The Double Take

by Roy Huggins

  I told her Yes, I had got the job, and asked for an outside line. The rest of the day I gave my left ear a workout calling theatrical agents and employers of second-rate talent in the area. None of them had ever heard of a Peg Bleeker. A few of them remembered Buster Buffin vaguely, and one had an idea he'd left show business and bought himself a meat market.

  It sounded more like a gag than a lead, but I took my phone book out of its drawer, looked around to see if anyone was watching—no one was except a large fly perched on the end of my pen desk set—and looked under the B's. After the Buffetts came one lonely Buffin. Buster Buffin's Buffet, with an address in Venice.

  The large fly sneered at me and said, “Bailey, you're losing the simple touch.” Or maybe I said it to the fly.

  I was thinking about something else and I didn't notice the green Dodge until I was out to where Wilshire passes the Los Angeles Country Club and the traffic had lost its Beverly Hills bulge. I let him tag along to Westwood Village.

  At Warner I swung to the right and then pulled up and leaned out, waiting. He came wheeling into Warner in an agony of sound, straightened out and shot by me. As he went by, he saw me, and I caught a glimpse of a sallow face under a green felt hat, and a loose-lipped mouth hanging open in indecision and surprise. He drove up to Woodruff, turned left, and disappeared.

  I started the car and drove up. A few feet down Woodruff, the Dodge was parked. I pulled up and got out. The car was empty. There was no registration showing, and the single plate was the deep chocolate brown issued by Michigan. Across the street a tall growth of oleander ran along the walk for half a block. I got back in my car and drove off. When I turned toward Wilshire, the green Dodge was still sitting at the curb, empty.

  Buster Buffin's Buffet was on the ocean front, a colorless, beaten little shack cuddled up next to the Paragon Ballroom like a barnacle clinging to a luxury yacht.

  Inside there was warmth and steam and the smell of fried onions and fat. There was a horse-shoe counter in the center with a kitchen at the open end and booths along each side. Some stairs at the rear on the left side went up to a second floor. A sign over them said Private Dining Rooms. There were some smaller signs on the back walls that made me pretty sure I had come to the right place. Yes! We serve crabs. Have a seat. Stomach pumps provided with our blue plate special. Vy iz der zo miny mor orzis azis den der iz orzis? Several others suggested in the same pungent humor that asking for credit would be a mistake. There weren't any customers.

  A little fellow with quick eyes like a nervous robin and the same hungry grin I had first seen on the display board at Keller's came out of the kitchen. He had aged some, and he managed to look unhealthy under a heavy coat of tan.

  He had a rag in one hand and a cigarette in the other. “Bein' as it's meatless Tuesday,” he grinned, “what'll you have?”

  “You're using last year's calendar. This isn't Tuesday.”

  Buffin put the rag up to his nose, screwed up his face in a pained grimace and held the rag out stiffly behind him. “Brother,” he said, “at Buffin's every day is Tuesday. You can have clam chowder—or clam chowder.”

  “Chowder,” I said agreeably. “And a cup of coffee.”

  He trotted back to the kitchen and came out after a while with a paper napkin, a bowl, and a large spoon. He put them down in front of me.

  “You'll find the chowder warmer than an old maid's feet,” he said, “but not half as clammy.”

  I said, “You'll have to watch that stuff. They'll be making you charge an entertainment tax.”

  Buster suddenly grabbed up the bowl in front of me and with a pseudo-horrified expression on his face said, “You wouldn't be a food inspector, would you?”

  “No,” I laughed. “And anyway, I'm hungry—put it back.”

  Buster put it down again and walked over to the coffee urn. I tried the clam chowder. It was tepid and thin and I didn't find any clams in it, not even a dead one. Buster put the coffee in front of me in a cup that weighed a pound. He was grinning again. It was a nice grin, not really inane, just a little tired and a little sad, the remnant of an insatiable optimism.

  “Cream,” he asked, “or do you take it like it is—mud gray?”

  I reached for the sugar and said, “Get much business from the ballroom?”

  “Yeah, except when the weather's like it was last Monday. That kills business at the beach. Even at night. I guess it's psychology.”

  That looked like a fine opening. I said, “I liked that rain. Reminded me of home. I'm from Portland where it really rains.”

  “You don't have to tell me,” he snorted. “I left there when my feet started to grow webs.”

  “You know the old burg, huh?”

  “Spent some time up there back in '37 or '38. Hoofin'.”

  “Where? The Orpheum?”

  “How's the chowder?”

  “Fine. Fine. So you know the old town?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The Orpheum, huh?”

  “Nope. That's straight vaudeville. Warm up your coffee?”

  “No, it's fine.”

  He started back to the kitchen.

  “Say, are you the owner, Buffin?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I think I remember you. Keller's Hofbrau, wasn't it?”

  Buster's face lit up and he said, “Brother, you're kiddin' me but it's soothin', very soothin'.”

  “No. I remember the name. I used to go down and buy my jug of beer every Friday night.”

  “Yeah,” he said, and winked. “That was a cheap town if there ever was.”

  I didn't hear that. “Keller had a corner on the lovelies, though. I can remember a couple I wouldn't mind going back for.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “How long you been in L.A.?”

  “Five years.”

  “You're a native. It's been good to me. I like L.A. Sure your coffee's okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  He turned and went back to the kitchen and left me sitting there. I'm a good fisherman. I can play any kind of a fish, if he isn't a bright kind of fish, like a dog shark. I drank some of the coffee and got up. Buster came back and stood by his cash register.

  “Two bits,” he said.

  I paid him and decided to stop wasting time.

  “You didn't know that blonde gal who sang for Keller, did you? Her name was Betty Bleeker.”

  He jerked his head up and gave me a slow stare. His quick eyes were puzzled, almost worried. “You mean Peggy Bleeker,” he said slowly.

  “Oh. Was that it?”

  “That was it,” he said and gave me a slow smile that showed a line of even white teeth that looked as genuine as a sound effect. “Did you go through this routine just to find out if I knew Peg Bleeker?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Pathetic, isn't it?”

  “Copper?”

  “No. I'm just looking for Peg Bleeker.”

  “Why?”

  “Okay, I said. “You win. Her aunt died almost a year ago and left a piece of property out by one of the shipyards. We've tried to find Miss Bleeker through the police down here, but they didn't seem to be trying. The property is pretty valuable right now, and we can't do anything without her. Keller told me she came down here with you.”

  “But, chum, that was six years ago. What's your angle on it?”

  “I'm just working for the executor.”

  “What's the information worth?”

  “It depends on the information.” I got out my wallet and laid a ten on the counter. “Let's see how much that'll buy.”

  He looked at it and left it there. He said, “She came down here with me and I helped her land a job. Then when I tried to get a little... she tossed me out and called me a cheap bastard.” He said it casually enough, but color crawled up under the tan and burned in two points on his cheeks.

  “What sort of a job?”

  “Song spot. Down at King Henry's Cellar on Fifth. But she didn't like tea. She was strictly dynamite. I never did make he
r. And I don't think anyone else ever did. But I came back for more. I got her a nice spot with the Revues and then she moved over to the Glendale in a strip routine. The Glendale was tops in burlesque then, but she was too genteel for the boys, and she wasn't built right anyway. Strippers are slobs.”

  I nodded my head.

  “Well, that's about it. I went back east, and when I got back I found out she'd got up a bubble dance routine and was hitting the night club circuit. I traced her to a couple of second-rate joints—one in Long Beach and one in San Pedro. Then I lost her.”

  He gave the counter a slow, eloquent swipe with the dish rag. He said, “I haven't given that babe a dime's worth of thought since.”

  I said, “Was she using Peg Bleeker as her professional name?”

  He looked up at me, almost shyly, and grinned. “I been waitin' for you to ask that. That's the $64.00 question.”

  “It's worth twenty, Buster. I could find out, you know.”

  “Like hell you could, but I'll sell it for fifty bucks. Take it or leave it.”

  I took it. He gave me the addresses of the two night clubs in Long Beach and San Pedro free of charge. The name Peg Bleeker had taken, and was still using when Buster lost track of her some time in 1939, was Gloria Gay.

  I took out the Hofbrau version of Peg Bleeker and handed it to him.

  I said, “Did she still look like that down here? The long bob, and the ammonia rinse?”

  He looked at the picture for a while without saying anything. Then, “Did Keller give you this?”

  “Yeah.”

  He handed it back to me. “She dyed her hair red after she got down here.” His face looked stiff and tight. He turned and walked back to the little kitchen.

  There's a lot of traffic on Wilshire, but I got the idea a dark blue Chevrolet that stayed behind me all the way in wasn't interested in getting ahead of me. I didn't try to find out. I was going to my office, and my office is in the phone book.

  I parked in the lot on the corner across from the Pacific Building. I walked by the little lunch room in the Hart Building and up to the cross walk, crossed the street and into the lobby.

  I hadn't noticed the Chevrolet, but I had seen something else more interesting; Mrs. Ralph Johnston, sitting in the window-booth of the lunch room, watching the entrance of the Pacific Building with the tense patience of a terrier watching a gopher hole.

  Chapter Six

  WHAT I DID FOR the next four days I could have hired a high-grade moron for; but I didn't have anything else to do, and besides, all the high-grade morons were working. I tramped around to agencies, burlesque houses, the two clubs in Long Beach and San Pedro, and made more phone calls than a Crosley inquirer. “Ma” Schaeffer, employment manager and house-mother-at-large for the Revues remembered Gloria Gay vaguely, but said she wouldn't have told me anything anyway: I smelled like a cop. A throaty blonde of uncertain years and talents located at the San Pedro address remembered a bubble dancer named Gloria Something-or-other. The name was in the records of a couple of theatrical agents, but nothing later than March of 1939. And at all the places I asked the same question: Had anyone else ever been around asking for her? The answer was always the same: No.

  I was sitting at my desk gloomily mumbling puns on the theme of sic transit Gloria and not getting any fun out of it. It was a gray morning with a heavy wetness in the air, and I was all through. I had planted forty acres of cards in the best greenroom soil. Now I was letting the earth turn and awaiting the doubtful harvest.

  I heard Hazel say, “Yes he is. One moment.”

  I looked up and she said, “For you” with her lips.

  I picked up the phone. A voice said, “Hi ya, Sherlock.”

  I gripped the receiver a little tighter. The voice was Buffin's. “Who's talking?”

  “Me? Why, your old pal. From the old home town. Buster Buffin.”

  “Just call me Watson. How'd you find me?”

  “Easy... I got somepen for you, Watson.”

  “All right. I'm listening.”

  “It gives for cash. And I'm afraid fifty bucks won't even buy you a seat.”

  “What kind of figures do you think I'll talk in?”

  “For what I have—plenty, brother, plenty!”

  “I'll save you some trouble, Buster. If you're going to tell me where I'll find Peg Bleeker, you're wasting your time.”

  He laughed. Not a nasty laugh; there was merriment in it, and a thin edge of hysteria.

  He said, “Where she is I don't know, and I care less. If you're smart you'll come down here. And be ready to talk cold turkey.”

  I tried to sound casual, like a man going out to look at an orange grove. “Where'll I find you in case I decide to listen?”

  “You'll listen. You'll find me right where you left me —Buffin's Buffet.” He hung up. I could hear his thin laughter before the little click came, leaving me sitting there alone.

  I took Santa Monica Boulevard down to the beach and kept one eye on the rear-view mirror all the way. Nobody followed me down there. I parked in the Paragon Ballroom's lot across from Buffin's.

  There was a sign on the door that said the place was closed and would open at 11:30 a.m. I tried the door. It wasn't locked.

  There was nobody inside. No customers, no little man with cold turkey to sell. I looked around in the kitchen. It was dirty, with a cold odor of rancid fat. There was no one there.

  I sat down on one of the counter stools and waited. Hard waves were pummeling the breakwater with a distant roar that made the silence in the little shack palpable and menacing. I got up and walked around. I yelled, “Oh, Buster!” and the echoes joined and jarred against me. And then the silence settled down again like a cold wet sheet. It was punctuated abruptly, sharply, by a tight clap of sound from overhead, followed by another, and then again. I was halfway up the stairs when the third shot sounded and something hit the floor, hard.

  Chapter Seven

  AT THE TOP I stopped suddenly and wondered what I was doing up there. I was armed with a penknife, very dull. I hadn't carried my .38 to talk with Buster. While I stood and wondered about it I heard the hollow stumbling sound of feet moving quickly down a flight of stairs, wooden stairs from the noise they made. There was a door in front of me. I threw it open and looked in at a cold and empty room with a green table in the middle of it and two chairs sitting on its dusty top. To the right, at the end of a five-foot corridor, there was another door. I tried it. It was locked, but it gave easily to a steady pressure that broke nothing but the latch. It wouldn't open far. I slid in and let go of the door. A body lying half against it slammed it shut. I ran through the room to a porch-like cubicle at the rear of the apartment. I found another door there, open to the outside— to the dull sound and salty odor of the bay. A steep and narrow flight of wooden stairs led downward to a walk that ran behind the ballroom and out onto the pier. There was no one in sight.

  I closed Buster's private beach entrance and walked back into the room where the body lay. It was a living room. There was a table by a window, a chest of drawers, a davenport, a couple of easy chairs, some framed pictures on the wall and a thin carpet on the floor. It all looked as if it had been ordered by phone from a second-hand store.

  The man lying on the thin carpet had stained it with an almost black flow of blood. It was Buster Buffin. I went over and looked at him. He was dead. His face was the color of sand in a cold dawn and his lips had drawn back and the even white teeth had slipped a little so that he seemed to be grinning at me. I knelt and looked at him emptily and wondered what it was that Buster had had to sell me. The teeth grinned at me and said that he didn't care now if I ever found out.

  He had been hit twice, in the chest. I looked around for a gun and didn't find one. Then I went back to Buster and apologized to him and went through his pockets. In his wallet there was something: a wrinkled piece of paper. There was an automobile license number scrawled on it in pencil. I knew it was a license number because it
was my own. Under the scrawl, in ink, were my name, address, and phone number. I put the slip of paper in my pocket, wiped the wallet off and put it back.

  I looked the room over. In one of the drawers there was a stack of glossy publicity prints. I took them out with a handkerchief in my hand and spread them out on the floor. They weren't all of Buster. There was one of Margaret Bleeker. Three smiling blondes, gathered about Buster and pointing their fingers at him. Mrs. Johnston was on his left, one arm about his shoulder, her slender legs crossed, and one eye winking at the camera. The pointing fingers made me feel a little uneasy. I pushed the pictures together and put them back.

  I looked around once more to see if there was a telephone, then I wiped off everything I had touched, including the door at the head of the stairs, and went down. I looked for a phone downstairs. It was important. If Buster had called me from here it was a toll call. There would be a record of it. There wasn't any phone.

  I opened the front door and looked out. I didn't see any telephone wires running into the place. There was no one on the street and the drugstore across the way looked as empty as a night club at 8 a.m. I slipped out and walked over to my car. It was a foggy morning. I didn't think anyone saw me.

  And no one followed me back except a face that hung over me as gray as an unwilling dawn and grinned at me with an amiable horror.

  I was sitting in my limber swivel chair with the blinds drawn against the afternoon sun listening to the flies going urgently nowhere around the room. One of them was buzzing fitfully about the edge of my glass like a teetotaler trying to make up his mind. The glass held Cubana rum, which was the nearest thing to bourbon I could find. Hazel was getting ready to go home, and pretending not to see me.