The Howard Hughes Affair: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Four)

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  I paid the gas station attendant who looked like Andy Devine, asked him the time and drove back toward Los Angeles humming “Chatanooga Choo-Choo.” My back was being reasonable.

  I drove to Arnie’s garage on Eleventh Street and told no-neck Arnie, whose face was so thick with grease that he looked like something from the road show of The Jazz Singer, that he should get my bumper back on as soon as possible. Arnie shifted his stub of a cigar and grunted. He never asked how bullet holes, blood and ripped bumpers appeared. He just fixed and charged.

  I legged it over to my office, trying to ignore the memory of Alex’s kidney attack and stand up straight as I walked. I made it to Ninth, passing Montoya the Dropper, a neighborhood character who would walk about thirty feet, only to repeat the thing over again. Montoya refused to acknowledge that he kept falling and became indignant if anyone confronted him with it. This affliction caused Montoya some professional difficulty since he made his meager living as a pickpocket. He was certainly the world’s most conspicuous pickpocket. I also passed Old Sol. Old Sol walked around with a whistle in his mouth and a book in front of his eyes. He blew the whistle whenever he came to a streetcorner and traffic stopped, green light or not. Since Old Sol was about seventy and he was still healthy, he was apparently doing something right.

  They were two of the more savory characters of the neighborhood I met as I turned down Hoover to the Farraday Building, the four-story refuge for second-rate dentists, alcoholic doctors and baby photographers where I had my office.

  As usual, the dark hall smelled of Lysol. Jeremy Butler, the former wrestler and present poet and landlord, spent a good chunk of each day fighting a losing battle to keep the building clean by carting squatting bums out the back door and slopping on pails of Lysol. He also changed the light bulbs regularly, but they were constantly being stolen or substituted for lower wattage by the tenants.

  The Farraday Building had an elevator, but only the uninitiated took it. Few people could afford the time the trip took. I echoed up the steps and down the hall to my office. The window on the outer door had been cracked and replaced where my landlord had thrown a troublemaker through it, a troublemaker who tried to rob Sheldon Minck.

  The neat black letters on the glass read:

  SHELDON MINCK, D.D.S., S.D.

  Dentist

  TOBY PETERS

  Private Investigator

  The door was new, but the reception room had been embalmed years ago. There was enough space for two wooden chairs, one once-leather-covered chair, a small table with an overflowing ash tray and a heap of ancient copies of Colliers. There was a whitish-grey square on one greyish white wall, where a dental supply company chart showing gum disease had recently fallen after a decade of doing its duty and warning the populace.

  I hurried along through the alcove into Shelly’s dental office, a single chair surrounded by old dental journals, coffee cups that should have been cleaned and piles of tools in various states of rust. Shelly’s radio was playing Smiling Jack Smith. Shelly himself, in a once-white smock and thick glasses slipping off his moist nose, was working on someone in the chair. Shelly shifted his cigar and turned his fat, bald head in my direction.

  “Toby, you got a call. I don’t remember who.”

  “Thanks Shelly,” I said and moved across the office toward my own office, which had once been a small false-teeth lab.

  “Hughes” said a voice from the dental chair. It was Jeremy Butler. “The call was from someone named Hughes.”

  “Right,” agreed Shelly, pushing his glasses back and humming with Jack Smith as he looked for some instrument among last week’s newspapers.

  “Jeremy,” I said. “Since when do you let Shelly work on your teeth?”

  Butler shrugged his enormous shoulders and leaned back, resigned.

  “I was reading in the paper today,” Shelly observed pulling out a mean looking tool, “and I saw this big ad for that dentist, Doctor Painless Parker with offices all over the coast, and I said that’s what I’d do. I’d advertise. Where the hell are those pliers?”

  “What else d’you read in the papers?” I said, being friendly.

  “Dick Tracy’s caught in a snowstorm.”

  “Terrific,” I said.

  “You working?” Butler asked softly. Usually, Butler spoke barely above a whisper, but people listened. People usually do when you weigh 300 pounds and most of it is muscle.

  “Yeah,” I said, happy to have a sounding board. I pulled up a stool, removed the newspapers from it except for one little corner that stuck to something wet and sat down facing the dental chair. Shelly found his pliers and I gave a quick summary of the case, talking over Jack Smith warbling “Just One More Chance.”

  I pulled out the list from Hughes. Butler examined it slowly and Shelly took a quick glance.

  “It’s the Jap,” said Shelly, turning with his pliers to Butler. “If not the Jap then the Nazi dame Gurstwald.”

  “Thanks for clearing it all up for me, Shelly. You are invaluable.”

  He waved his pliers, indicating that it was nothing much and was about to attack Butler’s mouth when the big man rose.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” he said, removing the dirty white cloth from his neck.

  “We had a deal,” Shelly protested.

  “You can still take five dollars from your rent,” said Butler. “It’s getting late and my sister’s boy is coming to spend the night with me.” Shelly sighed and put his pliers down.

  I was curious about Jeremy’s nephew. I wondered if he resembled a bathtub like his uncle.

  “How is the new place working out?” he said, meaning Mrs. Plaut’s rooming house. I had been renting a small motel-like bungalow from Butler before that.

  “Fine,” I answered. Shelly climbed into his own dental chair with a newspaper.

  “Take care of yourself, Toby,” Butler said and out he went.

  “I’m closing down early,” Shelly said looking at his cigar. “Mildred and I are going to see that all-Negro musical at the Mayan, VooDooed. You want to come?”

  Jack Smith paused so I could answer.

  “No, I’m waiting for a call. Mind if I use your radio when you leave?”

  He said he didn’t mind, and I went into my office to check on the mail, which didn’t exist, look at the framed copy of my dusty private investigator’s license, examine the photograph of my father, my tall heavy brother and our beagle dog Kaiser Wilhelm. I hated and loved that photograph and the ten-year-old kid in it who had been Tobias Leo Pevsner. My brother Phil’s arm was around my shoulder in the photograph, my father looked proud. My nose was already smashed flat by Phil, and Kaiser Wilhelm looked sad as he always did.

  Shelly left just before six and I went down for three burgers from the stand at the corner and brought them back to my desk with a Pepsi. I put in a call to Hughes through Dean at the Romaine office and sat eating as I waited for Hughes to call me back and Trudi Gurstwald to get in touch. I listened to Shelly’s Silvertone radio while I munched and turned to KFI for a jolly night of Bums and Allen, Fibber McGee and Molly, Bob Hope and Red Skelton. By the time Bob Hope came around, Hughes had still not called. In the middle of Red Skelton, I heard someone come into the outer office. I wasn’t expecting trouble, but I didn’t feel like taking chances. I had left the light on in Shelly’s office and my small light off. I snapped off the radio and tiptoed to the door to open it a crack and peeked out.

  I saw Trudi Gurstwald, her little yellow curls bobbing, in a fresh dress looking clean and fluffy. It contrasted with her pink and anxious face. She looked around the room nervously and made a turn to leave. I stepped out.

  “Mrs. Gurstwald,” I said, and she turned, startled.

  “Mr. Peters,” she said, her accent strong. “I thought I had missed you. I have only half an hour or so. Anton thinks I am shopping and I must meet him at 8:30. I have a cab waiting downstairs.”

  She paced the room and I took a seat in the dental chair. The sur
roundings didn’t seem to surprise or bother her. She had something else on her mind.

  “I don’t know what Anton would do if he knew I had come here,” she said, looking at me earnestly.

  “I don’t either,” I said. “Why don’t we put it from our minds while you tell me what you wanted to tell me about that night at Hughes’ house.”

  She bit both of her lips and turned to me with moist eyes.

  “I’m really afraid,” she said taking a step toward me.

  “Well, lady,” I came back, “you may very well have reason to be afraid. You have my sympathy, but I can’t give you anything more till you tell me what you know.”

  She took another step toward me, almost crying.

  “You can’t know what it is like living there with Anton and those people,” she said softly, her eyes searching mine. “He has such fear of the Nazis, the Americans, so many people. He can think of nothing else. And he has no strength left for me. He had such strength, Mr. Peters.”

  I nodded knowingly, deciding to let her talk it out in the hope that she’d get to the point herself. After all, she was the one who had the cab waiting.

  “When you came this morning,” she said, “it was the first life in that house in months. You said things no one says to Anton and you did to Rudy what I’ve wanted to do for years.”

  The tears were overflowing, and she was standing over me in the chair. I half expected her to pick up one of Shelly’s contaminated instruments and go to work on me. Instead she leaned over and put her open mouth on mine. Her mouth was large and engulfed me to the point where I had trouble breathing.

  She let me up for air and I caught some, but she wasn’t breathing hard.

  “I haven’t even touched a man in years,” she whispered.

  I felt sorry for her, but she didn’t give me much time to feel anything. She took my face in her hands and placed her mouth back on mine. I was in an awkward position for getting up, but I had the impression that even if we were on equal footing, Trudi Gurstwald was a match for me. Besides, I didn’t dislike what she was doing. I was just puzzled by it. I had learned to distrust the few women who had found me irresistible. There always seemed to be a price to pay for it. On the other hand, I never really had the will power to turn down the attention. It came too infrequently. So I didn’t try to stop Trudi Gurstwald and did my best to enjoy her kisses, while being curious about where they would lead to and wondering whether she was crazy and how long she’d let the cab wait.

  Her hands moved down my chest to my legs and then between them, and I stopped being curious. She may have been desperate and distraught, but she was doing the work. I gave her some help, and she moaned loud enough to wake any of the bums who might have been sleeping in the halls.

  We wrestled cooperatively around the dental chair getting my pants down and her dress up. At one point her breasts battered my head against the head rest and almost knocked me out. I had a fantasy of Trudi Gurstwald going up against Chief Little Wolf at the Eastside Arena and taking him in two falls.

  Making love in a dental chair—if that was what we did—is definitely not recommended for someone with a bad back. It has its rewards, but it also has it consequences. I was exhausted when Trudi Gurstwald gave me a final smile through her tears, kissed my sore mouth and stood up.

  “Thank you,” she said sincerely.

  “My pleasure,” I said, trying to stand up and finding myself pushed back in the dental chair by the pain in my kidney. I pulled my pants on in a sitting position and tucked in my shirt. Trudi looked at me soulfully and I thought she was going to have another attack of emotion. I wasn’t sure I could survive it.

  “Trudi,” I said, pushing myself from the chair and taking her hand before she could take mine or some other part of me. “What did you see at Hughes’ house that night?”

  She looked at me in surprise and straightened her hair and then remembered one of the points of her visit.

  “It was that Army major,” she said.

  “Barton.”

  “Yes, Barton. I went upstairs that night to the—how do you say it politely?”

  “Toilet.”

  “Yes, toilet. Someone was using the downstairs toilet and I saw this Major Barton coming out of a room. The door opened enough so I could see it was an office with papers and drawings. Major Barton was nervous and looked around both ways to see if anyone saw him coming from the room. I was in the …”

  “Toilet.”

  “Yes, I must remember that word. It is awkward to say Powder Room when one doesn’t mean Powder Room.”

  “Major Barton,” I prodded.

  “He looked both ways, closed the door and went down the steps. He had sweat on his head, and he wiped it with his sleeve, though the night was cool.”

  She squeezed my hand and looked soulful again.

  “Anton was afraid I should tell you and he would get involved,” she said. “I had told him. He said it would be the questionable word of two Germans against that of an American officer. But I had to tell you. If someone finds out we knew and said nothing, and it turned out to be important, we would be in even bigger trouble.”

  “Right,” I said. Her eyes were growing moist again and I added, “You’ve been here about half an hour. You’ve got Anton and a cab waiting.”

  “Again soon?” she asked.

  This time I kissed her first.

  “Again soon,” I said and guided her to the alcove, where she tripped against the once-leather-covered chair.

  When she stepped into the hall, I locked the door behind her to keep her from a sudden change of mind. I wasn’t worried about her being attacked by any of the neighborhood bums. She could take care of herself.

  I figured it was about nine and was about to turn on the radio to find out, when the phone rang.

  “Peters,” I said.

  “I say this once,” the voice said in sharp Germanic English. It was a man’s voice and it was not a patient voice. “You cease your current investigation. You cease or soon there will be no Toby Peters.”

  “Shelly,” I said. “Is this your idea of a joke? Your Hitler is as bad as your Clark Gable.”

  “This is no joke,” hissed the voice. “And you would be wise to heed my warning.”

  “I don’t know who’s doing your dialogue, pal,” I said, “but it could use a rewrite.”

  He hung up before I could. I knew it could have been a gag. But I also knew there was a chance that it wasn’t, so I calmly got my things together, put on my jacket, turned out the lights and decided to go home and sleep on it.

  I got as far as the alcove door when I saw the shadow in the pebble glass behind the reversed lettering of Shelly’s and my name. It looked like the shadow’s owner had something in his hand. I stepped back and whoever it was tried the door I had locked behind Trudi Gurstwald.

  “We know you are in there, Peters,” came a voice suspiciously like the one on the phone. “We called from across the street. Now open the door and we will have a nice talk without disturbing people.”

  His use of the editorial “we” failed to convince me that someone was with him. On the other hand, he seemed to have a gun and mine was in my car’s glove compartment.

  “Look,” I said, backing away in the hope of making it to the phone, but the “look” was as far as I got. The figure in the hall put two shots through the window, shattering Shelly’s name and mine. The bullets hit somewhere in the general vicinity of the whitish square where the gum disease chart once rested. I remember thinking we’d have to put the chart back to cover the bullet holes, and then I realized the bullets had come within a hair of hitting my face. The guy with the gun had been waiting for my voice so he could fire toward it. I backed against the wall, reaching for one of the alcove chairs. There was an open square where the window had been and it showed the hall. I saw no one there. But I heard no footsteps. Stupid anger took hold, and I went for the door like a Neanderthal, with chair in hand. Chair against gun. Idiot agains
t achiever.

  I opened the door, pushing glass out of the way, and stepped into the hall. Whatever he hit me with, and I think it was the gun, was right on target, low on the skull. I went down, knowing he had suckered me into the hall while he pressed himself against the wall.

  I didn’t go out right away. My hand must have automatically dropped the chair and went to the back of my head to keep in the blood or stop another blow. I rolled over on my back and dimly saw a guy above me with a gun. I had never seen him before. He reminded me of a fuzzy version of Ward Bond, and then I was out.

  Koko the Clown took my hand and led me into the inkwell where we found ourselves in Cincinnati. He drove me up the side of the hill across the river and out to the suburb in the hills where I lived. Then Koko disappeared. I ran to my two-level house to greet my family, but they weren’t there. I ran outside and they weren’t there. I ran past rows of shacks and no one was there. I was alone in Cincinnati and scared. I was scared because no one else was alive in Cincinnati and because I’ve never been in Cincinnati in my life and I wondered even while I dreamt what the hell I was doing there. I think I also wondered if I was dead. Someone groaned, and Koko reappeared to take my hand. He led me to my car, with the bumper still missing because Arnie hadn’t gotten to it, and drove me back down the hill and out of the inkwell.

  Early morning sunlight burnt my eyes and I forced them open. I was still alive, or as close to alive as I usually am. The chair I had taken into the hall was a few feet away. The glass from the broken window of my office was all over the place. The back of my head screamed, and I remembered a warning from Young Doc Parry about not taking any more jolts in the head. I managed to sit up, wondering what time it was and why I was still alive.