You Bet Your Life: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Three)

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  The knock at the door was sharp and hard. It broke through shadows and split the smoke-filled shafts of light in the hidden corners of the room and my mind. The five of us froze, staring at the door. The knock came again, followed by a cheery English voice.

  “Hello in there. I’m afraid I’ve forgotten something rather important in there. Mind opening up for a moment?”

  A thick palm smelling like garlic, urine, and tobacco covered my mouth.

  “Come now,” said English. “I hear you in there and I simply must have what I left. It’s quite valuable. I’d dislike my alternative, but if I do not get in I’ll have to solicit the aid of the police.”

  “Let him in,” croaked Costello.

  The juke box man turned, slid the bolt and opened the door. English walked in, carrying his coat. He squinted into the darkness. When his eyes adjusted, he saw me.

  “Ah, there you are. Heard the noise and thought you might be in some need of aid.”

  I managed a grummph through Costello’s fingers.

  “Sorry,” English said to Costello. “I really can’t make out what he’s saying. Could you remove your hand from his face?”

  “Get out of here,” grunted Costello. “And forget what you see. That’s good advice.”

  English scratched his head.

  “Sorry, again, but that just wouldn’t be possible.”

  The juke box man had moved behind English and had his arms out waiting for the signal from Costello. I couldn’t warn him, but he didn’t need my warning. English’s left elbow shot back blind, catching the juke box just below the rib cage. While he bellowed in pain, English spun around, pulled the man’s glasses off and threw his coat over the guy in the sweaty white shirt. He punched at the covered head and the coat and man went down.

  Costello let go of me and made a rush at English, while Chaney reached in his jacket. I caught Chaney around the knees, and he went down with me on top of him, aiming a fist in the general direction of his face. Costello moved low with his arms out like a wrestler. English met him straight up with his right hand out. He moved out of the path of the rush and grabbed for Costello’s hair, but there wasn’t any. Costello caught English in the stomach with his head, but English was backing away from the awkward turn and used the heavier man’s move forward to pull him off balance by grabbing his collar. Costello went sailing in a midair somersault and hit the tile floor with a thud that shook the room. The whole thing couldn’t have taken more than a few seconds. My wind was back and I was still on top of Chaney, who was hitting me in the side and head with wide punches that must have been hell on his knuckles and were doing my head no good at all.

  White Shirt had the coat off his head and was going for his holster. I saw him. English saw him too, but we weren’t close enough to do anything about it, and neither of us had a gun. A rush would bring a bullet through the top of one of our skulls. English pulled out his fountain pen. Maybe he knew it was the end and was going to write a quick will or down a small supply of Bourbon and branch water hidden in the pen’s bladder.

  I was on my feet ready for a heroic rush at White Shirt, whose gun was just coming out, when-something popped in the Englishman’s fountain pen and a thin blast of what looked like steam and liquid hit White Shirt in the face. By the time I had taken two steps, White Shirt was choking in pain with his hands covering his face. I was near enough so some of the gas made me feel clammy and a little sick. Unable to see, White Shirt let loose with a couple of wild shots in our direction. One of them hit Costello, who was in a sitting position a dozen feet away. His right hand went to his shoulder and he yowled.

  With his neat handkerchief over his mouth, the Englishman walked up to White Shirt and hit his gun hand with an open palm. The gun skidded across the floor and let out another protest shot on its own. The shot cracked the metal hide of a slot machine, sending it berserk.

  “Think that’s about it, don’t you?” said English, putting his handkershief back in his pocket and picking up his coat. He seemed in no hurry, but I was. Somewhere in the dark, Chaney was probably on his hands and knees reaching for his gun.

  We stepped over the juke box man’s groaning body, went through the two doors and into the night. I was sweating. The cold air hit me like dry ice. English pointed to a small foreign car right at the door, and I hurried in. My coat was on the seat.

  When he had gotten in his side slowly and straightened his coat, he lit a cigarette, placed it in his pearl holder, and explained, “Only coat left. I assumed it must be yours.”

  “It is,” I said, throwing a look at the door of the Fireside. Chaney staggered out into the cold, looked our way and lifted his gun. English glanced at him casually and pulled away, kicking up gravel as a bullet spat through the side window a foot from his head. He didn’t seem to notice. We were out of range when the second shot came.

  “Now,” he said with a smile. “Where am I to take you?”

  “LaSalle Hotel on LaSalle as fast as you can get there. I’d better check out and find someplace safer. Thanks for what you did back there.”

  “My pleasure,” he grinned, raising an eyebrow.

  “You were pretty cool.”

  “Was I?” he said happily. “I was petrified. Never did anything like that before, but it doesn’t do to let the enemy know, and it was damned exhilarating, wasn’t it?”

  The way back was through Cicero and the South Side of Chicago, with the sun just thinking about coming up. We sped past low wooden homes with early morning smoke coming from their brick chimneys and heavy-faced men with lunch pails waiting for streetcars. I watched and told English my tale of Hollywood, Capone, the Marx Brothers, and the Nitti acting society.

  I said it had all been great fun and told him some of my other fun in the private detective business. We exchanged further tales. My tale was something out of Dime Detective. The story he told sounded like Beau Geste.

  He was the second of three brothers from a rich banking family. His father had been a member of Parliament and had been killed in the last war. His mother had sent him to Eton, where he had been a pretty fair athlete and had broken his nose in a soccer game. Then things had gone downhill. He was booted out of a place called Sandhurst for chasing girls and sent someplace in the Austrian mountains where he found more girls, learned German, French, and Russian, and took up skiing.

  Then he moved on to a short shot at banking, gave up, became a reporter, and found his calling just when England went to war with Germany. He had been recruited by British Naval Intelligence and was now a Lieutenant in the Special Branch of the Royal Naval Volunteers. At present he was stationed someplace in Canada he couldn’t tell me about.

  He pulled up next to the LaSalle. Before getting out, I struggled into my coat and looked around for a waiting car or suspicious face. I saw none. I opened the door and reached over to shake English’s hand.

  “My name’s Peters,” I said, “Toby Peters.”

  “Good to meet you, Toby Peters,” he said. “I’m staying at the Ambassador if you need someone to share any further adventures. My name’s Ian Fleming.”

  6

  There was no one in the LaSalle Hotel lobby except a drowsing bellhop whose uniform buttons needed polishing. Curtis Katz was at the desk looking just slightly wilted at the end of an all-night shift. He gave me the hint of a smile.

  “I’m checking out,” I said. “Get my bill ready. I’ll be right down.”

  “I hope it wasn’t—”

  “No,” I said, hurrying to the elevator. “Urgent business back in Hollywood. Gable needs me. You know how it is.”

  Katz knew how it was. The elevator boy put his newspaper down and brought me up to six. By the time I reached my door, the power of Ian Fleming’s elixir had just about worn off. I turned the key and kicked the door open with my foot. No one shot at me. I switched on the light, did a quick check of the bathroom and closet, put on my holster and .38, and snapped one of the locks of my suitcase (the other was broken when I bou
ght it). Since I had never unpacked, the whole process took me about two minutes.

  I paid Katz with a check when I got back to the lobby. My account in L.A. might just barely cover it, and I couldn’t afford to give up any cash. I was heading for the door when Katz called, “Wait.”

  “Yes?” I said nervously, looking down through the pattern of scratches on my watch, to show I was in a hurry.

  “You have a message.” He got the message while I watched the entrance doors for a familiar face with a machine gun under it.

  “Mr. Marx called from Las Vegas,” preened Katz. “Said he and his brothers would arrive at Midway Airport here at noon. I presumed you’d know who Mr. Marx was.”

  “I do know, Curtis,” I said, leaning over the counter confidentially. “I can call you Curtis, can’t I?”

  “Certainly,” he smiled.

  “Good,” I beamed back. “Mr. Marx is a producer. We’re thinking of shooting a movie with Gable here in Chicago. It’s important that no one know Mr. Marx is in town. So if anyone comes looking for me, don’t give them the information. Might be reporters or a rival studio. You know how those things are?”

  He knew how those things were. I strongly suggested that his cooperation would be borne in mind when the decision was made to shoot the picture. There would be good jobs and small roles for friends.

  There were no cabs around, and the morning sun was already high enough by now to keep the streets from having any good shadows to jump into. There were some people on the streets, probably hotel workers, pickpockets, and confused drunks who had lost their way. I didn’t think the presence of a few people would stop Nitti’s friends from gunning me down on LaSalle Street.

  I ran across the street. My suitcase bounced as if it was about to split, and my holster and gun put a weight on my chest I didn’t like. I pushed through the nearest revolving door.

  Stepping back into the lobby of an office building, I watched a familiar big black Cadillac pull up in front of the LaSalle. Two men jumped out. One was Costello, with his right arm in a sling. The other was the juke box man. Chaney was at the wheel of the car. He looked right at the building I was in, but I was sure the lobby was dark enough.

  Two things had probably given me the time to get out of the LaSalle. I had hoped for one or both and had been rewarded. Costello was whatever brains the group of muscle had, and he didn’t have much. He didn’t want to call Nitti or Servi and tell them that I got away if he didn’t have to. He probably could have put in a call and had someone waiting for me when Fleming and I drove up at the LaSalle, but Costello was counting on getting me without help and without admitting a failure. He had also stopped to get his arm bandaged and put in a sling.

  Costello ran into the LaSalle and came back out in less than two minutes. He didn’t look as if he had found out much if anything from Katz. Before he got back in the car, he looked around the street, but he didn’t see me or anything else of interest. I gave them three more minutes to get out of the neighborhood and made a dash for a taxi that pulled up in front of the LaSalle to let someone out.

  “Midway Airport,” I told the cabbie. On the way, I considered the possibility that Costello might call Nitti and they might have a couple of people at airports and train stations to stop me from leaving. Then I figured that Nitti probably wouldn’t bother. He hadn’t been kicked around by a middle-aged detective and a stylish Englishman. Nitti would probably be happy to have me get out of town. Costello and his chums might think otherwise, but they’d have to report to Servi or Nitti before too much time passed, or risk their own heads on the train tracks.

  The trip to Midway was long. I blew my nose a few times, dozed off a few more times, and ignored the driver. When we got to the airport, I paid him off and hurried inside. I found a washroom, shaved, and changed my shirt. Then I found a coffee shop, had some Wheaties with sliced bananas, and bought a newspaper.

  I found the waiting room where the Marx Brothers flight would come in, but I was hours early. I took a seat in the middle of a group of guys who looked like businessmen and were talking about options.

  The paper told me it was Saturday. It also told me that snow would fall, that five senators didn’t like some war bill, and that slot machines were running wide open in the northern suburbs of Cook County. I could have shown them a few in the western suburb of Cicero, too. I also found out that British raiders had bombed Nazi bases in Sicily. That wasn’t what I was looking for. I paused over a story of some kids in Sag Harbor, New York, at a place called Pierson High School. Some of the students had dressed up as storm troopers and started to bully others to show how it feels. There was a picture with the story, showing some girls scrubbing a sidewalk with the young storm troopers standing over them. J. Edgar Hoover was asking for seven hundred more FBI men to help curb Nazi spies. Then I found what I was looking for. Tony Zale had KO’d Mamkos in the fourteenth. Zale had gone down in the fifth, and the fight had been close up until the knockout.

  Content, I fell asleep. My dream was about men with different mustaches, all leering and chasing me around a gym. There was a Groucho mustache, a Servi mustache, a Katz mustache, a Hitler mustache. I started throwing balls and gradually worked my way up through baseballs, basketballs and medicine balls. None of them stopped the attack, and my old pal Koko didn’t materialize to save me. I ran through a door and found myself in downtown Cincinnati. I woke up with a groan and a massive sneeze. No one was sitting next to me. I had just enough time to lug my suitcase to a newsstand, buy some aspirin, gulp down a half dozen, and make it back to the waiting room when the Las Vegas plane came in.

  Nobody looking like Marx Brothers came off in the first batch. I was about to give up when I heard the familiar screen voice of Groucho saying,

  “The least Perry Mason could have done was meet us here.”

  The voice came out of a short, erect dark man with a decidedly Jewish face. He was flanked by two slightly older men his own size who looked like twins. I stepped in front of the three men and spoke to one of the twins.

  “Chico Marx?” I tried.

  “That’s Harpo,” said Groucho. “And it’s pronounced Chick-o, because he’s a chick chaser. Well, whoever you are, you didn’t waste any time in trying to sell us brushes.” He looked down at my suitcase.

  “I’m Peters,” I said.

  “We’re Wheeler and Zoolsey and El Brendel,” said Groucho, whose bad mood was spreading beyond the four of us.

  “I’m Chico,” said one of the men who looked like twins. He held out his hand and I took it. “These are my brothers, Groucho and Harpo.”

  “Our real names are Julius, Leonard arid Arthur,” said Groucho, “but the last person who called us that is still locked in the bathroom of Loew’s State.”

  Clumps of people went past us, but no one gave even the hint of recognizing the famous brothers. I would have missed them myself if I hadn’t heard Groucho’s voice. Chico’s voice, as I knew, was nothing like his screen voice.

  An idea hit me, but I needed time to put it together.

  “Well,” said Groucho, “are you going to erect a tent so we can have a noon tea, or are we going to get off of this elephant path?”

  I led them to the coffee shop. While they ordered lunch, I did some fast explaining, giving the whole story of the search for Servi and Nitti’s refusal to listen.

  “So, you’re telling us Chico should pay $120,000 he doesn’t owe,” said Groucho.

  “No,” I said.

  “I see, I see,” said Groucho. “You’re telling us Chico should pay and should wait until somebody with a pushed-in face—no offense—”

  “None taken,” I said.

  “Some guy with a pushed-in face,” Groucho went on, “turns him into Swiss cheese.”

  “No,” I said.

  “You’re a sterling judge of options, Peters,” said Groucho, turning his attention to a chicken sandwich. “And I’d like to sit around this Chicago version of Ciro’s for days, but we’ve got to thro
w ourselves on the mercy of someone fast. Just lead us to this Servi character and we’ll work something out.”

  “Now wait a minute, Grouch,” said Chico quietly, while Harpo ate silently with eyes never leaving his brothers. “Maybe Toby has a plan.”

  “I’ve got a plan,” said Groucho. “You sign legal papers turning all your earnings over to me so things like this don’t happen again. You’ve gambled away more money than you’ve earned, and that’s a lot of gambling.”

  “Come on, Grouch,” sighed Chico. “We gonna go through that again?”

  “No, no. Sorry to bring it up and ruin your lunch. Just pretend I didn’t say anything. We’ll just go on forever making movies so you can keep ahead of your debts. We’re middle-aged men. We should be bouncing grandchildren and planting petunias. Instead we run around getting hit by trains, falling off horses, and getting punched by heavies.”

  It sounded like my life. I let them talk for a few more minutes while I ate an egg sandwich. The three of them had obviously been through this so many times that they knew the routine. Harpo apparently wanted no part of it.

  “O.K., Peters,” sighed Groucho, finishing off his sandwich. “What’s your plan—though I know I shouldn’t ask.”

  “The three of you go to a hotel,” I said. “You know any hotels in Chicago?”

  “We used to live here back in the vaudeville days,” said Chico. “We know the town. How about the Palmer House? There’s usually a good card game or two.”

  “This is against my better judgment, but we’ll be at the Drake,” said Groucho.

  “And,” I went on, “don’t register with your own names.”

  “I almost never do,” said Groucho, “but then again, it’s not because I’m hiding with my brothers. We’ll give you two days for your plan.”

  “Fair enough. You sit tight and don’t call anybody. I’ve got an idea that may get you out of this, but it will take me a day or so to set it up.”