Down for the Count: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Ten)

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  Silvio and Mush were still in place on the floor, only the count was final now. There were spots of red, three on Silvio’s face, little holes. Dripping red. He looked surprised. Mush was on his stomach. At least one bullet had gone into his back.

  And Parkman? Parkman was gone.

  6

  “Okay, little brother,” Phil said, slamming the top drawer of his desk two hours later. “Where do we start?”

  The pile of reports, files, and odd scraps of paper in front of Phil was about four inches high. He patted it, rubbed his meaty right hand on the surface of his desk, and looked at me. Phil’s office was big and empty. It echoed. He had spent almost a decade in the small lieutenant’s cubbyhole in the squadroom down the hall. In the month he had been in this new office, he had made no effort to adjust to it, fit into it. Maybe he felt he wouldn’t be there long, that he would be back in his cubbyhole when the war ended and younger vets came home. His temper had kept him in that cubbyhole longer than he should have been there, a temper that crackled at nearby criminals, whose rights ended at Phil’s knuckles.

  The wooden floor of Phil’s office was stained with years of grime. The desk was the battered one his predecessor Capt. Fred Molin had left behind. The window was uncovered, and there were no pictures on the brown walls. A file cabinet did stand in one corner and Steve Seidman leaned against it listening.

  After I found the bodies of Mush and Silvio, I had made my way through the pack of boxers trying to see what was happening, and had gone through the gym and down the steps. Gunther was gone. I was just heading back to Reed’s when the squad car came flying down Figueroa, full siren. Parkman had called them during the fight. They would find more than a couple of bloody noses.

  Now I sat looking at Phil, who reached up to loosen his collar, which was already unbuttoned. I didn’t know where to start.

  “No answer?” he said. “Then I’ll pick a place.” He pulled off the top report.

  “Ferdinand ‘Mush’ Margolis, thirty-two, automobile salesman,” he read and then looked up. “Mush did very well as a car salesman last year in spite of the fact that there were no cars to sell. Very enterprising young man except when he got into a little trouble here and there. Look here. We even have an arrest for murder. Never went to trial. One scar on the face, cause unknown.”

  He put the report on the side and took up the next one.

  “Silvio Defatto, twenty-nine, also a car salesman. Like Margolis, he seems to have had a reasonably successful boxing career back East. Beyond that his life is sadly lacking in detail.”

  Phil put this report away, too, and looked at me.

  “Your friend Parkman is not a pro at shooting people,” he said. “Point blank in a small room, and he hit them all over the place. It took him everything he had in the gun to kill them.”

  “He might have been scared,” I suggested.

  “They were lying on the goddamn floor for chrissake,” he shouted. “And where the hell is Parkman? He’s not back at his house. The way he was dressed we should be able to spot him two blocks away in the dark. Next item.” This report was a bit thicker than the first two.

  “Joseph Louis Barrow. Born May 13, 1914, Lafayette, Alabama. Current weight two hundred pounds. Height six feet, one and a half inches. Managed by John Roxborough, now in prison, and trained by the late Jack Blackburn, who was once convicted of murder. Joseph Louis Barrow of Detroit, who, according to you, happens to have been jogging on the beach when a man was beaten to death and happens to have run into the same two men in a gym a few hours ago just before they were murdered. You did a great job of keeping him out of trouble, Tobias.”

  “There—” I began.

  “I entered the name Joseph Barrow of Detroit on the report,” Seidman said from the corner. “We sent Cawelti and Burns to talk to him.”

  “Phil—” I began, but he cut me off again, holding up his left hand.

  “There’s more,” he said, opening the folder in front of him. “Your corpse on the beach, identified by Anne, who didn’t have much to identify. According to the medical examiner, he didn’t die on the beach. Not enough blood in the sand. He was dead a couple of hours when you got there. If Louis saw Defatto and Margolis with the body, they were dumping him, bringing him home.”

  “So Louis is off the hook?” I said.

  “If,” Seidman said behind us, “he can get someone to say he was with her two hours before the discovery of the body.”

  “I told you the problem there,” I said. “He was with a woman, a white—”

  Phil got up from behind the desk, took the folder on Ralph Howard, and threw it at me. “I don’t give a shit who he was with,” he shouted. “I want a name.”

  “No fuss, no muss, no publicity,” Seidman said. “We just talk to her. She says he was with her, we just prepare a single-sheet report and put it in the investigation file. Discoverer of the body, Joseph Barrow of Detroit, reported seeing two men leaving the location where body was discovered. Barrow’s presence at the time of the actual murder was established by a reliable citizen, and we fill in the name. That’s it.”

  I reached for the phone on Phil’s desk. He sat back while I got the Braxton and Joe Louis’s room. I told him two cops were on the way to talk to him, told him he wouldn’t wind up in the newspapers, and asked for the name of the woman in Santa Monica who would give him the alibi. It took a promise I wasn’t sure I could deliver to get the name and address, but I got them. I hung up smiling. The name he had given me was more than familiar. I gave Phil the name.

  “Meara’s waiting outside,” Phil said. “He figures the Howard killing and this afternoon’s shooting gallery are tied together, and he’s damn right. He wants to talk to you again. He wants reports. He wants results. Everybody wants.”

  “And you’re going to give him …” I said.

  “Shit,” said Phil, shouting. “Shit, shit, shit.”

  “Phil,” Seidman said gently, stepping from the corner. “Take it easy. You’ve got it all under control.”

  Phil glared at me, his face a fleshy pink. His right hand had crushed a sheet of paper and he was squeezing it as if it were Meara’s neck. Or mine. He shrugged, nodded in agreement, threw the crumpled paper on his desk, and sat again, opening the final and thickest folder.

  “Lipparini,” he read, “Monty. Owner of M. L. Auto Sales. Wife Chloe, three kids. Investments all over the valley. Just opened the M. L. Coffee Company in Encino. Respectable businessman, right? Three or four arrests when he was younger. No convictions. Brought in for questioning more times than I can count. But an honest citizen, right?”

  “Right,” I agreed. I knew that look in Phil’s eyes, that wild look.

  “Wrong,” he shouted, rubbing his hand across the steely bristles on his head. “Wrong. The maggot is a killer. He killed at least two people in Jersey before he came here. It’s in the report, but there was no evidence, no witnesses. He killed a woman in Los Angeles six years ago. Only witness disappeared. Since then he’s had other people do his killing.”

  “Like Mush and Silvio,” I suggested.

  “Mush and Silvio,” he agreed. “And Lipparini has parties with movie stars and gets his picture in the papers. And Steve can’t get enough money together to buy a house, and I can’t pay off my kid’s hospital bills.”

  Phil’s son, my nephew Dave, had been hit by a car a few years back. The doctor’s bills had wiped out Phil’s savings. He didn’t know it, but I had kicked in a few bucks to his wife Ruth from time to time when I had a few, which, I realized, I now had.

  “You think Lipparini had Howard killed?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, Phil,” I said. “Maybe. Why don’t you ask him?”

  “Meara’s asking him now, in my old office,” he said. “Two of his salesmen get killed, you think the man might have an idea or two. You think Meara’s going to get hamster shit out of Lipparini?”

  “No,” I said.

  “No,” Phil agreed. “So we keep loo
king for Parkman, and Lipparini goes off to some country club dance. We look for Parkman and hope we get to him before Lipparini, who might not like flashy little fight promoters punctuating his hired help. Things like that happen enough, and you might lose some credibility in the business.”

  “You want me to go with Meara?” I said.

  Phil didn’t answer. His elbows were on the desk and his head in his hands.

  “You want Toby to go with Meara?” Seidman repeated.

  “Get out,” Phil said without looking up. “You think this is the only case we’re working on? I’ve still got the Citizens to Prevent Crime coming in this afternoon. A group of businessmen who think the Mexicans in the zoot suits are going to organize and come after them with key chains and machetes. And we’ve got the asshole in MacArthur Park who keeps showing his dong to old ladies. And I still haven’t finished the damn duty roster. Get out.”

  “Phil, I …” I began. Usually at this point I’d come up with a few words to provoke him into fury, but I didn’t have the heart.

  “Just take off, Toby,” Seidman said. “I’ve got an appointment with Minck at ten in the morning. Maybe I’ll see you then.”

  Phil looked up, started to put the reports in a neat pile, and said gruffly, “Go on. I’ll be all right. Maybe I’ll get Meara to lose his temper so I can squeeze his fat neck till his red little eyes pop.”

  The idea seemed to cheer Phil a bit, so I went out into the hall and closed the door behind me. I might be able to catch Lipparini if I hurried. So I hurried, pushed through the squadroom door, and looked over the room filled with cops, creeps, and bewildered honest citizens. No one seemed to have made even a halfhearted attempt to clean the floor since I’d last been here. The massive Sergeant Veldu was sitting against his desk eating a burger and listening to a thin, scraggly woman with a high voice who leaned forward toward him and gestured with both hands.

  “He had on a coat,” she said. “I said to myself, ‘Who needs a coat in this weather?’ That’s what I asked myself. Then I found out. Open comes the coat and there’s nothing under.”

  “What’d he look like?” Veldu said through a mouthful.

  “I dunno,” the woman screamed. “All I could see was his thing.”

  “What’d that look like?” Veldu asked.

  “A hairy popsicle,” she said and Veldu choked, gasped, and coughed, sending a spray of burger, lettuce, and bun in the general direction of a wild-haired kid handcuffed to a nearby chair.

  “What’re you laughing at?” the woman said. “It’s not funny.”

  Veldu kept laughing as the handcuffed kid whimpered, “Hey, watch what you’re chewing there, huh?”

  I passed some faces I knew, a few guys in uniform, a few not, and made my way to Phil’s old office. I knocked and went in. Meara was leaning against the desk. The light was off.

  “Where’s Lipparini?” I asked.

  “Gone,” he said. “Bastard had his lawyer with him. Gives me a statement, says those guys just worked for him, and the lawyer says that’s it. I wanted to rip his dago guts out.”

  “That would have wrapped up the case nicely,” I said.

  Meara pushed himself from the desk, straightened his jacket, and looked at me. He tried for a nasty smile, but his heart wasn’t in it. He was just going through the motions.

  “This is my case,” he said, pointing to himself so I would know who he was talking about. “I don’t think those two wops Parkman plugged killed Howard.”

  “One of those wops was a Jew,” I corrected him.

  “All the same,” he said with a sweep of his hand to clear the matter up. He was deep in his own thoughts. “Lipparini knows something. I could feel it right in my fingers. If I could have worked him just ten minutes. Just ten minutes. Lord, is that too much to ask? I go to church.”

  If it hadn’t been clear before, it was now. Meara had a tankful. He took a not-too-steady step toward me.

  “I am one hell of a good cop,” he said.

  “One hell of a good cop,” I repeated.

  “And my kid is one hell of a good soldier,” he said defiantly.

  “A good soldier,” I agreed.

  I left him standing in the dark office and went back into the squadroom. The damn station was beginning to depress me, but I should have known better than to have expected the bluebird of happiness in the Wilshire Station. If said avian had accidentally flown in, the cops would have blown its head off and one of the grifters would have had its feathers out in less than the time it takes to say, “Duz does everything.” I didn’t look at Veldu or the complaining woman or the handcuffed kid. I made it to the door and ran down the stairs.

  I found a phone in the grocery store around the corner and called the M. L. Auto Sales office. The blonde in green answered.

  “Mr. Lipparini,” I said. “This is Toby Peters.”

  She put the phone down for a few seconds and then came back with, “He is not here and does not want to talk to you.”

  “Tell him—” I started, and she hung up.

  While I considered what to do next, I picked up some essentials in the grocery, a carton of milk for twelve cents, some donuts for another twelve, and three eleven-ounce packages of Sunnyfield Corn Flakes for twenty cents. I paid the old lady behind the counter and went back to the phone. Almost half a buck for a small sack of groceries.

  When the blonde answered this time, I did my imitation of Lionel Stander and said, “It’s Joe. I gotta talk to Mr. Lipparini.”

  “Joe?” she said. “Joe Salter?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” I growled. “Put him on.”

  “He already left for the party,” she said. “I mean he’s going home first and then—”

  “Where’s the party?” I growled impatiently.

  “At Marty’s Lounge,” she said.

  “On Beverly?”

  “Yes, but—” she began. I didn’t hear the rest. This time I hung up on her.

  I got into my car, which the police had parked in a no-parking zone in front of the station. It was a game they enjoyed playing. I took the ticket from the windshield, stuffed it into my pocket, opened the door, and put my groceries down.

  It was late afternoon when I got back to Mrs. Plaut’s. The landlady was nowhere in sight. She was probably making her daily rounds of the neighbors to strong-arm them into turning over sugar-ration coupons.

  Two little girls who lived next door had set up a Kool-Aid 1¢ sign. I shifted my package and pulled out a penny. The older girl, about five, took the penny and poured red liquid from a glass pitcher into a coffee cup. The coffee cup didn’t look clean. I tasted the drink. It contained no sugar.

  “Good,” I said, belting down the remainder.

  “Henry helped us make it,” the smaller girl said. Her face was round, outlined by straight brown hair.

  “Henry makes good Kool-Aid,” I said with a smile.

  “Henry is our dog,” the other girl said.

  I put down the cup and hurried up the steps and into the house. Before I parked my groceries, I knocked on Gunther’s door.

  “Come in, Toby,” he said and in I went.

  He was seated at his desk on his child’s chair. The desk was low, a normal model with the legs cut off. The walls of the room were lined from floor to ceiling with books, except for the alcove near the window where Gunther’s refrigerator and dining table stood. His window was covered with a white curtain that let the light in. In one corner of the room was Gunther’s small bed, neatly made, a normal sofa, which matched the one in my room, and a reading lamp.

  “Toby,” he said, turning to me with his hands out, “I’m sorry. I was unable to pursue them to their ultimate destination.”

  “Pursue who, Gunther?”

  “Mr. Al Parkman and the man he came out with, out from the gymnasium.” He pronounced it “gym-nah-zi-um.”

  “Take it slow and tell me what happened.”

  “I almost missed them initially,” he said. “They emerged fro
m the alley next to the theater. Mr. Al Parkman’s clothing is such that I noticed him. He does not dress tastefully.”

  “The other man?” I asked patiently.

  “Difficult to describe with great accuracy,” Gunther said, pondering the question. “No higher than you, perhaps even near the same weight. He wore the blue wool hat of a merchant sailor. I did not clearly see his face and I did not see his hair. He wore a blue pea coat. Of his age I can say only that he was not a very young man and not a very old man.”

  “Could ‘he’ have been a ‘she’?”

  “It is of course possible,” Gunther said, putting his fingertips together, “but I do not think so. They were too far away for me to conjecture beyond that which I have so far done. They entered a small car and drove. I followed. They drove to the Pasadena Freeway. There was much traffic, and I lost them just after the Orange Grove Avenue. I am sorry.”

  The freeway had opened two years earlier with bands, tape, and a dedication by Mayor Fletcher Brown, who said the freeway would save lives. The lanes were narrow, the curves sharp, there were no shoulders and not enough merging space on the ramps. It was easy to lose your life, let alone someone you were following, on the Pasadena Freeway.

  “Nothing to be sorry about, Gunther,” I said.

  “I returned to Al Parkman’s house for an hour,” said Gunther. “He did not come, but the police arrived, remained for some time, and then departed. So I came here. I will be happy to resume my vigil at his home should you—”

  “No need,” I said, shifting my package. “I’ve got a lead or two. I’m working on one tonight.”

  Gunther wished me well and I went into the hall, found a nickel, and called Anne to bring her up to date. I told her what I was going to do. She told me not to. I said I would, and she told me to get in touch when I found out anything.

  I dined on corn flakes, coffee, and a small can of salmon well mixed with mayo. My suit was showing wear, but I had no time to shop. I brushed myself off and drove downtown to the Farraday Building. I didn’t bother to go to No-Neck Arnie’s. I had only one thing to do in the office. I parked on the street and hurried into the building and up the stairs. Shelly was changing into his civilian clothes when I entered the office. Little by little the world of Sheldon-crud was reclaiming the room, a crumpled smock on a chair, a pile of less than clean instruments on a tray, the sink more full than it had been a few hours earlier.