Bullet for a Star: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book One)

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  Sheldon was in his early 50’s, short, fat, bald and myopic. His thick glasses were always slipping from his sweating nose. When he wasn’t actively working on a patient, a wet cigar stuck out of his face. He had only one working coat which must have once been white.

  Sheldon was working on a boy of about 10 who looked like Alfalfa in Our Gang. Sheldon squinted in my direction.

  “Toby? Are you working or something? You’ve got calls all over the place.”

  He handed the frightened kid the drill, wiped his hands on his coat, shoved his cigar in his face and waddled over to a porcelain table covered with newspapers and x-rays of teeth. After shuffling through the pile, he came up with a torn edge of newspaper. There were some names and numbers on it:

  Lt. Pevsner, call’d twice.

  Adelman, three times.

  “And,” said Sheldon, rummaging through some drawers of teeth, “some wise ass called once and said he was Errol Flynn.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him I was Artie Shaw, and I’d trade him two blondes for a redhead.”

  “Did he leave a number?”

  “No,” said Sheldon, fishing out a huge pliers. The kid in the chair gulped.

  “Sheldon,” I said, heading for my office, “that was Errol Flynn.”

  “No kidding?” He looked at me. “You know I once did an emergency filling for Cary Grant. He had great teeth. Paid cash on the spot.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  Sheldon returned to the kid and took the drill from his trembling hand.

  “And,” he added, putting his cigar on the end of the small work table, “there are two guys waiting for you in your office. They got here about five minutes ago.”

  “Who are they?” I asked.

  “Dunno,” said Sheldon, pushing his glasses near his eyes and plunging the pliers into the kid’s mouth. “I think I’ve seen them around.”

  I mixed a Bromo Seltzer in one of Sheldon’s paper cups, listened to the kid moan for a few seconds and walked into my own office.

  It is not much of an office. Designed as a dental room, it had a couple of chairs and my desk. The wall held a framed copy of my private investigator’s certificate and a photograph of my father, my brother and me with our beagle dog Kaiser Wilhelm. I was ten when the photograph was taken, about the age of the kid who was screaming in the other room.

  The two chairs in my office were occupied. I recognized both faces at once. One was the man who had saved Fay Wray from King Kong and the other looked like he could take on the giant ape.

  They both stood up without smiling.

  “You Peters?” said the burlier, curly haired and slightly shorter of the two, grimly.

  “I’m Peters,” I said pretending to go through the junk mail on my desk.

  “My name’s Guinn Williams, ‘Big Boy’ Williams. My friend is Bruce Cabot. You know us?”

  “I’ve seen you,” I said. After the pool house and Brenda Stallings, I wasn’t about to be impressed by them.

  “We understand that you know where a friend of ours is,” said Cabot. They approached me from either side of the desk, and I sat opening a letter from a Christmas card company. The letter said there was big money in Christmas card sales.

  I looked up. Williams, who spent half of his screen time backing up heroes and the other half throwing fists at them, looked angry and ready to explode. Cabot seemed calm, but determined.

  “Enough of this shit,” hissed Williams through his teeth. He jutted out his square jaw and reached for me. Cabot watched. I had Williams’ green tie in my mouth, and I could breathe his anger.

  He lifted me up with one hand, and my face was inches from his.

  “Son,” he said, “you have thirty seconds to tell us where Princey is, or they’re going to be cleaning you from the floor with toilet paper.”

  I considered kneeing him in the groin, but I wasn’t sure it would bring him down, and I sure as hell didn’t want to get him angrier.

  “You’d better tell him,” Cabot said evenly and reasonably.

  “I don’t know,” I said. Williams was cutting off my wind, and the words came out in a gurgle.

  “Wrong answer son,” said Williams. Cabot shook his head sadly.

  I had decided to put the knee to Williams and try to get to the door and Sheldon’s office. Maybe I could find a forceps or a chisel for a weapon. Williams lifted me up and walked me to the window. I could hear Cabot calling a number on the phone.

  “Bruce,” said Williams, “He has ten seconds to answer or he goes flying down to Hoover Street.”

  “Let him say goodby first,” said Cabot, handing me the phone. Williams reluctantly loosened his grip slightly, and I took the phone. The voice was familiar.

  “Toby, old man,” said Flynn, “how are my friends treating you?”

  Cabot broke into a broad grin and Williams went from a chortle to laughter, tears coming to his eyes.

  “This is some kind of gag?” I asked, regaining my wind.

  “Something like that.”

  “Murder and blackmail and someone trying to kill you, and we’re playing practical jokes?” I was angry and unamused.

  “Ah, my friend,” said Flynn, “that’s the very time when amusement is most needed. My friends are there to help you if you need help. They’ll do whatever needs to be done.”

  “O.K. maybe there is something they can do. Meanwhile, stay hidden for another day or so. I think I’m on to something.”

  “Fair enough,” said Flynn lightly, and I thought I heard a female giggle on his end of the line.”

  “I thought you were going to go somewhere alone,” I said.

  “Well, old boy, I’d rather take the risk than do without. I subscribe to what Thomas De Quincey, my favorite author, once wrote, ‘I hanker too much after a state of happiness, both for myself and others: I cannot face misery, whether my own or not, with an eye of sufficient firmness: and am little capable of encountering present gain for the sake of any reversionary benefit.’” He hung up and so did I.

  “Sorry about that,” said Cabot.

  Williams winked at me and grinned.

  “You’re a good sport,” he said.

  I thanked him and asked them to see if they could find out where Peter Lorre and Harry Beaumont were and then to take turns guarding Flynn, who seemed to have told everyone in Hollywood about his hiding place.

  Cabot reached for the phone and made a call.

  “Really scared you, huh?” said Williams proudly.

  “Definitely,” I said.

  Cabot hung up and told me Lorre was at the studio and Beaumont was on location but would be back the next day. I thanked him, and Williams leaned over my desk to give me a friendly clip on the jaw. My jaw ached.

  “See you buddy,” he grinned.

  “We’ll keep an eye on the Prince,” said Cabot, shaking my hand.

  They left, and I looked at the names of the two people who had called me. Before I lifted the phone I tried to make sense out of what I knew. It didn’t work. On my desk was Sheldon’s Los Angeles Times. I read the important news. Cincinnati was still in first by 5½ games in the National, and Cleveland by 5½ in the American League. Big Stoop was bending iron bar to impress the Dragon Lady in Terry and the Pirates, and Lindy was making speeches urging us to stay out of the war in Europe.

  I called my brother.

  “Didn’t you go home?” were his first words.

  “You’re my brother, not my mother,” I said.

  “Toby, don’t start playing wise with me or I’ll be over there with sirens. How’s your head?”

  “Fine. How is the family?”

  “Let’s not start that crap again. I want to see you in my office at eight tonight. You be here.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “The guy who got killed,” said Phil. “His name was Charles Deitch. He has a record. Two years in Joliet in Illinois. Peddling pornography, statutory rape, attempted blackmai
l. You know any of this?”

  “No,” I said. I didn’t know any of it.

  “You’re full of shit. Eight tonight. Be here.”

  He hung up and I called Adelman. Esther answered, but Adelman cut in on her.

  “Peters, where the hell have you been?”

  “Working on getting your negative and the money. I still have $200 coming from you.”

  “You remember what you told me this morning?” he said. He was not happy. “You told me that the fucking killer would destroy the photograph and negative and everything was fine? Well Philo Vance, you dumb sonofabitch, I got a call two hours ago. The price is up. Somebody wants $35,000 for the negative. You hear me?”

  “I hear you. Was it a man or a woman?”

  “A man, I think. He made his voice squeaky and high. He gave me one day to come up with the money. He’s calling back in the morning. I don’t care if he is a murderer. I’ve got to pay. We have full page ads in Variety this week for Sea Hawk. Newsweek ran a review with two pictures of Flynn. It’s doing great in New York. We can’t let anything happen.”

  “How about another murder?” I asked.

  “What the hell are you talking about? You’re fired.”

  “I’ll work it on my own. The killer has my gun, and if I turn up that negative and your $5,000 you owe me $200. Besides, I’ve got a good lead. I know who the girl is in the picture.”

  Sid was silent. I could imagine his collar wilting as he looked up at the photo on his wall of the former junk dealers.

  “You got a chance of coming up with something by tomorrow?” he asked.

  “A good chance,” I lied.

  “You’ve got till tomorrow night,” he said hanging up the phone.

  I called Brenda Stallings. She couldn’t see me tonight, but the next night would be fine, or the night after. I had a feeling I was being stalled, but I wasn’t sure she had anything else she could tell me, and that is all I was interested in. She did offer me fifteen thousand dollars for the photograph of her daughter, but I told her what I had told Sid. It would be a bad buy. Someone had the negative and could grind out more prints faster than MGM could turn out Andy Hardy pictures.

  I hung up and looked at my father, Phil, me and Kaiser Wilhelm. My nose was already flat in the picture, and the big kid with his arm around me might smash it even further later that night. My father looked down at us proudly. He had thought we would be brain surgeons or crooked lawyers or, at least, dentists. He had owned a small, not very profitable grocery store in Glendale till the day he died.

  My brother had a family, a lot of debts and a mortgage on a two-bit house in North Hollywood. My father was dead. Kaiser Wilhelm was dead. Trotsky was dead, and I owned the suit I was wearing. I didn’t even have a gun and I needed a shave. I decided to buy a gun, and a razor at Woolworth’s.

  My window went dark. I could hear the distant rumble of thunder over the hills. In a few seconds the rain started. In less than an hour my bad back would start burning around my kidneys. It always did when it rained. It had started two years ago. A giant black guy gave me a bear hug when I tried to keep him from getting to an actor I was guarding. Some muscles around my kidneys never bounced back.

  I didn’t feel very tough. I was tired and lonely and feeling damn sorry for myself.

  Alfalfa was gone when I went through Sheldon’s office.

  “What was going on in there?” he said from his dental chair, where he sat reading the newspaper.

  “Why didn’t you come and take a look?” I said.

  “I had a patient,” he said, returning to his paper.

  I went downstairs past the sound of the snoring drunk and ran to the cafe on the corner. It was dirty and I had to sit on one of those round red stools at the counter, but it was close and the rain was coming down hard. I had a burger, some fries and a Coke. Then I bought a safety razor and a toy gun at Woolworth’s next door. I felt like an asshole and the girl who took my eighty cents looked at me as if she thought I was going to use the gun for a hold-up. She was about twenty, with a red mouth going over her lip line. Her dark hair was tight against her head.

  “You remind me of Joan Crawford,” I said seriously.

  She smiled proudly, and I went to the door and dashed for my car. A green Dodge pulled out across the street splashing a man with an umbrella.

  In twenty minutes or so, I’d be back in Burbank and, with a little luck, I’d find Peter Lorre. I hadn’t put the pieces together, but I felt sure Harry Beaumont was important. Maybe Lorre could tell me something more about Beaumont’s reactions to the photograph of his daughter and Flynn. I stopped thinking.

  My back started to ache. I popped a Life Saver in my mouth, turned on the car radio and sang along with Eddie Howard, “I Found a Million Dollar Baby in a Five and Ten Cent Store.” My windshield wipers were doing a lousy job. I turned off the radio, said, “Shit,” and drove squinting through the rain. My back was in pain, and the green Dodge was fifty feet behind me. I was being followed.

  The rain kept coming down hard. I drove with one hand while I shaved dry and managed to nick myself only two or three times. The Dodge stayed on my tail down Cahuenga, but it was far enough back and raining too hard to see who was in it.

  It was after six when I pulled up to the Warner gate. Hatch came out with a red raincoat that made him look like a giant fireplug. Rain was dripping from his hat.

  “How’s it going, Toby?”

  “Fair, Hatch. You know Harry Beaumont?”

  There was no car behind me, but I knew the green Dodge was waiting half a block down.

  “Yes,” said Hatch, “I know Harry.”

  “Seen him today?”

  “No, he’s on location, somewhere above Santa Barbara on a Walsh picture, High Sierra. Should be back tomorrow for some shooting, I think.”

  “Thanks,” I shouted into the rain. “I don’t want to be responsible for your death. Get out of the rain. Wait. You know where I can find Peter Lorre?”

  “He’s in something shooting over on Seven, I think.” A bolt of lightning cracked toward Glendale and the Forest Lawn cemetery, a few miles behind the studio. Hatch hunched his shoulders and ran for the shelter of the shack, but he would be right out again. I could see a car pulling up as I moved in. I couldn’t tell if it was my Dodge.

  Stage Seven was easy to find. I knew the studio even in the rain, with four years between us. I checked myself in the rear view mirror, decided I looked all right, patted the toy gun in my pocket, checked on the photographs and stepped into the downpour.

  My back throbbed. I groaned slightly and moved as fast as I could.

  The stage was silent when I entered. It was really a giant, barnlike building with sets built in odd places. Here a ship’s deck, there a court room. I passed through a soda shop heading toward the rumble of mens’ voices.

  Working my way over sharp-edged electrical equipment, I found myself in front of a door. It wasn’t radically different from the one that led to my office and Sheldon’s, but this one said “Spade and Archer” in black letters on the glass. I walked around the door and the wall, past a reception area and into an office set. Standing near the desk deep in conversation were two men, both very short, both very animated.

  They paused when I stepped into the room. Both were wearing dapper dark suits. The slightly taller of the two men advanced on me with a smile, a broad, familiar smile.

  “I’m Edward G. Robinson,” he said in a gentle, cultured voice radically different from the dozens of gangsters and cops I had seen him play. “This is Peter Lorre.”

  Lorre got down from the desk, gave me a slight smile and nodded while taking my hand.

  “You’re here about the picture,” said Robinson guiding me to a leather sofa in the office.

  “That’s right,” I said.

  “I hope it wasn’t too difficult for you to find us,” said Robinson, “but we’re both working late, and it is much more convenient.”

  “Sure,” I said unb
uttoning my jacket and wincing as I sat, from a sudden twinge from my back.

  Robinson looked at me suspiciously from worn black shoes to wrinkled shirt and nicked face.

  “We are interested in both pictures,” said Lorre, with a slight German accent, lighting a cigarette and leaning against the desk.

  “Well,” said Robinson with a chuckle, “interested, yes, but committed, no. We’d like to discuss it first.”

  I wasn’t sure how they knew about the pictures in my pocket or what their role was in all this, but I was going to hold out for as much information as I could get.

  “Let’s not haggle,” said Robinson. “Mr. Lorre is prepared to pay $20,000 for both pictures. If that is not acceptable, he’ll pay $11,000 for either one. That’s my advice to him, and I think he’ll stick to it.”

  “I’ll stick to that,” said Lorre in a low voice.

  “What if they’re not for sale?” I said.

  Robinson and Lorre looked at each other.

  “Then why would you come here?” asked Robinson, his hands stretched out.

  “You are being very difficult, Mr.…” said Robinson.

  “Peters, Toby Peters.”

  “Yes, Mr. Peters. The truth is we really want the picture of the girl providing we can examine it and be sure it’s genuine. Mr. Lorre will pay …”

  “Twelve thousand,” finished Lorre.

  “Come now, Mr. Peters,” Robinson said with a friendly smile, sitting next to me, “you’re dealing with two seasoned actors. We know how to wait.”

  “I’ll let you look at the picture,” I said reaching into my pocket, and you tell me if it’s genuine.”

  “Fine,” said Robinson with a grin. “We’ll come out and look at it tomorrow morning.”

  “No,” I said. “I’ve got it right here, but I’d advise you not to try to take it. I have a gun.” I patted the Woolworth special in my pocket and pulled out the small, torn picture of Lynn Beaumont’s face.

  Lorre moved away from the desk and walked toward us. Robinson and Lorre exchanged confused glances. Lorre held out his hand, and I shook my head, no. I held up the photograph for him to see.