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

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “You want to tell us what happened in your apartment tonight?” said Phil with a smirk. He did not expect the truth the first time through. I wasn’t going to disappoint him.

  “I surprised three burglars going through my apartment. They overpowered me and threatened to kill me. They started to assault me when a couple of friends came by. Two of the assailants ran, and the other one pulled a gun. I threw a lamp at him after he took a couple of shots at me, and he went through the window. I can identify the other two.”

  “Three guys were burgling your apartment.” Phil shook his head. “Did they get lost in the rain? Maybe they thought they were in Beverly Hills or Westwood. What the hell have you got worth stealing?”

  “Well, I do have a collection of matchbook covers and …”

  “Who were the two friends who came to your rescue?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say. They’re sort of clients.”

  Phil clasped his hands together and looked at Seidman, who looked back at his pad and pretended to write something.

  “You tell me who they were or you spend some lockup time,” said Phil.

  I smiled cautiously.

  “You mean,” I said, “you’re not booking me for murder.”

  Phil ran his hand through his steely hair and touched his slightly stubbly chin before opening the manila folder in front of him.

  “The character who took a dive out of your window was Martin Langer Delamater. You’re lucky. He had a record going back to 1923. Twenty-two arrests and two convictions for everything from assault to attempted rape.”

  “Did he ever hold down a paying job?” I asked.

  Phil cocked his head at me.

  “A couple. Bartender, mechanic, security man …”

  “Where?” I asked.

  Phil grinned and spoke with mock amazement:

  “Well, what a coincidence. He worked at Warner Brothers for two months in 1935. You were there then, weren’t you, Toby?”

  “Yes, I thought he looked familiar.”

  “And he came to your apartment by chance?”

  “Maybe he was after my famous matchbox collection.”

  “Well,” said Phil, sighing and removing his tie as he stood, “I think you and I are going to have to have a private talk.”

  “You get that down too?” I asked Seidman who, obviously, had not.

  “Lieutenant,” said Seidman. It was his first word and came out with remarkable confidence. “I’d like to suggest that you finish this interrogation as soon as possible. We still have the Maloney murder and …”

  Phil sat down again and nodded in semi-resignation.

  “Delamater was fired from Warner’s,” Phil said, “for theft. The studio didn’t charge him, but before he went to San Quentin in ’38, we ran an investigation on his past activities, and they were happy to tell us all about it. You want more coincidences?”

  “Why not?”

  “Cunningham worked for Warner’s.”

  “Cunningham, who’s Cunningham?” I said, looking blankly at my brother, who tried to look into my soul.

  “The guy who got shot. The cute one with the bullet in his eye whose hand you were holding.”

  “I thought his name was Deitch?”

  Phil actually smiled slightly.

  “It is,” he said. “He was using the name Cunningham, like you use Peters. And he had a job at Warner Brothers. Strange coincidence, huh?”

  “Lots of people work or worked for Warner’s,” I said. “This is a movie town and that’s a big studio.”

  “And,” he jumped in, “a man with a rotten fake Italian accent answering your description was seen coming out of Deitch or Cunningham’s apartment early this morning.”

  I shrugged.

  “Lot of people probably fit my general description. Even you.”

  “Within twenty hours, you have been involved in two deaths, both of convicted felons, both of whom had worked for Warner Brothers. It’s nice to get these people off the street, but we’d like to do it legally and handle it ourselves. Now you are going to tell me what you know about all this. You’re not going to tell me stories about protecting labor leaders or surprising burglars. We’ll start with your telling me who your two witnesses are. You’re going to tell me in the next five minutes or you get locked up.”

  “On what charge?”

  “Obstructing justice. Disturbing the peace. Suspicion of murder. Pissing in the park.”

  Seidman wrote quickly and passionlessly. My brother’s fists were red, knotted balls with white knuckles.

  “I’ll have to ask my clients,” I said.

  Phil pointed to the phone on his desk, and I shook my head no.

  “I’ll call from a pay phone,” I went on.

  “There’s one downstairs,” Phil sighed. “Seidman will take you down.”

  “No. I go to an outside pay phone. Nobody listens when I call, Phil, or there’s no deal. I’ve spent nights in the lockup before. I can do it again.”

  “Call me Lieutenant Pevsner. Steve, go with him and give him five minutes in the booth. No more.”

  Phil looked down at his folder and began reading, or pretending to. I picked up the wire mesh tray he had thrown at me and placed it gently on the desk.

  Seidman opened the door and we went out.

  The outer room was a lot more active than it had been earlier this morning. A woman with curlers in her hair was sitting at a desk with her arms folded looking at the ceiling. A cop was earnestly trying to tell her that there were no grounds for holding Frank, whoever Frank was.

  Two uniformed cops flanked a thin guy wearing a sweater and a big, secret smile. He was either cuckoo, on drugs or simply drunk.

  “Phil’s your brother?” said Seidman, walking at my side toward the street. He nodded at the uniformed cop behind the desk in the lobby.

  “Right,” I said. “We love each other.”

  We went out the front door and Seidman pointed down the street. We walked. It was cool, and the sky was clear and filled with stars.

  “You know about his older kid?” asked Seidman.

  I said I didn’t, and he told me that David, the 10-year-old was in the hospital, a car accident. The kid was going to be all right, but it had looked bad for week or so. There had been surgery, and the whole thing was sure to put Phil even deeper in debt than I knew he already was.

  Seidman led me into a drug store and pointed toward a telephone booth in the back. He sat at the soda fountain where he could watch me and ordered a Green River.

  I called the studio. Adelman wasn’t there. I convinced the girl on the switchboard that I was working for him and needed his home number. Some woman with a young voice answered and reluctantly called Sid to the phone.

  “You find him?” he asked immediately.

  “Not yet. You hear from the blackmailer again?”

  “No. You calling for the latest news? Turn your radio on and listen to Raymond Swing.”

  “Wait,” I stopped him. “You ever hear of a man named Delamater? Used to work for the studio about five years ago, a security man.”

  “No, is he involved in this dreck?”

  “He’s dead. Tried to get the photograph of the girl from me.”

  “Schmuck,” he screamed, “who told you to kill somebody?”

  “I didn’t kill him. He fell out of a window. Listen Sid, I haven’t got time to talk. The police know Cunningham worked for Warner’s. They’ll probably be out to talk to you tomorrow. They’ve got me now, and I think I should tell them something or they’ll lock me up.”

  “That would be bad?” he asked.

  “That would be bad for you, because it would cut off the time I have to find the guy who’s trying to blackmail you and bring you that much closer to paying off.”

  “Can you keep Flynn out?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, “I’ll try.”

  “You know he made the top ten box office list last year, top ten and The Sea Hawk …”

>   “You told me about The Sea Hawk, Sid, and Newsweek.” Seidman was walking toward the phone booth. “I’ve got to go now. I’ll get back to you tomorrow.”

  “Don’t kill anybody else.” He hung up.

  “I’ll try not to,” I told the dead phone.

  When we got back to Phil’s office, I decided to do my best to cooperate. Seidman gave me an encouraging nod, but my best wasn’t good enough.

  “Who’s your client?” Phil said, putting down his pencil and making a new effort at being calm.

  “Somebody at Warner’s,” I said, “somebody fairly high up. He said I could tell you everything but his name.”

  “I don’t give a shit what he said,” stormed Phil, throwing his tie on the desk. “This is a case of murder, maybe two murders. I don’t need your client’s permission to carry on an investigation.”

  “But I do,” I said. “Do you want what I have to give you or do you want to start throwing things at me?”

  “Talk.”

  I talked. I said Cunningham had been trying to blackmail someone at Warner’s with a photo. I had gone to make the exchange and been clobbered. The killer, I said, had gotten away with the photo and the money, and my gun. Phil wanted to know why the blackmail hadn’t been reported to the police. I said that was my client’s business, but I didn’t think he trusted the police. Delamater and his two clowns had, I went on, probably come to my apartment to get me off the case. They were probably working for the blackmailer.

  “You can identify the two who got away?” he interrupted.

  “I told you I could, but I don’t think they know who they were working for. Delamater looked like the thinker of the trio. He wasn’t good at it but he was the best they had. Someone probably hired Delamater, who picked up the other two.”

  “Just the same,” said Phil, “you go through the pictures and we’ll try to turn them up. Now your story’s fine. What I need are some names. Who is being blackmailed? Who knows about it? Who are the two guys who were in your place when Delamater went out the window?”

  “The guys in my room had nothing to do with the case,” I lied, “but you can check with them. They’re Bruce Cabot and Guinn Williams.”

  “The movie actors?” asked Seidman.

  Phil and I looked at him.

  “Right,” I said.

  Phil made unveiled threats about my lying and had Seidman take me to the library in the basement. It was a musty room with two overhead 60-watt bulbs swinging from black cords. Seidman pulled out a pile of frayed, heavy green volumes, and I began to go through them looking for the mailbox and the giggler.

  It took me over an hour. After a while the faces began to merge and look alike. Two or three faces looked exactly like mine, and dozens of them looked like Guinn Williams. But I found the two and indicated them to Seidman. The giggler was Judd “The Shiv” Chesler, and the mailbox was Steve Fagin.

  When we got back to his office, my brother told me that Cabot and Williams had confirmed my story and would come in the next day to sign statements.

  “Your client’s name, Toby?” he said evenly.

  “Two days, Phil. Give me two days, and I’ll hand you the name and maybe the killer.”

  “You’ll hand me the killer?” He actually laughed, but it didn’t sound as if he were having fun. “You can’t even hold down a job; you lost your client’s money and your gun, and everybody beats the shit out of you.”

  “We all have bad days,” I said.

  “You’re having a bad lifetime,” he said. “Get out. You’ve got two days providing no one else gets killed.”

  I got up.

  “Phil, I’m sorry about David.”

  My brother didn’t look up. He just handed me my toy gun. “Don’t shoot yourself, Sherlock,” he grunted.

  My car was in the same place it had been earlier in the morning. It had another ticket. I put it in the glove compartment and headed home.

  There was a note on my door from the landlady. It said:

  Mister Peters,

  I am afraind I must ask you too move. You are paid entil the end of the month so you can stay till the end of the month and then you must leave please send me a check or cash money for damages to the apartment. Window, four dollars door two dollars for new lock lamp two dollars seventy five cents repair of wall from bullit three dollars repair of kitchen bathtub from bullit three dollars and thirty cents. Total of this is 15 dollars and a nickle.

  Mrs. Eastwood

  I took a hot bath, had a bowl of Shredded Wheat, checked to be sure the photograph was still in Bill Faulkner’s book and went to bed.

  In my dream, in color, I was walking down a Western street with six-guns on my hips. On my left, faithful sidekick Guinn “Big Boy” Williams gave me a wink. On my right, Bruce Cabot gave me a confident smile. We walked down the street and my big white hat kept slipping over my eyes. Advancing on us were six men, the giggler, the mailbox Barton MacLane, Henry Daniell, Claude Rains and Basil Rathbone. I didn’t feel confident. I reached for my gun when the distance closed, and I realized that it was the Woolworth toy.

  Rathbone shot me in the hand and I tried to tell everyone about my bad back. Rains took a second shot at me and missed. Just as I was about to go down in a volley of shots, Alan Hale leapt off a nearby roof. All six of the advancing men were crushed and Hale got up flashing teeth at me.

  When I woke up, sun was splashing through the broken window, and someone was sitting in my only undamaged chair. The someone was looking at me. It was Lynn Beaumont.

  The girl looked around the room. I looked too. There was still some glass on the floor. The door was hanging loose. Two chairs were demolished. Pieces of ceramic lamp and a mashed shade were piled in a corner, and a small chunk was missing from the wall where a bullet had hit. Mrs. Eastwood’s inventory had been correct.

  Lynn Beaumont caught me looking at her.

  “This place is a mess,” she said with distaste. “Do you live like this?”

  I sat up in bed, running a hand over my face and tasting the dryness in my mouth.

  “Sorry, I would have told the Mexican maid to tidy up if I knew you were coming.” I pulled my legs over the side of the bed.

  “I called you during the day and last night,” she said, glaring at me. “You didn’t answer.”

  “I had a very busy night. Somebody tried to kill me.”

  She was unamused.

  “Can you make coffee?” I asked, heading for the bathroom.

  She couldn’t. I tried toast. She thought she could handle that, but I remembered that I had no bread. There were no eggs either. There was some milk and a lot of cereal. I love cereal. I made the coffee while she glared at me.

  I took a good look at her. She looked cute, clean and serious. Her dark hair was short and straight, and her dress was blue and conservative schoolgirl. She didn’t fit the image of the girl in the picture with Flynn.

  While I brushed my teeth and washed, I screamed some questions at her. She screamed back. She had tried to reach me at Warner Brothers. They had told her I didn’t work there. Then she had tried my name in the phone book. I was there, the only Toby Peters. She had called. I hadn’t answered. So she got in a bus and came over from Beverly Hills. It wasn’t a long ride.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit, Lynn?”

  “Please call me Miss Beaumont.”

  “Miss Beaumont.”

  Her glare was steady and stern. She looked determined and strong willed. Maybe that’s what comes of having parents who are actors. The question was whether she had the strength of her mother behind it or something her father passed on to her.

  “I don’t want you to see my mother any more.”

  “Have to,” I said, going for the coffee and pouring her a cup. “Part of some work I’m doing.”

  “What is your work?” she said sarcastically, accenting the word “work” with a slight sneer.

  “I’m a private investigator.”

  The coff
ee was good and strong. She hated it. I poured us bowls of Shredded Wheat. She refused hers, and I ate both while we talked. I looked at the picture of Niagara Falls on the box. It looked cool, clean and far away.

  “Mr. Peters, I know what you and my mother were doing in the pool house.” Her hands were folded on the table. I poured out the last of the coffee. “My parents are getting a divorce, but I don’t want … I mean, I don’t think she …” She looked as if she were either going to hit me or cry.

  “Miss Beaumont,” I lied, “my interest in your mother is strictly professional. In fact, I’m on my way to see your father this morning about the case I’m on.”

  She didn’t believe me.

  “Have you made other visits like this to friends of your mother?” It was a long shot, but it couldn’t hurt.

  “Other visits?”

  “You know a man named Charles Cunningham?” I watched her eyes. They filled with anger. “You know a man named Charles Cunningham.”

  “He is, was, a friend of my mother … like you.”

  “Was?” I said.

  “They are not friends anymore. He promised …”

  “What did you do to get him to promise?”

  “Do? Nothing. I just talked to him and told him I’d tell my father and grandfather.”

  She seemed to be telling the truth, but she might also be a good actress.

  “Was Cunningham friendly to you?”

  “You mean did he try to get me in bed?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I think he had something in mind, but I didn’t let him get started.” She looked firmly at me, but the tears weren’t far.

  “Have you ever done it with anyone?”

  She shook her head no. I went on, finishing the coffee.

  “How many times did you go to see Cunningham alone?”

  She said she had gone to his place only once. He had made the one try and then had given up and tried to be friends.

  “Did he give you anything to eat or drink?”

  “Like coffee and Shredded Wheat?”

  “Like whatever?”