He took another drink.
“I remember,” I said. “Howard …”
“No,” he said holding his belly. “Not Howard. Unless Howard had all his teeth pulled out and bought cheap dentures about five or six years back. If he did, Howard’s dentist is going to want to know whose teeth he was working on for the last decade or two.”
“So—” I started.
“Where is Howard and who is the guy with the dentures?” He took another big drink and finished what was in the cup. “You want a drink? Eighty proof Chase and Sanborn …”
“No thanks,” I said. “Howard’s dead. Lipparini’s people caught up with him. Howard killed Lipparini and those two guys at Reed’s.”
“No go, Peters,” he said, yanking a bottle out of his drawer and sitting up to pour it. “You could be pulling something with Howard and the grieving widow. There’s insurance money going down here.”
“And you want some of it.”
He threw the bottle at me and stood up. “You start that kind of shit and I’ll bite off the other ear. You prove Howard’s dead, and I don’t care if she collects. All I want to be sure of is nobody gets away with killing people.”
“A body will turn up tomorrow,” I said. “No face, like the guy on the beach, but this one will have a mouthful of teeth.”
“If it doesn’t happen,” he said, swaying behind the desk, “I come looking for you. You know, Peters, I like it better when it ends this way. No fast lawyers getting people short terms, no long trials. Cleaner this way, but the body better turn up.”
“It will,” I said.
“I’ll hold on to Parkman for a day or two just in case,” he said with a grin on his pink face. “If there’s no body, Parkman and I go to the library and he tells what he knows and no insurance and some bad nights for the widow. You wouldn’t want bad nights for the widow?”
I gave him my own nasty grin and told him where to find Parkman. I had just turned my back when Meara spoke behind me. “I tell you I got a kid in the Army, Peters?”
“Yeah, Meara, you told me.”
“He’s the only kid we got. Could get himself killed.”
I went through the door and got out of Santa Monica. The airport wasn’t far and I could just make it.
11
Joe Louis was in a little room inside the airport not far from where Trans World Flight 29 would soon be taking off for Chicago with connections to New York. When I went in, he was in his uniform, shoes polished, looking out of a small window at the planes taking off. According to the woman who had led me to the room, the Champ was in there instead of in the regular waiting room to protect him from fans who might recognize him.
“It’s all over, Champ,” I said as he turned to face me.
He listened quietly while I told him the tale, leaving out some of the details. I had the feeling that he didn’t care much, that there were other things on his mind. All he was really interested in was that he was off the hook.
“You could use a good cut man,” he said, looking at my face and ragged ear. “You’re a mess, worse than I looked after the first Schmeling fight.”
“You bounced back,” I said. “I can do it. I just heal a little slower as I age. It goes with the body.”
“I guess,” he said. “How much I owe you?” He had his hand under his Army jacket and on his wallet when I stopped him.
“You don’t owe me anything,” I said. “I owe you a refund. You overpaid, Champ.”
He took his hand off his wallet and gave me a puzzled look. “First time anybody ever said no when I had my hand on my wallet,” he said. “You ain’t a rich man.”
“I ain’t a rich man,” I agreed. “But I like to think I’m not a thief either. Next time you’re in L.A. after the war and you’ve got a fight, leave two tickets for me at the box office, if you remember.”
“I’ll remember,” he said, and then he paused as if he had something more to come out with and didn’t know how to say it. “You got any kids?” he asked.
“No kids, no wife,” I said.
“I talked to Marva, that’s my wife, this morning after the police finished talking to me. We’re going to have a baby. I’m gonna be a father.”
“Great,” I said, holding out a hand.
He took it with a small smile. “I like kids,” he said. “I’m gonna try to put things together, be a good husband, father, you know?”
He was playing with the Army cap in his hands, rolling it into a cylinder and unrolling it in his big hands.
“It’s hard,” he said, shaking his head. “I can train, do the running, eat the food, get the sleep. Always do what Chappie told me, but he’s gone. Then when the women come or some friend needs a few hundred dollars, I can’t say no, haven’t got the will for that. I gotta work on it.”
Never having had the problem of women eagerly pursuing me or friends after my wealth, I strained my imagination and came up blank.
“You’ll manage,” I said lamely.
“I’ll try,” he said. “Sure you don’t want …”
“I’m sure,” I said.
There was a knock at the door, and the woman who had led me to the room stuck her head in and said it was time for the flight to Chicago.
“Could have taken a military flight,” Louis said, “but I want to get back by morning. I’ve got that exhibition tomorrow.”
I nodded. He looked as if he had something more to say but didn’t know the words. He picked up his green duffle bag at the door, put it over his shoulder, said, “Thanks,” and went out the door.
Half an hour later I was in bed dreaming dreams I didn’t remember or want to remember.
A knock at the door woke me in the morning. The knock was followed by the appearance of Mrs. Plaut. I sat up.
“Phone,” she said succinctly.
“Thanks,” I said, trying to rise.
“You look worse than Elliott Sylvester,” she said, examining my face as I groped for my pants.
“I don’t want to know who Elliott Sylvester is,” I said.
“Elliott Sylvester,” she said, “was our neighbor when we lived in the Valley. He engaged in combat with a cougar.”
My pants were on backwards. I turned them around and ran my tongue over my lower lip, but it still felt dry.
“It was his idea,” Mrs. Plaut explained. “He was of the opinion that he could best a cougar in combat as he had bested many of the neighbor boys in wrestling, but that was foolhardy.”
“At best,” I agreed, standing up and feeling my wounds tremble with delight at the torment they had planned for me this sunny day.
“Cougars are much more dangerous than young men,” she said.
“I’ll bear that in mind,” I said as I stumbled toward the door. She gave way and let me pass but followed me down the landing to the pay phone. I picked up the dangling receiver and said something I hoped sounded like “Hello.”
“Peters?” Meara said. “You sound like shit.”
“Thanks.”
“Body turned up this morning,” he said. “Guy around fifty-five or so, flannel shirt. Shot and thrown off the rocks up near Santa Barbara. Not much to identify.”
“That’s too bad,” I said.
“Too bad,” he agreed. “Parkman’s on his way home. Keep your ass out of Santa Monica.”
“Does that mean we’re not playing quoits tonight?” I tried.
He didn’t bother to answer. The phone went dead.
I turned to Mrs. Plaut, who was watching me.
“Somebody died,” I explained.
“It is inevitable,” she said. “Happens to everyone, especially relatives. The man with the hair is waiting for you downstairs.”
“Thanks,” I said, but she didn’t hear me. She had already turned and started down the stairs. I went to the railing and looked down at Seidman.
We didn’t talk much on the way to the Wilshire Station. I asked him how his dental work was going and he said it looked as if he wouldn’t ha
ve to kill Shelly.
Phil was just saying good-bye to a chunky woman with an angry look on her face who could have been anything from forty to sixty. She was clutching her black patent leather purse to her chest with two hands to keep any snatcher in the police station from getting it.
“I’ll have a man on it this afternoon, Mrs. Courtney,” he said with a smile that made him look as if he had been interrupted by painful stomach gas.
“It should have been attended to weeks ago,” she said. “If it had been, I wouldn’t have had to complain to my congressman.”
“This afternoon,” Phil said, tugging at his collar.
“We will see,” said Mrs. Courtney, who turned and hurried down the hall, after giving me a look that told me I was just what she expected in a place like this.
“Neighbor’s using her garden hose without permission,” Phil said, his teeth clenched. “That’s the kind of shit I have to … Come in.”
Seidman and I went in.
“You want coffee?” Phil growled. “Or iodine. You can drink the iodine and rub the coffee on your face, or what’s left of it.”
“Just the coffee,” I said.
Seidman volunteered to get it and went out of the room.
“Explain,” Phil said. “Explain fast before Steve gets back. The less crap he has to hear, the less he has to lie about it.”
I talked fast and told the truth, down to Howard’s killing and the body Meara had told me about less than an hour before.
“You know what I should do?” he said, holding up a clenched right fist. “I should make you completely unrecognizable. You’ve got me, the department, yourself, up to the balls in fraud.”
“I wanted Anne to have the insurance money,” I said. “The money and some decent memories of her second husband. Who did it hurt?”
“It didn’t do Howard a hell of a lot of good,” Phil said. “And you don’t look too hot either, not that I give a damn.”
Seidman came back through the door with the coffee, a cup for each of us. Phil took a gulp, swished it around his mouth, and let it go down. Then he put the cup on his desk and ran a thick paw over his clipped hair before he looked at the stack of reports and files on his desk.
“Here’s how it goes down,” he said. “The two guys in the gym and Lipparini, killers unknown. Looks like an intersquad gang mess.” He looked up for an argument and got none from Seidman or me.
“Howard was killed on the beach Sunday by the guys who got it at Reed’s. Maybe the mob didn’t like their killing Howard, or they were covering up. Maybe … The whole goddamn thing is full of holes.”
I could tell from the still clenched fist that he wanted to hit something or someone, possibly the departed Mrs. Courtney. Instead, he picked up his coffee cup and took another gulp.
“It’ll hold,” Seidman said. “And we get to put all that back in the records room.”
Phil looked at the reports and nodded agreement. “Sure,” he said. “We’ve got more important things to do, like stakeouts on Westwood retirees who borrow garden hoses. Get out, Toby.”
“I’m sorry, Phil,” I said, putting down my unfinished coffee.
It was the wrong thing to say. He didn’t want my sympathy. Our brotherhood was not based on mutual support but on a thin thread of antagonism. His face went beet red and he stepped around the desk. Seidman stepped in front of him, and I got the hell out of Phil’s office.
When I got to the Farraday Building, Jeremy was in the lobby putting new name tags on the directory board. For a few years he’d had the names printed at a place across the street. Recently, Alice Pallice had churned out the little tabs on her machine. The turnover in the Farraday was so fast that it was a major chore.
“Admiral Farragut left,” Jeremy said, stepping back to see if the tab he had just inserted was aligned with the one above.
Admiral Farragut was the nickname I had given a tenant who moved in less than a month earlier. He always dressed in white and looked a little like the pictures of Sir Thomas Lipton on the tea boxes, right down to the little white goatee beard. From his small office on the second floor, Admiral Farragut had given illegal goat gland injections to aged ladies and gentlemen who wanted one more shot at being young. Apparently, there weren’t enough seekers of the Fountain of Youth in the neighborhood to make it worth while, so he had packed up his elixir and headed north, south, or east. He couldn’t go any further west.
“Would you like his office?” Jeremy said, putting in another name tab.
I could afford it, at least till what was left of Joe Louis’s money ran out. The temptation was great.
“I would charge you no more than you are paying for your share of Minck’s suite,” he continued, delicately adjusting a small tab with his huge fingers.
“Thanks, Jeremy,” I said. “I’ll think about it. You going to do that exhibition?”
“I’ll wrestle the soldiers,” he said, reaching into his pocket for yet another name tab, “but no poetry. If I cannot subject my own work to ridicule, I cannot do it to Byron or Emily Dickinson. I’ve struck an alternative deal. Alice and I will distribute copies of Wings of the White Dove to all servicemen following the exhibition.”
“Sounds like a good deal,” I said, moving toward the stairs. “I’ll get back to you about the office.”
Shelly was listening to Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians on the radio and working on a patient when I came in. He turned and looked at me, leaving the woman in the chair with her mouth open.
“My suit,” he said.
I fished forty dollars out of my pocket and handed it to him. “You can buy three suits for that if you shop carefully,” I said.
“I’m not angry anymore,” he said magnanimously, tucking the money into the pocket of his stained white jacket.
“I’m relieved,” I said, heading for my office. “Better take care of the lady.”
Shelly turned to look at the woman as if he had forgotten she was there. She looked frightened, and he turned back to me. “Mildred is coming back this morning,” he said.
“Fortune smiles on you, Sheldon,” I said.
He scratched his neck and looked at his fingernails to see if they told him anything, possibly something about cleaning them. He decided they didn’t.
“Mildred and I need a vacation together,” he said. “Don’t you think?”
I shrugged and he looked at the woman in the chair, who shook her head to indicate she thought Shelly and Mildred needed a vacation together, or anything else the man holding the sharp instruments might need or want.
“You mind if I use this money on a weekend with Mildred?” he asked. “I’ve got two other suits.”
“Be my guest,” I said. “Might be a good idea before it’s too late. I hear they’re drafting overage dentists. You might be working on some colonel’s teeth in Manila by June.”
Shelly’s glasses dropped dangerously on his nose. “I’m too old,” he said, looking from me to the woman, who, mouth open, heartily agreed that he was too old. “I’m overweight, nearsighted, and out of touch with the latest techniques.”
“And those are his good points,” I told the woman in the chair.
“I’d look terrible in a uniform,” he went on.
“You looked fine as a waiter,” I said. “They’d make you an officer. Lieutenant Sheldon Minck.”
“No,” bleated Shelly.
The panic in his face was more than I had expected, and I didn’t want to be responsible for what his trembling hands might do to the woman in the chair.
“Relax, Sheldon,” I said. “I’m joking. You’re safe, free to continue your humanitarian work right here.”
“That’s a joke?” he shouted. “That’s his idea of a joke,” he said to the woman in the chair, who made a face to make it clear that she thought my joke was in terrible taste. It was at that point that I decided to turn down Jeremy’s offer of a new office. I’d miss Shelly too much. He was family.
“Can you imagine
that?” he said, turning to the woman in the chair. “If I told you all that I’ve done for him, you’d call me a saint.”
I went into my office and sat down. Shelly had left no messages on the desk, but the mail was sitting there. I went through it and discovered that I owed a refund to a woman in Bakersfield who claimed I had failed to find her lost cat. She wanted her twenty dollars back. I considered writing to her to tell her that I hadn’t promised to find her cat, only to look for it. There were no promises in my business, at least none you could be sure of keeping. The hell with it. J. Pierpont Peters stuffed a twenty into an envelope, addressed it to Miss Merle Levine in Bakersfield, and ended the correspondence.
Later in the morning I would call Anne and try to talk her into paying Parkman two grand when the insurance money on Ralph came in. I didn’t want to, but I also knew I’d go to the funeral for Ralph and watch them lower some other guy into the ground. I didn’t know where they planned to plant the real Ralph Howard.
Hell, the mail was more interesting. A company in Porterville wanted to know if I would be interested in a career as a plumber. With all the plumbers in the armed services, the world was looking for people who could control the flow of water. Women were encouraged to consider the possibilities of a new career in a challenging field that had previously been for men only.
I wondered what was going to happen when the war ended and all those men, at least those who could still walk and talk and handle tools, wanted their jobs back: plumbing, mechanicing, selling, preaching, and teaching. It even struck me that some of them might be shell-shocked enough to consider being private detectives. Unless we had a post-war boom of private crime, there wouldn’t be enough cheating, violence, and runaway wives to go around. Then again, I might not have to worry about it. By the time the war ended, I might have enough to retire. At the rate I was going, if the war stopped in four or five years I’d have a nice little nest egg of a couple hundred dollars.
I was starting to feel sorry for myself, which was a bad sign for a battered detective. I decided to go out and needle Shelly a little more. I checked the money in the drawer, noticed that it had started to rain, and went into the outer office, where Shelly was irritatedly telling the woman, “Spit, don’t swallow. You’re choking cause you’re not listening. You spit that stuff out. Who wants to swallow it? Some people have no—”
Down for the Count: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Ten) Page 17
