the pressure that was being put on them. The hat Pedrosian wore, a white one with a garish band and a brim that was too wide, was equally unflattering.
“And your nephew? Where can I find him?”
“He’s at his house in Key West.”
Pedrosian pulled out a small notepad and jotted down an address.
“Here,” he said, folding the sheet and passing it to Jack who glanced at it briefly before stashing it in his shirt pocket.
“Is there anything else you require, Mr. Wilcox?”
“No, I think that gives me enough to get started. Where can I reach you if I come up with more questions?”
Pedrosian pulled out a plain-looking business card and handed it over. It read in a simple print:
Aram Pedrosian
Owner
Sunset Apartments
313 E Flagler St.
Miami, Florida
Pedrosian rose to leave and Jack followed to open the door.
“I trust, Mr. Wilcox, that you’ll pursue this investigation with the utmost discretion. I’m sure you can understand that this is a delicate matter for my nephew that he doesn’t want to get around town.”
“Of course.”
Pedrosian turned and slumped down the hallway to the front door. He stopped just outside to light a cigarette, turned to the left, and was gone.
Back in his office, Jack retrieved his cigar from the ashtray, relit it, and tried to decide whether he should make a visit to the Florida Inn or Key West first. By the time he put out his cigar he had decided on neither: first he would disturb his landlord on a Saturday to get the rent paid.
Jack’s landlord wasn’t happy about being bothered by a tenant on the weekend, but seemed to have gotten over it when Jack handed over the rent money. With the cash he had left, Jack headed over to the bus station.
His car had been repossessed right around the time that Carol had left, otherwise he would have driven himself. Greyhound had pretty regular buses out to Key West, which Jack figured might make a more fruitful first visit for the case.
As he settled into his seat on the bus later that afternoon, Jack pulled the name and address that Pedrosian had scrawled out of his shirt pocket. It read “Aren Pedrosian, 254 Olivia St.” Jack wasn’t too familiar with Key West; he’d been there only once, about five years ago and hadn’t been back since. Going only by the address, he had no idea whether the nephew was well-off or just getting by. Usually, when he was tracking someone down for a client, he was pretty good at judging a person’s status by their address, but that was in Miami.
Resigning himself to the fact that he’d have to wait to find out, Jack slouched in his seat, pulled his hat over his eyes, and tried to get a nap. He wasn’t quite over his hangover and he wanted to be as fresh as possible when he met up with this nephew.
Aren Pedrosian’s house didn’t stand out from any of the others on Olivia Street. It was a smallish, wood-frame house painted a garish, bright blue color. The tiny yard was dominated by a tree Jack didn’t recognize, the branches of which extended out into the street and over the small porch where an ancient looking man sat in a rocking chair smoking a pipe.
Jack walked up the sidewalk and addressed the man. “I’m looking for Aren Pedrosian. Is he here?”
The man squinted at Jack, pulled his pipe from his mouth as if about to speak, then replaced his pipe and went back to smoking as if nothing had happened. Jack was bewildered; the man had looked right at him. Before he could come up with an idea about the man’s strange behavior, another much younger man appeared at the front door, which had been standing open.
“You’ll have to excuse my grandfather,” he said. “He’s going blind, he’s been mostly deaf for the last decade, and to top things off, he speaks only Armenian. I’m Aren Pedrosian. How can I help you?”
“I’m Jack Wilcox, private investigator. Your uncle hired me. I guess you know why?”
“Yes. Come inside, please.”
Jack stepped through the doorway and passed through a short hallway into a wood-paneled room that reminded him of the state room on the only yacht he’d ever boarded. A large, old-fashioned chart was pinned to the far wall and Jack wasn’t quite sure whether it was there for plotting a trip or only for decoration. The room was not exactly an office. There was no office furniture, save for a small writing desk that sat facing the room’s only window, where the setting sun dropped its last rays on a neatly-organized stack of papers.
“Please,” said the young Pedrosian, “have a seat.”
He motioned toward a set of high-backed leather seats arranged around a small, round table.
“May I offer you a cup of coffee, Mr. Wilcox?”
“No, thanks,” Jack said. “The caffeine makes me jumpy.”
That was partially true. The other part was that from what little he knew of coffee from Pedrosian’s part of the world, he didn’t care for it. Even pumped full of sugar it was too strong for his liking.
“Your uncle didn’t give me a lot of details. He only said that they made off with your money and he wanted me to be discreet. Who exactly were these girls, Mr. Pedrosian?”
“Well, that’s hard to say. When I first met them they were doing their show in Miami; they had just started that job, actually. I convinced them—and the manager at the Florida Inn—to let them come down here one night a week to do a small show at a club that I partially own, The Blue Palmetto. They were a big hit and had been coming for about a month before the manager at the Florida Inn called them back. Even then, when they had the night off, they’d come down here to see me. Well, Judy came to see me and Betty came along, playing the protective older sister role.”
Jack interrupted, “What do you mean she ‘played the protective sister role’ when they were here?”
“I mean, I don’t buy it, at least not now. I thought Judy and I were hitting it off. Fool that I am, I even started looking at engagement rings.”
Pedrosian excused himself briefly to retrieve the coffee pot from the kitchen. He returned with two tiny mugs, but filled only one of them.
Jack caught a whiff of the potent brew and asked, “But at some point you started to think that things weren’t quite as they seemed.”
“Yes,” he continued. “About three weeks ago Judy called to say that she and Betty were in trouble. The manager at the Florida had decided they had breached their contract by coming down here to sing at my club and he was threatening to take them to court unless they could come up with $5,000. I told them it was ridiculous and that I was going to call the manager and tell him where he could stick his demands. Judy begged me not to do that. The manager has some, shall we say, unsavory friends—everyone in Miami knows it, really—and Judy and Betty were afraid of what might happen to them if they didn’t get him the money.”
“So you gave them the money?” Jack raised an eyebrow.
“I did more than that. I wired them $10,000 and told them to buy out the rest of their contract with The Florida. They could come sing at The Blue Palmetto. I’d pay them well and treat them well too. The girls sounded excited about it. They said they’d pay off Jeffries—that’s the manager’s name—in a couple of weeks, when the timing was better, and then move down here. At the time, I didn’t question it, because they seemed to know what Jeffries was up to better than I did.”
“And that turned out to be a mistake,” Jack offered.
“Indeed.”
Pedrosian took a sip of the coffee he had poured for himself and set it down again on the table with a gentle clink. He gazed over at the window and, realizing that the sun was gone, set to lighting a kerosene lamp sitting on the sill.
The room now cast in shadows, Jack took out his pad and made a few notes of what Pedrosian had told him.
“Do you know where the girls were before they started at The Florida Inn? Is it possible they ran back to some family members to hide out for a while?”
“They talked about ‘back home,’ but I don’t remember them ever actually saying where that was. In any event, I’m pretty sure they’ve been taking their act on the road for a while. They talked about other nightclubs every so often. Maybe there had been one in New Orleans; I’m not sure.”
“I assume you sent the money through Western Union?”
“Yes. We decided that was the easiest and most discreet way. When the girls showed up with $10,000 I knew Jeffries would suspect I was involved, but I didn’t want to be noticed before then. It was better that way.”
“All right. Is there anything else I should know?”
“No, I don’t think so. Is there somewhere I can reach you if I remember anything else that might be helpful?”
Jack handed Pedrosian one of his few remaining business cards. He’d have to remember to get some more printed when this whole thing was over.
Pedrosian took the card and then remarked, “Actually, there is something else you should have.”
He walked over to the writing desk, pulled out one of the small drawers, and pulled out a photograph.
“Here,” he said, handing the small snapshot to Jack. “We had this taken together about a month ago at my club. It should give you an idea of what they look like.”
Pedrosian stood in the middle of the frame, flanked by two women who appeared to be in their mid to late twenties. They were both blonde, although Jack couldn’t quite tell from this picture whether they were natural or from the bottle. The trio was posed in front of what must have been The Blue Palmetto’s house band. Pedrosian was dressed to the nines in a tuxedo and the girls wore matching, sequined nightgowns, that were slit just barely this side of too high and cut just barely this side of too low. Pedrosian clearly wasn’t just trying to sell these girls’ lovely voices.
“That’s Judy on the left and Betty on the right,” Pedrosian offered.
“Thanks for this. You have a good evening, Mr. Pedrosian.”
Jack replaced his hat and went out the way he came in, nodding on his way out to the old man who was still enjoying his pipe on the porch. He didn’t care to take another long bus ride that day, nor was he even sure that he could walk all the way back to the station in time to make the last one. He chose, rather, to saunter a couple blocks over to a cheap boarding house where he’d stayed once or twice before, ages ago. He rang the bell for the desk clerk, paid for a single room, collected his sheets and towel, and headed upstairs to find his bed.
It wasn’t long after making his bed, that Jack found himself back out on the street, hunting down the nearest watering hole. “Just a taste,” he told himself. He wouldn’t stay long and he’d be right back on the job first thing in the morning, back to Miami on the first bus.
Jack settled on a little place on Duval Street. It used to be Sloppy Joe’s, he was pretty sure, but they’d picked up and moved several years ago. He didn’t bother to read the name over the door and headed straight in. As long as they had Johnnie Walker, it didn’t matter too much what the place was called. He dropped into a seat at the bar and ordered a double of his favorite whisky.
He awoke to the sound of what seemed to be an earth-shattering pounding. Sitting up, Jack discovered that only part of the pounding was in his head; the bulk of it was at the door of the room that he’d almost forgotten that he’d rented last night.
“Hey, buddy, it’s noon already,” a gruff voice bellowed as if inside his head. “You’re an hour past checkout time. Get your kiester outta there right now before I call the cops!”
Even in his current state, Jack thought that calling the cops on him was a huge overreaction. If the owner wanted him to get out, he could just open the door with his master key, drag him out and dump him in the street. It wouldn’t have been the first time Jack had found himself in the gutter.
“Okay, okay,” Jack managed. He was in his clothes—miraculously free of vomit, he noticed—so he grabbed his wallet off the floor where it must have fallen last night and headed to the door. He unhooked the latch, and pulled the door part way open when a meat hook of a fist caught him square on the jaw. Jack saw stars then blacked out before he hit the floor.
He awoke slumped on the floor and peered up to see an enormous hulk of a man, as hairy as a gorilla, Jack thought, seated on the bed.
“If you know what’s good for you, Wilcox, you’ll stay away from those Armenians. Mr. Jeffries, just wanted me to give you that tidbit of advice.”
The man rose and delivered a swift kick to Jack’s ribs—a kick Jack was sure had succeeded not only in knocking the wind from his lungs, but must have also take a year or two off his life and cracked a rib or two to boot. He stepped over Jack toward the door and stomped down the hallway and out of the boarding house.
A few minutes later, Jack managed to pull himself back onto the bed. He lay there for a while trying to muster the strength to get up and walk to the front desk to check out. Why would Jeffries care about Jack’s working with the Pedrosians? He couldn’t think of anything off the top of his head, but maybe he just didn’t know the Miami organized crime scene well enough to figure it out. Whatever it was, Jack’s next stop on his investigation was obvious to him: he had to go to the Florida Inn, Jeffries’ territory and try to pick up the trail of the Haynes sisters there.