The Fala Factor: A Toby Peters Mystery

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “I’m moving,” I said with as pleasant a grin as my battered face could muster.

  My hands were out to show they were empty, and as I stepped into the hall he backed away, the gun level at my stomach.

  “My clothes were wet,” I explained.

  “Don’t talk,” the cop said, still looking at me. “This is crazy enough without you giving me the fantods. We’ll just call the station again.”

  “My name’s Peters,” I said. “I’m a private investigator. I didn’t kill that man. The killer went out as I came in.”

  “Makes no never-you-mind to me,” the cop said. “Just stand there quiet, or better yet, sit yourself down on the floor till I get some help here.”

  “My brother’s Lieut—Captain Phil Pevsner of the LA.P.D. He knows about this case,” I said. “Call him.”

  It was the first thing I could think of and probably not a particularly good idea since it was a partial lie and Phil might be less willing to listen than some unknown sergeant working Sherman Oaks.

  “All in good time,” said the cop, reaching for a phone on a little white table in the hall. “You’re just talking to a soldier of law here. Now sit.”

  I sat on the floor, resigned, while he made his call.

  When he finished, the old cop took off his cap without taking his eyes from me. He was on the thin side except for his little basketball belly and he wore a dark toupee that didn’t match his sideburns.

  “You got your share of scars there,” he said conversationally, trying to humor the madman.

  “Right,” I agreed. “You want to know what happened in there?”

  “Nope,” he said, showing a little smile. “I want to get home and finish reading the copy of Dragon Seed my wife bought me. I don’t want to think about this at all. Who you got in the Kentucky Derby tomorrow? Picked up a bookie the other day who told me to back Shut Out.”

  The conversation for the next ten minutes was one-sided. The old cop, who said his name was Max Citron, talked and I tried not to listen as I sat in Olson’s undershorts, shaken by an occasional chill. I don’t know how long it was till the next two cops came. The first thing they decided after consulting with Citron was that I could put on an old suit of Roy Olson’s. He wouldn’t be needing it. Citron disappeared, came back with a gray suit, and I dressed while the new cops, both detectives, whose names were Downs and Hindryx, examined the bathroom, listened to my tale, wrote down what I said, and appeared to have no interest in the whole business.

  “So the dead guy is a vet named Olson,” Downs said, looking down at his notes as we stood in the hallway downstairs. He was dark-suited, thin, weary, and wore a toothpick in the corner of his mouth.

  “Roy Olson,” his partner, a squat redhead, filled in.

  “Right,” Downs said. “You had some beef with him or something sick going. You were in the tub together and things got out of hand. All a mistake, right?”

  “That’s not what happened,” I said, shaking my head patiently. “Ask Mrs. Olson. Where is she?”

  “No Mrs. Olson here. Nobody but you,” Hindryx said, nodding back into the house.

  For a second time, I explained what had happened. The two cops wrote it down dutifully so that my two tellings could be checked against each other and whatever additional tales I might tell. Hindryx wrote it, grunted occasionally, and put his notebook away.

  “Where’s your car?” said Down.

  I told him and he decided it would be fine right there until it could be checked out.

  “Cop who found you said you’re Phil Pevsner’s brother, that right?” said Downs.

  “It’s right,” I said.

  “He’s an asshole,” said Downs, looking at me for contradiction.

  “You want me to tell him you said that?” I answered.

  Downs shrugged. “Suit yourself,” he said, shifting his toothpick to the other side of his mouth.

  The next hour was a trip down memory lane. Printed, booked, checked for priors, questioned again, and headed for the lockup. I had a single call I could make. I told the cop at the local that I wanted to make a few calls, that there was no law that said I could make only one, that the cops got that idea from William Powell movies, but he didn’t budge. One call it would be.

  I’d been through this before. I wouldn’t get a bail hearing on a murder charge so there was no point in calling Gunther to get me out. They’d want to keep me for a psychiatrist to talk to after what had happened. So I called the Wilshire District station. Veldu was still on duty, a double shift he explained as the lockup cop checked his watch to be sure I didn’t take too much time. Phil was home but Seidman was still there. I talked to him and gave him a quick explanation.

  “Steve,” I said when he didn’t answer. “You there?”

  “I’m here,” he said wearily, “but I’m not sure you’re all there. I’ll tell Phil and see what he wants to do.” He hung up and I gave the phone back to the lockup officer.

  It was night and the cell I was taken to was small and smelled of nightmares. There were two bunks in the cell and a weak light in the ceiling. On the wall between the bunks was a chalk drawing of Smokey Stover. Someone was lying on the bunk on the left. Doc Olson’s clothes and I took the bunk on the right.

  “I didn’t do it,” said the voice from the other bunk. The guy in it was lying on his back, his right arm across his eyes.

  “I believe you,” I said, checking the bunk for bugs.

  The other guy began to snore and I lay back trying to think. Had I stumbled into some unrelated murder? Had some jealous hulk that Anne Olson picked up strangled her husband, and I just had the dumb luck to walk in at the wrong time? Where was Anne Olson? Had Olson been knocked off because of the kidnapping of the president’s dog? Why? I knew I was too edgy to sleep, but knowing is not the same as feeling. I was asleep in minutes. My body had been through enough in forty-seven years to know when it needed a break, even if my mind didn’t.

  I dreamed that Guy Kibbe and I were sitting on Doc Olson’s naked stomach. He was floating and we were out in the middle of the ocean. From a faraway island, a woman’s voice called, “Out here damned spot.” Using our hands, we paddled for it on the bouyant corpse. When we reached the island, my ex-wife Anne and Koko the clown were hand-in-hand, dancing on the beach. We got off of Olson, and the four of us watched him float out to sea. For some reason, it was a tender moment. Something was about to happen. Anne was about to speak and tell me something important, but she never did. Someone shook me awake and I was back in the cell.

  “Come on,” said Seidman.

  “She was going to tell me the answer,” I said, sitting up and looking over at my cellmate, whose arm was still covering his eyes.

  “Sure,” said Seidman. His jaw was slightly swollen.

  “You snore,” said the guy from the other bunk.

  “You did it,” I answered, following Seidman out of the cell.

  Some bookwork, discussion, and dirty looks passed between Seidman and Downs, but in a few minutes the final touches were made and I was on my way, seated next to Seidman.

  “I got the report from Hindryx,” he said, heading into the night. “That the way it was?”

  “The way I said it.”

  That was all we said for the next half-hour till we got to the Wilshire station. It was four in the morning according to the clock downstairs and the night man had replaced Veldu. I didn’t know the night man so we exchanged nothing. We bypassed the squadroom and went to an office in the hall with CAPTAIN LOWELL B. PRONZINI stenciled on the door in black letters that were peeling off from years of scratching and a few dozen washings. Lowell B. had just retired. It was, I found, the office of Captain Phil Pevsner. It was bigger than his old one, had three chairs besides the one behind the desk, and probably looked out on the parking lot. I couldn’t tell. It was too dark. The desk was just as old as the last one and there were two battered file cabinets in the corner.

  “Coming up in the world, ain’t yo
u Rico?” I said to Phil, who sat rocking in his new swivel chair behind the desk.

  “What’s Eleanor Roosevelt got to do with this shit?” he said, still rocking.

  Seidman took one of the chairs, moved it to the corner, and sat down to swallow a pill and massage his right cheek, beneath which lurked the work that Shelly had done on him.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  Phil stopped rocking for a second, looked forward at me, a day’s stubble of gray beard on his chin. He said nothing and went from rocking to swiveling in his chair.

  “Try again,” sighed Seidman from the corner.

  Phil paused, looking bored, and reached for the metal cup of coffee on his desk. He discovered it was empty, got mad at the cup, and threw it in the garbage can near the desk. The garbage can was brown, metal, and not new.

  “Ruth can make some curtains,” I said, “turn this into—”

  “Eleanor Roosevelt,” Phil said, rubbing his temples.

  “Eleanor Roosevelt,” I agreed, and told him everything, her fears, the dog, everything. “You believe me?” I concluded.

  Phil’s hands went up in a resigned gesture of indecision. He looked at Seidman, whose tongue was in his cheek testing his inflamed gums. He had no opinion.

  “Go home,” Phil said, swiveling away from me to look out of the dark window.

  “Aren’t you going to tell me to stop looking for the dog?” I asked. “To keep out of it, to—”

  “Would it do any good?” Phil said.

  “No,” I agreed, “but that’s the routine. Aren’t we partners anymore?”

  “We never were, “sighed Phil. “Downs and Hindryx gave me four days to come up with something or they’re pulling you back in. I leaned on them a little. They’re a pair of shits.”

  “They have great respect for you too,” I added.

  “And they’ve got a friend in the Wilshire who’ll be watching things for them,” Seidman added behind me.

  “Let me guess,” I said. “Cawelti? Hell, Phil, just pull in Anne Olson. She must have panicked. She’ll back my story.”

  “Go home,” said Phil. “Now.” He spun around, stood up, and turned his red face to me. The tie was back on. Old habits.

  “I’m going,” I said, backing away. “My car is in Sherman Oaks. It’s on your way back to North Hollywood. How about dropping me off?”

  “Go,” said Phil so softly that I could only tell what he was saying by watching his lips. I went.

  I was almost to the front door of the station when Seidman caught up to me.

  “I’ll take you to your car,” he said.

  “You don’t live in the valley.”

  “Can’t sleep with this toothache,” he said. “Besides, Phil doesn’t want to take a chance on you going back to Olson’s when you get the car.”

  Seidman led the way to his car and we drove without talking. The sun was just coming up on the far side of the valley when we made the turn onto the cul-de-sac. It was Saturday morning. Seidman took my thanks without comment and waited to be sure I made a U-turn and drove away. He followed me and then veered off when he was sure I was on my way up Coldwater Canyon Drive. He had no worries. I was headed home wearing a dead man’s suit. When I got over the hills, a stop light caught me and a guy on the radio said Robert S. James, the rattlesnake killer, had just been hanged at San Quentin. He was, said the announcer with a pregnant pause, “calm to the end.”

  I looked in the rearview mirror at my face. My chin was covered with stubble just like my brother’s, the same gray field of hard times.

  Mrs. Plaut was singing her Fanny Brice rendition of “I’m Cooking Breakfast for the One I Love,” complete with Yiddish accent, when I pushed open the door of her boarding house on Heliotrope. My plan was simple, to get to my room and fall asleep, but to accomplish that I had to make it past Mrs. Plaut.

  She didn’t hear me come in. There wasn’t much that Mrs. Plaut could hear, but she made up in determination what she lacked in hearing. She stood about four and a half feet high and was somewhere in the range of eighty years old. Her age, sex, and hearing impairment deprived the U.S. Army of the services of the most able assistant General Patton could have hoped for.

  The door to her rooms on the main floor were open. I moved past slowly and quietly, noticing that she was back in the kitchen and the smell of something good was wafting into the hall. I got to the first step when her voice stopped me.

  “Mr. Peelers,” she shouted. “Mr. Peelers. You must wait for comments and messages.”

  I put one hand on the wall and turned to face the inevitable. Not only did Mrs. Plaut not know my name, but she had latched onto the delusion that I was a pest exterminator who was somehow involved in the publishing industry. My periodic efforts to explain something approaching the truth to her only managed to tire me out and thrust the woman deeper into delusion. The situation was complicated by the fact that Mrs. Plaut was, with great and typical determination, writing the definitive history of her family. She had completed over fifteen hundred pages, neatly printed. It was my task to edit and comment on the chapters as she finished them.

  Why didn’t I move? Answer: The rent was low. My best friend, Gunther Wherthman, a Swiss midget who made a living as a translator, was a tenant at Mrs. Plaut’s, and, with the war, housing had almost disappeared in Los Angeles. Rents were flying as high as Doolittle, a sign of the times that, fortunately, had not entered Mrs. Plaut’s interest or awareness.

  She appeared through the door below me, wiping her bony hands on her apron, which was muslin and carried a stenciled message in black: PROPERTY OF THE U.S. ARMY AIR FORCE. She adjusted her glasses with a clean finger.

  “I’m very tired, Mrs. Plaut,” I said wearily.

  “You look very tired,” Mrs. Plaut said, looking me over, her head cocked to one side critically.

  “What can I do for you, Mrs. Plaut?” I said with a smile.

  “I have a list of items to relate,” she said, fishing into a pocket in her apron and pulling out a small notebook, which she opened. “First, have you finished reading my chapter about Aunt Gumm and Mexico?”

  She looked up at me patiently, waiting for an answer.

  “I have finished,” I said, speaking slowly, clearly, and loud enough to awaken whoever might still be sleeping in the boarding house. They would be sloshing down soon for Mrs. Plaut’s breakfast, those who were willing to pay the price in conversation. “But I don’t understand why your Aunt Gumm thought she owned Guadalajara You never make it clear why—”

  “You know Aunt Gumm owned Guadalajara,” she beamed, interrupting me.

  “I’d heard something about it,” I said, leaning on the wall.

  The chapter, which lay on my table upstairs, was even less coherent than most of the previous ones Mrs. Plaut had been giving me. I really didn’t mind reading the manuscript. I just couldn’t take discussing it with Mrs. Plaut.

  “How did your Aunt Gumm meet the bandit,” I tried.

  “You are in need of a shave,” she said critically. “Though your new suit is an improvement over what you have worn previously.”

  “I got it from a dead man,” I said, grinning evilly.

  “I see,” she answered with a grin. “That is no concern of mine. I am quite aware of your line of business, as you know. Let us return to Aunt Gumm.”

  “Let us,” I said, and then desperately, “Your buns are burning.”

  Mrs. Plaut gave me a tolerant look and clasped her hands together.

  “Buns,” I repeated.

  “Uncle Parsner was the one for puns and such like,” she said gently. “Aunt Gumm was devoid of a sense of humor. You must keep my relations in order if you are to help, Mr. Peelers.”

  “I’ll try,” I said in weary surrender. “Aunt Gumm is wonderful, a critical member of the family. The chapter should be longer, more about the bandit.”

  “The bandit,” she said, glancing at the open door from which the smell of buns came, “was a distant friend
of Joaquin Murietta, who kept his toenails in a jar. Aunt Gumm’s bandit did no such of a silly thing though he was, I am told, given to telling dialect jokes, mostly at the expense of those less fortunate than himself, though who that might be remains a mystery not only to me but to Uncle Jerry and other branches of the family. My buns are done.”

  “Good,” I said, turning to go up stairs. I had made it up four steps when she stopped me.

  “There are other items to relate,” she said. I turned and watched her tiny figure as she glanced at her notebook. “Calls galore. The policeman brother of yours called.”

  “He found me,” I said.

  “And,” she concluded with a flourish by slamming closed the notebook, “you are now involved in the politics.”

  “I am?”

  “One of the many Roosevelts who run this country called you,” she said with disapproval. “I do not recall if it was Anna. I rather hope it was since I voted for her father. Teddy Roosevelt was the last good president we had. Before him all was abyss except for Jackson and Polk”

  “Did you vote for them?” I said softly, my eyes closing as I rubbed the stubble on my chin.

  “Rude disrespect will not get you into heaven,” she said, pointing a flour-covered finger at me. I wasn’t sure if she had miraculously heard what I had said or had come up with an even more unpleasant invention.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Plaut. I really am. I’m tired and—”

  “She should not have married him,” she went on.

  “Who?” I tried, feeling the tears of sleep.

  “Franklin and Eleanor are cousins,” she explained patiently as if I were a backward second-grader. “That is incest.”

  “Let’s hope so,” I said. “If I don’t get upstairs and into bed, I’m going to tumble down these stairs and make it difficult for Mr. Hill and the others to climb over my body.”

  “We’ll talk again again when you are in a less jovial frame of mind,” she said, disappearing into her rooms before I could find out when Eleanor Roosevelt had called. My goal was a few hours of sleep followed by a call to Eleanor Roosevelt and a search for Jeremy Butler, who might be able to tell me something about Bass, the former wrestler who seemed to be the only suspect I had in Olson’s murder. That would be followed by a search for the missing Anne Olson.