The Fala Factor: A Toby Peters Mystery

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  Arnie filled it up and gave me an estimate on fixing the door. The estimate from No-Neck was twenty bucks.

  “I’ll make it fifteen if you throw in that hat,” he said as he pumped gas into the tank “lt’d be some good laughs around here.”

  “I didn’t know you had a sense of humor, Arnie,” I said, adjusting the hat on my own head.

  “I’m as sensitive as the next guy,” he said, pulling the gas nozzle out. “That’s two bucks for the gas and another fifteen cents for oil.”

  I paid, took off my hat so I could get into the car without knocking it off, and drove away. A pair of boots would’ve helped, but I didn’t have the time. My disguise would have to do.

  Parking on Broadway was tough. I pulled around a corner and drove into a parking lot. I got out, put on my hat, and gave the guy in overalls a broad grin and told him I expected to be back in an hour.

  “You got it, Tex,” he said.

  “How’d you all know I was from Texas?” I said.

  He was climbing into my Ford and shaking his head. I figured him at about eighteen years old, maybe nineteen.

  “It’s the hat, Tex,” he said with a wink. “Real authentic. You guys all have them authentic hats just like in the movies. You want a tip?”

  “Sure enough, son,” I said.

  “You’re layin it on too thick,” he whispered confidentially. “I’m from Lubbock. Anyone talk like that back home, we’d know he was a Yankee pissing around and we’d hog tie him and ship him north on a cattle car.”

  He screeched rubber and headed toward the corner of the lot. What did he know? I left the lot and headed down Broadway past Little Joe’s to the building where Martin Lyle and his New Whigs had their office. It was a respectable building, if not in a high prestige neighborhood. It even had an elevator that worked at reasonable speed and carried me up to the eighth floor with no stops.

  “Good weather you folks up heah are having,” I told the bespectacled, pudgy woman who operated the elevator. She turned, looked me up and down, shook her head, and went back to work. I was beginning to seriously doubt the credibility of my disguise, but it was too late. I got off the elevator, touched the brim of my hat to her and went down the hall to room 803, which had stenciled in gold on its door THE NEW WHIG PABTY HEADQUARTERS, and below that in smaller letters, MARTIN LYLE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR. Below that there remained the outline of additional lettering that had been scratched away. I bent to look and was fairly sure that the removed letters read DR. ROY OLSON, PRESIDENT.

  I was squinting at the door when it opened and a pale woman looked down at me. She was wearing a dark blue suit, her black hair back in a bun, and a serious look on her face.

  “Can I help you?” she said.

  “Name’s O’Hara,” I said, standing as high as five nine would take me. “I’ve got an appointment with your Mr. Lyle.”

  Damn, the Irish accent had taken over. I touched the brim of my hat to remind me of who I was supposed to be and cursed my stupid disguise silently.

  “Come in, Mr. O’Hara,” she said, and I did.

  The outer office was small. Secretary’s desk, some files, photographs, paintings of stern-looking old men in ancient suits. “Who are those fellas?” I said, pointing at the wall paintings.

  “Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, William Henry Harrison, and Winfield Scott,” she said, going back to her desk efficiently.

  The photographs on the wall flanking the portraits were, according to the woman, of various congressmen, none of whom I recognized.

  “Most impressive,” I said, getting back my Southern exposure.

  “We think so,” she said efficiently. “I’ll show you right in.”

  She got up from behind the desk again, knocked at the door behind her, and, hearing a “Come in,” opened it and motioned me to follow her.

  I wasn’t sure of what I expected Martin Lyle to look like. I was counting on his never having seen me before and of my accent being just good enough to disguise my voice. Lyle was standing behind his desk, which featured a tabletop American flag. Both hands were on the desk and he had a small smile on his face, the same small smile I had seen on his birdlike face in Doc Olson’s waiting room when he had been sitting there with his parrot.

  “You may leave us,” Miss Frederickson,” Lyle said. “In fact, you may simply close the office and take that package to Mr. Sikes in Santa Monica.”

  Without a word, Miss Frederickson closed the door and left.

  “Now,” Lyle said, apparently not recognizing me in the hat or never having paid attention to me in Olson’s office, “let’s talk about our old friends in Washington.”

  I had the big hat in my hands as I sat in the chair across from Lyle, who remained standing, a small smile on his face.

  “Allen Hall,” he said evenly.

  “Big fellah.” I grinned.

  “And am I to understand that you would like to consider joining our organization?” Lyle said, still standing.

  “Maybe so,” I chuckled. “Maybe so. I’m ready to do whatever it takes to save this great country of ours from going down with the likes of Franklin De-lay-no Rosey-velt.”

  “And so are we,” he said as the door to his right opened and Bass stepped into the room. “So are we, Mr. Peters.”

  Bass looked as close to respectable as it was possible for a moving truck to look. He wore a suit, white shirt, and tie, though the short end of the tie was too short and the long, too long. His washed-out blond hair was combed back carefully.

  “Accent gave me away?” I said, trying to be calm.

  “I knew who you were when you called,” said Lyle, motioning to Bass with a nod of his head. Bass clearly did not understand the nod so Lyle had to sound it out for him. “Go stand at the door to insure that Mr. Peters does not leave before we’ve had a nice chat. You like chatting, don’t you Mr. Peters?”

  “I like chatting,” I said, bouncing my cowboy hat on my knee.

  “Good,” said Lyle, still standing as he adjusted his rimless glasses. “I’m going to try to reason with you.”

  “At the moment I’m very much interested in listening to reason,” I said amiably.

  Lyle touched the tip of the gold-painted flag pole on his desk and looked at the flag as he went on.

  “Your interference, your insistence on pursuing me and Mr. Bass, could result in publicity so devastating that it could reach the Whig Party. Did you know that we elected two presidents of the United States, two, both of whom were secretly assassinated to keep the Whig Party from flourishing?”

  “Two?” I prompted like the congregation in a Southern Baptist Church.

  “William Henry Harrison and Zachariah Taylor,” Lyle said. “General Harrison was poisoned by Martin Van Buren less than a month after he took office, and General Taylor was stabbed by minions of Polk after they first corrupted Taylor and forced Henry Clay to expell him from the Party.”

  “I never heard any of that,” I said, pretending great interest.

  “You mock me, Peters, but the proof is in our book, the manuscript of which will soon be going to the printer to coincide with our national campaign for the presidency. This war we are in would never have come to pass if Henry Clay or Daniel Webster, our founders, had been elected to the presidency.”

  “They were against the war with Japan?” I asked.

  “Bass,” Lyle said over his shoulder to the unseen Bass behind him. This time Bass understood. He stepped forward and hit the top of my head with an open palm. It felt like a steel beam falling from the top of a tall building.

  “Clay and Webster were against our entry into the Mexican Wars,” Lyle explained, though I had trouble hearing him over the vibrating in my ears. “Clay made the mistake of issuing the Raleigh papers early in his own campaign. He opposed the Mexican War. But …”

  And with this Lyle raised a fist.

  “But …” I agreed, solemnly glancing over to be sure Bass wasn’t going to prompt me.

  “But onc
e we were in a war, the Whigs went to military leadership to lead the country as we always did. Tippecanoe, Taylor, and Winfield Scott. And that is what we want, Mr. Peters. A strong military leader to take American back where it belongs, behind its own strong borders, defended with a big stick.”

  “And with you behind the scenes as Henry Clay?” I added. “And Bass here will be Daniel Webster?”

  “Doctor Olson was to have served that function,” said Lyle. “Behind your sarcasm is accidental truth, Mr. Peters.”

  “So?” I said, twirling the cowboy hat in my hand until Lyle nodded and Bass stepped forward to take the hat from me.

  “So, if you involve us in some tale of murder, threats, and this dog obsession, it will be very difficult to get a military figure of the stature of Patton, MacArthur, or Eisenhower to join us. We need credibility. Our ranks are small but our resources boundless and our determination unswerving. New members join us every day.”

  “Like Mr. Academy,” said Bass, from behind me. I turned to face him, but he had sunk back into attention for his leader, who fixed him with a less than paternal look.

  “We did not kill Doctor Olson,” Lyle went on, returning his gaze to the flag. “Roy Olson was a man of great vision, though he had little fortitude for the essential actions of political realism.”

  “Like dognapping,” I said.

  This time I moved my head as Bass’s palm descended. It was a good and bad idea. It kept my brain from turning to Kosto pudding, but it resulted in his hand hitting my left shoulder. My left arm, hand, and fingers went numb.

  “The dog was … There are more important things than the dog,” Lyle sighed.

  “Mrs. Olson,” I said, trying to get some life into my tingling fingers.

  “Between us,” said Lyle, “and no one will ever believe you outside this room—that was an accident. She found out about certain … things.”

  Like the dog, I thought, but I didn’t say anything this time. I wanted two good legs if the chance came to get out of the room. I’d also need at least one good hand to open the door.

  “Mr. Bass attempted to reason with her, but things got out of hand.”

  With this, Lyle’s hands went up as if to show that the matter was out of his hands, a question of fate or bad timing.

  “It was,” he went on, “an accident.”

  “And the woman who pretended to be Mrs. Olson,” I said. “The one who kept me from maybe saving Olson the night he was killed, the one who took off my pants in the clinic yesterday?”

  Lyle looked at me with genuine curiosity.

  “I may have misjudged you, Peters,” he said. “You may simply be mad. Bass, do you know of any such woman?”

  We both turned to face, Bass, who looked bewildered. The conversation had passed him by.

  “Woman,” I said. “You know what that is? Mrs. Olson, not the one you killed, but the other one.”

  “No,” said Bass, but it sounded less like the answer to a question than an attempt to ward off the one weapon with which he couldn’t cope, words.

  “Mr. Peters,” Lyle returned to me. “This is getting us nowhere. Certain things have to be done if political viability is to be maintained, if this country is, literally, going to be saved. Your petty investigations of an inconsequential murder and a less consequential missing dog might well jeopardize the fragile but vital web we are constructing. It is, indeed, like the first, strong strand of the spider. It is the strand on which the entire structure is based, a structure that will grow and encompass our enemies, but that first strand must be protected until it is strengthened. Do you understand?”

  “You’re no Daniel Webster,” I said. “Or Henry Clay. Spiders and webs. Come on, Lyle. People are getting killed out there. China’s going to fall. The RAF is getting shot down over Germany and you’re back in the nineteenth century.”

  “Bass,” Lyle cried, and before I could move from the chair, Bass had his arms around me and had lifted me up. I lost my wind and gasped for air, but my voice came out in a little puff.

  “Wait,” I tried to say, but Lyle had opened the window behind him and nodded to Bass, who carried me easily around the desk.

  “Wait,” I tried again, but Bass didn’t wait. He stuck my head and shoulders out the window, eight floors above Broadway. Traffic was heavy below me. I spotted my own car in the parking lot and even spotted the parking lot attendant from Lubbock.

  “Since there is no reasoning with you, Mr. Peters,” Lyle said within the room, “then you will simply have an accident or commit suicide.”

  “Others,” I gasped as I felt Bass’s arms loosen and tried not to imagine myself bouncing off the building.

  “Others?” said Lyle. “Others what? What others?”

  Bass’s grip had loosened enough for me to cough out the words, “Butler. Bass knows him.”

  “I beat him,” Bass said, proudly shaking me.

  “One out of three,” I said

  “Pull him in,” Lyle’s voice called out, and in I came. Bass threw me into the corner of the room, where I bounced off the wall and sat catching my breath.

  “I think you’re lying about your friends waiting for you,” said Lyle, closing the window and advancing toward me with Bass right behind.

  “Send Kong down to look,” I said as I got up.

  Bass looked puzzled and then something clicked.

  “He called me a monkey,” he said, pushing past Lyle and reaching down for me.

  “Bass,” Lyle shouted, stopping the hands inches from my throat. I could smell Bass’s breath. It should have smelled of garlic, but it was more like mint, which was even more unpleasant than garlic would have been.

  “I haven’t time for games like this, Peters,” Lyle shouted. “Let us call this little visit a warning, a friendly warning. If you persist, the warning will have been made. Now get your silly hat and take your silly ideas out of here. Out of here.”

  I picked up my hat, and using the wall, got up with Bass glaring at me.

  “Monks, monks, monks,” I said, limping to the door and brushing off my hat.

  “What? What did you say?” Lyle croaked.

  “Your parrot, that’s what he said the last time I saw him. He said he was Henry the Eighth and then the bit about the monks.”

  “Those were Henry the Eighth’s last words,” Lyle said.

  “Those were the parrot’s last words too before that second Mrs. Olson you know nothing about blew his head off.” My hand was on the door and I looked back at Lyle. His upper lip was trembling.

  “Henry is dead?” he said.

  “Unless a parrot can live without a head.” I sighed. “Just thought I’d give you a little good news to start the day off right.”

  Before he could recover and consider having Bass remove my head, I went out the door, hobbled through the outer office, went into the hall, and headed for the stairs, the location of which I had noted before I had entered the office.

  I wasn’t sure what I had discovered beyond the fact that Bass had killed Mrs. Olson, but that was a start and a few things were fitting into place.

  Jeremy was working on the mirror in the Farraday elevator when I arrived. He sprayed, scrubbed, looked at his own image. Since my ribs were bruised, I rode up with him.

  “I should replace this mirror,” he said, “but I like to maintain the original. Replacement is necessary in all things but there comes a point at which so much has been replaced that what you have is but the replica of what once stood. When that process begins, we are too often unaware of the transition. However, my fear, Toby, is that when singular replacements become necessary, I will lose my interest in maintaining the building.”

  “That will never happen,” I assured him as we groaned up past the first floor, which reminded me. “How are Alice and Jane getting along?”

  “Remarkably,” he said, working away at the mirror “Miss Poslik is very much interested in our children’s book and has already begun illustrations. Of course, we coul
d offer her no money at this point, perhaps at no point, but there is a communal feeling about this project.… What is wrong with you, Toby?” he asked, suddenly looking at me in his mirror as we squeaked past the second floor.

  “I ran into your old friend Bass,” I said, gently touching my rib cage to reassure myself again that nothing was broken. “He sends you his best.”

  “I doubt that,” he said, turning to examine me “You are fortunate that he simply toyed with you.”

  “He dangled me out of an eighth-floor window,” I said as we approached the third-floor landing The elevator came to a stop and Jeremy, tiny bucket in huge hand, stepped out after sliding open the metal door. His lips were tight in anger.

  “He should have been dealt with long ago, before he had the opportunity to seriously hurt anyone,” he said.

  “He killed a woman last week,” I said, as the elevator door closed.

  “And he is on the streets?” asked Jeremy, looking up at the slowly rising cage.

  “No proof,” I said, sagging back against the mesh.

  “Justice does not always require evidence of the senses,” his voice came up. “It can even go beyond intuition.”

  Our voices were echoing down the halls now, vibrating off metal and marble and over the whine of machines and distant humming voices.

  “I thought you were coming to the idea that there was no good and evil,” I shouted. “What about your poem in the park?”

  “I have no obligation to be consistent,” he shouted back. “My thoughts and feelings are one. When enlightenment comes, it will come not because I will it but because I am ready for it.”

  “Whatever you say, Jeremy,” I said, as the elevator came to a stop on four. I said it quietly to myself. It was hard to think about enlightenment with a ringing skull and bruised ribs.

  When I reached the outer door, I knew that things had changed, that I would enter a cleaner but even less savory realm because it would be a false one. The still moist sign on the pebbled glass read SHELDON MINCK, D.D.S. There was no reference, even in small letters, to the existence of Toby Peters, Private Investigator. Inside the door, the waiting room had been scrubbed and a new, metal-legged trio of chairs sat waiting emptily. The small table was clean, the ashtray scrubbed and empty, and two editions of the dental journal, both recent, rested waiting for an eager patient to explore their visual wonders. The ancient poster of gum disorders was gone. In its place was a framed, glass-covered sign urging waiting victims to buy war bonds and stamps.