The Devil Met a Lady

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “What do you tell them?” I asked, sipping my Pepsi while the coffee cooled.

  “Lies,” she said. “Everybody who comes to me lives and comes home in one piece, whether I see it or not. Everyone gets married and lives happily ever after. Someone in uniform comes in, like those two in the back …”

  I looked over at the two WACs, who were leaning toward each other and whispering.

  “… I turn off the juice and try not to see anything.”

  “That works?”

  “Sometimes,” Juanita said, with a jingling shrug. “Sometimes I see what I don’t want to see. Truth is, Toby, I can’t just turn it on. I don’t even know what it is. It comes when it wants. Some things help, like the cards or leaves. Drink your coffee.”

  “Don’t tell me things, Juanita.”

  “Just a demonstration, for God’s sake,” she said.

  “Your lipstick is smeared.”

  She reached for a napkin, looked at herself in the mirror behind the counter, and took care of the problem. “Drink the coffee.”

  I put down the Pepsi and drank some coffee. It wasn’t hot. It wasn’t any good either. Manny brought the three tacos, two on the plate and one on the side, wrapped in waxed paper.

  Juanita and I ate our tacos in relative silence and I thought she might have forgotten or given up on looking at my coffee grounds, but I was wrong.

  “You finished?” she asked, as I put the cup down and chomped on the final crispy corner of my second taco.

  I grunted and she pulled the coffee cup in front of her.

  “Oh, shit,” she gasped loudly, after looking into the cup.

  The WACs and the well-dressed old man looked over at us. Manny waddled over.

  “Whatsamatter?” he asked. “Something fall into the coffee? I’ll get you another one. Hold it down. I got customers.”

  “Sorry,” Juanita said, looking up at me. “Just something I saw in the grounds.”

  “I like having you around,” Manny whispered. “You add a little colorful je ne sai quai, if you know what I mean, but please don’t scare the damn customers.”

  “Sorry, Manny,” Juanita said softly.

  Manny shook his head and moved away. The old man and the WACs went back to their meals.

  “Don’t tell me what you saw,” I said.

  “I can’t help it, Toby. It’s a damn curse. I don’t know why a Jewish kid from Jersey woke up one morning and started to see things. It just happened. I had an aunt, Bess, who my cousin said had the Evil Eye, but …”

  “What did you see in the coffee, Juanita?”

  “You know.”

  “How many guesses do I get?” I said, gulping down the last of my taco and pocketing the one in waxed paper as I stood up.

  “Sometimes I get too colorful,” she said, touching my hand. “I’ve got nothing to do so I show off. You know what I’m doing tonight? I’m going to see the new Tyrone Power movie and then I’m going home, maybe listen to the radio, call my sister in New Jersey, and go to bed early. It’s really not …”

  “What did you see, Juanita?”

  “Death,” she said.

  “Whose? When?”

  “The lying man. It’s already happened.”

  “Niles,” I said.

  “No, his name isn’t Niles. I don’t know what his name is, but he’s the second dead man.”

  “What’s it got to do with me?” I asked, putting a buck on the counter and finishing the Pepsi as I stood.

  “The dead man is looking at you,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  Juanita was pale and looking at me with wide eyes. I leaned over and kissed her forehead. She smelled of something that might have been cheap lavender.

  “There’s more than one more, Toby,” she said.

  “More than one more?”

  “Dead man,” she said.

  “Enjoy your movie,” I said, moving toward the door.

  It took me about four minutes from the time I left Manny’s to find out what Juanita was talking about. The office was dark. I stepped in and hit the light switch in the little waiting room. It didn’t work. Nothing unusual. I knew how to avoid the two chairs and the table stacked with old magazines.

  I went through the door into Shelly’s office and heard Dash scurrying across the floor before I found the switch.

  When I turned it on, I found myself looking into the face of Andrea Pinketts, who was seated in Shelly’s dental chair. Dash was sitting on Pinketts’s lap, licking one paw.

  Pinketts’s eyes were opened in surprise and he was looking directly at me. He had one of his thin cigars dangling from his lips, waiting for a match, but there was no point in giving him a light. He was definitely not among the living.

  I took the wrapped taco out of my pocket, pulled off the waxed paper, and placed it on the floor. Dash meowed and jumped down, racing for it.

  I moved to the dental chair and found that Pinketts had one of Shelly’s less-than-clean surgical scalpels buried deeply and professionally in the back of his neck.

  Something else was wrong with the room, besides the dead and not completely cold man in the chair. To the sounds of Dash working on the taco, I did a quick survey. The place was a mess. Shelly’s office was usually a disaster, but it was even worse tonight. Someone had been through it, pulling out drawers, moving cabinets.

  I went to my office. The drawers were out. The Dali picture was down and leaning against the desk. Someone had probably looked behind it. I stepped over the papers, paper clips, and assorted souvenirs of past failures and tried to think, which was no easy trick, since I almost tripped over Fritz’s body on the floor behind my desk.

  His demise had been less clean and surgical, though it had also been from behind. His skull was crushed and bloody and the blood was still wet.

  I opened my window, took in as much night air as I could handle, and sat down on my wooden chair, which someone had pushed off to the corner to make room for Fritz. I sat looking at him and around the room. I don’t know how long I sat. There were no thoughts. It felt numb and relaxing and then I looked up at my door. Maybe it was a sound or just the sense.

  “Toby,” said Jeremy. “Are you hurt?”

  I nodded my head.

  “We saw the light and …”

  “I think I just meditated, Jeremy,” I said, trying to smile as he moved toward me, leaned over the desk, and saw Fritz’s body.

  “What happened?” he asked calmly.

  “Beats hell out of me,” I said, looking at Fritz for an answer.

  “This is one of the men from the street,” he said, examining the corpse.

  “The one you shot-putted,” I said.

  “The other one, in the dental chair?”

  “Part of the Bette Davis case,” I explained. “I suppose I should get up before the cops get here. I’ve got a feeling whoever did this has probably called them, and a cop named Cawelti will be here grinning very soon.”

  “Then,” said Jeremy, lifting me from the chair, “you must return to the palpable world. I suggest, if this has been arranged to implicate you and keep you from finding Miss Davis, that Alice and I clean the suite quickly and arrange for both of the dead to be found elsewhere.”

  “That can get you five years, minimum,” I said, rousing myself. “You and Alice. It’s my problem, Jeremy.”

  “Frequent mayhem and murder may increase the problems of renting office space,” Jeremy said, reaching down to lift Fritz’s body from the floor as Alice appeared in the doorway.

  “The baby is in bed,” she said, looking at me.

  I looked at Alice apologetically, but she was all business.

  “You take the other one,” Jeremy said. “We’ll put them in the alley.”

  Alice disappeared without a word as Jeremy slung Fritz’s body over his shoulder. “Not too much blood,” he said. “Do what you must do, Toby. Alice and I will clean up quickly.”

  I should have stopped them, but I didn’t. I watched Jeremy cart
the body out of my office door, waited a beat or two, and then got up and went back into Shelly’s office. Pinketts’s body was gone and Dash had finished his taco. He sat in the dental chair cleaning himself. I leaned over, crumpled the waxed paper, and threw it toward the overflowing garbage can near the sink. It balanced precariously and didn’t fall.

  I moved into the waiting room, picked up the record where I’d left it under the mess of magazines on the table, and put it carefully in an empty carbon-paper box that had recently been in my bottom desk drawer but was now leaning against the wall. Then I rummaged through Shelly’s strewn debris, avoiding colorful and not-so-colorful half-filled bottles and ancient pamphlets, and found some blueprint drawings of a dental x-ray machine Shelly had considered buying a year earlier. I folded them neatly, placed them in an envelope, scooped Dash up from the dental chair, and went out into the night.

  Luck of a sort was with me. I pulled onto Hoover and saw the flashing lights of a police car weaving through the traffic behind me. I drove slowly, pulled over half a block down next to a fire hydrant, and turned off my lights. The police car parked in front of the Farraday and two people got out. One was a cop in uniform and the other was Cawelti.

  I wondered if Alice and Jeremy would get the place cleaned up in time. I didn’t wonder long. I had a movie star to rescue.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Back in 1916 an outdoor version of Julius Caesar was presented with Tyrone Power, Sr. as Brutus. Spectators sat on the side of a sloping Hollywood hill with the actors below them on a low stage. It was a natural amphitheater and, according to Mr. Hill—the mailman who also lives at Mrs. Plaut’s boardinghouse and claims to have been at the event—thousands attended and heard every word clearly.

  The event was such a success that two years later something called Light of Asia, an inspirational pageant, was staged outdoors at the foot of the hills.

  A series of such outdoor triumphs led Mrs. Christine Wetherill Stevenson, a far-from-broke patroness of the arts, to convince her friends to buy a chicken ranch which included a sloping hillside.

  By 1926 the chicken ranch had been turned into the Hollywood Bowl, complete with stage, seats, lights, and a continuing series of concerts, plays, and inspirational events.

  Anne and I, just after we were married, went to the Hollywood Bowl to see and hear John Philip Sousa’s band. After the concert we made love behind some trees near the bandstand and then stopped on the way to our apartment for chocolate sundaes at Bert’s Drive-In on Sepulveda.

  Well, this was another day and decade. The parking lot was closed. No surprise. I pulled over on the side of the road, told Dash to go to sleep, and picked up the envelope with the x-ray-machine plans and the record in the carbon-paper box. I also removed my .38 from the glove compartment and placed it in my jacket pocket.

  There were stars out and a decently bright if not full moon. I could see well enough to make it across the long empty parking lot. The smell of poultice seemed to have deserted me, but I wasn’t sure. Maybe I had just gotten used to it. My pain wasn’t so bad and my ribs were sore but not throbbing. I wished I had a plan, but the memory of two bodies had dulled the joy of the night and my confidence.

  The Bowl was dark and empty. The stage was bare. I was early. Suddenly I was hit by a blast of light, and a voice rang out. Wiklund’s voice.

  “Plenty of good seats,” he shouted. “Thousands of them. Pick one.”

  The light went off and I tried to blink my way back to night vision but I was blind.

  “Take your time, Mr. Peters,” Wiklund said from the general direction of the stage.

  I stood, one hand in my pocket holding my .38, the other hand clinging to my trading package.

  “You may think your coming a surprise,” said Wiklund from the darkness, “but it is not. To survive is to anticipate. An actor learns this early or perishes. I would have been surprised had Mr. Farnsworth shown up in person.”

  I could make out vague large forms now, and even had the impression of something or someone on the stage.

  “When you can see sufficiently,” said Wiklund, “find a seat so we can get on with the performance.”

  I moved slowly, cautiously, in the general direction of where I thought the front row might be.

  “God, I love the resonance of this place,” said Wiklund. “I’m afraid our lights will have to be minimal for this performance. Too much illumination might attract the air-raid wardens or the police. The night watchman is, unfortunately, tied up and will not be able to attend this performance, which means that we have ample time.”

  Two stage lights came on, not bright, but enough for me to see figures and to make my way to a front-row seat.

  Wiklund, Jeffers, and Bette Davis were on stage. Davis held a champagne glass in her hand. There was a small table in the middle of the stage with an old Victrola record player perched upon it. I figured Stevens—Hans—was somewhere working the lights.

  Bette Davis, dressed in a floor-length green gown glistening with a rainbow of sequins, looked in my direction—her eyes wide, her face revealing nothing. Jeffers was dressed in a tuxedo, as was Wiklund.

  “You are privileged,” said Wiklund. “And Mr. Jeffers and I are honored to share the stage with Miss Davis. We’ve been working on our lines since last night. It’s only a scene, a bit of Oscar Wilde, but …” He shrugged. “Cucumber sandwiches with Miss Davis, who has graciously consented to appear with us, are as good as caviar with a queen.”

  Bette Davis forced a small smile.

  “We are, unfortunately, missing a few subsidiary performers,” Wiklund said as Jeffers looked at his watch and then toward me, less than lovingly. “Mr. Pinketts, Mr. Gray, and the lovely Inez are—”

  “Dead,” I said.

  Wiklund’s confidence wavered.

  “I fail …” he began, looking at Jeffers and then at me.

  “Gray and Pinketts are dead,” I said, “and Inez is on her way to Jersey,” I lied.

  Wiklund was decidedly pale.

  “You killed them?” asked Jeffers, moving forward toward the edge of the stage.

  “No,” I said. “I thought you people might have some idea of who killed them. I have a thought or two. Want to hear?”

  Jeffers and Wiklund looked at each other, and I could see they had a thought or two of their own.

  “I think whoever hired you to get these plans and this record,” I said, holding up the package from under my arm, “wanted to beat you out of your cash. I think whoever hired you has come to the same conclusion I have.”

  “Which is?” asked Wiklund.

  “That you are,” said Bette Davis, stepping forward, “a company of amateurs, both as criminals and as performers.”

  The scene didn’t look like any play I’d ever seen. I hadn’t seen many plays, but I liked the way it was going, and Bette Davis and I were getting all the good lines.

  “You said …” Wiklund said.

  “Many things,” said Davis, moving close to Wiklund, who backed away. “Many things to convince you that I planned to cooperate. But do you want to know what I think, what I’ve thought since I encountered you?”

  She turned dramatically on Jeffers, who had moved menacingly toward her. “And you,” she said. “You are suited for nothing better than low comedy. Your timing is terrible. Your voice is weak. Vaudeville, if it still existed, would reject you, and burlesque would place you at its outer fringes.”

  Jeffers’s hand came up, but Davis proved her point about timing by throwing her drink in his face.

  I put my package down on the seat next to me and applauded.

  “This is all wrong,” Wiklund said as Davis and Jeffers glared at each other, and wine or water dribbled down Jeffers’s face. “You’re lying about Pinketts and Gray.”

  “You’ve been upstaged, Wiklund,” I shouted.

  Someone was moving toward me out of the darkness near the stage.

  “Stop it,” shouted Wiklund. “You’ve ruined the scen
e, my moment.”

  Bette Davis had turned her back on Jeffers and was facing Wiklund again. Her hands were on her hips and she was looking at him with amused pity, a reaction he did not want to field.

  “The scene is over,” said Davis.

  Wiklund’s face was bright red. “Mr. Stevens?” he called.

  “I’m here,” said Stevens, stepping in front of me.

  “Take the package from Mr. Peters and dispatch him,” he said.

  I had my gun out and pointed at Stevens’s stomach as he took a step toward me. “Let Miss Davis walk down the steps and join me,” I said, “or no package.”

  “No,” shouted Wiklund. “She stays up here till I am convinced that you have given me the genuine article.”

  “Impasse again,” I said.

  “Hell, no,” said Jeffers, pulling a gun out of his tux and aiming it at Davis.

  I handed the package to Stevens, who grinned, took it, turned his back on me and my weapon, and moved to the edge of the stage where Wiklund came forward to take it.

  Wiklund moved to the Victrola, tore open the carbon-paper box, and placed the record on the machine. He hit a switch and stood back. The speaker crackled and the needle picked up the first scratches before the voice of Kate Smith burst out with “God Bless America.”

  Things moved fast now. Bette Davis kicked Jeffers between the legs. The gun in his hand went off, sending a wild bullet into the Victrola and cutting Kate Smith off in mid “land that I love.” Davis took Jeffers’s gun hand and bit it. The gun fell to the stage. Davis tried another kick at the bent-over Jeffers, but his arm went out and he blocked it as he went to his knees groping for his gun.

  Wiklund hesitated, but Stevens turned toward me and reached into his jacket. Before he could get it out a shot went off, echoing through the Hollywood Bowl.

  “Nobody moves and nobody touches metal,” came the calm deep voice of Lieutenant Steve Seidman.

  The trio on stage froze in a drawing-room tableau as Seidman moved down the aisle between the seats and a pair of uniformed cops stepped in on either side of the stage.

  “You followed me,” I said.