On the street outside a big red car of the Pacific Electric Railway rumbled by as Sal Lurtzma answered, “You want talent, you’ve got the number, Sal Lurtzma.”
“It’s Toby, Sal.”
“Toby, I got no time now. I’m expecting a call from Bruckerman in Vegas. I’ve got a family of jugglers from Poland he’s gonna die for.”
“I need a theater and a call out for auditions,” I said.
“Now you’re a producer? Give me a quarter for lunch for Chrissake. Get off the phone. Have a heart, Toby.”
My jaw was aching and I had places to go.
“Finish my business and I’ll get off the line,” I said.
“Talk fast.”
“Get a theater and put out a call for Peter Lorre imitators to show up there for an audition tomorrow morning. And put an ad in Variety.”
“What’s the show? This got something to do with the Lorre guy Millman gave me?”
“A movie,” I said as a woman in a turban approached as if she had a call to make. “And it has something to do with the Lone guy. He’s dead. They need a replacement.”
“Right. I know Little Augie at the L.A. Times and Gonigal on Jimmy Fiddler’s radio show. Maybe we can get something in tonight if I hurry. Big question.”
“You get fifty bucks,” I said.
“Good answer,” said Sal. “Get back to me on this one.”
I hung up and the turbaned woman trying to look like Maria Montez grabbed for it as I ducked under her arm and the enema display. I found the aspirin display, picked up a bottle, and went to the lunch counter. I was the only customer and the freckle-faced kid in white behind the counter tipped back his white cap and beamed, “What can I do you for?”
“Seltzer, straight,” I said, opening the bottle and dropping six or seven aspirin in my palm.
“That stuff can eat right through your stomach lining,” said the kid with a shake of his head.
“Seltzer, straight,” I repeated.
“Suit yourself,” he said with a shrug and moved away while the aspirin began to melt in my moist palm. My jaw ached when I opened my mouth. I wouldn’t have minded it too much if I’d had something more to show for it than a couple of beers and a tamale pie lunch.
“Bottoms up,” the kid said, placing the clear bubbly glass in front of me. “You like baseball?”
I nodded to indicate that baseball was all right, popped the aspirin, and gulped them down with the entire glass of seltzer while he watched and shook his head.
“My face hurts,” I said.
“Hey, none of my business,” the kid said, pointing to himself. “It’s your stomach. You see where Harris hit a homer in the eleventh yesterday with two on to the beat the Yankees? Boy, the Yankees aren’t the Yankees anymore, you know? All those guys going in the army or something.”
I looked at the bottle in my hand and considered washing down a few more aspirin.
“I wouldn’t,” the kid said.
“You ever had real pain kid?” I asked, looking at his freckle-faced Andy Hardy grin.
“Sure,” he said.
“Like …?”
“When they amputated my leg,” he said, stepping back to pull up his white Rexall trousers to reveal a mold of wood and steel. “Lost it the first day, just outside Pearl Harbor. Never even got to see a Jap.”
He let the trouser leg roll down. “More seltzer?” he asked.
“No,” I said, putting down a quarter and getting up. “I’ll take it easy on the aspirin.”
“Good idea,” he said, picking up the quarter.
I left the stool wondering whether the kid was a grinner because he was happy to be alive or because he was one of those people who smiled because they had a secret, an important secret that you’d probably never learn and certainly couldn’t appreciate.
I was doing a great job with kids this morning. First I’d embarrassed Ernesto in front of his mother and now the Rex-all kid had embarrassed me. I figured I might as well get all the kids out of the way in one day so I pulled out my notebook and found the phone number and address for Robert Parotti, the kid assistant to the Steistel brothers. The address was on Union near Seventh.
I went back to the telephone and hovered over Maria Montez, who cupped her hand over the mouthpiece and gave me a go-away look. She was too old to be doing Maria Montez. She smelled OK and might even have looked pretty good if she weren’t going out for the wrong role.
“Do you mind?” she asked as I pretended to weight the merits of major enemas.
“No,” I said, and I didn’t.
She sighed mightily and went back to her phone call. She informed somebody named Gaylord that she would have to call him or her back, that she had no privacy, only she pronounced it prih-vah-see. She hung up and glared at me for a beat.
“Sorry I was breathing down your neck, but I was wondering if you’d give me an autograph, Miss Montez,” I said, trying to sound shy.
“That is pathetic,” she said pronouncing it pah-theh-tic before she high-heeled it down the aisle.
Bobby Parotti wasn’t home. A woman, probably his mother, said that it was his day off and he was at the zoo, that Bobby spent all his days off at the zoo. So, I headed for the Griffith Park Zoo after marking the cost of two phone calls and a bottle of aspirin in my back-pocket notebook. I always presented an itemized bill for expenses to my clients. When they questioned it they always did the same thing, picked out the first odd item, like the aspirin. When they got a reasonable answer they didn’t ask any more questions even if later there was a twenty-dollar entry for flying lessons.
I’d bodyguarded once for a real estate salesman named Murphy. Murphy’s ex-wife had threatened to send her new boy friend around to shake some money out of Murph. Murph had been an Ovaltine box full of good advice.
“When you get the sale about made,” he said, “shove the contracts in front of the buyer and tell him to press down hard because you got three carbons. Don’t give the customer time to think.”
I weighed that advice as I headed for Griffith Park, worked my jaw, and listened to Lorenzo Jones and his wife Belle. Lorenzo and Belle were about to go to bed and she was quoting poetry again. Belle had been quoting quite a bit of poetry recently. I switched to KFWB and listened to the Hollywood Quiz. I got most of the questions. I knew Merle Oberon was married to Alexander Korda who had just been knighted, which meant that Merle was now Lady Korda. I knew Betty Hutton was going to star in Happy Go Lucky and that Virginia Weidler was the lastest MGM child star. I missed questions about Nelson Eddy and I didn’t know Bill Robinson was sixty-four.
It was warm with a threat of rain. Every since the war began, dressing each morning was a guessing game. The papers and the radio couldn’t give weather reports because the government was afraid the Japanese would use them. I don’t know how. The Japanese probably had weather experts too. Whatever the reason, you didn’t know what to expect each day, not that I would have dressed differently.
A thundercloud or two rumbled as I parked in the lot and got out of my car. A pair of sailors and a girl moved past me laughing and got in a Chevy coupe. The zoo was big, and I might not find Parotti but I owed myself a look at some animal faces more homely than mine.
I stopped next to a grassy slope and looked back at the parking lot to be sure no one was tailing me. A car or two parked, people got out, but none of them was familiar and none looked around as if they were trying to spot me. I found a stale piece of Beeman’s Pepsin chewing gum in my pocket, unwrapped it, folded it over, and felt it crumble apart between my teeth. When I was satisfied that no one was behind me I head into the zoo.
The monkey house was the best place to start, not because I knew Parotti like monkeys, but because I did. Parotti was there though, sitting on a bench in front of the baboon cage. He had a bag of peanuts and was eating them with total concentration, unaware of his surroundings.
I sat beside him, being careful to avoid a sticky spot, and considered telling him how easily
I had found him, maybe saying a few things about telepathy or coincidence or fate or something, but I didn’t bother. Unless it happens to you, it doesn’t really mean much. You could tell your wife that Hitler was hiding in your basement and she’d say, “Yes dear, did you call my brother and ask to borrow his lawnmower?” It wouldn’t be that she didn’t believe you. It simply wouldn’t register unless she saw Hitler come up the steps sweeping coal dust from his brown uniform and muttering foul-sounding things in German.
“You like the monkeys?” I said.
“Yeah,” he answered without looking at me. “But I like the apes more. Baboon’s an ape.”
He went on eating his peanuts as we watched one of the baboons blink in our direction and then settle down to pick fleas or something out of the hair of another baboon and eat each flea with an intelligent look on his face.
“Smart, they’re smart,” he said, shaking his head.
People walked past. A few paused to watch the baboons and move on. One soldier with a girl said something to the baboons. The girl with him laughed and clutched his arm.
“They’re not funny,” said Bobby Parotti.
“They?”
“That soldier. That girl. Not funny at all,” he said, turning to look at me for the first time. “I know you?”
“We met on the roof of Eskian’s hardware store,” I said.
One of the baboons got tired of having fleas picked off his skull and started hooting and chasing the other baboon around the cage. Bars rattled. Baboons bared their teeth. Bobby Parotti’s eyes watched the show. His teeth were bared in imitation. The baboons screamed, went eye to eye, and changed their minds. Both retreated to corners of the cage to brood about the stalemate. Bobby closed his mouth.
“Damn,” he said. “That was something.”
“It was something,” I agreed. “The roof of Eskian’s,” I reminded him.
“Baboons,” Bobby said with a knowing shake of his head. “They’re like people.”
“If you say so, kid,” I said. “You remember the roof of Eskian’s yesterday?”
Bobby looked at me as if I were mad.
“Sure, I remember. The actor got killed. Pete Lowry. That’s why I’ve got the day off. They’re looking for a replacement. I’m supposed to be looking for a replacement.”
“But you’re at the zoo,” I reminded him,
Bobby shrugged and ate a peanut. He offered me one. I took it and threw it to the baboons. They rushed for it and the bigger one grabbed it first.
“So, they can wait another day,” said Bobby.
Seemed reasonable to me. A seventeen-year-old kid was holding up production on a movie because he wanted to watch the baboons in Griffith Park.
“I can help you,” I said.
“You don’t look like Lowry,” Bobby said without bothering to give me a serious look.
“No, but I’m going to be someplace soon where they’ll be a lot of Peter Lorres. Trust me. I’ll find you someone. Just answer some questions for me.”
“Ask,” Bobby said looking deeply into his small sack of peanuts. He found one at the bottom, took it out, and began to work on it.
“Who shot Lowry?” I asked.
“You did,” he answered. “Cops said it was your gun. That bird woman …”
“Mildred Minck,” I supplied.
“the one who was hanging around Lowry,” he went on. “She said you did it.”
“I didn’t shoot him,” I said.
“OK by me, buddy,” he said with a smile. “I didn’t much like the guy anyway, and it got me a day off.”
“You didn’t see anything before Lowry got shot? I mean, on the roof.”
“I was watching them do the scene. That’s one of my jobs. I watch to see if there’s a mistake. I got the script in one hand and I’m watching them with the other. At the same time I’m doing sound.”
“You watch with your hands?”
“You know what I mean,” he said, crumpling the empty peanut bag and looking around for a wastebasket. There wasn’t one close by so he shoved the bag in his jacket pocket.
“Anybody been bothering Lowry? He have any arguments with anyone?” I asked.
Bobby got up, stretched, looked around for new jungles to conquer, and shook his head negatively.
“Naw, just that Mildred. They were going at it before the setup.”
“About what?”
“About what?” he repeated, looking at the baboons for an answer. “Money. Something about money he wanted. And she said something about not liking him doing a love scene with Elisa. She didn’t understand the script. It wasn’t a love scene. Neiderman is trying to throw her off the roof.”
“Neiderman?” I asked.
“The character Lowry was playing,” Bobby explained. “That Mildred was nuts. Elisa wouldn’t let Lowry touch her finger. Well, I mean, she wouldn’t have.”
“You like Elisa?” I asked.
He plunged his hands in the pocket of his zipper jacket and looked at me and then away with a blush and a shrug. I went on as three burly young men who looked like Marines on shore leave stopped in front of the cage and began tossing Cracker Jacks at the baboons. Bobby turned his attention to them and frowned. He wasn’t going to deal with the puppy love question.
“You ever meet Elisa’s son?”
“Ernesto,” Bobby said as if he were spitting. “I’ve met him. He almost hit me.”
“Why?” I asked.
The Marines were pelting the baboons, who had backed into a corner of the cage and were clinging to each other and reaching out to gather in an occasional Cracker Jack.
“He didn’t like the way I … hey, what’s this got to do with the price of coffee?”
“Nothing,” I said. “The Steistels. How did they get on with Lowry?”
One of the Marines had run out Cracker Jacks. He looked around for something to pelt the baboons with and picked up a handful of pebbles. Bobby watched the trio and started to shift his weight from leg to leg, his hands plunging more deeply into his pockets.
“What?”
“The Steistels and Lowry,” I reminded him.
“I don’t know. They didn’t talk much in front of me but I had the feeling the old guys didn’t like Lowry. They kept talking to him in German. I don’t like to hear people talk German. There’s a war. You don’t use their language.”
I couldn’t argue with that logic. The Marine with the pebbles began lobbing them at the baboons, who clutched each other in the corner trying to separate pebbles from Cracker Jacks. Bobby was having trouble concentrating on my questions.
“Excuse me,” he finally said to me and, hands in pockets, took five or six steps toward the three men laughing in front of the cage.
Bobby said, “Excuse me,” again, but this time the words were aimed at the three Marines. They didn’t hear him or didn’t want to. A couple of old women turned to Bobby, realized they weren’t being addressed, and moved on. My sore jaw twinged a warning.
“Bobby,” I whispered, but Bobby was on a mission.
“Excuse me,” he said louder.
One of the laughing Marines looked over his shoulder.
“Who? Us?” he asked.
“Yes,” replied Bobby. “Please leave the baboons alone. How’d you like to have someone throwing things at you in a cage?”
The laughing Marine stopped laughing.
“What’s it to you, kid? They your parents?”
One of the other Marines thought this was pretty funny. The third and biggest of the trio suddenly didn’t think anything was funny.
“Just don’t bother them, that’s all,” Bobby said, taking his hands out of his pockets.
I didn’t know if baboons ate meat but I had a feeling they might soon be given the opportunity to try tidbits of Bobby Parotti. I sighed, got up, tested my limbs and back, worked my jaw like the tin man in The Wizard of Oz, and decided that I was still operating even without an oil can. I moved to Bobby’s side as the first Ma
rine took a step toward the boy. Two of the Marines were only a little older than Bobby. The third and biggest was ancient, probably twenty-four or twenty-five.
“You work here or something?” one of the younger Marines asked.
“No,” Bobby answered before I could say yes. “I just think you should let them alone.”
The Marine marched three steps forward and grabbed Bobby’s jacket at the collar. The empty peanut pack came tumbling out of Bobby’s pocket. I reached forward, grabbed the Marine’s wrist, and twisted down and hard. He pulled back his burned wrist, grabbed it with his other hand and gritted his teeth in my direction. I tried to keep track of the other two Marines, who were stepping forward as I watched the one I had burned, expecting him to make the first move.
I also hoped that someone was watching this and would run for a cop or a keeper. I’d had enough fighting for one day.
But it wasn’t the Marine who moved. It was Bobby, who leaped forward and threw a straight right at the young man who stood glaring at me. The punch caught the Marine by surprise. The fist hit the side of his neck and sent him sprawling backward into the arms of the second Marine, who caught him.
“Run, Bobby,” I whispered. “Get some help. I’ll talk to these guys.”
“No,” said Bobby, who could have been jammed into the pocket of any one of the three Marines in front of us.
The baboons had moved to the front of the cage and were holding onto the bars, watching us and chattering, showing their teeth and taking odds on Bobby’s and my chances for survival.
The two younger Marines moved toward us again and I reached into my pocket for something, anything. A bat would have been nice but all I found was my key chain. I wished I had more keys. I clutched the keys in my right hand and made a fist.
“You leave the monkeys alone,” Bobby screamed in near hysteria.
“You got it, kid,” said the Marine whose wrist I had twisted. “And so do you, old man.”
I figured he was talking to me. I had been expecting a punch, not an insult. He had found the perfect lead. It had come naturally. He went for me as the other Marine reached out for Bobby. My Marine didn’t expect much trouble and I wasn’t sure how much I could give him in the long run. If I was lucky, I might mange to put a member of the armed forces out of business for weeks or months when he should have been landing on some island with a rifle in his hands. I even had time to think that picking on baboons was less frustrating and dangerous than talking back to drill sergeants or getting shot at. It didn’t matter. I ducked as if I were going to try to cover up and minimize the beating I expected. The Marine stepped in front of me and looked down. I couldn’t see his face, just his feet, but I could sense where he was hovering. I could hear Bobby shouting, “Bastard,” as the second Marine shoved him backward toward the bench. I didn’t know where the big Marine was. I shot up suddenly and my head caught the chin of the guy in front of me. As he straightened up with a groan, I threw my key-handed fist into his midsection. He staggered back in pain and I turned to help Bobby or get myself really hurt.
Think Fast, Mr. Peters Page 11
