“Being in movies is very much like being in the circus,” Chaplin said. “But it pays far more.”
“I knew a man named Davies, mild, gentle, well read,” said Gunther. “One day he rose before dawn and killed four tigers with a crossbow. He didn’t harm the lions.”
“The tigers had attacked him?” asked Chaplin with interest.
“He was not an animal trainer. He was an contortionist. And there was Klaus Muellenberg with the Royal Danish Circus. A nice man, an aerialist, murdered the Flying Schmidts, all five of them with an antique rifle. Gave no reason. Insanity accounts for much that occurs in the world. One need only read the war news.”
It was probably the longest speech I had ever heard from Gunther and I didn’t want to interrupt him. But if Chaplin was right, Howard Sawyer and two large men were on the train probably looking for Fiona Sullivan right now. I explained the situation quickly to Gunther and asked, “Any suggestions?”
“We get Miss Sullivan and leave the train,” said Chaplin. “Then we seek help from the nearest police officer.”
Gunther nodded and I agreed. It was pointless to run to San Francisco if the person you were running from had you trapped on a train.
“Let’s go,” I said and opened the compartment door.
A very big man filled the doorway. He was wearing gray slacks and a gray polo shirt and a determined, unfriendly look on his bronzed face. His hair was nearly white, but his skin was clear. It was the size of his biceps that most impressed me.
My first thought was, why isn’t this guy in the army? My second thought was that there was someone even bigger directly behind him. The bigger man was darker, older, and had a well-trimmed bartender mustache.
“Sit down,” the younger one in the door said with an accent that suggested someplace far away and very cold with reindeer. He stepped inside, his partner behind him.
“I think,” said Chaplin, “you should get out of our way or we’ll be forced to ring for the conductor.”
“Sit down,” the Viking repeated.
“Please clear the entry,” said Gunther, displaying a gun he produced from nowhere.
The Viking looked over his shoulder at the mustached man behind us, then turned back to us and said, “No.”
“If you take another step, I will shoot,” said Gunther.
“Just let us all sit for five minutes,” said the man. “Then we will leave. Which of you is Peters?”
“I am,” I said.
“You, we will break your arm before we leave.”
“Any particular reason?” I asked.
“We are being paid,” he said.
“The guy who paid you is killing a woman in the next compartment,” I said.
“If you touch Mr. Peters, I will shoot you,” Gunther said.
“I believe he will,” Chaplin said.
The Viking shrugged.
“We have already been paid,” he said. “We’ll break no arm. Just remain where you are. Five minutes.”
“We don’t have five minutes,” I said, stepping in front of him.
“Then,” said the Viking, “we shall have to break your arm.”
The door to the compartment suddenly opened. The two men in front of me blocked my view. But suddenly there was only one man. Mustache was gone. The Viking turned around and found himself facing Jeremy Butler. He had about twenty-five years on Jeremy but he was outclassed. Jeremy stepped into a bear hug. The Viking pushed his hands against Jeremy’s head trying to force him back. Jeremy lifted the younger man off the ground and grunted. The Viking groaned in agony. Jeremy let him drop to the floor.
The man was on his hands and knees trying to get past Jeremy to the now-open door.
“The man who paid you,” I said. “Who is he?”
Jeremy blocked the crawling man by stepping in front of the door.
“Don’t know,” the fallen Viking gasped. “We were at the beach, Venice. Just … you broke a rib.”
“Yes,” said Jeremy.
“The man?” I repeated.
“He gave us fifty dollars each,” the man groaned. “And another fifty just before we got on the train.”
Jeremy stepped out of the way. The man crawled out and the four of us moved into the corridor. Mustache was staggering toward the end of the car holding his neck in both hands as if he were trying to keep his head from falling off. The Viking was right behind him, trying to stand.
“Alice told me I should come,” Jeremy explained, as we moved to the next compartment.
“I’m glad she did,” I said, knocking at the door.
“Who is it?” asked Shelly.
“Me, Toby.”
“Toby who?”
“Shel, open the door.”
“Does someone have a gun or a knife in your back?”
“If they did, could I tell you? Open the door. We have to get off the train.”
“Give me a password,” Shelly demanded.
“Like what?”
“My receptionist’s name.”
“Violet.”
“Violet what?”
“Gonsenelli,” I said.
The lock was pulled back and the door opened. Shelly was alone in the room. The door to the toilet was open. Fiona wasn’t inside.
“Where is she?” I asked.
“She needed a Bromo Seltzer,” he said. “She went back to the dining car.
“Shelly, I told you … forget it.”
He joined us in a run through the train, five odd looking men single file providing a free show for the people in the three coaches we passed through. There was no one in the dining car but a few waiters sitting at a table smoking and drinking coffee.
“A woman come in here a few minutes ago?” I asked.
“No,” said one of the waiters.
“What’s beyond this car?”
“Baggage,” said the waiter. “Door’s locked. No one came through here.”
“She’s gone,” said Chaplin.
“He has Miss Sullivan,” said Gunther.
“She said she needed a Bromo,” Shelly nearly whimpered.
Outside the window, a conductor shouted, “All aboard.”
“So,” said Shelly, “does this mean we’re not going to San Francisco?”
I led the procession to the end of the car and pushed open the door. I climbed off with the sound of Shelly’s voice behind me saying, “Wait. I’ve got to get my suitcase.”
We didn’t wait. There were people on the platform but no Howard Sawyer, no Fiona Sullivan. We ran to the gate and looked around the crowd in the station.
“You see a man and woman just run through here?” I asked the ticket checker. “The woman probably looked scared, about this high.”
“Didn’t notice such,” said the man, adjusting his glasses and looking back at Shelly down the platform waddling toward us.
“What now?” Chaplin asked.
I didn’t have the slightest damned idea.
“We go to the police,” said Gunther.
“I go to the police,” I amended. “Jeremy, you have someplace Mr. Chaplin can stay for a few days? I don’t think he should go back to Mrs. Plaut’s.”
I was thinking about Elsie Pultman in the car on Heliotrope.
“Several vacancies, one furnished on Lankershim, very nice,” Jeremy said.
Jeremy had taken a cab. So had Shelly and Gunther. We moved to the cab stand outside the station.
“I nearly forgot,” Jeremy said, reaching into his pocket and coming up with a neatly folded sheet of paper. He handed it to me. “Read it when you have time.”
“I’m sorry,” I said to Chaplin.
“No need to apologize,” he said. “I’ve not had this much excitement since I fell out of the balcony in Manchester when touring with Fred Karno’s troupe. Landed on a stout woman who survived and provided me with a look of astonishment I’ve attempted to duplicate in character actresses ever since. Find Miss Sullivan, Mr. Peters. And stop this lunatic.”
I went back inside the station and made a phone call. Then, I went to my car, drove to the booth, paid my way out, and headed toward my appointment with Phil. I turned on the radio and heard the familiar bonging of a grandfather clock.
Bong … “it” … bong … “is” … bong … “later” … bong … “than” … bong … “you” … bong … “think. Lights Out.”
I listened to the story about two Nazis who drop into England by parachute to blow something up and find themselves in a castle where they kill their British hosts, who come back to life and act as if nothing has happened. They kill the British again, but they come back. This goes on till one of the Nazis cracks and blows up the place along with himself and his fellow Nazi.
It was heartwarming. Just as it ended I parked in front of the Wilshire Station. Lights out.
CHAPTER
8
THE SQUAD ROOM was almost as busy at night as it was during the day. Actually a lot of criminals like to work a normal day. It makes them feel as if they had a respectable profession like everyone else. Some criminals even have families, wives or husbands and kids. Some.
Phil was in his small office in front of his desk. His tie was loose. He needed a shave and had a cup of coffee in his hand. He looked at me when I walked in and then at the wall in front of him.
“You found Fiona Sullivan’s body?” I guessed.
He shook his head, “no.”
“Sawyer?”
“No” again.
“What?”
“I’m thinking about retiring,” he said, now looking into his cup.
“You? Never.”
“I could get a security job,” he said. “Regular hours.”
“Not you,” I said as someone screamed in the squad room. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman.
“Sometimes I think we’re losing the war,” Phil said, moving behind his desk.
“We’re winning,” I said. “Germans and Japs are on the run.”
“Not that war,” he said. “The war against them.”
He nodded toward the door.
“They keep coming. New crop when the old ones get caught or die.”
He still hadn’t looked at me. His eyes were fixed on the wall across from him. His head was nodding slightly at the truth he had just spoken.
“You won’t quit.”
“I suppose not,” he said. Then he looked up at me. “Ruth won’t make it this time.”
I sat in the chair across from my brother.
“They said that last time.”
“No,” he corrected. “Last time they said she might not make it. This time it’s locked in. Talked to the doctor. Got a second opinion and a third. I’m either quitting or taking time off to be home.”
“Starting?”
“Day after tomorrow,” he said. “Maybe next week.”
I didn’t say anything.
“She’s an easy woman to live with,” he went on. “And I’m a hard man to put up with. I don’t think we’ve had a big disagreement in ten years. She supported Roosevelt. I didn’t. She was right.”
He held up a pad of paper and took a long slug of coffee. He made a face. It was either bitter or cold or both.
“I made calls about your list,” he said. “No Howard Sawyer connected to any of the dead women.”
“Pultman,” I said.
“She ever tell you she knew him?”
I thought about it. She never had.
“No. But Fiona Sullivan was engaged to him.”
“As far as we know, she’s not dead.”
“Okay,” I said. “So Sawyer’s not his name. He used different names.”
“Why?”
“To get their money.”
“No man coming near your Sawyer’s description got money from any of the dead women. Three of them just about had a pot to piss in. Only one besides Pultman was murdered, and I talked to the detective in Philadelphia on that one. He’s sure it was a murder/robbery. Woman left an estate valued at four hundred dollars to her only daughter. One left what she had, which wasn’t all that much either, to a granddaughter who lived with her.”
“He made them look natural,” I said. “Those women were murdered.”
“Why? They have nothing in common that we can find. No relatives. Never met each other. No common interests. Hell, one was a Negro.”
“Maybe he’s a nut, like in the circus,” I said.
“The circus?”
“Never mind,” I said. “He has some reason other than money. How much did Elsie Pultman have? Who gets it?”
“That I’ll know by tomorrow,” said Phil. “There’s something you’re not telling me, Tobias.”
“No.”
“Who’s your client? Who are you working for on this if it’s not the Sullivan woman?”
I could have told him it was Chaplin back when the whole thing started, but now we had at least one clear murder connected to me and, through me to Chaplin. If Chaplin’s career was in trouble when I first walked through his door, it would be gone if he got into a scandal like this. Headlines: CHAPLIN MEETS LADY KILLER. CHAPLIN WITNESS IN WIDOW MURDER CASE. WAS KILLER INSPIRED BY CHAPLIN MOVIE PROJECT?
“Can’t tell you, Phil,” I said.
He nodded again. It was the answer he had expected. I hadn’t disappointed him.
“Why did he leave the body in front of your place?”
I could tell Phil’s heart wasn’t in it. He was going through the motions.
“I’m getting to him, getting close to him. It’s a warning. He was going to kill her anyway, so he thought he’d leave a message for me to stop looking for him.”
“He’s afraid of you.” Phil smiled, a smile saying, “That’s what I expect from my brother, from the world.”
“Something like that.”
“It doesn’t add up,” Phil said.
“I didn’t put the numbers down,” I said. “He did.”
“We’ll keep looking for Fiona Sullivan,” Phil said.
“If she’s dead,” I said. There’s still one more living woman on the list. Blanche Wiltsey.”
“We’re looking for her. Any ideas?”
“No,” I said, thinking that whoever Blanche Wiltsey was, she might be dead by now and that would be the end of Sawyer’s list and our leads.
“Go,” said Phil.
“I’ll come by the house on Sunday,” I said.
“Do that.”
“All right if I bring Anita?”
“Sure,” he said swiveling his chair away from me.
“Now what?” I asked.
“I go home,” he said. “I go home.”
My hand was on the doorknob when he said, almost to himself, “Charlie Chaplin.”
I turned. His back was still away from me. I waited for the bomb he was going to drop.
“Charlie Chaplin,” I repeated. “Okay. He’s my client. Sawyer threatened him, mentioned the movie he’s writing about a guy who murders women, gave him Fiona Sullivan’s name.”
Phil ran his fingers through his bristly hair and looked up at me.
“Didn’t I just say Ruth and I haven’t had a big disagreement since F.D.R. was first elected? Actually we have one, ongoing. She thinks Chaplin is getting a bad break from the papers and the government. I think he should have his ass kicked out of this country. Ruth thinks he’s the funniest man who ever lived. I don’t get it.”
“Who do you think is funny?” I asked, and I really wanted to know.
“Nobody’s funny,” he said.
“You know Juanita?”
“The fortune-teller in the Farraday,” he said, turning away. “So?”
“She … forget it. I’ll see you.”
I left with my brother’s broad back to me and went into the squad room.
A very old man wearing a dark suit with no shirt under the jacket was sitting on the waiting bench across the room.
His eyes were closed
and he was rocking back and forth, singing “On the Good Ship Lollipop” in an amazingly good falsetto imitation of Shirley Temple.
I paused at the desk of a detective named Quirst who had lost an eye in World War I and never seemed to be affected by anything that happened around him. Quirst, who was known as Popeye, was looking at the old man. The squad room was about half full now.
“Peters,” he said. “You here to cheer up your brother? Or maybe bring him back to life?”
“I’m trying,” I said. “What’s his story?”
I nodded at the rocking, singing old man on the bench.
“Him? Name’s Corkindale. Killed his wife with an iron skillet. Then he killed the family dog, a poodle. Keeps singing and saying ‘Lola.’”
“Lola? The dog or the wife?”
“Dog,” said Quirst. “World’s full of crazies. My philosophy: Don’t expect anything good and don’t expect people to make sense. Then you won’t be disappointed.”
The old man on the bench sang, “And there you are. Happy landings on a chocolate bar.”
I left.
There were no police cars and no blue Ford in front of Mrs. Plaut’s when I got there a little after eleven. I had stopped for a couple of hot dogs and a milk shake at a drug store on Hollywood Boulevard.
I was tired, and I had a prayer: Please God, don’t let Mrs. Plaut catch me tonight.
This time God answered my prayer. I took my shoes off at the front door, opened it slowly, and moved cautiously across the entryway, avoiding the familiar spots, which were guaranteed a loud creak. I went up the stairs, expecting that voice behind me. I couldn’t face giving a shouted explanation or hearing the tale about Elsie Pultman’s body parked outside on Heliotrope.
I made it to my room, flicked on the light, looked at Dash who was on his back next to the refrigerator with his eyes closed. When the light came on, he looked at me, put one paw over his eyes, and went back to sleep.
When I took my coat off, I heard something crinkle in the pocket. I pulled it out. It was the sheet Jeremy had handed me at the cab stand in front of Union Station.
It was a poem with a note above it. The note read: “Here is the poem I told you I was going to write.”
A Few Minutes Past Midnight Page 10
