Buried Caesars

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  There was nothing to say. We moved down the stairs slowly, hit the landing. More shots outside. We could hear the jeep’s motor grinding as it bounced over the sand. As we went down the second flight of stairs to the front hall we heard a second car start up.

  Hammett raised the shotgun when I opened the door. The DeSoto was kicking dust behind it as it rocked down the road. The jeep spun around about twenty yards away. Major Oren Castle was standing in the passenger seat, aiming his rifle at the fleeing DeSoto. He fired. A ping as a bullet hit the fender. Then I recognized the driver. It was J.V., blue-uniformed, her hair falling over her eyes.

  “Are you all right?” Castle called, taking a final shot at the distant car.

  “Best two days I’ve had since I tracked down a stolen Ferris wheel,” said Hammett, shotgun at his side.

  “Toby,” J.V. called, turning off the engine and getting out of the jeep. She hurried toward me, stopped, embarrassed. “You’re all right?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, reaching out to touch her cheek. “Desert air agrees with me. Great for the sinuses.”

  Castle’s drawn face was pointed toward the dot of the DeSoto, and I could tell that he was considering a chase. Instead, he put down his rifle and turned to us.

  “Orders are to find you, get you back,” said Castle, getting out of the jeep.

  Hammett was heading toward the house. I put my arm around J.V. and followed him. Castle removed the jeep’s key and came after us, alert in case Pintacki and his men returned.

  We headed for the kitchen, found food and bottles of cold water in the refrigerator. Castle went in search of the telephone while we ate, drank and got an explanation of the rescue from J.V.

  Major Castle had arrived early that morning and had gone directly to police headquarters—where Chief Spainy said he had no idea where Hammett and I were and he wasn’t exactly sure of how to get to Pintacki’s place. When Castle had left, J.V. had stopped him and volunteered to drive him to Pintacki’s on condition that her brother not get in any trouble. Castle wasn’t a cop. He had orders and Spainy wasn’t part of them. He’d agreed and they had set out on the rescue.

  Conrad had started the shooting but he had been no match for Castle. When Pintacki realized that he had been outclassed, in spite of superior firepower, he had piled his bulldog duo into the DeSoto and taken off.

  My question was: Had he taken off with the damning MacArthur papers or were they still in the house?

  “The papers?” Hammett said, reading my mind.

  “The papers,” I agreed, and we set out to find them. We went in different directions. In a bedroom I knew was Pintacki’s because William S. Hart’s bandana was framed on the wall opposite the bed, I found a table filled with framed and autographed photographs of silent movie stars. I stole one of Wallace Beery dressed as a woman. Back in the early twenties, Beery had been a two-reel comic playing an overgrown Swedish maid. I tucked the picture under my arm and went on looking around the room. There was plenty of crackpot literature on the bookshelves along the wall, including piles of thin books written and published by Pintacki. The titles included:

  American Armageddon: The Quest for a Leader after the Apocalypse

  Political Sanity and the Inspiration of Hollywood

  Yahoo Democracy: It Can’t Work

  Never Trust an Oriental

  One World and All of It America

  War and Peace

  Two hours later we met in the dining room, reasonably sure that the papers weren’t in the house.

  “I should have gone after them,” Castle said.

  “You had orders,” I reminded him.

  He nodded.

  The generator coughed and went dead and we decided it was time to get out of the castle of Mad King Pintacki. We walked out to the jeep, where we found the cat curled up asleep in the back seat. He looked as if he had found water. J.V. drove, Castle rode shotgun, Hammett and I sat in the back seat. I gave her directions to my car but took her on a slight detour to Andrew Lansing’s body.

  He was lying on his back looking up at the sun the way I had left him the night before. A small lizard skittered off his leg and burrowed into the ground.

  Castle barely glanced at the body. His mind was on other things.

  “I’ll tell the Chief,” J.V. said. “He’ll have to put out a bulletin on Pintacki, especially if you sign a kidnapping complaint.”

  We bounced on, leaving Lansing’s body behind us. When we saw the barbed-wire fence and my Crosley right beyond it, J.V. slowed down. Castle got out while the jeep was still moving, pulled a khaki army blanket out from under his seat and ran over to the fence still carrying the rifle. He threw the blanket over the top strand of wire and motioned for J.V. to come ahead. He guided her slowly and expertly over the blanket. The jeep flattened the fence and we jostled over without picking up a flat tire.

  I retrieved my jack from under the fence and my keys from where I’d hidden them. Then we had a motorcade back to Angel Springs, J.V. and me in the Crosley right behind Castle driving the jeep with Hammett at his side, rifle in his lap. I could see as they pulled onto the road ahead of us, Hammett was enjoying himself. No doubt about it.

  When we got back to Angel Springs and pulled in front of the police station, Spainy and two of his men—including Barry, who had arrested Hammett and me in front of Pudge Stone’s house—were waiting for us. Spainy gave J.V. a sour look when she got out of the Crosley with me close behind.

  “Find anything, soldier?” he called out with a grin.

  “Enough,” said Castle. “I’d appreciate your calling in a bulletin on a 1940 DeSoto, blue, California license number 27183. Three occupants. I think you’ll want them for questioning in the murder of one Andrew Lansing. You’ll find Lansing’s body on Pintacki’s land, bullet in the back of his head.”

  “That’s right, Chief,” J.V. said, stepping forward.

  “Pintacki,” Spainy said, biting his lower lip and looking at his sister, then at Barry, trying to find a way out of this.

  “Pintacki,” Castle said again. “And if he and his men are found, I’d appreciate being informed. I’ll call to check with you every two hours.”

  “Every two hours,” Spainy repeated. “Couldn’t be a mistake here someplace, could there?”

  “No,” said Castle.

  “Didn’t suppose,” Spainy said, removing his broad-brimmed hat to wipe his brow with a moist handkerchief. “Didn’t suppose. Okay, J.V. How’s about you get back to work?”

  J.V. looked at me and I nodded. She put her hands on both my cheeks and kissed me, mouth open, wet and long. Then she turned to Chief Spainy defiantly and walked past him into the station.

  Barry smirked and Spainy turned on him.

  “What the hell’s so funny, patrolman?” he said.

  “Nothing, Chief,” Barry said, suddenly sober.

  “Unctuous toad,” Spainy said. “Look that one up, patrolman.”

  “I will, Chief,” Barry said.

  “Like so much mule shit he will,” muttered Spainy. And then aloud, “Anything else you folks would like me doing?”

  Castle, Hammett and I couldn’t think of anything.

  “I’ll be back sometime,” I said, heading for the Crosley.

  “Looking forward to your visit,” Spainy said. “We’ll have a nice chat.”

  Hammett picked up the cat and got into the Crosley. Hammett and I had left some things at Pudge’s house, but neither of us wanted to go back for them. Castle drove the jeep, following us.

  Needing shaves and tired, we drove west away from Angel Springs and headed toward the ocean. We stopped once for gas and sandwiches. Hammett didn’t say anything, just held the cat in his lap and listened to the radio. Finally, a little before nine-thirty at night—after Ezra Stone went out of his Henry Aldrich character and told us to buy U.S. war bonds and stamps—Hammett reached over and turned off the radio.

  “You heard?” he said.

  I knew what he was talki
ng about.

  “I heard,” I said. “Could be some simple explanation.”

  “Could be,” he said. “You think there is?”

  “No,” I said.

  “What are you going to do with it?” he asked, looking ahead toward the blackout-dimmed but still shimmering low outline of Los Angeles.

  “Save it till I get dealt a bad hand,” I said. “Play it soon if I don’t.”

  Hammett nodded.

  I was parked in front of his hotel on Beverly about an hour later. Castle pulled the jeep in behind me. Hammett put the cat down on the seat next to me.

  “Can I give you some advice?” I asked, as he started to close the car door.

  “Give it,” he said.

  “Don’t go back to Shelly,” I said.

  “Shelly?”

  “The dentist,” I said, as Hammett closed the door further to keep the cat from jumping out. “He’s a hack, a quack and a butcher.”

  Hammett smiled, showing ragged teeth mat certainly needed a lot of work. “Thanks for the advice. I’ll think it over.”

  “Thanks for the help,” I said. “If I don’t see you, good luck with the army.”

  I watched him walk up the hotel steps, turn and wave. The dim light of the hotel’s neon sign made him look pale blue. And then he was gone.

  “Peters.” Castle’s voice came from my left through the open window.

  He leaned forward and continued. “Follow me.”

  “Where are we going?” I asked. “I’m tired, hungry and …”

  “Follow me,” he repeated and moved back to the jeep.

  I wanted to complain to the cat, but he had curled up and fallen asleep in the front seat still warm from Hammett. Castle pulled in front of me and I followed him, expecting to take the long ride back to Pasadena. I was wrong. He led me up Coldwater Canyon Drive to the top of the hill and made a sharp left into a driveway. About thirty yards down the driveway, we parked in front of a tennis court next to a new two-story house. Behind the tennis court I could see the moon reflected in a swimming pool. Down to the left I could see the lights of the city that never quite went completely off in spite of blackouts and warnings.

  “Nice view,” I said, following Castle who said nothing.

  We were a dozen feet from the door when it opened and two huge, ugly black dogs bounded out barking and showing lots of teeth.

  “Stop,” Castle commanded and the dogs stopped. One of them skidded about a foot or two but he stopped. Both dogs went silent and I felt my fingernails loosen their hold on my palms.

  “Major,” came a voice from the dark doorway and a young man in slacks, white shirt and tie stepped out, machine gun in hand.

  “At ease, soldier,” Castle said.

  The young man whistled softly and the dogs turned and ran back into the house. Castle led me through the door. By the time we got in, the young man with the gun and the dogs were gone.

  Castle made a right turn through a dimly lit room and moved to a closed door. He knocked and Douglas MacArthur told us to enter.

  We entered. Or rather I entered. Castle let me in and remained outside the door.

  It was a dining room, but a dining room ready for battle, ancient battle. Eight chairs made of heavy wood with big arms and high backs surrounded a massive table of matching wood. Books and magazines were piled on the table. The walls were covered with banners and mounted weapons: maces, axes, crossbows.

  MacArthur stood behind the chair at the head of the table. He was wearing an Oriental kimono with a towel around his neck, smoking a cigarette in a jeweled holder. The General’s hair was smoothed back as if he had just stepped from a shower.

  I was seeing a different MacArthur.

  “Your report, Mr. Peters,” he said.

  I reported.

  “No letters, no money, no papers,” he said softly when I had finished.

  “Not yet,” I said, “but …”

  “The time for my departure is approaching,” he said loud enough to make the dogs howl for an instant before someone quieted them. “If you do not succeed, Roosevelt … there are already rumors that I am about to be appointed ambassador to Russia. I must remain in command of the Pacific. The regimented minds of Roosevelt and those who surround him are not flexible enough to handle quickly the changed situation. They want to make war a science when it is actually an art.”

  “An art,” I echoed, when he paused for response.

  “An art,” he repeated. “Not the mechanistic mania of liberal patronizers of the people. History teaches us that religion and patriotism have always gone hand and hand, while atheism has invariably been accompanied by radicalism, communism, bolshevism, and other enemies of free government.”

  He looked down at an open book on the table and went on, his voice trembling with rage.

  “If we lose this war, and an American boy with a Jap bayonet through his belly and an enemy foot on his dying throat spits out his last curse, I want the name not to be MacArthur, but Roosevelt. I told that to the President and I tell it to you. I can’t afford the luxury of rest. I must be driven by outrage and I want that outrage to recharge you with determination. A day, two at the most, is all you have.”

  There was no handshake this time. MacArthur picked up the open book from the table, walked to the door behind him and left the room.

  Back in the hall, Castle was waiting. He asked no questions. I volunteered no information. He walked me to the front door and I went out into the night. I wasn’t sure I was recharged by MacArthur’s speech but I knew I didn’t want another pep talk from the General. That was motivation enough.

  The cat opened one eye when I got into the car. Then he went to sleep again. I stopped at a Ralph’s Market on the way back home. I picked up some milk, tuna and cold cuts, a new box of Wheaties and a loaf of bread. It was almost eleven when I hit Heliotrope and parked, almost legally, at the corner, half a block away from Mrs. Plaut’s boarding house.

  There were several ways to handle this. I could hide the cat. I wasn’t sure how. He was too big to fit under my Windbreaker and even if he did, I didn’t think I could keep him quiet. I could simply carry him in and hope that Mrs. Plaut was asleep or wouldn’t hear me. That had worked only once in the time I had lived under her sagging roof. Mrs. Plaut did not sleep.

  I picked up the cat, the grocery bag, and the photograph of Wallace Beery, locked the car and walked the half block over and up the stairs. The night was cool and the house dark except for the night light in the hall. Mrs. Plaut’s lights were out. I went up the porch stairs as quietly as I could, and the cat cooperated. I made it through the front door and stopped trying to be quiet. Mrs. Plaut was sitting in the straight-backed wooden chair in the hall, wearing a flannel shirt and work pants with a white shawl over her shoulders. Something that may have once been a radio or a secret Japanese radar-beam detector rested in her lap. She was probing it with a screwdriver, her lips tight, her eyes fixed on something inside the box.

  I walked toward the stairs, knowing I didn’t have a chance but keeping alive the faint spark of hope, a spark that suggested she might be so absorbed in what she was doing that she wouldn’t notice me and the cat.

  “You have a cat,” she said, when my foot hit the first step.

  “I do,” I admitted, turning to her.

  “Is it a he cat or a she cat?” she asked, still probing and lip-pursing.

  “A he,” I said.

  “She cats raise hell and commotion,” she said. “Aunt Isabelle had a she cat named Newz, short for New Zealand where Aunt Isabelle claimed her husband had gone, never to return. Aunt Isabelle was fond of sitting on her porch and saying to all and sundry who might question her vigil, ‘I am waiting for Newz!’”

  “It’s a he,” I said.

  “Prove it,” she said.

  I put down the grocery bag and the photograph of Wallace Beery and held the cat up under his forepaws, his legs dangling, his maleness demonstrated. The cat looked around and licked his
lips. I was sure he smelled Mrs. Plaut’s bird. Mrs. Plaut looked up, craned her neck forward and nodded in acceptance.

  “It’s a he,” she acknowledged. “You can keep him around, providing he stays clean and you feed him.”

  “I’m not going to keep …” I began, but she was back to her screwdriver and had ideas of her own.

  “Have you read my M.S.?” she asked.

  “Your M.S.?”

  “Man-u-scrip,” she explained. “Met a woman at the ration board who writes books about pine drops. She said to call it an M.S., man-u-scrip.”

  “Pine dro … I haven’t finished your manuscript yet,” I said. “Two men have been murdered. I was locked in the tower of a castle in the desert and escaped with the help of an assault by the United States Army.”

  “Excuses,” she said, finally getting some small screw to turn. “Where would my family be if Grandfather Stoltz hadn’t joined the wagon train from St. Louis?”

  “I don’t know.” I said.

  “Probably Sandusky, Ohio,” she supplied pertly.

  “I’ll have it read by tomorrow,” I promised. “I left it in my office before the murders. I’ve got a new photograph of Marie Dressier.”

  I retrieved the Beery photo and handed it to her. She let the radio rest in her lap while she examined the photograph.

  “You’re sure this one is Miss Marie Dressier?” she asked, with suspicion.

  “On the set of Grand Hotel,” I lied.

  She frowned at the photograph, seemed ready to ask another question and changed her mind.

  “I will place it back on the porch,” she said, putting the photograph down next to her chair. “Please do not shoot it again.”

  “I won’t,” I promised.

  “People have been looking for you,” she said, as I tucked the cat under my arm, grabbed the groceries and started up the stairs.

  “People?”

  “A man with no manners who had a case of the pox when he was a child, and two jesters in overalls who looked like my friend Selma Rice’s dogs,” she explained. “I did not like their style. I suggest you seek more amiable friends.”

  “That is my goal in life, Mrs. Plaut,” I said, getting up one more step.