Think Fast, Mr. Peters

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  Shelly was leaning over a patient when I stepped into his office. He heard the door and glanced over his shoulder with a pudgy pout. I don’t think it’s safe to look away from someone when you have a drill in his mouth but then I don’t think it’s safe in Shelly’s chair at any time.

  “I’m going out to look for Mildred,” I said, moving to the small table in the corner behind the dental chair. I rummaged through old magazines and crumpled brown bags that once contained food of some ilk. I made my way to the framed photograph of Mildred Minck that was always pulled out and placed prominently on the table when the formidable Mrs. Minck made it clear that she was paying one of her semiannual visits to the Farraday. Mildred smiled up at me gastrically. I slipped her out of the frame under Shelly’s myopic eyes and pocketed the photo.

  Shelly switched off the drill, which whirred to a grinding halt, and stood up, adjusting his glasses and shifting his cigar to the other side of his mouth.

  “We’ll talk later about your … rude behavior,” he said.

  The guy in the chair looked like a beer bottle. His thin body was stiff and straight, his bristly straw yellow hair standing up. His mouth was open for the next drill attack and he looked frightened.

  “No, we won’t,” I said, opening the door to leave.

  “We will talk about your rudeness,” Shelly insisted. “You embarrassed me in front of a patient.”

  The beer bottle man’s eyes were wide and darting from Shelly to me as if our words held some clue to his fate.

  “I’m going to go see Peter Lorre,” I said.

  “You’ve found them,” Shelly shouted and turned to the frightened man in the chair. “He found them.”

  The man in the chair did his petrified best to look pleased about the news, which obviously made no sense to him. I did nothing to correct Shelly’s inaccuracy. I had found not “them,” only a lead to Peter Lorre. As I closed the door, Shelly was singing and drilling with baritone hope.

  3

  Levy’s ran a special on Wednesday afternoons. Choice of brisket, liver and onions, or chicken with vegetable, coffee, and vanilla ice cream for thirty-two cents. I had tried them all more than once. I wasn’t exactly a regular at Levy’s but I came frequently enough for assaults on Carmen, the dark, exotic, and slightly hefty beauty who cashiered behind the counter on a wooden stool. Since chance had led me to Levy’s, I decided to seize the opportunity and plead my case again with the cashier of my dreams.

  On more than one occasion I had managed to put together a semimatching clean jacket, trousers, shirt, and tie, lather my scuffed shoes, and convince Carmen that the night of her dreams was in store for her if she would but accompany me to the movies or a boxing card at Madison Square Arena. Carmen was a challenge. The world bored her. Her dreams, if she had any, were her own and buried deep inside that ample body. My dream was simple, to bury myself in Carmen for at least one night of ecstasy. Carmen didn’t smell of perfume. She smelled of corned beef, new dill pickles, cooper pennies and an additional faint scent of woman. She was an enigma who preferred wrestling to boxing, Tony Martin to Bing Crosby, certified public accountants to me.

  I hadn’t seen Carmen in about two weeks. I’d been busy in New York.

  “Carmen,” I whispered over the head of an egg-shaped man with a toothpick in his mouth who was trying to pay his bill. He smelled of overly sweet aftershave, but Carmen, ah Carmen, smelled of Jewish food and voluptuous fantasies.

  “Toby,” she said, glancing at me and then back to the change she was counting, “haven’t see you for a few days.”

  “Weeks, Carmen, weeks. I was in New York. Government case,” I whispered past the toothpick muncher, who took his change and looked at me. I held a finger to my lips to indicate that as a loyal American he should keep silent about what he had just heard. “Loose lips,” I said to him.

  The man nodded, belched, and walked off.

  “I was shot in the arm saving Albert Einstein,” I said to Carmen quietly. It wasn’t quite true but it was close enough. I rolled up my sleeve to show her the bandage. She looked politely and reached back to turn on the radio. Singing Sam’s deep voice came on, telling us it was Coca Cola Refreshment Time and that he was going to sing both “What Do You Hear from Your Heart?” and “The Night We Met in Honolulu,” both of which he proceeded to do while I finished my mini-barrage on Carmen, who hummed along and, with the help of a small hand mirror, examined her large, white teeth for lipstick stains.

  “Shot,” I said. “In the arm.”

  She looked up again in the general direction of my arm but with no great curiosity.

  “Shot,” she repeated. “Einstein shot you in the arm? Frankly Toby, no offense, but I don’t believe you.”

  “Would you believe dinner on Saturday and Show Time at the Biltmore, buck-fifty tickets,” I said, flush with the recent advance from Shelly.

  “Who’s playing?” Carmen asked cautiously.

  “Vaudeville,” I said leaning over the counter to confide my secret. “Georgie Jessel, Jack Haley, Ella Logan, Kitty Carlisle, and the DeMarcos.”

  “Saturday?” she asked, large brown eyes careful, checking for a lie.

  “Saturday,” I said. “I’ll pick you up and I’ll wear a clean shirt.”

  “Your car …” she began as a pair of late-lunch customers hurried toward her, checks in hand.

  “It’s clean, no more camouflage colors. I explained that. Believe …”

  She reached for the check of a pencil-shaped man whose neck was wrinkled under a starched collar.

  “Six o’clock, my apartment. Sit-down restaurant with tables,” she said, looking away. “No taco place with stools like last time. No hot dogs at Manny’s.”

  “Sit-down table,” I agreed. “Real food.” The pencil-shaped man didn’t care. He took his change, put a finger inside his collar to search for room that wasn’t there, and moved on.

  “I gotta work,” Carmen said reaching brightly painted fingernails for the next customer’s check.

  “Me too,” I said with a wink at the customer who was pulling a buck out to pay his tab. Unfortunately, the customer had a permanently lowered right eyelid and made it clear that if he weren’t about five-one and about a hundred pounds he’d ram my already battered face through the glass front of Carmen’s cashier’s counter.

  “You got something to say?” he challenged.

  I didn’t. I turned away storing the hope of Saturday ecstasy away till I got back to my room at Mrs. Plaut’s that night. What dreams of Carmen I would have! But it was time for work and Levy’s was not at its busiest.

  Finding Peter Lorre was no problem. He sat with his back to the door at a rear table. I could tell it was him from the rear. He was short, his hair slicked down, and a haze of cigarette smoke hung over the table. I could see the man who sat across from him facing the door quite clearly. There was something familiar about his small, intense face and the twisted little black cigar in his mouth. As I made my way to their table I could hear, over Singing Sam in the background, waitresses shouting orders and Lorre and the other man speaking German. I dodged a skinny waitress balancing an armful of hot plates and stood next to the two seated men. The man with the cigar was the first to notice that I wasn’t there to take their order. He said something to Lorre who turned to look up at me over his left shoulder. The actor was wearing a solid white sweater over his white shirt.

  Peter Lorre looked younger than I had expected. His face was as unlined as a five-year-old’s and his slightly closed eyes and straight black hair falling over his forehead added to the childlike look.

  “Yes?” he asked.

  “My name’s Peters,” I said. “Toby Peters. We met a couple of years ago over at Warner Brothers. You were on a break on the Maltese Falcon set playing cards.”

  He smiled up at me politely and took a drag at his cigarette but it was clear that he didn’t remember me.

  “Well, Mr ….”

  “Peters,” I supplied.

/>   “Yes, Mr. Peters. It is good to meet you again but my friend and I are discussing some business and …”

  “Mildred Minck,” I said. The most striking thing about Lorre was his voice. It was much lower and less accented than I remembered it from seeing and hearing him on the screen. The same thing had struck me when I first met him back at Warners, but there had been so many radio imitations of the famous voice that I had forgotten what the real one sounded like.

  Lorre’s unlined forehead lined suddenly.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said.

  “Mildred Minck,” I repeated.

  The man with the cigar asked a question in German and Lorre answered before turning to me to say, “Mildred Minck. You are selling some kind of fur called mildred mink?”

  A waitress asked me to sit down because I was in the way so I did without waiting for an invitation from Lorre.

  “I’m selling nothing,” I said. “I’m looking for Mildred Minck. I’m a private investigator. I’d show my card but I don’t have any more. I gave my last one to a woman named Cleland who was considering hiring me to find her missing cat. That was back in thirty-nine.”

  The waitress reached over my shoulder to serve Lorre and the other man. Both had the specials. Lorre had the chicken. The other guy had liver and onions. I told the waitress I’d take the brisket.

  “Did you find the cat?” Lorre asked with what appeared to be genuine interest.

  “She didn’t hire me. She was just shopping around.”

  “Mildred Minck,” Lorre repeated. “Am I supposed to have some information about this person?”

  “According to a note from her, she ran away with you,” I said.

  “I ran away with someone named …”

  “Mildred Minck,” the man with the cigar said with a knowing nod.

  “Do you have a photograph of Miss Minck?” Lorre said.

  “Mrs. Minck,” I corrected.

  While I fished out the photo I’d removed from Shelly’s office, Lorre and the other man dug into their food. I handed Lorre Mildred’s picture.

  “That is not a flattering photograph,” he said, showing it to the other man, who examined Mildred’s picture carefully, then shrugged and speared a rectangle of liver.

  “Actually, it is,” I said putting the picture back in my wallet. “I take it, then, that you don’t know Mildred.”

  “That is correct,” Lorre said. “I am a married man and I do not pursue married women. Occasionally a woman other than my wife has shown an interest in me, though I am not a conventional hero as you might well judge from the roles I have played. These women have been, by and large, quite attractive.”

  “And Mildred …?” I pushed.

  “I will not insult another man’s wife without cause simply because I am given the opportunity,” he said with a mischievous smile.

  “I don’t see why not,” I said. “I do it on a regular basis.”

  Lorre laughed, translated my words to the other man, who removed his cigar long enough to let out a choked chortle, and returned to his meal.

  “I’ve never met a real private detective before,” Lorre said. “You’d think that after playing a Japanese detective and confronting Sam Spade I would have gone out of my way to meet someone of your profession but I never considered such first-hand knowledge necessary. Do you solve murders and get hit on the head with any frequency?”

  Our waitress interrupted with the three specials. My brisket looked lean and I dug in, talking while I ate.

  “I get hit on the head, neck, shoulders, stomach, thighs, legs, feet, and even the ankles. The ankle attack came from a feisty midget who later got thrown out of a hotel window,” I said, forking a potato and tucking it neatly into my cheek.

  The guy with Lorre said something in German and I caught what might have been the word “feisty.” Lorre explained in German and then turned to me. “Fascinating.”

  “Some people have gotten themselves murdered in my vicinity,” I admitted, reaching for a chocolate phosphate that may have been mine. “I don’t know about solving murders. Sometimes the people who kill get caught. Sometimes they don’t.”

  The guy with the cigar reached out and snatched the chocolate phosphate. I grinned and chewed.

  “We must talk further of this,” Lorre said, “but Herr Brecht and I have some business …”

  “Right,” I said, holding up my hand. “I’ll gulp this down, make a sandwich of the brisket, and get out of your way.”

  “I don’t wish to be rude,” Lorre said as I reached past him for a couple of slices of pumpernickel, “and I’ll gladly pay for your lunch.”

  “And I’ll gladly accept, with thanks.” I deposited the brisket between the bread slices and finished off the last of the potatoes.

  “Final question, Mr. Peters,” Lorre said. “In case I might need your services, are you a good detective? I mean can you give me some references?”

  “No,” I said, “but I’ll give you something better than a reference. You’re about to get a contract offer from Warner Brothers, about seventeen hundred a week with a three-picture deal.”

  I took a big bite of my sandwich and grinned down at him.

  “Remarkable,” he said. “My agent has just confirmed such an offer is coming. In fact Herr Brecht and I are here in anticipation of that offer and the possibility that we might now be able to work together on a film project. Back in Germany, Herr Brecht gave me my first major theater work. In a sense, he discovered me. And … but wait, there is a matter of some discretion for which I might well need your services.”

  The last he whispered.

  I leaned forward and with brisket breath said, “The young German lady you met on your last film.”

  Lorre’s jaw dropped. His large, round eyes drooped and the corners of his mouth dipped.

  “That’s the look in The Man Who Knew Too Much, just before you grabbed that girl,” I said.

  The look on Lorre’s face disappeared and he shook his head.

  “You are an intriguing man, Mr. Peters, an intriguing man. I think we might be able to do some business. I’m very pleased that you found me.”

  I stuffed what was left of my sandwich in my mouth, wiped my hands on the napkin near my empty plate, pulled out a gnarled pencil and wrote my name and phone number on the list of today’s specials.

  “I’m sorry I could not be of more help,” Lorre said with a shrug, finally reaching for a fork. Brecht had eaten through the whole encounter, finished his chicken, and started a fresh cigar, though I don’t think the twisted black things he was smoking could ever have been fresh.

  “Hey,” I said, “you eliminated yourself as a suspect.”

  We pitched a little small talk back and forth, movies, the war, and the private detective business. Lorre told me about a movie he and his friend Brecht wanted to do about a man who comes home and finds a stranger locked in his closet.

  “You never see the stranger,” Lorre said, “just me, the man who comes home. I try to coax him out, but he won’t come.”

  Brecht said something in German.

  “Yes, that’s right,” agreed Lorre. “We would get someone with a name to do the voice of the person in the closet. We could probably get someone very good for very little money because they wouldn’t even have lines to learn. They could sit behind the door and read their lines from the script like a radio show. But there are problems.”

  “Like who wants to watch a movie with only one man in a room,” I said.

  “No,” said Brecht who seemed to understand more English than he was letting on.

  “No,” agreed Lorre. “My character would go back out, stop at a diner, meet a woman.”

  “Sounds fine to me,” I said getting up. “But I’ve got to get going now.”

  I got up, thanked them for their time, and told Lorre to give me a call if he thought he needed my services.

  I tried to catch Carmen’s eye as I headed out of Levy’s but she was busy juggling cash an
d trying to find something on the radio. As I headed for the YMCA on Hope Street, I made some plans and digested brisket.

  Lorre hadn’t run off with Mildred Minck, didn’t know where she was, didn’t know who had, didn’t know anything about it. So, either Mildred was lying, had been forced to write what she wrote, or she really thought she was running off with Peter Lorre. The outright lie seemed the best bet but there was too much wrong with it. Why pick Peter Lorre to lie about? Wouldn’t it be more likely that Mildred would claim to be swept off her varicose limbs by Robert Taylor? And wouldn’t she know, wouldn’t even Mildred Minck know, that it would be as easy as a phone call and a short drive to prove the lie? Next stop: She was forced to write the note. OK. Why would anyone force Mildred Minck to write a note saying she was running off with Peter Lorre? If that was the answer, I was probably lost and would never find her. I’d be dealing with a maniac with a sense of humor unequaled since Bluebeard. Final stop: Mildred thought she had run away with Peter Lorre.

  This was getting me somewhere. Los Angeles couldn’t be filled with Peter Lorre look-alikes. So, how does one go about finding a Peter Lorre imitator? Talent agencies. I was feeling better by the time I got to the Y. I had a plan, a direction, and a sore arm and tender back. Things were better than normal.

  It was an off hour. I didn’t expect anyone to be around, at least not many people. There weren’t. The guy at the desk whose name was Alf or Ralph, I couldn’t remember which, looked up from his newspaper when I came in. He was old, skinny, and wearing a white T-shirt to show his bones. I nodded and he told me that a Japanese sub had torpedoed an American merchant ship off the coast up above San Francisco.

  “A fishing boat for Crissakes,” he said, the gray skin on his neck shaking. “Can you imagine?”

  “Happened today?” I asked.

  “Sunday,” he answered absently, seeing into the future or his fears. “Remember back March, April they shelled a tanker right off of Frisco?”