The Fala Factor: A Toby Peters Mystery

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  but the king would not dream

  of a choice less extreme

  than to tie off, garrotte,

  my tender white throat.

  And so the next time

  a tune leaps to your mind

  cut it off in mid-note

  and commit this to rote:

  If the queen can hang

  for a song she sang,

  then might not the noose, come

  for a tune that you hum?’

  Brought on by hysteria,

  the queen then sang an aria

  but a black-hooded fella

  cut short her a capella,

  as a voice from the crowd

  shouted angry and loud.

  ‘Not a moment too soon,

  she can’t carry a tune.’”

  The turkey neck looked puzzled while another guy in the crowd applauded and a voice from the back said critically, “It got no goddam onomatopoeia for chrissake. A poem gotta have onomatopoeia.”

  I backed away from the coming debate, wondering what a kid would make of Jeremy’s creation and if he and Alice were planning to illustrate their book. I also filed in the back of my mind the possibility of bringing Mrs. Plaut and publisher Alice Palice together. Object: publication, and my own curiosity.

  On the way back to Burbank for another try at Jane Poslik, I turned on the news and found that it was Saturday, which I already knew. What I didn’t know was that the sugar shortage had gotten worse. Hoarding syrup was now a crime and ice-cream manufacturers were being limited to twenty flavors of ice cream and two of sherbet. Beyond that, Laraine Day was engaged to army aviator Ray Hendricks, who used to sing with Ted Fio Rito. Shut Out had won the Kentucky Derby, and a Japanese transport and six fighter planes had been destroyed in an attack on enemy bases in New Guinea.

  I had time for about ten minutes of Scattergood Baines before I pulled up in front of Jane Poslik’s apartment in Burbank. My workday had begun in earnest.

  Jane Poslik was home. She didn’t want to open the door at first, but I dropped some names like Olson, Roosevelt, and Fala, and she let me in. Her apartment was small and neat and so was she. There were sketches on the wall in cheap, simple frames, more than a dozen sketches of women in a variety of costumes. My favorite was a pencil sketch of someone who looked like Lucille Ball in a fancy French dress all puffed out, white and soft.

  “Looks like Lucille Ball,” I said, nodding at the drawing.

  “It is,” she said, watching me carefully with puckered lips.

  Jane Poslik was somewhere in her late thirties, hair cut short. She wore a brown dress with a faint pattern. She was not pretty and not ugly. If her nose had been less chiseled, her chin a little stronger, she might have come out all right, but if she was one of the Pekin, Illinois, beauty pageant runners-up or an actress who had played the second female lead in a Dayton theater company production of Street Scene, she wasn’t going to be any competition for the hundreds who tripped over each other coming to Los Angeles every week.

  “You an actress?” I said, taking the scat in the small kitchen she pointed to.

  “Designer,” she answered, filling a pot with water. “Coffee or tea?”

  “Coffee,” I said. “You work for a studio?”

  “No,” she said, hugging herself as if she were cold and turning to look at me. “Not yet. So far I’ve managed to design for a theater company in Santa Monica. I’ve had to take a variety of jobs.”

  “Like working for Dr. Olson,” I said.

  “Like working for Dr. Olson,” she agreed, fishing a package of Nabisco graham crackers out of a cabinet and placing them on the small table in front of me. “Right now I’m doing part-time work for Gladding, McBean, and Company in Glendale. I’m designing some mosaic tiles. If it goes well, I’ll be put on full time.”

  “Sounus good,” I said.

  “It’s good,” she agreed, standing near the coffee pot. “But, it’s not designing.”

  “Olson,” I said.

  “Olson,” she sighed. “You work for …”

  “A private party close to someone quite high in the government,” I said, nibbling a graham.

  She looked at me for a long time trying to decide whether to trust me or not.

  “I know about the letters you wrote to the White House,” I said. “I know that the FBI talked to you.”

  “All right, Mr. Peters,” she said, deciding to take a chance. “What do you want to know?”

  “What made you think something was going on with Dr. Olson and the president’s dog?”

  The coffee was perking now. She checked the pot, made another decision, and said, “I’ll answer your question when you answer one for me.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Why are you wearing Dr. Olson’s suit?”

  The explanation took about five minutes, with me leaving out a few things and pausing for her to react when I told her that Olson was dead. She reacted with a quick intake of air and silence.

  “Killing people over a dog,” she said, pouring the coffee. Her hand was shaking so I helped her.

  “I don’t know why they killed him. You have some ideas?”

  She sat sipping coffee and told her story, making sketches on the table with her finger. Her mind was creating another century, another life for Joan Crawford or Olivia DeHavilland, while she gave me her suspicions. Her memory was good and she didn’t waste time or words. According to Mrs. Roosevelt, Jane Poslik was reported to be mentally unreliable. She was, as far as I was concerned, the sanest person I had met in weeks outside of Eleanor Roosevelt.

  She had begun working for Olson soon after he moved to Los Angeles. Back in Dayton, where she said she was from, her family had bred dogs, so she was familiar with them. Olson, apparently, had been easy to work with though he had made a few clumsy music-accompanied passes at her in the operating room. She had handled him with no great trouble. The revelation seemed a bit strange since Anne Olson was a Lana Turner to Jane Poslik’s Ann Revere, but Olson was probably one of those guys with active glands from too much contact with goats. Olson had, from the start, been nervous, but Jane had chalked that up to normal behavior. He had brought several dogs with him from Washington, which he kept in a special section of the clinic and wouldn’t allow anyone else to handle. One was, indeed, a small black Scottie. Once Jane had walked in on a telephone conversation between Olson and someone named Martin. The word “Roosevelt” had been part of the conversation, which ended abruptly when Olson spotted Jane in the room. For the next few weeks, other bits and pieces began adding up to the conclusion that Olson and someone named Martin were involved in some way with President Roosevelt and his dog. She also concluded that Olson had left Washington because of the dog business and that Martin had, somehow, found him. Then one morning Bass came to work. Jane had the distinct impression that Olson had not hired Bass, that he had been sent to watch Olson, possibly protect him from questions and doubts.

  “I’m not sure,” she concluded, pouring herself and me another coffee, “but I had the impression that Martin or someone would come to the clinic to give Dr. Olson instructions, pep talks, or a good scare.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Well,” she said, making circles on the table with her finger, “there were afternoons when after a normal series of examinations or procedures, and no phone calls, he would be pale and shaken. More than one poor animal suffered in surgery those evenings. In any case, I must have given some indication of my suspicions because Bass began to ask me questions. What do you know about the dogs Dr. Olson brought from Washington? What do you know about Dr. Olson’s friends? That sort of thing. Bass is far from subtle. I became more suspicious, obviously. Within a week I had sufficient evidence from phone calls, conversations overheard between Bass and Dr. Olson and Mrs. Olson, to lead me to the conclusion that Olson had taken the president’s dog. I can’t imagine why he would do it.”

  The major emotional change in her telling had come when sh
e mentioned Mrs. Olson, so I pushed that after getting down another graham cracker. I wanted to dip it in my coffee but kept myself from doing so.

  “Anne Olson,” I said.

  “Mrs. Olson’s name is Laura,” Jane Poslik answered, looking up at me from her imaginary drawing.

  Anne or Laura Olson had had a few belts when I met her so she might have been playing non-sober name games with me. I let the puzzle pass for the moment and went on.

  “Was she, is she, part of the business with the dog?”

  She shrugged. “It’s possible, but I’m a prejudiced source. I didn’t like Laura Olson. She was on a free ride. While Olson was not my favorite human, he was a troubled man who needed support. She gave him quite the reverse.”

  “Was she fooling around with Bass?” I tried.

  “Possibly, but I doubt if you could call anything Bass does fooling. More coffee?”

  “No thanks. Go on.”

  “I once walked in on her nose to nose with a man who had brought in a sick cat for treatment. She didn’t take long.”

  That I could confirm from my own experience.

  “That’s it?” I said.

  “That’s it,” she agreed, standing up. “That’s what I wrote in my letters after the FBI came asking questions last month and I started to put things together as I told you. I know it isn’t courtroom evidence, but it was enough to make me think it was worth reporting. I don’t know how, but I thought it might have something to do with the war. Mr. Peters, my parents are both dead. There’s just me and my brother. Charlie’s in the navy somewhere in the Pacific. Am I making sense?”

  “You’re making a lot of sense,” I said, heading for the front door. “And I like that dress on Lucille Ball.”

  “Thanks,” she said, offering me her hand. “Let me know if—”

  Whatever it was she wanted to know remained unsaid. There was an insistent knock at the door a few feet away from us.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Police,” came a voice I recognized.

  She looked at me, took a few steps, and opened the door to John Cawelti, who didn’t look in the least surprised to see me. He gave both of us a knowing smirk and stepped in.

  “Listening at the door, John?” I said with a smile.

  “Call me John again and I ram you through the wall.” He grinned back.

  “John and I are old friends,” I said to Jane Poslik, spreading my legs slightly in case he decided to pay off his threat. He took a mean step toward me and she stepped between us, facing him.

  “This is my home,” she said softly. “And you’ll touch no one in it. What do you want?”

  “I’m investigating the murder last night of a Dr. Roy Olson,” Cawelti said, looking at me and not her. “You used to work for him, and I understand you didn’t get along, that you quit a few weeks back. You want to tell me about it and let me know what you told my friend Peters?”

  “Miss Poslik and I were just leaving,” I said, showing my most false smile.

  “No, Mr. Peters,” she said, “you go ahead. I’ll talk to Officer—”

  “Sergeant Cawelti,” he said.

  “Suit yourself,” I said, brushing by Cawelti. “I’ll be seeing you, John. You won’t be able to miss me. I’ll be the guy a step ahead.”

  I stepped quickly past the door of the as yet unseen Molly Garnett and headed for my car parked across the street. It was early in the afternoon. The sun was shining, and a couple of small birds swooped by playing tag as the black Chevy that screeched away from the curb rushed out to kiss the side of my Ford. I would have been caught in the middle of the kiss if I had not heard an unexpected but familiar voice call out, “Toby.”

  I managed to sense the Chevy, rolled forward on the hood of my car with my feet in the air, and tumbled over on the sidewalk to the sound of metal scraping metal. When I looked up, the Chevy was weaving down the street wasting precious rubber.

  “Toby,” came Gunther’s voice.

  I looked back to see his small form hurrying toward me.

  “I’m okay, Gunther,” I said. “Was that …?”

  “Bass,” he finished, coming to help me up. Gunther was strong for his size. He had done some circus work back when he had to, but he wasn’t quite what I needed. It was extra work getting up and pretending that he was helping me, but I managed it.

  “I followed him as you said,” Gunther explained. “He came here, started to get out from the car, saw you, got back into the car, and then tried to compress you. Shall I pursue him?”

  “Not now,” I said. “You saved my life again, Gunther.”

  “I was fortunate to be in vicinity,” he answered, embarrassed. “I’ll continue my pursuit tomorrow then?”

  “Tomorrow will be fine.”

  We shook hands after agreeing to meet back at the boarding house that night, and I inspected the side of my car. The paint was streaked with metal showing through as if some massive bird had scratched its claws along it. The door was dented slightly, but there seemed to be nothing else wrong other than that I couldn’t open the passenger door. I’d worry about that later.

  I got in and drove downtown.

  Jeremy was seated in his room on the second floor of the Farraday when I got there. I had once referred to Jeremy’s room as an office, but he had politely corrected me. “It is the room in which I often work, but I work in other rooms, other spaces, while I walk, sleep, dream,” he had explained. There was no desk in the room and no name on the door. If you didn’t know he was in 212, you’d never find him. The room itself contained an oversized leather chair near the window and a couch of matching black leather. A low table in the middle of the room was surrounded by four stools. On the table were neat stacks of lined paper, some with poems and notes written in Jeremy’s even hand. Others were blank. The walls were lined with books from floor to ceiling. There wasn’t a speck of bare wall in view. I knew that beyond another door in the corner was a room I had never seen, in which I guessed Jeremy slept.

  When I entered the office, Jeremy was seated in the leather chair. The two reading lamps in the room were off and he was backlit at the window with a book in his lap.

  “Jeremy,” I said, “I’m sorry to bother you but I need some help.”

  He was looking at me without expression, the book held open in front of him. I went on. “A woman named Jane Poslik in Burbank may be getting a visit from Bass. I don’t think he plans to be friendly when he visits. I’m going to try to put a penny in his fuse, but for a day or two someone should keep an eye on her. I know you have your book to—”

  “The address, Toby,” he said, finding a bookmark and placing it carefully in the page he was holding open with his huge thumb. “The day is clear. I can sit in my car and meditate. Look for the secret moment of the day.

  “There is a Moment in each Day that Satan cannot find

  Nor can his Watch Fiends find it, but the Industrious find

  This Moment and it multiply and when it once is found

  It renovates every Moment of the Day if rightly placed.”

  “Byron,” I guessed, going with one of Jeremy’s favorites.

  “Blake,” he corrected, getting up. “The last victory went to Bass in the American Legion Stadium before four thousand. It would be interesting to meet him with only a passing bird, the bending grass, and the sun upon our heads.”

  “Sounds fine to me,” I agreed.

  “Do I have time to do a quick cleaning of the lobby?” he said, putting the book neatly back in a space on the shelf near him.

  “I don’t know, Jeremy.”

  Leaving Jeremy’s office, I knew there had been another choice. I could have gone back to Jane Poslik, tried to talk her into moving out of her apartment till I got the whole thing settled, but that would have meant giving her a hell of a scare, which she didn’t need. Besides, she might have turned me down. No, my best bet was to track down Bass, try to find the dog, locate the guy Jane had mentioned—the guy named Martin
—and hope for the best.

  Back on the fourth floor, I could hear Shelly humming over the sound of Emmett Quigley in the office next to ours. Emmett had been in the Farraday for two weeks. He was either giving voice lessons to the deaf, writing modern versions of Gregorian chants, or engaged in some elaborate self-torture. Why he needed an office was a question that merited about five minutes of discussion each morning between infrequent patients for Shelly and even less frequent clients for me.

  “Any calls?” I asked as I stepped into the office to a startling sight.

  “No calls, nothing,” said Shelly, who was on his knees cleaning the floor. His glasses had slipped to the end of his nose and he was twitching madly to keep them up. His hands were covered with soapy suds. The dishes and instruments in the sink had been cleaned and the sink itself scoured. The coffee pot was gone and something about the wall was somewhat strange. Then I realized that the coffee stain near my door had been scrubbed away.

  “What’s going on Shel, Mildred moving in?”

  He puffed to his knees, wiped his hands on his filthy white coat, and found his soapy cigar.

  “Inspection,” he explained. “County Dental Association inspections. They got complaints. Can you imagine? Complaints about me.”

  “I can’t imagine that Shel,” I said with sympathy.

  “Of course you can’t,” he agreed. “It’s unimaginable. There’s nothing wrong with this office. I use the most modern techniques, equipment.”

  “Then why are you cleaning up?”

  Shelly got up, removed the soapy cigar butt from his mouth, gave it an evil look, and threw it in the bucket of water near his feet. “So they won’t have anything, not a thing to point to, to say Sheldon Minck is not sanitary, not ethical. I am both sanitary and ethical.”

  “While you’re at it,” I added, “you should lead a safari into the waiting room. I think some of the bugs out there have tusks worth showing to a dental inspector.”

  “I’m doing the waiting room next,” Shelly sighed, pushing his glasses back on his nose and leaving a sudsy white mass over the left lens. “And you should clean up your office. In fact, you should clean it up and move out till the inspection is over. I don’t know what the ethics are about having sub-tenants.”