Then I limped to my office. The place was empty. It was Sunday. Even crooked lawyers and pornographers get a day off. I was feeling good and sorry for Toby Peters as I went slowly up the stairs carrying my shoes.
The new sign on the doorway was in gold letters.
Doctor Sheldon Minck, Dentist, D.D.S., S.D.
Painless Dentistry Practice Since 1916
Toby Peters
Investigator
I wasn’t even “private” any more. The alcove had been cleaned up somewhat, and a new chart, this one showing the inside of a tooth, covered the bullet holes. Someone had cleaned the ashtrays.
Shelly’s office even showed signs that there had been a halfhearted attempt to clean it up. I went to my office, found an envelope from Hughes with two days pay and called the phone company to find out it was almost eight in the morning. Then I called Basil Rathbone.
A woman answered and got him.
“Yes?” he said.
“It’s me, Toby Peters,” I said with a great yawn. Then I told him what had happened.
“I see,” he said, when I had finished. “And now you have one more bit of business to take care of. Would you like my advice?”
“Go ahead,” I said.
“Holmes often took justice into his own hands. It was rather a hubristic act, but he was a man of tremendous ego. While you may not fancy yourself such a man, this case may require other than simplistic action.”
“I understand,” I said, looking up at the baleful eyes of both my father, who had wanted me to be a lawyer, and my brother Phil, who wanted me to leave him alone, and Kaiser Wilhelm, who simply wanted me.
“Thanks for the help, Basil,” I said.
“Glad of whatever assistance I could provide. I’d like to keep in touch.”
“I’ll do that,” I said and we hung up after the goodbyes.
My plan was to make some coffee and wait, but I couldn’t get my feet and body out from behind the desk, so I pulled out my notebook and began to transfer my expenses for the case.
Bumpers, bribes, tremendous quantities of gas, parking, phone calls, dinners, windshields, doctor bills, brought the whole thing to $198.60. I had put in six full days. I decided not to count that morning. That made $288 in per diem rate, minus the $192 advance. That made another $96, which meant Howard Hughes owed me an additional $284.00. Considering what I had gone through, it didn’t look like a hell of a lot, especially after paying for the office and car damage. Without another good job or two soon, I’d be hocking the coat I bought in Chicago.
I typed the bill neatly on some Nevers Trucking Company stationery, which had been given to me as a present by Nevers when his company went out of business after he went behind bars for five years for hijacking. I had done some work for his lawyer, leg work, but everything I found had made Nevers look worse. He had held no grudge and given me a stack of stationery.
Stumbling back into Shelly’s office, I found a scalpel and brought it back to my office to sharpen a pencil, with which I crossed off the letterhead for Nevers, using the side of an envelope to keep the lines straight. Then, I neatly penciled in my name. So much for the professionalism Howard Hughes expected from me. I put the bill in an envelope, licked it and put a two-cent stamp in the corner.
The case was officially closed, but there was that one nagging unofficial thing to do.
I turned on the radio and listened to a Sunday morning preacher warn me about the wicked paths, the evil in the world and my own responsibility. I must have been really in shock. He actually seemed to make sense to me.
Listening got difficult. He yelled louder to keep me awake, and I vowed to remember his words, but my head went down, and some time between heaven and hell I was sleeping with my head on my arms.
I dreamed of yesterdays, baseball games, a dog running and a man who told me why I dreamed about Cincinnati. I wanted to remember what he said, so I could think about it when I woke up, but I was interrupted by an airplane that dove into a hangar and came out the other end.
Then I was standing in a dark hall, and someone was walking through the darkness toward me. It was a little kid, a boy. He stamped on my sore foot and tried to reach my head. He was very matter of fact and unemotional about it, and he was wearing a fedora like Howard Hughes. I covered my head with my hands and called for help from Koko the Clown.
He came bouncing in and jumped on my head to help protect me, but the little kid’s punches went through Koko, landing on my wound.
I ran from the kid, still carrying Koko on my head, and hid in a closet. I could hear the kid coming closer. The closet was dark and someone was showing a movie on the wall. I tried to get to the projector to stop so it wouldn’t attract the kid, but I couldn’t get through the glass wall. Koko wouldn’t get off my head, and footsteps were coming closer.
“For God’s sake, help,” I tried to say, but nothing came out. I was mute, my mouth dry.
I woke up and slipped off the chair. Someone was in the outer office. I thought I knew who it would be. I threw water on my face from the sink behind me and called out.
“What time…” I squealed and cleared my throat. “What time is it?”
“Almost noon,” came the voice from the other room.
I moved around the desk and headed for the door and the person who had killed Wolfgang Schell in the dental chair.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
I made some Ben-Hur coffee and realized that I had left the radio on. Music was coming through softly, and it sounded all right in the quiet building.
“You want some coffee?” I said.
He said yes, and I poured him a cup.
I started to sit in the dental chair and thought better of it. I sat on the stool. He sat in the dental chair.
“What happened to your foot and your head?” he asked, sipping his coffee.
“Everybody asks that one,” I said.
“Under the circumstances, it’s a natural question,” he said.
“I’ll tell you later,” I said. “I told the police a now-dead Nazi named Kirst killed the guy in the dental chair.” The coffee was awful, but I poured myself some more.
“They believed you?”
“They accepted it,” I said.
“How did you know I did it?” he said gently.
“Lots of little things put together,” I said. “Partly a couple of words in blood about a ‘child’ and partly a comment by Basil Rathbone about the butler not doing it. It’s funny,” I said. “The butler did do it.”
Jeremy Butler’s huge mouth turned into a slight smile.
“Schell, the guy in the chair, saw your nephew, didn’t he?” I said. “I remember your saying that night that your nephew was coming to see you. He must have been with you when you heard the noise. You came out in the hall and saw Schell about to shoot me. Right so far?”
“Yes,” said Butler, finishing his coffee and warming his hands on the now-empty cup.
“Then, when he fired a couple at you and that didn’t stop you, he backed into the chair and you got to him. He couldn’t very well write your name in blood. He didn’t know your name. The thing that struck him was the kid behind you so he wrote ‘child’ in blood, hoping his brother would put something together and get a bit of European revenge. How’m I doing?”
“Very well,” said Butler.
“How badly did you get hit?” I said.
He shrugged and lifted his shirt. A four-inch white bandage circled his stomach, holding a large patch of gauze held firm with adhesive tape. Butler’s stomach wasn’t as hard as it had been a couple of years back when he threw 300-pounders to the canvas with body slams, but it was all right.
“The wound wasn’t bad,” he said. “I’ve had worse from old ladies’ umbrellas after a wrestling match.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“What do we do now?” asked Butler.
“Nothing,” I said. “You saved my life. What good is it going to do to go to the cops? How’s your nephew t
aking it?”
“Marco’s a tough kid. Looks about ten but is thirteen. He hasn’t started to grow yet. He thinks I’m a hero. He was too young to ever see me wrestle.”
We had some more coffee and said nothing, just listened to the radio.
“I came here the last three days to see you and talk about it, Toby,” he said. “But you weren’t here.”
“It worked out,” I said.
We were quiet for a few minutes more.
“Thanks again, Jeremy,” I said. The moment was turning awkward and I was ready for rest. He took my hand, which was lost in his, gave me a smile and left.
I turned off the radio and caught a cab home. It was Sunday. Gunther was making lunch in his room, and I joined him at his invitation. I told him the long tale and he listened attentively while he neatly buttered his bread. Gunther was wearing his suit, but he seemed to have nowhere to go.
We ate fish soup, quietly listening to the radio, and I felt calm and peaceful for the first time in months.
Gunther told me about his work for Brecht and his fear that the new translator, Bentley, would be getting it in the future. However, Brecht had steered him to a number of friends who were going to Gunther for more work translating Danish.
Our lunch was just about finished when we heard the phone ring, followed by Mrs. Plaut’s loud voice beyond the door. Then came her familiar padding feet.
“Mr. Peelers?” she shouted at my door. “Mr. Peelers? Telephone.”
I moved to the door as fast as I could and out of Gunther’s room. I caught her still knocking and yelling at my door.
“I’m here, Mrs. Plaut,” I said.
“You’re not in your room,” she said in her flowered robe, holding it together with a firm, wrinkled right hand to keep me from peeking.
“I know,” I said.
“I thought you were in your room,” she said.
“I’m clearly not,” I said.
“What happened to your body?” she said, looking at me.
“I went four rounds in an exhibition with Joe Louis,” I explained.
“I didn’t know you were a boxer,” she said in awe and new respect. “I thought you were a private exterminator.”
“No,” I said, “I’m a…forget it. Yes, I’m a boxer.”
“You’re homely enough,” she pondered.
“Thank you. Is the phone call for me?”
“The phone call is for you.”
I moved down the hall and left her mumbling toward the other direction.
“Peters,” I said. “This is my day off. Call me in the office tomorrow. Late tomorrow. If I’m not there, leave a message.”
“It’s me, Shelly. Is that you Toby?”
“I just said it was me.”
“The bill for fixing the office came to forty dollars. You still owe me.…”
“I’ll pay you tomorrow. Why does everything have to end on details? Can’t a man have the satisfaction of doing his job and just sitting back for a few days in peace and physical agony?”
“I know how you feel,” Shelly sympathized. “When I pull a couple of impacted ones, I want to have a drink and take a few days to recover.”
“You fill me with confidence, Shelly,” I said. “I admire the new door.”
“Thanks. Hey, there’s a message for you. I left it near the autoclave or in it. I can’t remember. Maybe on your door. It wasn’t important.”
“Then it can wait till tomorrow,” I said. “Have a good Sunday, Shel.”
“Just a nut who said he was Boris Karloff,” Shelly chuckled. “Did a lousy imitation. Left a number. I answered him with my Peter Loire.”
“What did he say?” I asked.
“He said he had a problem. Something about a vampire or something. It was a dumb joke and a dumb imitation, believe me. ‘Tell Mr. Peters it is urgent,’” Shelly said, imitating Boris Karloff. “‘Vampires, he said.’”
“I’ll call him Monday, Shel. Goodbye.”
I hung up. Boris Karloff and vampires. I went through the catalogue of characters who might pull a dumb joke like that and was on the sixth name when I gave up and wondered why a joker would actually leave a number to call. There was an outside chance that Boris Karloff had actually called me. I’d worry about it the next day. This was my day for resting bones and mending in the sun on the front porch while I listened to little girls jump rope to violent chants and racial slurs. It was a day to contemplate calling Carmen the waitress at Levy’s and suggesting an outing in the park. It was a day to be a human being and not a private investigator.
I went back to Gunther’s room to help with the dishes, but they were finished.
The music was playing and I fumbled in my pants pocket for a nickel to call Carmen. Maybe she could put together a picnic from Levy’s for her and me and Gunther.
But such was not to be. The music on the radio stopped with a hum of static followed by the voice of an announcer.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “We interrupt this program to bring you the following special announcement. The Japanese have just launched a massive air attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Although no official statement has come from the White House, this sneak attack is clearly an open act of war, and it is expected that President Roosevelt will, indeed, declare war on Japan immediately. We repeat. The Japanese have just…”
I turned off the radio. The pain in my head was back, and I changed my mind about what I was going to do with this Sunday. I was going to find a store open somewhere and buy presents for my brother’s kids, Nate, David and the baby, Lucy, and I was going to spend the afternoon with them listening to Orson Welles and Quick as a Flash and the news if they wanted me. I was pretty sure they’d want me.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1979 by Stuart M. Kaminksy
cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
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The Howard Hughes Affair: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Four) Page 17
