The Man Who Shot Lewis Vance

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “Keep the difference,” Wayne said. “You did a good job.”

  “I was hoping you’d say that.”

  “Mr. Peelers,” Mrs. Plaut shouted. “I do not wish to miss the canapes.”

  “Listen,” the Duke said languidly. “We’re having a preview showing of my new picture, Shepherd of the Hills, at the Los Feliz Monday night at nine. If you can make it, I think you might get a kick out of it. Remember my dad?”

  “Doc Morrison?”

  “The druggist, right. Back in Glendale. I play a frontier druggist named Doc Morrison in the picture. Means something a little special to me. I’d like you to be there.”

  “Can I bring—”

  “Anyone you like,” he pitched in with a laugh. “See you.”

  “Time is money,” Mrs. Plaut shouted as I hung up the phone. I didn’t see how the homily applied in this case. I dropped another nickel and called Chaplin’s house. The slow butler answered and I told him I’d like to come over later to give Mr. Chaplin something. The phone went silent and I waited, listening to Mrs. Plaut begin a story to Gunther about one of her relatives named Trumpeter who dug up Indians.

  “Mr. Chaplin says you are welcome to drop by anytime after four and before seven.”

  “Suits me,” I said, and hung up.

  We took the Crosley instead of Gunther’s Oldsmobile with the built-up gas pedals because the Crosley used less gas. Mrs. Plaut was not wearing the Aurex, but I could see as she sat next to me, clutching the box in her lap, chattering about tardiness, photographs, and the rationing of tea, that she was playing with it in her open purse. Gunther fit neatly into the small rear seat below eye level. Since he said not a word all the way to the Farraday, I had to fight the urge to lean back and be sure he was still there. The wedding gift sat in the front seat by my side.

  It was an odd time for a wedding, a Friday afternoon, but Jeremy and Alice wanted a weekend honeymoon. It made parking a little tough. I couldn’t park at Arnie’s and make Mrs. Plaut walk. She had never demonstrated the slightest inclination toward frailty, but the afternoon was hot and she was wearing her best dress and I knew that Gunther didn’t enjoy two-block hikes with people staring at him.

  I think I made it into a legal space on Ninth. It was close. A heartless cop could have given the city the benefit of the doubt. I took the chance. I had the money for the ticket and the prospect of getting more.

  Nothing was different in the Farraday lobby. Our footsteps echoed and distant sounds of voices and doors echoed in the darkness. We took the elevator, and Mrs. Plaut, when we hit the second floor, asked me if I knew how the hearing aid worked. I told her I thought so, but Gunther indicated that he had done the translation for the directions to a hearing aid and was sure he could explain. He explained quickly and Mrs. Plaut listened intently with a squint as the elevator came to a stop on three.

  I opened the door and let Mrs. Plaut out. Gunther, carrying the gift, paused and motioned for me to bend down to catch a secret.

  “Did you see the vehicle following us?” he said.

  “I saw it Gunther, Pontiac. One man. Car needed some body work. He was looking for a parking space behind us.”

  “Why?” Gunther asked.

  “Who?” I asked. Since we had no answers for each other we followed Mrs. Plaut down the hall, got ahead of her, and led her to Jeremy Butler’s office-apartment. We were late. Not very late, but late. Music was playing when we opened the door. The music was provided by a man with a thatch of white hair wearing a frayed shirt and dark tie. He was playing the flute.

  “The second movement of Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 2,” Gunther informed me as we eased into the room.

  The ceremony was about to start and the room wasn’t all that crowded. Jeremy, suited and tied, nodded at me and I nodded back across the room. Alice the broad-beamed beamed in a new pink blouse and blue skirt that covered her muscles. It would be nice to say she looked beautiful. She didn’t but she did look a little softer. Her brown hair was loose in the back and turned out to be almost down to her waist. The minister was a guy named Jacomo Huston from the Church of Shiva on 16th. Jeremy and Jacomo carried on long arguments on philosophy and religion in Pershing Park. They drew great crowds. I’d heard their act a couple of times and thought someone should grab them for an educational radio show.

  I avoided the eyes of Madame Carpentier and those of Mildred Minck, who tried to make contact, maybe to hypnotize me into paying Shelly more rent. I wondered if Shelly had told her I wouldn’t pay. From her look I guessed he hadn’t. From Shelly’s pale smile I could tell he hadn’t. The two cakes were laid neatly out along with bottles of Roma white wine and Pepsi plus a big pot of coffee. Gunther placed our gift on the table in the corner with the other gifts.

  “If we are—” the Reverend Jacomo Huston began, but the door burst open and Phil entered. I thought at first he was looking for me, the $10,000, and the papers from the Alhambra safe. I had visions of the two of us punching it out and rolling over cake and guests. But right behind Phil came his pale, thin wife, Ruth, carrying year-old Lucy and behind them my nephews, Nate and Dave. Dave spotted me downing a Pepsi and shouted over flute and reverend, “Uncle Toby, Uncle Toby, did you shoot anybody yet today?”

  Nate put his hand over his brother’s mouth but Dave struggled free and made his way over to me.

  “I don’t see any new cuts or holes,” Dave said, looking up.

  “I’m a mess under the suit,” I confided.

  Dave smiled. “Great,” he said.

  “If we can now begin,” the reverend tried again, and he began.

  The ceremony was brief and didn’t make a hell of a lot of sense to me, stuff about merging with the all, being tranquil, being what one is meant to be. The kids fidgeted, Lucy made demands, and the guy with the flute used his instrument to scratch his head. Madame Carpentier kept glancing at me and I did a good job of pretending to concentrate on the ceremony. I couldn’t see Gunther. He was below and behind someone or something.

  “Bombs and bodies fall,

  Spirits in turmoil call

  and claim our vision,

  our hearing or senses

  demanding that we place

  one foot in the past and

  one in the future straddling

  the present; But we are in the hall

  of now and the shadows standing tall

  should not move us from the one

  at our side; The present is our obligation.

  Forsake not history or tomorrow’s dreams

  but honor the now and abandon schemes

  that promise whispers instead of sweat

  and love.”

  “Amen,” said Mrs. Plaut and everyone added their “amens,” though I wasn’t sure we had heard a prayer.

  “Is it over?” Nate whispered hoarsely to me so everyone could hear.

  “I now pronounce you man and wife,” answered Jacomo Huston. Jeremy and Alice embraced and exchanged a small kiss before turning to the small gathering with gentle smiles. The flutist started something else and Gunther appeared at my side, slightly smaller than ten-year-old Nate, to tell me that the piece was Vivaldi’s Recorder Concerto in D.

  A good time was had by all, at least by most. I kept Nate and Dave nearby for protection, but it didn’t stop Phil from coming over to me after he had picked up a piece of chocolate cake.

  “Nice,” he said. He was sweating with about twenty extra pounds.

  “Nice,” I agreed, looking over the group.

  I glanced at Phil, who appeared ready to say something more, changed his mind, and moved away. I waved at Ruth and Lucy across the room. Lucy had spilled Pepsi over herself and her mother.

  The presents were opened. Shelly and Mildred gave a card promising six months of free dental care to the newlyweds. Madame Carpentier’s gift was a pair of matching Egyptian health necklaces. Mrs. Plaut’s gift was a pair of hand-knit sweaters, both of which looked too small for the happy couple. Phil and Rut
h gave an orange juice squeezer, and Gunther and I gave a vacuum cleaner, a rebuilt Royal Eureka, bought for $12.95 from the L.A. Furniture Company on South Broadway.

  When I finally made my way to Jeremy to wish him and Alice good luck, he asked me, “Is everything settled, with those two in your office?”

  “The pineapples? All settled. My life’s in order, Jeremy. Enjoy your honeymoon.”

  “Darkness and light, Toby,” he said, clutching my hand. “Remember there can be no light without darkness. No joy without sorrow. Life is not life without contrast.”

  “I’ll remember that, Jeremy,” I said, which proved to be the right answer. He released my hand, and I turned around to find myself facing Madame Carpentier.

  “Nice dress,” I said.

  She finished off the glass of white wine and shook her head at me. “You can call me Charmaine,” she said.

  “Nice dress, Charmaine,” I said, trying to ease past her to the strains of Vivaldi and conversation. I pretended to wave to someone I desperately had to get to in the corner. There wasn’t room to get by unless Madame Carpentier backed off.

  “The three are dead,” she said.

  “Yes, but—” I started.

  “And now someone follows you,” she added, licking cake frosting from her fingers.

  “I’d rather not—”

  “You have no choice. He will find you. This cake is too dry. Not enough butter.”

  “Butter is hard to come by,” I said. “There’s a war on.”

  Half an hour later, after telling Dave and Nate how their father had saved my life by putting a pair of bullets in Straight-Ahead and avoiding Shelly and Mildred downing two more Pepsis and a piece of cake shaped like a book, I scooped up Mrs. Plaut and Gunther and departed.

  “Weddings make the Plaut women weep,” said Mrs. Plaut, clutching her purse. She wasn’t weeping. Gunther looked unusually sober and said nothing.

  I drove them back to Heliotrope, noting the Pontiac on my tail.

  “Toby,” Gunther said from the backseat.

  “I see,” I answered.

  When I dropped them at the door, Mrs. Plaut said, “Photographs tomorrow morning.”

  “I tremble with anticipation,” I said, grinning.

  “I’ve told you about sarcasm,” she said, her face at my open car window. “Cousin Gaylord never recovered from it.”

  “Try the Aurex,” I said. “It’d be a shame to have it go to waste.”

  “Be careful, Toby,” Gunther called, looking back down the street to where the Pontiac had pulled in.

  I pulled away and spent the next twenty minutes losing the guy in the Pontiac. He wasn’t a pro but he was determined. He ran a couple of lights on 8th Street, cut off a flower truck on Alameda, and almost kissed my bumper on Banning. Luckily for him he was trailing a yellow Crosley that was easy to spot and had the pickup of a kiddie car. I pulled into a driveway on Inez right near Hollenbeck Park when I lost eye contact with him after a left turn. I drove right into some guy’s open garage and cut the engine. In my rearview from the shadows of the garage I saw the Pontiac speed down the street.

  “What are you doing?” came a voice and then a face through my passenger window. The face belonged to a man who looked like Lionel Barrymore.

  “Good afternoon,” I said. “Mr. Barrymore?”

  “No,” he responded. My name is Harris, Anton Harris.”

  “You’re not an actor?”

  “I’m a tree surgeon,” he said. “And you’re in my garage. You really think I look like Lionel Barrymore?”

  “Yes,” I said, checking for the Pontiac in the mirror.

  Anton Harris smiled. “I always thought so,” he said. “But Betty and the kids don’t think I look like anybody.”

  I left Anton Harris, sure he would make for the nearest mirror, and backed into Inez. No Pontiac. I took a right, watching my rnirror, and slowly made my way back to 14th Street. I parked a block away from Straight-Ahead’s apartment and locked the car. I also paid two Mexican kids who should have been in school fifty cents to watch my car, with the promise of another fifty cents when I came back.

  No one stopped me from entering the apartment building. No baby cried this time as I went up the stairs. I looked at Straight-Ahead’s door. There was a padlock on it and a sign indicating that no one was to enter without police permission. Someone had already written an obscenity on the sign. I went up to the roof. No one was there. No one had found the box with the files and cash.

  I made my way back to the street and to my car. The two kids were there and my hubcaps were still in place. I gave them each another quarter as I had promised and drove away.

  I hit Chaplin’s place at five and went through the same procedure to get in. The butler walked even slower this time but he didn’t lead me into the house. We walked around it and he pointed down the hill and beyond the tennis court. That was as far as my guide was going to go. The rest of the safari was up to me.

  Chaplin was sitting in a clearing beyond the tennis courts. The clearing was covered in concrete and in the center was a sewer with a manhole cover. Chaplin was sitting on a rock with his legs folded and his chin on his fist. He wore a loose-fitting white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow and a pair of dark trousers, creaseless and trim.

  “Mr. Chaplin,” I said softly.

  He seemed to be hypnotized by the manhole cover. Finally, he sighed and spoke without looking up at me.

  “There are comic possibilities to a manhole cover that have never been explored,” he said. “I mean the cover itself, not the hole. The trick is to take a natural object and turn it into a symbolic prop.”

  “Like the globe balloon in The Great Dictator or the buns in The Gold Rush,” I said.

  Chaplin looked up at me and cocked his head to one side like a small bird. “Precisely,” he said. “The manhole cover can be made of wood, a light wood but not too light. It must look heavy and have a sense of solidity, but not the weight. It is the door to our foul refuse. I’ll open that Pandora’s box and engage in a display with the cover, balancing, dancing, perhaps using it to ward off villainous pursuers. No, it lacks meaning. A plate to eat from? No …”

  “A wheel you can put on a car that just lost one,” I suggested, getting into the spirit. “The manhole cover replaces the missing wheel so you can escape. Then the guy following you falls into the open hole.”

  Chaplin eyed me for as long as a minute.

  “Possibilities,” he said. “I doubt I’ll use it at all but it has possibilities. You’ve come to report on your investigation of the Larchmonts. Bascomb said you have something for me.”

  Chaplin’s eyes fell on the box under my arm. I sat on the rock next to him and made a show of opening the box. The money was in an envelope. I opened the envelope, showed him the contents, and handed it to him. His eyes opened wide.

  “It’s all here?”

  “Count it,” I said. “The Larchmonts are out of business, at least in California. You want the details?”

  “That won’t be necessary,” he said. “Neither will I need to count this other than the five hundred dollars we agreed upon.”

  He counted off the five hundred in fifty-dollar bills and handed them to me. I stuffed the wad into my front pocket.

  “You’ll stay for dinner, I trust,” he said, rising. “My sons are home and we are having squab. After which I plan to tell some particularly blood-curdling ghost stories.”

  “Not tonight,” I said, standing.

  Chaplin walked me up the hill. He looked even smaller outdoors than he had inside a few days earlier, but he also looked healthier.

  “You’ll come Sunday to the little party I have planned?” he said. “I would like to propose a small but not insignificant role for you in the film on which I am now working.”

  “If nothing else comes up, but I think I’ll pass on the acting.”

  “As you wish,” he said at the gate, holding his hand out. I shook it and he said, “
And the papers. What do you plan for them?”

  “I’ll build a little raft and burn them at sea, like Beau Geste.”

  Chaplin shook his head. “A romantic, but, ah, so too am I.”

  He let me out and I turned to watch him hurry back up the path. He didn’t waddle like the tramp and he wasn’t wearing the costume. The hair was almost white instead of black but it was the same curly hair. All the scene needed was “The End” to come up out of the lawn.

  I got in the Crosley and drove back downtown. It was too late to get to the bank. I had six hundred bucks. The world was mine. I could move into a new office. I knew I wouldn’t but it was good to know I could.

  Instead of heading for the office, I drove over to Spring and went into Levy’s for the Friday special. I asked Carmen if she wanted to go to a John Wayne premiere on Monday. Maybe even meet the Duke. It was fine with Carmen, who managed a dark smile. Before the waiter served me the soup at the corner table I had picked out so I could watch Carmen breathe, I went into the kitchen. The chef was a Negro named Walter. We had talked a couple of times. He was the best Jewish cook in Los Angeles.

  “Got a fire going?” I asked.

  Walter, sweating from the heat of the kitchen, pointed to the stove.

  “You mind?” I asked.

  Walter was too busy with the dinner trade to answer with more than a nod. I burned the letters and papers two or three at a time and swept the ashes into the garbage can in the corner. It took about five minutes.

  “Thanks, Walter,” I said.

  “I gave you the stuffed peppers ’stead of the fish,” he said. “Trust me.”

  “I do,” I said. “Thanks.”

  When I got back to my table the cabbage soup and the stuffed peppers were waiting. So was a well-dressed blond young man.

  “You’re Toby Peters,” he said in a foreign accent.

  “And you’ve been following me around in a Pontiac,” I said, crumbling some crackers into my soup and smiling over his shoulder at Carmen.

  “A friend of mine needs your help,” he said.

  “I’m going on vacation,” I said, taking a mouthful of cabbage soup. When I was a kid I had hated cabbage soup, but at some point I couldn’t remember, I had decided I loved the stuff. It didn’t beat a good bowl of Wheaties, but it was close.