King of the Holly Hop: A Milan Jacovich Mystery - Hardcover

Les Roberts

3.72

209 ratings by Goodreads

9781598510386: King of the Holly Hop: A Milan Jacovich Mystery

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 159851038X ISBN 13: 9781598510386

Publisher: Gray & Co., Publishers, 2008

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#14 in the Milan Jacovich mystery series . . .
Going to your high school reunion is never fun. But this time, it's murder.
When Cleveland private eye Milan Jacovich reluctantly attends the fortieth reunion of his St. Clair High School graduating class, he gets a rude surprise: one of his classmates is found shot dead and another quickly becomes the main suspect.
The suspect, successful playwright Tommy Wiggins, draws Milan into the case--and puts him in a very awkward position. Investigating his former schoolmates is an uncomfortable task for Milan, as he soon discovers the dark secrets of people he only thought he knew.
The deceased Dr. Phil Kohn, it turns out, was a cad who managed to make more than a few enemies during his abbreviated life. But did a forty-year-old grudge really lead to his death? Or was it something more recent--a jealous spouse, a shady business partner?
Milan's hunt for the real killer leads him through the oddly intertwined worlds of Cleveland's medical community, organized crime, polite suburban society, and hard-core drug dealers.
It's a tough investigation in which Milan could lose many friends--and, if he's not careful, his life.
In the fourteenth book of his Milan Jacovich series, Les Roberts once again delivers a dose of real Cleveland characters and settings that bring the city to life on the page.

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About the Author:

Les Roberts is the author of 14 mystery novels featuring Cleveland detective Milan Jacovich, as well as 9 other books of fiction. The past president of both the Private Eye Writers of America and the American Crime Writer s League, he came to mystery writing after a 24-year career in Hollywood. He was the first producer and head writer of the Hollywood Squares and wrote for the Andy Griffith Show, the Jackie Gleason Show, and the Man from U.N.C.L.E., among others. He has been a professional actor, a singer, a jazz musician, and a teacher. In 2003 he received the Sherwood Anderson Literary Award. A native of Chicago, he currently lives in his adopted home town of Cleveland Heights, Ohio.

Chapter One

Three surprises make a high school reunion strongly resemble a visit to hell. First, you’re surprised some of the people you were sure would be there are missing. They’ve either moved far away, or they have no desire to join the reunion. Second, you’re surprised some of those you never dreamed would attend actually show up.

Third: you find yourself there too.

The weekend of my fortieth high school reunion―dear old St. Clair High School in the St. Clair–Superior corridor on the near East Side of Cleveland―was to begin on a Friday evening in February. February is a singularly lousy time to have a reunion, but I found later that the hotel had been booked way in advance during the more pleasant spring and summer months. I carefully chose my wardrobe for the evening, and had left it hanging in my office closet all day―the one just across the Cuyahoga River from downtown Cleveland in an old building I’d purchased several years earlier with a bequest from an elderly aunt. Checking myself out in my bathroom mirror, I thought my black wool blazer looked nifty, even on somebody as big as I am, and I donned it for the cocktail party with gray slacks, a darker gray shirt, and a muted red-and-gray necktie. Then finally I girded my loins and drove across the river to the Crowne Plaza Centre Hotel downtown.

I stepped off the elevator into an alternate universe in which everyone wore plastic-covered name badges. The men were consciously pulling in their tummies as the women strove equally hard to flaunt what remained of their girlish figures. Some faces rang distant bells for me, and in my mind I attempted to de-age them, imagining how they looked when they were seventeen.

A few people nodded at me as they strove mightily to remember my name. A few waved or smiled insincerely, and I’d bet they didn’t recognize me, either. One man I didn’t remember, now a heavyset bald guy wearing a checked sports jacket, looked at me and whispered something to his wife, covering his mouth with his hand like a wicked plotter in the court of the Venetian doge. I hadn’t the vaguest idea what he was saying about me. Until I registered, I wasn’t “official,” and no one would speak to me.

The woman sitting sentry under a welcome banner with our class year emblazoned on it wore a short, perky haircut and what looked like a strapless 1954 prom frock made of gingham, with a huge matching bow over one of her generous breasts. I recalled neither the name nor the cleavage.

“Hi-i-i-i,” she said with an upward inflection, and rose to shake my hand. “I’m Gerry Gabrosek. Remember?”

The name tag identified her as Geraldine Gabrosek Bokar. I recalled her then―an indefatigable girl who always served on the dance committee, the senior picnic committee, the prom committee―and she’d been president of the French club, and in the hostess club too. She’d always organized her own social life, and most of her girlfriends’ lives, too.

“I’m Milan Jacovich,” I told her.

“Everybody knows who you are―the private detective. You’re famous.” She leaned over the table to press her cheek to mine, and strong perfume wafted up from the valley between her bosoms like swamp gas. I didn’t bother telling her that “detective” is a police rank, and that I’m actually a private investigator.

She fluttered on for a while and then gave me my name badge, a schedule for the weekend, info sheets I never got around to reading, a biography sheet with paragraphs about everyone attending, my Saturday night dinner ticket with table number affixed, and a complimentary drink coupon.

One complimentary drink. Subsequent drinks I’d have to pay for. It was boding to be a long damn night.

I pinned my badge to my jacket and made my way into the main room. There must have been two hundred classmates and spouses in there. Some, who’d stayed in the lower echelons of the labor force like their immigrant parents, looked stiff and awkward in their dress-up clothes. Others seemed at ease, smiling and aggressively sociable. Lots of hugs and handshakes and manly backslaps going on, and air kisses galore. The gathering was an emotional clusterfuck.

The attire of some seemed a part of their anatomy and the confident way they held themselves, as if they went to parties like this every week. They knew exactly what to do, how loud to talk, and just how to hold their drinks in one hand while trying to consume hors d’oeuvres. They’d come to the reunion to strut and preen; they claimed bragging rights.

Then there was Gary Mishlove, a microscope geek who had publicly vomited in junior year chemistry lab while performing an experiment with spoiled milk that had stunk up the whole second floor for a week. He’d always been a short, chunky guy and I recognized his face almost immediately, but his body had acquired an extra two hundred pounds and he was now dangerously obese.

Gary was talking to Maurice Paich, the school’s favorite actor. How he ever survived in a tough neighborhood with an interest in acting and hauling around a moniker like Maurice, I’ll never know―but he wound up as a radio announcer for a local station. At his side his wife, a pretty, brilliant blonde whose name, I learned from a quick peek at the bios, was Meredith, was casing the room and inspecting everyone except her husband, and seemed to have an early start on an evening’s heavy drinking.

I was surprised Stupan Godic had bothered attending. From an immigrant family like mine, he’d returned from the draft after serving in Southeast Asia, damaged and embittered, and spent the next thirty-five years sunk in heavy drug use. He was medium height and still very skinny. In a wrinkled sports jacket over a blue denim shirt with collar and cuffs hopelessly frayed, he wore a half-angry and half-dreamy expression. He was lost in the traumatic events of the seventies and unready to step forward into the twenty-first century. We talked for a minute and then he shuffled away, carrying his war memories with him around his shoulders.

I made my way to the bar. The bartender, young enough to be the offspring of anyone in the room, poured me a Jack Daniels on the rocks and took away my complimentary drink ticket.

A big-eyed woman approached me, dragging her reluctant husband behind her like a kid accompanying his mom on a shopping spree. Her hair was pulled back into a severe bun, framing a Modigliani face. I recalled the smile but nothing more. Arlene, Eileen, Elaine―I couldn’t quite pick out the right name.

“Milan Jacovich,” she said, “how fantastic to see you again.” She at least remembered how to pronounce my name; it’s My-lan, accent on the first syllable―not Mee-lahn or Mi-lahn―and the surname is pronounced with a Y, not a J, as in Yock-o-vitch. She embraced me warmly, putting her soft cheek against mine, kicking in at least one memory. Somewhere, forty years ago, for some reason I didn’t recall, I’d kissed her. “Ilene Silver. Remember?”

I confirmed the spelling on her name badge. Ilene. I’d been close, anyway.

“It’s Ilene Seltzer now. This is my husband, Toby.”

Ilene Silver to Ilene Seltzer―she didn’t have to change monograms on the towels. Ilene told me they had two children, and that Toby was CEO of an engineering firm in Broadview Heights, in the western suburbs. Losing interest quickly, I flatlined after the third sentence, smiling and nodding and not listening to a thing.

Then something over her shoulder caught her attention. “Ooooh!” she squealed. “There’s Tommy Wiggins.” And without so much as a “See ya,” she powered toward our school’s real celebrity alumnus.

Tommy Wiggins had grown taller since I’d known him. He was now just under six feet, slimmed down a lot, his full head of hair generously sprinkled with silver. Fame had taught him to wear his charisma well―it hovered around his head like a nimbus. Classmates roared toward him like linebackers determined to sack the quarterback, clamoring to bask in a small sliver of his angel shine.

Clevelanders aren’t impressed with celebrities, except for the ones who wear their jockstraps to work, like LeBron James. Local TV personalities get nodded to, but are rarely bothered. However, all my former classmates seemed to feel a certain proprietary interest in Tommy Wiggins because he’d gone on to famous things. In high school, he’d been shy and slightly pudgy and very dreamy, interested in what were perceived to be arcane and not very manly subjects like art and theater. He’d gone to college in central Ohio, majoring in creative writing. When he moved to New York, seven of his plays were produced on Broadway―six of them smash-hit comedies. He’d won two Tony Awards and a Pulitzer Prize, and when they made his work into movies, he’d earned two Oscar nominations for the screenplays. He was a big shot in both New York, where he lived, and in Los Angeles, where he kept a condo, and he frequently made the tabloid press as he married and divorced twice. His second wife was a sexpot movie actress nearly thirty years his junior, and he had been linked to other women even more famous. He’d attained a success most Clevelanders only dream about, and that’s why all his former school chums were fawning all over him.

I stopped to talk for a while with high school sweethearts who had made it permanent the year they both graduated from high school. August Turkman―we called him Augie―had gone to work in his father’s dry-cleaning store in Maple Heights and married Amalia Zelka six months later. Now Augie owns that dry-cleaning store and two others, and after forty years of marriage they both still looked happy. That was nice, I thought, even when Amalia told me they’d moved to a much bigger house in Maple Heights and now raise Welsh corgis.

“Bitsy” Steinberg―now Elizabeth Steinberg Miller―came over to greet me. She had the grace to admit we had never spoken in school, but she said she’d always enjoyed watching me play football, and introduced her husband, who owned a local chain of pool-and-patio stores and who frequently popped up on his company’s commercials, talking too loudly.

I wandered the room, free drink in hand, encountering familiar faces. Men whose hands I’d never shaken hugged me like long-lost war buddies, and women were hell bent to kiss my cheek. Most were virtual strangers to me, but we shared a history of sorts. A snapped towel in the locker room, a copped feel under the bleachers, sweating out tests together, quietly hoping for the future―memories conveniently forgotten, but not diluted by time as it tumbles by.

Then Lila Coso Jacovich entered on the arm of her longtime consort, Joe Bradac, looking spectacular in a black cocktail dress that hugged the swell of her breasts. Her hemline ended two inches above her still-shapely knees. Joe, who owned a machine shop and virtually lived in service overalls, had actually shown up in a suit. It’s the only suit I’d ever seen him wear that didn’t make him look like a wholesale chicken salesman.

I found my way back to the bar and ordered another Black Jack. This time I had to pay for it.

I carry no torch for my ex-wife. Our split-up―all her idea, by the way―hit me hard at the time. By now, though, we’d been divorced longer than we’d been married, and had moved on. Whatever residual issues remained between Joe Bradac and me existed only in his head, not mine. I belted down half my drink and shouldered my way through the crowd to where they stood. Lila surveyed the room like a reigning queen, but Joe blinked uncertainly as he watched my approach the way a deer in shock regards an oncoming semi on the highway.

“Lila, you look beautiful,” I said, bending to kiss her cheek. We never kissed anymore, not even cheeks, but everyone else at the reunion was doing so and it would have shouted tension had we not.

I didn’t shake Joe’s hand; I never did. He was always frightened that I’d crush it into jelly. It had eaten a hole in my liver that Lila secretly cheated with and then finally discarded me for someone like him, but Joe is exactly the kind of man Lila needs―one she can dominate and push around at will. Say what you will about me, then and now, nobody has ever pushed me around.

If they do, I push back.

So I was happy to be long gone from a home where major arguments occurred twice a week, at least one of them invariably on a Sunday. I still have feelings for Lila because she’s the mother of my two sons, but each time I see her it reminds me why we aren’t together anymore.

I disengaged myself from the happy couple and stood off to one side, wishing I’d skipped the reunion altogether, when my attention was caught by a guy whose name I don’t think I ever heard, even though I remembered him from St. Clair. In his youth his face was like a tomahawk, all sharp, brutal angles, and years hadn’t softened it. Now he wore his black hair combed straight back and slicked down, sporting a mustache that drooped at the ends.

He’d tried out for high school football, I remembered, and during the scrimmage―he’d hoped to become a running back―he kicked one of the tacklers right in the stones at the moment of contact. About five minutes later, when he was taken down hard by one of the linebackers, he gouged the kid’s eye with his thumb, causing some pretty scary bleeding. I never got his name and hardly ever saw him around after the coach told him to get lost. He was too far away for me to read his name badge so I could look up his bio. He might be a Baptist minister now, or a vacuum cleaner repairman, but he looked like a hired assassin.

The crowd had finally drifted away from Tommy Wiggins, and he headed straight to the bar for fortification. I came up beside him and reintroduced myself.

“I remember you, Milan,” he said. “You played football, didn’t you? As I recall, you were always very nice to me. I remember things like that.” His smile seemed more genuine than the one pasted on when everyone swarmed around him, hoping to touch him. His hair was longer than that of most men his age who still had theirs, but he didn’t need a haircut at all―the length had been cultivated for a more artistic look, and his golden skin proclaimed the gentle all-over tan of a New York tanning salon. He’d grown a lot more handsome in the forty years since senior class, but he didn’t carry himself as though he knew it. He seemed more relaxed with me than with the reunioners who’d slobbered all over him, and I gathered he was always immensely comfortable in his own milieu.

“I guess I’ve changed some,” he said, “but you haven’t at all―except you had more hair when we were seventeen.”

“You wear success well, Tom. Congratulations.”

“Don’t kid yourself.” He accepted a martini on the rocks from the bartender, took a sip, and jiggled the glass a little so the ice cubes clinked. “Every writer I know―Oscars and Tonys and Pulitzers notwithstanding―is terrified that he’s taken his last good shot, done his last good work, and his next effort is going to fall loudly on its ass in front of God and everybody else.”

“Yours won’t,” I said. “You’ll always have something interesting to write about because you lead such a fascinating life.”

“Writers don’t have adventures. We just observe them. Then we go sit all alone in ...

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