Case #2: The Family Business
Date: April 14, 2002
Location: Logjam, CA and New Jersey
There are certain advantages to being a mobster
or a private eye. Neither require a lot of
paperwork to get the job done. But being
involved in a pair of murders, even if I
didn't supply either corpse, required spending
over three hours in the Sheriff's Station
filling out forms and lying about my past
to Sheriff's Captain Donn Tyler before he
finally said I could leave. He was calling
it a day, too, so we both walked to the parking
lot.
"Want to grab a bite at Rusty's?"
Donn asked me.
It was nearly six o'clock and I could eat
a bear. "Sure. Meet you over there."
Donn had an odd grin on his face. I didn't
know if it was because he wrapped up two
murders or he was trying to put on a brave
face since his wife had left him. I didn't
much care for Lindsay, so I couldn't work
up much sympathy in that department.
I got my usual table at Rusty's and ordered
a couple of beers before Donn arrived. Bonnie
wasn't on duty that night, but Marla Franklin
was. She had even redder hair than Bonnie,
but none of the personality.
"Two beers?" she questioned after I placed
my order.
"I'm expecting somebody," I said.
"Who?" she snapped. "Bonnie
had plans this evening." Her pale blue
eyes in that moon-shaped face eyed me like
a scorpion sizing up her prey.
"Then it mustn't be Bonnie. How about
those beers?"
"I told her about you," she said.
"I bet it's quite a story. Tell me when
it comes out in paperback."
She puffed up like a peahen, her round face
turning as red as her hair. I guess her mood
was catching, because some of the old Johnny
Cassini, former gangster, and not Johnny
Casino, likeable P.I., was clawing his way
to the surface. Maybe being around a pair
of mobsters, even dead ones, for a few days
got my blood up.
That's when the place got suddenly quiet.
I thought the crowd at Rusty's had overheard
our conversation and was waiting for Marla
and me to punch each other out. Instead,
it was Sheriff Tyler who had come into the
restaurant. Everybody waited to see if it
was an official visit. Marla spotted him,
too, and when he walked toward my table she
stepped aside, pointed toward me, and grinned
like a snake.
Donn sat down.
"Now how about those beers, Marla?"
I said, grinning back at her. "Do you
have any meatloaf?"
"Thursday is meatloaf day," she
hissed before heading for the beers.
"She's a charmer," Donn said to
Marla's back. "No Bonnie?"
"Not tonight. I guess we're going stag
this evening." He gave me a half-hearted
smile. "Have you heard from Lindsay?"
I asked.
"I'll call her at her sister's in a
few days. Give her a chance to think things
over."
I was going to change the subject, but he
did it for me by placing a pocket size tape
recorder on the table. It was the one I used
to record Lucy Fontaine's confession after
she killed her father and my uncle Joey.
"Don't you need that as evidence against
Lucy?" I asked.
"May not be able to use it," Donn
said.
"It's admissible in court, isn't it,
since I was there, too."
"That's the problem, Johnny." The
smile returned.
He turned on the recorder. Even in the crowded
restaurant, I recognized my voice on the
tape.
"You don't know what life was like for
me, Lucy. I kept seeing two different people
in the mirror. One telling me to grab everything
I could get my hands on, anyway I could get
it. And the other telling me I was a worthless
son-of-a-bitch."
"But you ran away," Lucy Fontaine
said back to me in her high-pitched whine.
"You could have had everything. You
could have had me."
"I didn't know what I wanted when I
was in the Mob. Oh, I knew how to break arms
and scare the hell out of people. But I couldn't
find myself. I'm just lucky I got out before
there was nothing left to find."
Switching off the recorder, Donn said, "You
turned it to 'Voice Activate,' not 'Off.'
It kept recording your conversation with
Lucy."
"Oh, gee," I mumbled, thinking
about my next move. "Can I pull a Dick
Nixon and edit out some of that stuff? It
was private."
Donn snatched the recorder off the table
and stuffed it in his pocket. "No, but
you can tell me about yourself. I mean about
the real Johnny Casino… Cassini. Who are
you… really?"
..........................Continued