The Fala Factor: A Toby Peters Mystery

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  I didn’t have to fumble for the key to my room. The rooms in Mrs. Plaut’s boarding house had no locks. Mrs. Plaut’s philosophy was that adults should change clothes in the bathroom down the hall and decent people should have nothing to hide beyond their own crude nakedness. She respected closed doors only for the time it took her to knock once and enter. If one wanted privacy in this barracks of the outcast and elderly, one resorted to a chair under the doorknob. Even this had been known to do no more than slow down the determined landlady.

  I liked my room. It was nothing like me. There was one old sofa with doilies on the arms which I was afraid to touch, a table with three wooden chairs, a hot plate in the corner, a sink, a small refrigerator, a few dishes, a bed with a purple blanket on which God Bless Us Every One had been stitched in pink by Mrs. Plaut, a painting of someone who looked like Abraham Lincoln, and a Beech-Nut gum clock on my wall, received in payment from a pawnshop owner for finding his runaway grandmother. Every night I took the mattress from the bed and put it on the floor. This morning I repeated the rite. I slept on the floor because of a delicate back crunched in 1938 by a massive Negro gentleman who took exception to my trying to keep him from asking Mickey Rooney a few questions at a premiere at Grauman’s Chinese.

  I removed Olson’s suit, dropped it on the sofa, ran my tongue over my furry teeth, decided I was too tired to eat and too sensitive to examine my bruises, and fell like an uprooted radiator on the mattress. My Beech-Nut clock said it was 6:34. My father’s watch said it was noon or midnight. I fell asleep clutching my second pillow to keep from rolling over on my stomach and ruining my back.

  There were dreams, but I didn’t remember them well. A city, probably Cincinnati, about which I dream frequently though I’ve never been there, a plump young woman with glasses saying something to me, a tree and a stag whose branches and antlers had grown together so that they couldn’t be separated. I woke up to someone knocking at my door. The clock on the wall told me it was eleven.

  “What, what, what?” I grouched.

  “Toby?” came Gunther’s high precise voice, complete with Swiss accent. “Are you well?”

  “Come in, Gunther,” I said, sitting up.

  He pushed at the door and stepped in, all three feet nine of him in his usual sartorial splendor. He wore a light brown, three-piece suit with key chain, tie, and tie pin. Gunther was somewhere in his late thirties. We had met two years earlier, when he was my client, and had been friends since then. If given one wish, Gunther would have made me a reasonably clean human with minimal taste.

  “You did not come home last night,” he said evenly, indicating concern without interference.

  Sitting up on the floor, I was almost at eye level with him.

  “Case,” I said, tasting my tongue. “Secret, big.”

  “Mrs. Roosevelt,” he said.

  “My secret mission seems to be this morning’s news,” I said, getting up and groping for my—Olson’s—pants.

  “Mrs. Plaut and I exchanged information while attempting to take a coherent message,” he explained. “I assumed from your converse just now …”

  “You assumed right,” I said, unable to resist the urge to scratch my stomach. “Listen Gunther, I’ve got to shave my teeth and brush my beard. You want to put some coffee on? I’ll be right back.”

  Gunther nodded politely and moved to the corner of my room, which served as my kitchen and which Gunther always approached as if on a mission to deal with an attacking horde of army ants.

  No one was in the bathroom so I managed to finish my shaving and brushing with a new bottle of Teel in less than ten minutes. I put Olson’s shirt and tie back on, slipped on my second pair of socks, the ones with only one hole, and went back to my room. The coffee was poured, and a bowl of Wheaties stood waiting for me with a nearly empty bottle of milk next to it. Gunther sat sipping his coffee with great gentility and dignity, his feet not quite touching the floor.

  Gunther had a book in front of him and was deep in thought over something in it.

  “What’s the problem?” I said helpfully, now that I was awake and capable of thought and movement.

  “Passage that requires a translation,” he said, tapping the tome in front of him. “What does it mean, ‘Take a deep breath, and call lung distance? Should that not be ‘long distance’? And even so, I believe there is intended some crude form of wit in this.”

  I was well into my second bowl of Wheaties and had used the last of the milk on it when I concluded my explanation. Gunther had sipped coffee silently, nodding occasionally to show that he followed my explanation.

  “Would you say it is a good joke?” he asked seriously. “I mean in English.”

  “It sounds like Lum and Abner,” I said, finishing my coffee.

  “Then I’d best find some means of rendering it in French,” he said seriously. Then he changed the subject, coming to something that I could see had been on his mind.

  “What is it, Gunther?”

  “If you are engaged in something that will even in a small way help in the war effort, I should like to offer my assistance, even in a small way.”

  With anyone else I would have been unable to resist the opening and get in three or four small jokes.

  “I have great loyalty to this nation,” he said, back erect, “as you know. Many of my people, most of my people, my own relations in Berne, assure me of their similar feelings though to be neutral is of a necessity.”

  “You don’t have to explain to me, Gunther,” I said, getting up and gathering the dishes. Gunther must, indeed, have been grappling with weighty thoughts because he didn’t stop me. Usually, the thought of my cleaning anything up was repulsive enough for Gunther to not only volunteer, but to insist that he take over. He wiped the corners of his mouth neatly with a paper napkin and hopped with dignity from his chair.

  “I have offered my services,” he said. “They are sincere.”

  “Okay,” I sighed, “I’ll take you up on the offer. I’ll give you the address of a veterinary clinic in Sherman Oaks. I want you to go there, wait for a blond hulk. His name is Bass. Follow him but don’t let him see you. That shouldn’t be too hard. There aren’t too many smarts rattling inside him.”

  Gunther nodded knowingly, and I explained the whole thing, including Olson’s murder, the missing dog, everything.

  “I’m relieved,” he said with a small grin. “I was afraid you had chosen that suit. While properly conservative, it does not accommodate your personality.”

  “It’ll have to do,” I said, thinking that Gunther would also have to do. Normally, it is not a wise thing to send a midget out to tail a suspect. There is no such thing as an inconspicuous midget or little person, but then again there are few people as dense as Bass seemed to be.

  Gunther hurried to his room to get on with his assignment, and I decided to do the dishes some other time. In the hallway I flexed my muscles, decided that they still functioned, and moved to the phone on the wall to make a few calls.

  Eleanor Roosevelt did not answer at the number she gave me, but a woman with what sounded like an English accent did. I gave her my name and she told me to wait. Gunther passed me, still suited, nodded seriously, and went down the stairs. The phone rang.

  “Mr. Peters?” came Eleanor Roosevelt’s voice.

  “Mrs. Roosevelt,” I said. “Things are getting a bit complicated.”

  “I have been informed about Doctor Olson,” she said. “Do you think it has something to do with Fala? I should hate to think that a man actually died because of some intrigue over a dog, but then regard for human life has not been this low since the reign of the Teutons.”

  “I guess,” I said. “But this might be getting beyond the stage where I can handle it. You might want to call in the heavier guns, the FBI, whoever.”

  There was a pause while she considered what to say next.

  “Mr. Peters, it is quite evident to both of us that you wish to continue this inquiry. You have my t
rust, and I feel confident that you will not betray it. Beyond loyalty, there is little else that can be asked or received.”

  “Intelligence would be nice,” I said.

  She laughed gently. “You do not strike me as an unintelligent man,” she said. “There are those who pose as men in the heart of our own government, even those who have been elected, whose intellect does not surpass that of a small terrier and whose loyalty lags far behind. The canine reminder is, by the way, quite intentional.”

  “I’ll get back to work and get to you as soon as I can,” I said.

  “Remember,” she said, “I have only a few days. I must be back in Washington for the Peruvian dinner, and Mr. Molotov is coming.”

  “Sounds like a fun-packed few months,” I sympathized.

  “Mr. Molotov is, in fact, quite nice,” she said. “His English is good, his sense of humor mischievous, and his manner poor. He actually brings his own food and carries a loaded gun in his suitcase.”

  There I stood chatting with the First Lady in the hallway of Mrs. Plaut’s boarding house when Mrs. Plaut herself appeared at the bottom of the stairs, saw me, and began her resolute way up.

  “I’ll have to go now, Mrs. Roosevelt,” I said. “Something important just came up. I’ll report as soon as I can.”

  “Be careful Mr. Peters,” she concluded. “The dog is important, but it is, after all, a dog.”

  “I’ll remember that,” I said, hanging up and wondering if I could make it back to my room before Mrs. Plaut caught up with me. But she was too fast.

  “Mr. Peelers,” she said, cutting off my retreat with her wiry body. “Now, I think, would be a good time to discuss Aunt Gumm.”

  “Mrs. Plaut,” I began, “I’ve got … forget it. It’s a fine time to discuss Aunt Gumm and Mexico.

  “The Mexicans,” she said knowingly, “pronounce it Me-he-co.”

  By noon I had developed a headache from shouting, but managed to break away from Mrs. Plaut. I didn’t use the phone in the hallway for fear that she would want to talk further about her proposed next chapter dealing with her mother’s encounter with the Mormons.

  I darted down the stairs, out the door into the sunshine, and made it to my car in near record time. I found a Rexall drugstore and called Jeremy Butler’s office/home number at the Farraday. He didn’t answer but Alice Palice did. Alice and Jeremy had become “good friends.” It was a union that did not bear too much fantasy. Alice more than occupied space on the third floor of the Farraday. She ran Artistic Books, Inc., an economical operation, consisting of one small printing press that weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. Alice, who looked something like a printing press herself, could easily hoist the press on her shoulder and move it to another office when the going got rough.

  “Jeremy’s in the park,” she said. I thanked her and hung up.

  It was one o’clock, so I switched on the radio. It was too early for the baseball game so I found KFI and listened to “Mary Noble, Backstage Wife.” Soap operas always gave me a lift. It was nice to find people, even pretend ones, who were having a harder time than I was.

  I drove past the office on Hoover and down Hill past Angel’s Flight, the block-long railroad that carried passengers up the steep slope of Bunker Hill between Hill and Olive. When I was a kid, my old man once took me and my brother to the observation tower at the top of the hill that rises about a hundred feet over the mouth of the Third Street Tunnel. I remember seeing the San Gabriel Mountains and wanting to tell Phil that it was beautiful, but Phil had always been Phil. Back then it had been a tourist attraction with about twelve thousand passengers a day going up the railway and to the top of the tower.

  I turned off of Hill at Fifth and found a parking spot near Philharmonic Auditorium. The sign outside the hall told me Volez and Yolanda were, indeed, playing there and I could get tickets for as little as fifty-five cents. I stopped at the box office and splurged on two one-buck tickets, then nodded to the statue of Beethoven on Fifth, and moved into Pershing Square. When I was a kid it had been Central Park, but had been renamed in 1918 in honor of old Black Jack. I passed by the banana trees and bamboo clumps that surrounded the square, and in the shade of the Biltmore Hotel I squinted around searching for Jeremy. I took a few steps down the broad brick walk that forms an X across the square and looked at the fountain in the center of the X. The place was full of men, almost no women, most of them wearing suits, most of them with ties. Arguments were going on all over the place. Near the fountain a guy with glasses was pointing off in the distance and showing a handful of papers to another guy without a hat who had his hands on his hips. Another group was gathered around a bench on which was standing an ancient man who looked a little like John Nance Garner. John Nance was shouting at a small Negro man wearing a fedora and a mustache. I weaved my way through the knots of men arguing. One guy conversing with some students from the Bible Institute down the street was going at it about where God was now that men were being killed by heathens. A pair of cops weaved in and out, keeping things from getting out of hand, which they often did. Then I spotted Jeremy. He was hard to miss since he stands about six two and weighs slightly over two-fifty. He was under the Spanish War Memorial in the northeast corner of the park. Under the shade of the twenty-foot statue of a Spanish War veteran, Jeremy had his right hand on the shoulder of a white-whiskered, barefoot messiah, and was gesturing with open palm at the bronze cannon a few feet away.

  The war had brought out a battalion of prophets who wandered through downtown Los Angeles strongly suggesting that the end of the world was well under way. This did not strike most Los Angelenos as news.

  I listened politely to Jeremy telling the bearded man that hope and not fear should be the basis of progress, but the bearded guy was not about to turn in his staff and head for the barber. He just stroked his beard and nodded sagely. Jeremy spotted me out of the corner of his eye and excused himself from the man.

  “He doesn’t lack intelligence,” Jeremy said, “but there is nothing more difficult than to get a man to give up an obsession in which he has invested his faith, no matter how unreasoning that obsession may be.”

  “You’ve got that right,” I agreed. I always agreed with Jeremy because he was wiser than I was and could break my neck by breathing on me if he felt the need, which he never did.

  “What can I do for you, Toby?” he said seriously, stepping out of the way of a pair of old men, one with a newspaper under his arm, who barreled past us.

  “I’m looking for information on a former wrestler. A guy named Bass. Big guy, bigger than you, maybe thirty-five or younger,” I explained.

  “He may look that young, but he is almost your age,” Jeremy said, looking around for the messiah who had disappeared in the crowd. Jeremy rubbed his shaven head and returned his attention to me. “A close look will show that Elmo Bass’s youthful face is that of a man who has not been furrowed by experience and life. It is an unformed face, not a young face. It is a face that has experienced no depth. It is a face unlike yours or mine.”

  “Got you,” I said. “What about him?”

  Jeremy shrugged and unzipped his gray windbreaker to give his massive chest some room to breathe.

  “Very dense,” said Jeremy sadly. “Very little sense of the moral. Never having truly suffered, he has no sense of what suffering means. A dangerous man, Toby. One to stay away from. I fought him three times. He beat me but one of them, the last one at the Stadium in, let me see, 1935 or ‘36. He was removed from the sport that same year. No control, no sense of the game, the art of enactment. He did not know how to act. He could only fight. Consequently, no one but me wanted to enter the ring with him, though he did end his career against the Strangler, and Pepe the Giant.”

  “So you think he could kill?” I said.

  “With little excuse and no remorse,” Jeremy said.

  “Where does he hang out?”

  Jeremy shrugged and said, “We have not kept in touch, though I have heard les
s than kind things said about him, particularly from Pepe with whom I still play chess from time to time. It would be best to stay away from Bass. You know what his nickname for himself was? Le Mort, Death. Pepe called him Badass Bass. If you must encounter him, I strongly suggest that I accompany you.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind Jeremy, thanks.”

  “Alice and I,” he said seriously, changing the subject, “have a new enterprise. She has agreed, at least for the time, to put aside the pornography, and publish a series of books of children’s poetry that I am writing. While I have no great quarrel with pornography, I think it tends to simply reproduce itself and make the pornographer carry guilt instead of pride. Would you like to hear one of the poems I have written for our initial book?”

  “Sure,” I said, noticing that a scrawny man in a sweater and jacket was listening to our conversation. A cigarette dangled from his lips, and the skin on his neck hung down like that of a forgotten turkey.

  “Ah,” Jeremy said, suddenly remembering, “Academy Dolmitz. Academy hired Bass for debt collecting a few years ago. I thought I heard that he still did some part-time work for Academy.”

  “Thanks, Jeremy,” I said. Academy Dolmitz had a used bookstore on Broadway. The bookstore was a front for a bookie operation.

  “The poem,” Jeremy reminded me, a gentle but massive hand on my arm. I stood politely with the turkey man and others as Jeremy recited his poem to a growing crowd, which numbered about ten by the time he finished.

  “The wife of the king

  continued to sing

  though his majesty said

  he would render her dead

  if the queen did not cease

  and give him some peace.

  ‘If my song was too loud,’

  said the queen to the crowd

  which had gathered to see

  a monarch hang from a tree

  ‘then a strong admonition

  might have changed my position,