Mrs. Plaut wasn’t home. If she had been, I probably would have strangled her. I was in no mood for tolerance. I decided to offer Gunther an apple, but he was out. So I sat in my room for about fifteen minutes, still wondering what Ralph’s last name was. Smiler? Johnson? Stoneworthy? Ann probably picked him for his name. This was getting me nowhere, and I had gone through four apples. I grabbed Curtis Bowie’s manuscript of High Midnight and took a long bath.
Since it took a millennium for the bathtub to dribble to half-capacity, I was well into the script by the time I turned off the water. A bird chirped outside, and I decided High Midnight wasn’t so bad. I finished it forty minutes later and ran some more hot water for an extra shave.
High Midnight was about a middle-aged former sheriff who shoots his wife and her lover and then holes up on a hill at the far end of town with his dog. Angered because no one told him what was going on behind his back, the former sheriff keeps the town pinned down. The easygoing present sheriff tries everything he can think of to get the old sheriff down. He sends an Indian killer, mounts a charge and when the town begins to talk about getting rid of him, the new sheriff offers to meet the old sheriff in a shoot-out, though the old sheriff is a former gunfighter and the present one an inexperienced novice. Before the shoot-out takes place, the old sheriff accuses the new one of having been one of those his wife had taken up with. The new sheriff says yes, but adds that he was just one of many. In the shoot-out the old sheriff, who has been suffering from a wound from one of the attacks on him, misses and is killed though he wounds the new sheriff, who in a final speech says the old boy was wrong but he stuck by his principles. The new sheriff then throws down his badge because the town has not supported him and rides wounded out of town.
I wasn’t sure whether Cooper was going to be the old or the new sheriff. It was a cinch Tall Mickey Fargo would be a joke in either role, and the only thing for Lola was the part of the wife, who gets killed at the beginning of the picture but who appears in some flashbacks.
Withered and dry, I went to my room, pulled the mattress from my bed, lay on my back and fell asleep. I dreamed, as I frequently do, of Cincinnati, where I have never been. Nothing much ever happens to me in Cincinnati. I wander empty neighborhoods and feel lonely. Gradually I feel scared and wonder where the people are. Then a crane with a demolition ball comes down the street, and I hide in an empty building. It isn’t a pleasant dream. My pleasant dreams are about Koko the Clown, but Koko won’t come when bidden. He reserves his dream appearance for times of crisis.
When I woke up, the room was dark. I sat up, staggered to the lamp, turned it on and checked my watch. The hour hand hung limp. The minute hand said it was fifteen minutes to something. My Beech-nut clock said nine-fifty and my Arvin radio picked up the tail end of Bob Burns on KNX, so I knew it was almost ten. Putting on my suit and a clean but frayed shirt with a tie which my nephews had given me for my birthday, I sneaked down the stairs, trying to avoid Mrs. Plaut. I failed. She caught me at the door.
“Mr. Peelers, Mr. Peelers,” she cried, hurrying to me with short little steps and her hands up. “You had a call. Carole Lombard called and said to tell you to remember to tell Cary Grant to be reasonable.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Plaut,” I said.
“I will,” she said with a smile, turning back into her parlor.
My decoding of the message was that Lombardi had called or had someone call to remind me to be sure Cooper agreed to make the picture. He was certainly determined.
It was almost eleven when I parked in front of the Big Bear Bar in Burbank. The street was quiet. A few lights were on in the nearby houses, and the lawns were creaking with crickets. Three cars were parked in front of or near the bar, and I thought I recognized one of them. When I got to the door, I could hear Lola Farmer belting “Rosie the Riveter.” She should have stuck to ballads. I waited till she was finished before stepping in.
There was a bartender with the face of an orangutan serving a customer with the body of a chimp. At one of the tables a couple sat arguing in low voices. At another table sat someone I wasn’t looking for, the squat man with the high voice who had laid me out in front of Mrs. Plaut’s. At the table next to him sat the person I wanted, Shelly Minck. His back was to me, but I couldn’t mistake that shape, that bald head and the cigar smoke. Lola was clinking the keys to think up another song. She looked about the same as she had in the afternoon, which was fine with me.
“Requests?” she asked.
“The Man I Love,” I said, and she looked up and gave me a smile of agony.
Shelly turned as quickly as he could at hearing my voice. He started to rise, but I got to him before he could get up and put my hand on his shoulder.
“It’s not polite to leave when the lady starts a song,” I whispered.
“I can explain,” he said.
I winked at the squat man, who drank his beer and pretended not to see me.
“After the song,” I told Shelly.
Lola did a reasonable job, considering the state of the piano and the limits of her voice. There was something so damned sad about her singing that I was beginning to like it.
I applauded and so did Shelly and the chimp at the bar. The arguing couple was too busy and the squat muscleman was still pretending not to be there. I waved to him to catch his attention, which caused him to rise, pay his bill and leave. His place was taken by the two men who had come through the door, Costello and Marco, both looking as if they could use the sleep I had taken.
“Talk, Shelly,” I said, before Lola could start another song.
“It’s like this …” he began, but I had had enough.
“No, on second thought don’t talk. Just pay for your drink and get out, and stay out of this case.”
“But …”
“Out,” I shouted. Everyone looked at us, and I raised my hand to show it was just a friendly discussion between friends.
“I could help you, Toby,” whined Shelly, pushing his glasses back from a nose that looked as if it had been immersed in mineral oil. I reached for his jacket, and he held up his right hand.
“All right, all right. I know when I’m not wanted.”
“No you don’t, Shel. That’s the problem.”
He got up, paid his bill and went out the door. Marco and Costello had a discussion, probably considering if one of them should follow Shelly to see who he was and what I had to do with him. Marco got up and ambled out.
Lola played, sang and drank for about fifteen more minutes till the couple in battle got up and paid their bill. Then she took a break and came over to my table.
“Nice,” I said.
“A few centuries ago I remember promising you a drink,” she said, looking at me. “Jimmy,” she called, and then to me, “What’ll you have?”
I drank a beer when it came and looked at her with sympathy and more.
“The drink is all I promised,” she said hoarsely.
“The drink is all you promised,” I agreed, looking over at Costello, who was nursing a second beer.
“I’m going to be lucky to make it back to my place and into bed alone. It’s been a tough day.” She finished her drink and looked into the bottom of the glass.
“I understand,” I said. “You need a ride?”
“Just a ride,” she said, looking at me. From a distance she had looked all right, but close up I could see that dancing of the eyeballs that shows someone who might have trouble navigating the length of a napkin.
“Gotta get back to work,” she said, standing, steadying herself and making it back to the piano. She ran a handful of fingers through her hair, coughed and began to sing. The monkey at the bar left in about ten minutes. That left just Costello, me and the barkeep. Lola wrapped up a medley of Cole Porter without losing too many words, and I clapped. I gave Costello a dirty look, and he joined in clapping. Jimmy the bartender was already cleaning up for the night.
“You need anything?” I asked Lola at the piano.
“A steady arm and a new head,” she said and smiled, reaching under the piano for a small purse.
She said good night to the bartender, and I put my arm around her to give her support to the door. I nodded to Costello that it was time to go. He caught me at the door and grabbed my arm.
“I gotta wait for Marco. He took the car.”
“I’m not staying to keep you company.” I told him and went out into the Burbank night with Lola. Somewhere a dog barked. The street was dark and quiet, and so was Lola.
She almost fell asleep on the way to the Glendale address she gave me. I knew the way. I grew up in Glendale. At least I got older in Glendale.
Her furnished apartment was in a new war boom building on the commercial strip. Some people were sitting outside swapping songs, lies and stories, waiting for the factory shifts to change or unwinding after a long day. I got Lola through the hall with writing on the walls. There was no carpeting and no attempt to cover the cement blocks which the building was made of. Our footsteps bounced around, and the few words I said were lost in echoes.
At her door she found her key and turned to me.
“I wouldn’t be much good,” she said with a sad smile.
“Some other time,” I said wittily.
She touched my cheek and kissed me, her mouth soft and tired and tasting of sweet bourbon and lost dreams. I lost myself in the kiss, and then she pulled away.
“Like a teenage date,” she said, and then she disappeared through the door, closing it behind her.
I felt sorry for myself. Someone was trying to kill me, but that wasn’t what was making me sad. Ann was getting married. Carmen worked late and fought me off and Lola Farmer was too drunk and sad.
Heliotrope was quiet. Lights were out on the street, and Mrs. Plaut had long since tucked away her manuscript. I parked behind a Packard right in front of the house. It looked like Marco and Costello’s Packard. I checked the license plate and it sounded right. Marco wasn’t in the car.
No one stirred as I went into the house and up the stairs to my room. I went in quietly and turned on my lights. Costello was sitting at my table, looking up at me with his eyes wide and his mouth open.
“Okay,” I started to say wearily and then stopped. Something red trickled from Costello’s mouth.
When I reached him, I could see the glassy look of pain and surprise in his eyes. One reason for it was the knife in his back. It was a long knife. Now you might wonder how I would know it was a long knife if it was imbedded in the back of my uninvited guest. It was my knife, one of the two kitchen knives that had come with the room.
“Who did it?” I asked, kneeling next to Costello, who grasped my arm with the grip of death.
“He …” gasped Costello.
“Who?”
“Yes … He … No … Yes,” he whispered.
“Yes, no, yes?” I repeated.
“He … No … Yes,” agreed Costello.
With that enlightening exchange, my guest fell over on his face, just missing a spot of milk I had failed to clean up from breakfast. He was dead. I knew what I had to do. Costello was short, but too heavy to haul away, and I didn’t want to be caught trying. I could just let him sit there till morning and then call the police, but I didn’t think I’d get much sleep, and besides it would just be putting off the inevitable.
I went to the hall phone and called the Wilshire Police District Office. It wasn’t quite in this area, but that’s where my brother Phil was in charge of homicide.
Phil wasn’t at the station: The sergeant on the desk said he’d give me Officer Cawelti. I said no thanks. Cawelti and I were not sleep-over friends.
I called Phil at home. His wife Ruth answered sleepily.
“Ruth, this is Toby. Did I wake you?”
“No, what time is it? The baby’s up with something. What’s wrong, Toby?”
Before I could say more I could hear a grunt and the bouncing of springs. Behind that was the cry of my niece Lucy.
“Toby,” came Phil’s voice, wavering between concern and anger, “what do you want?”
“I’ve got something for the boys,” I said softly. “I picked up autographs of Babe Ruth, Bill Dickey, Mark Koenig and Bob Meusel this morning.”
“You’re drunk,” hissed Phil.
“I’ve also got something for you-your favorite-a corpse.”
“Where?” he said soberly.
“Here, in my room.”
“You did it?” asked Phil seriously.
“No, someone left him as a present.”
“I’ll be there in half an hour.”
While I waited for Phil I went carefully through Costello’s pockets. They didn’t tell me much except that his last name was Santucci, that he was from Chicago and that he was married. He had forty bucks and a holster with a gun which hadn’t been fired. I thought over his nonsense comments and tried to make sense of them. I woke Gunther, who came in wearing a tiny gray bathrobe with a sash. Gunther avoided examining the corpse and told me that he had heard some noises in my room about an hour earlier, but that since I hadn’t answered when he knocked, he had assumed I was all right.
I told Gunther about my conversation a few minutes ago with the now-dead Costello, and Gunther listened seriously, touched his tiny chin and hurried to his room for a pencil and paper.
“I think I understand,” he said animatedly. “You asked him who killed him and he said …”
“He. No. Yes,” I finished, looking at Costello’s head.
“Okay,” I went on, wanting to make a Spam sandwich but thinking it might look bad if my brother came while I was munching over the corpse. “He was killed by He. Yes. No Yes.”
“Is there a street perhaps or a place in Los Angeles called Yesno or Yezno or Yeznoyes or …”
“That’s it, Gunther,” I said, pointing a finger at him. “No Yes. Noyes. There is a street called Noyes in Burbank, and that’s where I was tonight. Costello didn’t know how to pronounce it. Maybe he was telling us where he was killed, not who killed him. So what do we have?”
You have,” explained Gunther, “a man who was murdered on Noyes Street.”
“I don’t see what difference where he was killed makes. But that’s my knife in his back. Either the killer came here earlier and took it, or he got Costello here somehow and killed him. Either way he was dumped here to get me in trouble and out of a case I’m on.”
There was a loud knock at the door downstairs.
“Phil,” I said, and Gunther put his hands in his robe and hurried back to his room. He had no affection for Phil, and Phil in a bad mood would think nothing of drop-kicking Gunther through the window.
There was no chance that Mrs. Plaut would hear the door no matter how hard Phil pounded. I ran down and opened it.
Phil Pevsner, brother of Tobias Leo Pevsner who at an early age became Toby Peters, was a little taller than me, a little broader, a few years older and much heavier. His hair was close-cut, curly and the color of steel. His thick, strong fingers scratched constantly from habit; dandruff or perplexity, I’ve never been sure. He started doing it in 1918 when he came back from the war. Phil hadn’t even bothered with the tie he usually kept unmade around his neck. Behind him stood Sergeant Steve Seidman, a cadaverous man who had little to say and was my brother’s partner. Seidman was a strange creature, a man who actually liked my brother.
“Where is it?” Phil said through his teeth.
I handed him the crumpled sheet with the Yankee autographs. He crushed it in his fist and was about to fling it in my face.
“They’re real,” I said, holding up my hands. “For Dave and Nate.”
He shoved the paper into his pocket and pushed me out of the way. Seidman followed behind, giving me a shake of his head to show me he disapproved of my not growing up.
In my room, we stood looking down at Costello solemnly for a few seconds before Phil sighed and Seidman began to examine the body.
“Now,” said Phil, grabbing my shirt and looking into my eyes, “start talking-fast, clear and straight.”
Phil hated crime just a little more than he hated me. His impulse was to smash a hole through criminals and brothers and make straight for whatever sunlight and peace might be on the other side. Sometimes I thought Phil might have a few screws rattling around in his head. For more than twenty-five years he had been trying to clean up Los Angeles. The more he cleaned up and the more criminals he found, the more corpses came. At one point he had even charged a two-bit gunman with picking wildflowers, a crime punishable in Los Angeles by a $200 fine and up to six months in jail. There was no end to being a cop, and that frustrated him. Since he could never really win, he hated each new murderer and victim, who reminded him that things were getting worse instead of better, that Phil Pevsner would not make it a better world for his three kids. Since I seemed to be in the business of bringing him more business, I was not one of his favorite Californians.
“I don’t know his name,” I said. “He’s from Chicago, a minor hood. A case I’m on has something to do with a guy named Lombardi, who just came here from the East to start a sausage factory.”
“A case?” said Phil evenly. “Tell me more about it.”
“Client,” I said and smiled. “I have to check with the client.”
“How many times did I tell you there is no such thing for private detectives? You’re not a priest or a lawyer. Sam Spade was full of shit.” Phil shook me around a little to see if sense would find an accidental resting place in my head. It wouldn’t.
“I’m not talking about the law,” I said. “I’m talking about ethics.”
Phil laughed. I didn’t like the laugh. I think he was getting ready to go for the long-distance Toby-throwing record. So I talked fast.
“This guy and another Chicago hood named Marco were tailing me. They picked me up yesterday and they’ve been on my tail since.”
“So you got upset and skewered one of them when he came to lean on you,” Phil explained.
“No,” I said. “I was out for the night at a bar in Burbank. You can check at the bar. It wasn’t crowded.”
“That’s not proof of anything, and you know it,” shouted Phil. “You recognize the knife?”
“Which knife?” I said innocently.
“The one in the guy’s back, you smartass piece of …” If I had enough nose left for him to break, he would have done it. Seidman put a hand on his shoulder and stepped between us. Phil backed off, his face red, his teeth grinding.
“Back off, Toby,” Seidman whispered. He had seen this game of bait-the-brother between me and Phil before. He had tried to figure it out and had tried to reason with both of us, me to stop needling Phil and Phil to stop taking the hook. The Pevsner brothers are a proud and foolish lot. We have no interest in listening to reason.
“You think you can keep from driving him to kill you while I call the evidence boys and the coroner?” Seidman said, looking over at Phil, who was glaring angrily at the corpse.
“Okay,” I said, and Seidman went out to use the hall phone.
With his back to me, Phil said, “Did he say anything before he died?”
“Only Mother of Mercy, is this the end of Costello,” I said.
Phil didn’t turn. I think he was trying to count to ten.
“On the head of my wife and kids,” he said with a calmness that scared even me, “if you give me one more wise-ass answer tonight, I’ll maim you.”
He had done it before. It was time for me to cut the comments and stick to lies and near-facts. I wasn’t sure if it was in me. My brain is trickier than I am and makes me say things that aren’t always healthy for either of us.
“Maybe your client did this?” Phil tried.
“Nope,” I said, moving to the sofa to sit and being careful not to touch Mrs. Plaut’s doilies. I noticed for the first time that if you looked at the doily long enough, you could see the face of Harold Ickes in the pattern. “In a crazy way, old Costello here and my client were after the same thing. There is a guy whose name I don’t know who looks like a file cabinet. He-”
“No name …?” said Phil, adding, “You got a clean glass?”
I found him a glass, and he filled it with water and took a white pill from a bottle in his coat. I knew better than to ask what it was.
“What was that?” I asked, even though I knew better.
“Anti-Toby pills,” he said, rubbing his fingers over his gray stubble of morning beard. Seidman came back. His face showed nothing. It never did, but his eyes went to both of us to be sure that we had survived a minute or two alone together.
“They’ll be here in fifteen, twenty minutes.”
There was a knock on the door and Seidman opened it to Mrs. Plaut, who came in clutching her robe around her with one hand and holding a lug wrench in the other.
“Are you in need of assistance, Mister Peelers?” she said, looking with suspicion at Phil and Seidman.
“No, thank you, Mrs. Plaut,” I said. “These are policemen. There’s been an accident.”
Then her eyes caught sight of the body slumped over with the knife in his back.
“You call that an accident?” she said. “There is no way anyone can get accidentally stabbed in the back. And that’s my knife. Mr. Peelers, that knife will have to be thoroughly cleaned or replaced.”
“It will be, Mrs. Plaut,” I said reassuringly, ushering her back out the door. She seemed to be hearing much better in the hours before dawn.
“I didn’t think you were that kind of exterminator,” she whispered to me in the hall.
“I’m not,” I said as she turned her back. She put the wrench over her shoulder and went down the stairs.
“Your knife,” said Phil when I came back in.
“I didn’t recognize it,” I said.
“We’re going to my office,” said Phil. It wasn’t an invitation. When the evidence men came, Phil and I got in his car. Seidman stayed behind to interview people in the boarding house and neighborhood who might have seen something.
Phil and I said nothing all the way to the Wilshire station. When we got inside, Phil didn’t bother to greet the old sergeant on duty, and when we got upstairs, the only ones in the detective squad room were a cleaning woman and Cawelti, a guy with tight clothes, a smirk and hair parted down the middle and plastered like a Gay Nineties bartender. We waded through the day’s garbage and into Phil’s office, where he sat heavily in his chair behind the desk. I sat in the chair opposite him. We looked at each other for a few minutes, and for the first time I realized that Phil’s office was about the same size as my office. Not only that-he had laid it out the same way mine was, even down to his cop diploma on the wall and a photograph, only the photograph was of his wife and kids. I tried to remember whose office had come first. I thought it was his. I considered pointing out the resemblance we both had missed, but Phil picked up his phone.
“Get me two coffees,” he barked. The person on the other end, who I assumed was Cawelti, said something and Phil nodded politely before continuing. “That’s a sad story, John. I don’t care if you have to run down to the drugstore and break in. I want you to be in my office with two coffees within ten minutes or I’ll give you a coffee enema.” He hung up, ever the master of the colorful vulgarism.
“Pa wanted you to be a lawyer,” he said out of nowhere.
“I didn’t want to be a lawyer,” I said. “I liked my hands in my own pockets.” I’d read that somewhere, but I didn’t know the source and was sure Phil wouldn’t.
“You could have been a police officer. You were …” He stopped. We had been through this and it got us nowhere. He reached into his drawer and found a pad of paper. He reached deeper and found a pencil. He shoved them both to me and told me to write out a report, the whole thing. He didn’t even say “or else.”
I asked Phil what time it was.
“You’ve got a watch,” he growled.
“Pa’s watch,” I explained. Phil told me it was three in the morning.
I pulled out the card Cooper had given me and called the number while Phil stared at me.
“Huh?” came Cooper’s sleepy voice.
“This is Toby Peters. We’ve got a complication.” I explained what had happened without giving anything away to Phil and hoped that Cooper hadn’t fallen asleep. Then I concluded, “I think I should tell them about your involvement and ask for their discretion.”
“I don’t like it,” said Cooper finally.
“I’m not throwing a party over the whole thing myself,” I said.
“A man has to do what a man has to do,” said Cooper. “I say things like that in my movies but I don’t know what they really mean. So you do what you have to as long as I don’t have to back it up in public.”
I hung up and began the report. I was just finishing when Cawelti brought in the coffee. He was not happy about bringing in the coffee. He was not happy about seeing me.
“Thanks, John,” Phil said.
“Thanks, John,” I added, and Cawelti left, slamming the door behind him.
The coffee was cold, but it was coffee. My report was all truth. I left out a lot, but what was in there was bonded stuff that would hold up.
“Do I get a ride home?” I said.
“It’s a nice morning,” said Phil, finishing his coffee. “You can take a streetcar or taxi. It will give you some time to think and us some time to tidy up your room.”
I said thanks and went into the squad room. Cawelti was gone, but the cleaning lady had accumulated a shoulder-high pile of rubble.
“You a cop?” she said in a pretty good Marjorie Main imitation.
“No,” I said.
“You’d be surprised at the junk I find in here sometimes,” she said, starting to shovel her pile into a barrel on wheels. “Found an ear once,” she said. “How can you lose an ear?”
I left her musing on life as I went out and into the first chill hint of dawn. I didn’t have to walk home, as it turned out. I went half a block toward the drugstore, from where I planned to call a cab, when a car pulled along next to me and Marco looked out and back at the station.
“Get in,” he said.
“I think I’ll walk,” I said. “Fresh air will do me good.”
“Get in,” he insisted, showing his gun. “In back.”
“We’re half a block from the police station,” I reminded him.
“And you’re a few seconds from termination, if you don’t get in,” he said.
I liked his reasoning and got into the back seat. I wasn’t alone. Lombardi sat with one hand rubbing the bridge of his nose. He had a headache, and it was probably me.
“Our friends from Chicago are very upset at this turn of events,” Lombardi said softly. “And I am not pleased, either. We understand that Mr. Santucci has been murdered.”
Marco squirmed in the front seat and nearly whimpered, “What do I tell my wife? He is supposed to be breaking me into the business and he gets killed. How do you think she’ll feel after what happened to her brother?”
“Bad?” I guessed.
“We all regret this shocking tragedy,” said Lombardi. “Now, you must first convince us that you are not responsible. Our colleague is killed in your room with your knife. He was following you.”
“How do you know about the knife?”
“I have a headache,” Lombardi said. “Talk very quietly, very quietly. I have a friend in the police department. Actually, it is the friend of a friend. That’s all you have to know. On the other hand, there is so much a person in my position has to know. Being a businessman is not as easy as many people think. One has responsibilities.”
“I didn’t kill him,” I said softly. “Look, someone is still trying to get rid of me. Someone who took a couple of shots at me today. He’s the guy we should all be looking for. Him and whoever hired him.”
“I must be quite disoriented from my headache,” Lombardi said, “because what you are saying makes sense. I think you should find this person or persons and quietly stop them.”
“Wait,” growled Marco.
“And,” Lombardi continued, “if you come up with the name of someone who should be made quiet especially the someone who did this terrible thing to our friend from Chicago, then you will tell me and the bereaved brother-in-law will speak to them. You of course understand. I haven’t time to be more subtle. Here,” he called to Marco.
Marco turned his huge face to us. “You mean we just let him go?”
“Yes,” said Lombardi, “for now. Now go, Mr. Peters.”
I got out, and the car pulled away. I was still about two miles from my room, but I had things to think about. I found an all-night grill I knew and ate a couple of bowls of Wheaties with a cup of coffee.
The grill always had a rear table full of guys who looked like truck drivers, but I had never seen any trucks parked on the street. Their conversation was usually about the war, food and the movie industry.
While I downed the dregs of my bowl and considered ordering another, a guy who looked and sounded like Lionel Stander shouted angrily at another mug, “What are you talking about? Bette Davis can act rings around her, rings around her. Joan Crawford got no range, no reserves of emotion to draw on, you moron.”
The Joan Crawford advocate rose to the occasion and clenched his fists, countering, “Is that so? Crawford in Rain was superb, projected brass and pathos at the same time.”
The two critics snarled at each other, and I got out before a brawl developed. My vote was for Olivia DeHavilland, but her name hadn’t entered the conversation.