The next morning I got up early, had some coffee and the Wheaties, and put on my last suit, a brown wool that looked reasonably good if you didn’t get too close. Since it was Sunday, I couldn’t get my milk-smelling suit cleaned and the button sewed on, and I couldn’t contact Arnie to try to make a deal on the ’38 Ford before the price went up again. Dot had remembered to take the license plates off the old Buick and drop them in the box with the other goodies.
A call to the Wilshire District Police Station told me that Phil was in and working. Crime doesn’t stop on Sunday. In fact, Saturday night is usually enough to make Sunday a cop’s daymare.
No backache. No major bruises. I decided to walk the three miles and take in the California sea air, but by the time f hit Fairfax, the rain had started. I ducked into a doorway and looked for a cab. The streets were not quite empty, but Sunday mornings are not carnival time in Los Angeles. Everybody always seems to be someplace else. Too much land too spread out to absorb us all, but the war was helping make up for it by sending thousands in every day. Common sense would have had it the other way. The coast was the most vulnerable part of the States to Japanese attack. The Japanese were warning us every few days that they were coming. Maybe the bombing of Tokyo last week would give them something else to think about, maybe it wouldn’t.
What brought people were the jobs. Soldiers, sailors, and marines shipped out from the coast. The fleet was always coming to San Diego. The big money was in the armed forces, and the jobs were where the big money was.
California was having a love affair with men in uniform. They could drink, shout, maim, and abuse, usually one another, and they’d be forgiven like cute three-year-olds. Civilian guilt paved the way until their time ran out and they had to get on those ships and sail to hell island.
The men in uniform who weren’t having a great time in L.A. were the cops. By the time I caught a cab and got to the station, the rain was slowing down. A quartet of uniformed cops stood at the top of the stone steps trying to decide if they should go out into the streets, dampen their uniforms and spirits, and look for the bad guys, who were too damned easy to find.
I went in and nodded at the desk sergeant, an old-timer named Coronet, who nodded back. A sailor was sleeping on the wooden bench against the wall.
“Got rolled,” said Coronet, nodding at the kid. “Swears it was two guys and Jean Harlow. I told him Harlow’s dead. And if she weren’t, why would she roll a sailor?”
“Could have been someone who looked like Harlow?” I said.
Coronet shook his shaggy white head wisely and offered me a stick of Dentyne. I stuck it in my jacket pocket. He unwrapped his and began to chew.
“Naw,” he said. “That makeup, the whole ambience is out of touch.”
“Ambience?” I repeated.
“Heard it on ‘Believe It or Not’ last night,” Coronet nodded. “Very educational show. You should catch it.”
“I will,” I said and went up the twenty creaking brown stairs through the often-kicked wooden door at the top and into the squad room. As it always did, the room smelled of food, humanity, and stale smoke.
Business was booming. Fat Sergeant Veldu sat at his desk with one salami hand in the ample hair of a Mexican kid. Veldu was holding the kid’s face inches from his own and whispering. The kid looked scared. I couldn’t hear what Veldu whispered because there was too much going on.
Two women dressed for a big night out were sitting on a bench in the corner, smoking and talking as if they were waiting for the maitre d’ to lead them to a seat at the Cafe La Male. One of the women, a blond, had a black and purple eye. The other woman had a thick bandage over her ear.
The blond laughed and said over the noise, “You should have bit it off.”
Next to them a ragbag wino in a long coat was looking through Veldu’s wastebasket. Veldu reached back without taking his hand from the Mexican kid or moving his eyes and coshed the ragbag with his free hand. The ragbag sat up.
My least favorite detective in the solar system, John Cawelti, was sipping coffee and playing with a pencil while he listened to someone on the phone, who didn’t give him a chance to speak. Cawelti’s checked jacket was off, and his shoulder holster rested comfortably over his heart. As always, except for one time when Jeremy Butler had shaken him up, Cawelti’s black hair was plastered down and parted in the middle as if he were about to try out for tenor in a barbershop quartet. He looked up and saw me. I smiled at him. It was love at first sight. Then he made the little gesture that cemented our relationship, and I mouthed “Same to you” and winked. He glared for a few seconds more, jabbed his pencil into his desk, and turned away.
Two uniformed cops were standing over a seated guy built like a Norwegian tanker. He tried to stand but they pushed him back. He paused, blank-faced, tried to stand again, and the cops pushed him down again. Neither side seemed to be enjoying the game. I could see why the cops didn’t want him to get to his feet. He was a dead ringer for heavyweight contender Tami Mauriello.
I spotted Seidman in the corner sitting on his desk going through some papers and made my way to him over bums, through bruisers, ladies of last night, cops, and piles of paper.
He didn’t bother to look up. He had cops’ eyes and knew when I’d stepped into the squad room.
“Usually we have to go out and find you,” he said in his dead, even voice, which matched his complexion. “We changing the rules?”
“I’m getting older and mellower, Steve,” I said, sitting next to him on the desk and trying to read with him. He put the papers down, folded his arms over his thin chest, and looked at me.
“So am I, Toby,” he said. “And I’ve been up all night. So has Phil. Now if you go into his office and get him riled up and I have to come in and make peace, I may move a little slower than usual. You may not be lucky. Give it a rest. There’s a war on.”
“Blessed are the peacemakers,” I said.
“For they shall inherit the pieces,” he replied. “Go on in. Wait. This is a dumb question but I’ll ask it for the record. Did you kill that Grayson in Plaza Del Lago?”
“No,” I said, plunging my hands in my pockets and dancing out of the way of Veldu and the Mexican kid, who was waltzing toward the private interrogation room in the far corner.
Seidman went back to reading his file, and I knocked on Phil’s office door.
“Come in,” he said. In I went.
Phil was seated at his desk. His back was turned, and he was scratching his steely-haired head as he had done for the past thirty years. I closed the door and eased into one of the two chairs on the other side of the desk. His office was no bigger than mine back at the Farraday. His window had an even worse view. He admired the brick wall across the way for a few more seconds, scratched his head once more, and turned to me, folding his hands in front of him on the desk. His eyes were red, and gray stubble covered his face. He’d look better in a beard, but cops couldn’t have beards.
“O.K., what have you got for me?” he said.
I reached into my pocket, pulled out the bronze Alcatraz, and placed it on the desk in front of him. He looked down at it without unfolding his hands. I looked at it too.
“This is-” he started.
“Alcatraz,” I finished. “A present, a paperweight. I used to have it in my office. Got it from an ex-con named Maloney who did time on the Rock. Thought it would look better in here. Maybe you could refer to it when you wanted to sweat a grumpy killer.”
Phil’s right eye closed slightly trying to assess the joke. He was capable of heaving the thing at me or picking it up, leaping over the desk, and beating me with it.
“Thanks,” he said.
It wasn’t going to be easy to get a rise out of my brother this day.
“How are Ruth and the kids?” I tried. That usually bothered him.
“Fine. We were supposed to have a picnic today.” He looked out the window. Thunder crackled up the coast. “Sunday. What the hell. Did you kill Grayson?”
“No.”
Phil scratched his head again and opened the file in front of him. It was my thick file, already fingerprint-stained and frayed at the corners. The basics were there. I’d been in and out of trouble for a dozen years, though no more than other private eyes.
Phil looked up from the file and glanced at our father’s watch on my wrist. It said four o’clock. It was getting better all the time, no more than seven hours off.
“O.K.,” Phil sighed. “Woman named Delores Grayson says you drove out to Plaza Del Lago yesterday looking for her father. She tried to keep you from seeing him, but you got away from her in her kitchen and went looking for him. She was scared but followed up a few seconds later. She found you in the old man’s bedroom. The guy was dead and you were ready to clobber her with a radio. You forced her into the living room, made her sit, and you ran for the door and beat it. How does that sound to you?”
“Like Hansel and Gretel,” I said. “Her name isn’t Grayson. It’s Ressner. I was looking for her father, her real father, Jeffrey Ressner, the guy I think tried to put the hand on our friend Mae West. He was in the house. She tried to keep me from seeing him. When I got to the bedroom, Grayson was already skewered. I told Delores to call the cops, and I went for Ressner, who pulled out in a Packard, California 1942 license plate thirty-four fifty-seven. I went after him till my car died. Hell, it committed suicide. Delores Ressner is trying to protect her nut father.”
“You didn’t see Ressner kill Grayson?” Phil said, reaching up to his neck to loosen his tie, but it was already loose and hanging around his shoulders.
“I didn’t even see Ressner clearly when he took off in the Packard,” I said.
“The Packard belongs to the Graysons,” he said. “It’s missing. I’ll get the state police to talk to Delores. This isn’t my case, Toby. It’s the state police. I’ll put them off a day or two if they can’t break Delores, but then you’ll have to talk to them. You think he’ll go for Mae?”
“He’s a wacko, Phil. I don’t know what he’ll do, but I’ll get on it. Can you put anyone on her to be sure?”
“Out of my district if she stays at the ranch. And I just don’t have the reasons.”
“Maybe I can get Jeremy to be a houseguest at the ranch till I track Ressner down,” I said.
Phil looked down and nodded.
“Hell, Phil, this is damned depressing. It’s like Thanksgiving when we were kids and you and I would declare a truce long enough to go for the turkey wishbone. I’d wish for a Tris Speaker glove or a million bucks.”
“And I’d wish to be a cop,” he said.
We sat silently in the room for about two minutes listening to the chicken yard outside the thin wooden partition. I was trying to think of an insult to get Phil going again when Seidman pushed open the door without knocking.
“Veldu’s prisoner just had an accident,” he said evenly. “Fell down in the interrogation room. He’s out. Doesn’t look so good.”
“Coming,” said Phil, pushing back from the desk. “Call the hospital. Have them send an ambulance just in case.”
“Already did,” Seidman said, closing the door.
Phil eased his cop’s gut around the desk and took one lumbering step to the door. I got up behind him.
“Phil,” I whispered. “Face it. You’re getting too old for this stuff.”
His elbow shot back and caught me in the stomach, taking my wind with a gasp. He grabbed me by the neck before I sunk to the floor and pulled our faces even closer together than Veldu and the kid had been.
“Listen, brother of mine,” he hissed. I could smell the morning coffee on his breath, see life coming to his eyes. “There’s a line you don’t go over. Never. You just put your foot on it. Now back away.” He shook me a little and stood me up. “You’ve got two days. That’s all I can hold the state cops for. Then they get your hind end.”
He let me go and I took one step backward, pulling in air and holding the wall to keep from falling. Seidman stepped back in and looked at me.
“You all right?” he said.
“Couldn’t be better,” I gasped.
“You woke him up,” Seidman said, nodding his head toward where my brother had departed.
“It’s surprising what you can accomplish with a little brotherly love and battery acid on your tongue,” I sputtered, holding my stomach.
Seidman hurried off, and I staggered to the door and out. The walk through the squad room was long. I didn’t want to hold my stomach, and I didn’t feel like getting into a conversation about sugar rationing.
I put one hand on a desk to steady myself before making the last half-dozen steps to the door. It turned out to be Cawelti’s always neat and polished desk, and his thin voice whispered in my ear, “Get your fingers off my desk or you’re going to be a one-handed typist.”
I got my fingers off, looked at him, crossed my eyes, and gave him a Harpo Marx gookie face. Cawelti’s face turned bright red, the red in a ripe sugar beet or a Walt Disney cartoon. His holster bounced with the rapid beating of his heart as he stood up.
The two women, one with the black eye and the other with the ear bandage, paused with the wino to look at us. I turned my back and walked to the door, expecting a bullet, another dent in my skull, or teeth in my neck.
“It’s coming to you soon, Peters,” Cawelti said.
“I understand your draft notice is in the mail, John,” I said, opening the door. “We’ll all miss you.” And out I went.
It had, so far, been one beautiful morning and the day had just begun. When I got down to the desk, Coronet was talking to the sailor, who was now awake.
“I ought to know Jean Harlow when I see her,” the kid said. “I seen all her pictures.”
“Dead is dead,” said Coronet reasonably between chews of his gum. “I tell you the whole ambience is out of touch, son.”
I handed the kid the stick of Dentyne that Coronet had given me earlier. He looked at me suspiciously, took the gum, and said thanks.
The rain had stopped but it was coming back soon. I found a nearby drugstore open, sat at the counter, and had spaghetti Milanese and a Spur cola for twenty cents. It was early for lunch, but my stomach needed settling and my mind needed stimulation.
The waitress, who was listening to Walter Winchell on the radio, paused long enough to give me change for some phone calls and I went to work.
The first call was to Mae West.
Dizzy or Daffy answered the phone and got Mae West on a few seconds later. She breathed deeply two or three times before panting “Hel-lo Peters. What can I do for you or vice versa?”
“You can stay home for a few days and let that friend of mine, Jeremy, keep you company till we track down this Ressner. He’s getting a bit unruly.”
“Jeremy that big, big fella?” she asked.
“The same.”
“I’d love to spend a day or two discussing the finer things in life with him. Send him down with a change of pajamas and a bad book. I’m going through a bit of divorce and can use the company of an intellec-tual.”
“I’ll tell him.”
“Be careful.”
“I try to be,” I said, fidgeting for coins for my next call.
“I doubt it,” she said and hung up.
I reached Jeremy in his apartment, the only apartment in the Farraday Building. He didn’t like to leave the place even on Sunday. He had been working on some poems for his forthcoming anthology, an anthology that he decided to publish himself using Alice Palice’s portable printing press, for which Alice would receive a month’s free rent. He quickly agreed to spend a few days guarding Mae West, however.
“I think Alice has a yen for you, Jeremy,” I said, counting my remaining coins.
“She is not without charm,” he said. “That is a woman who never dissembles.”
“And Mae West?”
“There is an art to dissembling that she has mastered,” he said seriously. “I’ve just reworked one of the last poems for the collection. Would you like to hear it?”
“Sure,” I said, standing in a Rexall drugstore, my sore stomach full of spaghetti Milanese and worrying about an escaped lunatic. I really did want to hear it, though I never understood Jeremy’s poems. There was something soothing in them, like a lullaby.
“When the red slayer coughed,
I laughed
and warned him that the night air
was not his lair.
His yellow fire eyes met mine
and gave a sign
that told me I knew not what subtle ways
an ailing God’s maze
is laid out in the corridors of time,
by the minions in mime.
Respect what you do not understand,
and bend or break,
he belched and he was right.
I embraced the night.”
“Beautiful, Jeremy,” I said.
“It’s best if you’ve read Emerson,” he said seriously.
“Best,” I agreed.
“Still needs a little work,” he said.
“A little,” I agreed. “Maybe Mae West will give you some ideas.”
I had the operator get me the number on Winning’s business card. There was no answer. I told her to keep ringing. No answer. I went back to the counter, had a cup of coffee and a stale sinker, and talked to the waitress about the weather and her sister, who was pulling in big bucks working a shipyard. I was careful not to ask if she was working in the yard or on the workers in the yard.
“I’d go to the shipyards, but I haven’t got the build,” she confided.
She looked a little like an egg with long hair. We listened to Winchell race on about the rubber shortage and the possibility of Hitler asking for a peace meeting. Then I excused myself to try for Winning again. This time he answered after ten rings.
“Doc,” I said, “we’ve got a problem.”
I told him about Grayson and chasing Ressner. I told him there wasn’t enough in the file to go on. After he got over worrying about who would pay the bill for Ressner, now that Grayson was gone, he told me a few more things about Ressner that might help.
“This is information given in confidence of an analytical session,” he said and hesitated before going on, “but under the circumstances, I think …”
“So do I,” I said. “I’m running out of coins. Shoot.”
“Ressner’s most recent obsession focused on Miss West, Cecil B. De Mille, and Richard Talbott, the actor.”
“I know who Talbott is,” I said, lining up my few remaining nickels and hoping he’d go on. “Academy Award nomination this year for Fire on Deck. You suggesting that I get to De Mille and Talbott?”
“I’m informing,” Winning said. “I suppose Mrs. Grayson will continue to want adequate care for her former husband.”
“Seems reasonable,” I said, “especially after he just murdered her present husband and landed her in a golden widow’s sea of Poodle piss.”
“You know what Freud said about scatology, Mr. Peters?”
“No,” I said, “but if I don’t hang up, I’m probably going to find out. Am I still on the case?”
“You are. Report to me or my secretary daily.”
“Will do,” I agreed, and the operator came on to ask me for another dime. I hung up. Went out, and left a ten-cent tip with the egg-shaped waitress dreaming of shipyards.
I knew where I would be going in the afternoon, but I had a stop to make this morning. I could either hit De Mille or Talbott. I settled on De Mille because I knew where he lived. It was no great secret. Every Hollywood tour took in the De Mille house and had since about 1915 or 1916. I had seen it when I was a kid with my old man on one of those days out we had together.
I got a cab and was at the De Mille house before noon. It was a big white, Spanish-looking place with awnings over the downstairs windows and glass doors all over the place that could be kicked down by a Little Rascal.
I noticed that there were plenty of lush bushes to hide behind. The sky was rumbling again, and I went through the gate trotting to beat the rain and protect my suit. A man was running toward me down the path to head me off. He ambled forward, holding a round metal hat on his head. He was, I could see even at this distance of twenty yards, about sixty, putting on a little weight but moving with a straight back and military bearing.
“And where might you be headed young man?” came that familiar radio voice.
“I’m coming to see you, Mr. De Mille,” I said.
He stopped a few feet in front of me, removed his metal hat, and looked at me. He was dressed in a white shirt, poplin brown jacket, and matching pants.
“I’m afraid-” he said, the way he did on the Lux Radio Theater when time was running out.
“So am I,” I jumped in. “My name’s Peters, Toby Peters. I work for Dr. Robert Winning, and I’m here about someone who has escaped from Dr. Winning’s institute, a Jeffrey Ressner, who you may remember.”
“Remember him indeed,” said De Mille, thumping his metal helmet with his fingers. “Please come into the house before the rain starts. I was just on my rounds to check the neighborhood. I’m an air-raid warden for this sector, but it can wait awhile.”
We got to a side door of the massive place just as the rain came darkly down. He led the way, and I followed through glass doors into some kind of study. The floor was wood and the rug a white animal fur that seemed almost lost in the middle. There were two old leather sofas and a leather chair. They were all such a dark brown that they might as well have been black. Various gadgets sat on shelves around the room. I recognized a globe made of wire, but the others made little sense. One looked like a miniature guillotine. De Mille put his helmet down, leaned against the desk, and looked at me. He picked up a square, highly polished green piece of stone, rubbed it with his thumb, and looked at me again.
“Now, Mr. Peters, what seems to be the difficulty with Mr. Ressner now? And please have a seat.”
I sat in one of the leather sofas so that I could face him. His thin hair was white and the top of his bald head slightly freckled. He had a good healthy tan and eyes that wouldn’t stop probing.
“Ressner got out and it looks as if he killed a man,” I said.
“Indeed,” said De Mille without blinking.
“He has also harassed Mae West,” I went on, “and there is, of course, some chance that he will consider seeing you. He hasn’t, has he?”
De Mille put the shiny stone down, walked over to touch the metal globe, and said clearly in that voice that sounded almost English, “Not for more than five years. On that last occasion, he appeared from beneath our dinner table and ranted on about playing Christ in one of my films. I brought him in here away from my family, humored him till the police arrived. He took it as an act of betrayal.”
“And you haven’t heard from him since?”
“I’ve just said no,” De Mille said with a touch of irritation. “Actually, the man did have a certain uncontrolled talent that would have translated well on film. Had he sanely come to me, perhaps through an agent, I probably could have made use of him, not as Christ but as some kind of madman. And you young man, have you ever acted?”
“Not professionally,” I said.
“Interesting,” replied De Mille, looking at me intently. “I’m thinking of putting together a film about Dr. Wassel. Have you heard of him? The president mentioned him on the radio last month.”
I said no and De Mille went on: “A great unsung hero of this war. There are many heroes of this war whose stories will never be told.”
“I’d like to arrange for a police guard on the house,” I said. “Just in case.”
De Mille awoke from his dreams of Wassel and looked at me with a look he probably reserved for insubordinate assistants.
“While I may not be a young man any longer,” he said, “I have military training and the confidence that I am able to protect my own home with my own people. I am neither a fool nor a coward, Mr. Peters, and I shall take all proper precautions. If need be, I’ll have a few Paramount guards assigned to the house when I am away.”
“Good idea,” I said. “Frank McConnell is a good man.”
“A good man, indeed,” agreed De Mille with interest. “You are well acquainted with studio security.”
“Used to be in the business,” I said. “Who are your closest neighbors?”
“Only one,” said De Mille, glancing toward the window. “W. C. Fields in the next house. We are not particularly close, though we are cordial. There was a tragedy involving my young grandchild not too long ago in Mr. Fields’ pool. And while it was not his fault, it is painful …”
“Sorry,” I said.
“I want to make it clear to you that I do not usually disclose either my personal life or feelings to outsiders,” he continued, looking for something to play with with his nervous fingers. “I do, however, have great concern for my family and will do whatever is needed. I will, of course, check your credentials.”
“Please,” I said. “Check with Mae West, or Lieutenant Phil Pevsner of the L.A.P.D., Homicide, out of Wilshire, or even Gary Cooper. He’s worked with you, and I did a job for him last year.”
“I shall,” said De Mille, taking a step toward me. “On Wednesday we’re having a war bond party at Paramount. That will be in the morning. Providing your credentials check out, you are welcome to come and perhaps discuss whatever progress you might be making.”
He shook his head, leading me to the study door.
“With all the madness in the world, we surely don’t need more,” he said. “Perhaps you can find this Ressner and someone can help him. God knows we can use the support of our fellow men. None of us is without blemish. I’ll tell you a little story.”
The rain had slowed but not stopped. He went to the desk, picked up the phone, and told someone to bring the car around to the study. Then he returned to me.
“The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has never deemed me qualified to receive its award for direction,” he said, moving to my side. “They did, however, ask me to present the award this year for best direction to John Ford for his beautiful and touching How Green Was My Valley. Well, at the dinner, one of the distinguished guests was the ambassador of China, the country for which our hearts bleed as it suffers at the hands of Japan. When I introduced the ambassador, I spoke with emotion of the honor of his presence at the gathering and concluded by saying, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, His Excellency, the Japanese ambassador.’ I corrected my error too late and compounded it later that evening during the presentation to John Ford, a navy commander, whom I addressed as Major Ford. On the way home that night, my wife remarked, ‘Well Cecil, at last you have done something that Hollywood will remember.’ While I can display some amusement about that night now, I’d like to do something that Hollywood will indeed remember, perhaps a film tribute to our fighting men, a tribute I can best complete if our Mr. Ressner does not interfere.”
He led me to the door and opened it. A car pulled up and De Mille shook my hand.
“The driver will take you wherever you are going,” he said. “Take care and let me know how it comes out.”
“Can I suggest that you keep these doors locked?” I said, stepping into the drizzle.
“Would it really do any good?” he said with a smile.
“Probably not,” I shrugged, “but we don’t like to make it easy for our enemies.”
“Indeed not,” agreed De Mille with a genuine smile. “I’ll keep them locked.”
I had the driver take me to my office. The Farraday was dark and reasonably silent on a Sunday afternoon. I opened the front door with my key and went through the dark lobby, trying to keep my mind on Ressner and the case, but knowing where it was headed. I went up the stairs in near darkness and fumbled at the door to Shelly’s and my office. Inside I hit the lights and listened to my footsteps move across the floor.
A note was pinned to my cubbyhole door. I tore it down and saw that Shelly had scrawled, “What do you think of it?”
“It” was an ad torn from a newspaper. The ad was no more than an inch high and one column wide. In the top of it was a drawing of a tooth with lines sticking out around it like the lines kids make to show the sun’s rays. The ad copy read:
DR. SHELDON MINCK, D.D.S., S.D.
DENTAL WORK WITH THE PAIN REMOVED
A Clean Healthy Mouth Is Your Patriotic Duty
Appointments Now Being Taken
Very Reasonable Rates For All
Discounts For Servicemen, Their Families,
City Employees and The Aged
The ad closed with our address and phone number. I went into my office and dropped it on my desk.
I had the number for Grayson’s in Plaza Del Lago and I tried it. It rang and rang and rang, but I held on. Eventually a voice, male and serious, came on.
“Grayson residence,” he said.
“Miss Ressner, please, or Miss Grayson, whatever she wants to call herself,” I said.
“Are you a reporter?” the man’s quivering bass voice demanded.
“No, a suspect. My name is Peters. Just tell her, cowboy, and let her decide if she wants to talk to me.”
“You’re the one who killed Harold,” he spat.
“I didn’t kill Harold or anyone else. Just put Delores on and go back to whatever you were doing. This is my nickel, remember.”
The phone went down hard on wood, and I waited. Out the window the sun peeked through a couple of clouds, didn’t like what it saw, and went back in again. Delores came on the phone.
“Hello,” she said, full of confidence.
“Were you going to tell them the truth at some point, or are you planning to let me hang for your father’s crime?” I said sweetly.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. You-”
“The L.A. cops and I are going to find your old man, and it won’t be long. We have enough on the time of death from the coroner, the questions about the stolen Packard, and the fact that his fingerprints are on the knife to nail him.”
“There were no fingerprints on the knife. The police said …” Somebody was kibitzing behind her, but she shushed him.
“Maybe not,” I agreed. “But if you keep this up, when we grab your old man and crack this, you are going to be in trouble as an accessory to murder. I’m having a bad day, maybe a bad decade, and I’m in the mood to trample people who try to make it worse. It’s raining here. I lost my car. I’ve got no money and I’m damn mad, lady. You want to go down with your old man, it’s your bingo card to play.”
“I’ll think about it,” she said, breaking slightly.
“Think fast,” I said. “If I get him before I hear from you, it’s too late.” I gave her my phone number and hung up.
There wasn’t much else I could do to stall. I kept a Gillette razor in the bottom drawer. I’d already shaved in the morning, but I wanted to be sure. I took it out to Shelly’s sink along with a frayed toothbrush. There was plenty of sample toothpaste and powder around the office. I picked up a blue and white tin of Doctor Lyon’s.
The sink was still piled high with dishes, and a spider was busily setting up house. I murdered him and set aside the razor and brush. I took off my jacket, rolled up my sleeves, and went to work. Using tooth powder for soap, I had the dishes shiny in ten minutes. I considered doing the whole office, looked at my watch, which told me nothing, and decided that I couldn’t stall anymore if I was going to make it.
I shaved, dried myself with a reasonably clean towel, brushed my teeth, and got the caked paste out of the brush with hot water. At that point, someone knocked at the outer office door. I yelled “Come in” and he did. He was about six feet tall, short sandy hair, glasses, a nice suit and a little briefcase under his arm. He looked like an up-and-coming young movie star, the kind of actor you’d expect to see standing next to Robert Taylor as they defended the Pacific.
“Mr. Peters?” he asked stepping in.
I told him he was right, walked into my office, and pointed to the chair on the other side of the desk. He sat, adjusted his glasses and tie, and looked at me.
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said.
I had been thinking that if he was a client desperate enough to look me up on a Sunday I would do my best to get a reasonable advance out of him and put him aside for a few days.
“You were wondering why I’m not in the services,” he said. “I have an ulcer in my colon.”
“Sorry to hear that, Mr.-”
“Gartley,” he finished reaching into his portfolio and pulling out some papers.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Gartley?” I asked folding my hands on the desk and giving him my most professional look.
“Though I’m not in the services”-Gartley went on finding the right papers-“I am doing work essential to the war effort. What does a war require?”
“Men, guns, an enemy,” I answered.
“Money, Mr. Peters,” he said shaking some of his papers at me. “Money. And I help to get it.”
“You’re raising money, selling bonds?” I guessed.
He shook his head no.
“We have written to you several times but you haven’t responded,” he said the way you talk to a kid who hasn’t eaten all of his peas.
“We?” I tried.
“Bureau of Internal Revenue,” he said sadly. “You owe your government some money. Your income tax forms were, at best, a mess.”
“I never got your letters,” I said looking for something to play with. I found a mechanical Eversharp pencil that hadn’t worked for years.
“Possibly, but unlikely. According to our records you made only one thousand eight hundred sixty-seven dollars in 1941. Is that true?”
“True.”
“Forgive me, Mr. Peters, but that is a bit difficult to believe.”
“I forgive you. I also agree with you. It’s difficult to believe. Look around. I have a luxury office in a select location, drive the latest in modern transportation, have a standing reserved table at Ciro’s and Chasen’s, and reside among the stars. Drop by my house later. I’ll have the servants prepare a picnic on the patio.”
“You are being sarcastic,” Gartley said without smiling.
“I’m trying,” I agreed. “Now where do we go?”
“You give us a detailed listing of all your property and a more complete set of data on your purchases and expenditures.” He handed me about seven pages of forms with spaces and lines and Internal Revenue Service written in the upper-right-hand corner.
“And if I don’t?”
“You will be prosecuted for failure to cooperate with the federal government. In wartime that can be a quite serious offense.”
“I have no money,” I said standing up and turning my pockets inside out, which was a mistake, since I did have some change that went flying. Gartley had seen it all before. He simply looked at me, readjusted his glasses, and began putting papers back in his briefcase.
“It is difficult for us to understand,” he said evenly as I sat down without bothering to push my inside-out pockets back in, “how someone with the clients you had last year, some of our most reliable and wealthy citizens, could have so little income.”
“I’ll explain,” I said twisting the Eversharp so that the little piece of metal at the end stuck out. “If I’m lucky, I work maybe a month or two each year on cases that pay reasonably well. That’s four to eight weeks. Outside of that I take odd jobs at store openings, busy hotels, picking up on bad debts. I made more when I was a guard or a cop.”
“Then,” Gartley said quite reasonably as he rose, “why don’t you go back to those occupations?”
“I like what I’m doing,” I said.
Gartley looked around the room, shrugged, and said, “You have one week to turn those papers in. You could and probably should put down a good-faith payment of a hundred dollars, which will be returned to you should our investigation of your form so indicate.”
“I haven’t got a hundred dollars. I haven’t got a decent suit. I’m not sure if I can pay my rent next month and I need some new socks.”
Gartley nodded and left. I looked at the forms. They gave me a headache. I considered trying to fill them in while I was sitting there, but the Eversharp didn’t work and I couldn’t find a pencil. Besides, I had something else on my mind.
It was raining. Maybe I couldn’t get a cab. Maybe I couldn’t get there in time. Maybe I should work on the case, go to see Mae West, head for Talbott.
Enough. I turned off the lights and went to the door. The Farraday hummed at me, and I walked down slowly. By the time I hit the front door, the rain had stopped again. The streets were wet, and a cab was cruising at about three miles an hour. I stepped out and motioned for him. He made a lazy U-turn and came to me.
I got in and told him where to take me. I hadn’t brought a present. I had given Alcatraz to Phil. I could have stopped at a drugstore or flower shop, but what the hell. Whatever I got she wouldn’t like. What do you give your ex-wife when she’s getting married? You give her a kiss goodbye, that’s what.
The trip should have taken twenty minutes to the Beverly Wilshire. It probably did, but it felt like five minutes. I got off at the hotel, paid the Sunshine cabbie, and went in. The doorman smiled when I asked where the Howard wedding was being held. Everyone smiled me into the right room. It was big. It was money. It was Howard and TWA.
The ceremony had already begun when I stepped into the room. There were about sixty people seated, watching. Anne was dressed in a brown suit, her favorite color, and Ralph was wearing a matching brown. His white hair was Vitalis smooth as he put the ring on her finger.
I couldn’t tell what denomination the clergyman performing the ceremony was. It didn’t matter. It was legal and it was over. Ralph kissed her, and they turned to face the guests. Anne’s eyes were moist and she caught me at the door. She gave me a small smile and I nodded and smiled back.
I’d lost my Buick and my wife in twenty-four hours. Maybe, if I really worked on it, I could lose my health or my life in the next twenty-four. Something touched my sleeve. I looked at my side but no one was there. Then I looked down at Gunther.
“I thought, perhaps,” he said softly, “that you might like a nearby friend.”