The Shakedown Shuffle: A Dieselpunk Adventure (The Crossover Case Files Book 3)

by Richard Levesque

  “Let me know how those phone calls go, okay?”

  “Sure, Jed.”

  I nodded. “You’re a plum, Peggy.”

  Then I went into the office and closed the door, wondering if there wasn’t a different angle I could play with Beadle. The last time we’d spoken, it had been in an effort to get information on Elsa Schwartz’s whereabouts. That whole exchange had led to the death of one of his bodyguard/acolytes. I expected if I tried the same thing again, the old madman would laugh me off the phone. But if I told him that Elsa was back and that I needed an infusion of cash to finance my pursuit of her, it might be bait he’d bite at—even if I wasn’t entirely sure that Elsa was at the heart of last night’s adventures. I was pretty certain that this time Beadle would have no clue as to Elsa’s plans or her hiding place, but I also knew he wanted her brought to justice—or outright killed—as payback for the way she’d had Beadle’s man strangled right in front of me.

  Leaving Peggy to make her own calls, I got on the line myself and started working the operator to get me through to the estate on Catalina. When someone finally picked up, I learned that Beadle was on his way home from New York and couldn’t be reached until tomorrow.

  “Well, then, tomorrow it is,” I said. At least tomorrow was still more than a week away from the end of the month.

  My sleepless night was starting to catch up to me, and the pot of coffee I’d drunk in the pre-dawn hours could only do so much to keep me going. At ten-thirty, I checked with Peggy to find that there’d been no callback yet from O’Neal and that the people at Paragon had no handle on Leonora’s whereabouts today. The actress’s home phone rang incessantly without response, and Peggy’s trick of badgering Leonora’s answering service had not worked this time around.

  “I’ve struck out,” she said, mock self-derision on her face.

  “Not for naught,” I said. “But thanks for trying.” Nodding toward the outer office door, I said, “I’m stepping out. I’m in no shape to just sit in here and count the walls the rest of the day.”

  “Early lunch?”

  Guillermo’s breakfast was still taking up a good chunk of my real estate. “No,” I said. “I think I’ll just go downstairs and see what’s showing. Take my mind off of things a little.”

  “All right.”

  “You can call down there if anything big comes in on the phone, right? I’m hoping to hear from O’Neal.”

  “Of course.”

  Our office occupied a space above one of the Broadway movie palaces that had drifted from its heyday in the 1920s. As a result, I was a regular at the matinees, sometimes sitting through the same show two or three times a week when things were painfully slow at the office. I knew exactly which seats had not yet had their springs sprung or their backs broken. The usherettes down there knew me and didn’t mind fetching me from the show if Peggy called down looking for me.

  The show didn’t start until eleven, so I milled around in the lobby for a few minutes, chatting up the earnest young woman at the candy counter before going into the auditorium to find my preferred seat—four rows down from the back and six seats in from the left. With everything that had been going on this week, this was my first foray into the theater since the films had last changed. And although I had glanced at the marquee when approaching the box office, the film’s title hadn’t registered with me, nor had I bothered asking what it was about. I wasn’t really there for entertainment, after all, but rather for distraction. It could have been a foreign film without subtitles for all I cared, so long as it helped me get my mind off my troubles for the span of an hour and a half or so.

  All of which is to say that I was more than a little surprised to see Leonora Rigsby’s name in the credits—written out in big block letters right after the film’s title, Cursed by Love.

  Well, I thought, this ought to be interesting. I’d never seen a film with anyone I knew in it before. And my awareness of Leonora and her private life was about the only way I’d be able to find something called Cursed by Love actually stimulating enough to hold my interest.

  It was standard melodrama with jilting and hand-wringing, one wholesome character, another controlling one, and a few one-dimensional types to fill in the blank spaces on the screen. Leonora played the wronged lover whose romantic efforts kept getting blocked by circumstance, fate, and coincidence. She did a more than passable job at playing a woman interested in men; this was something I’d already known her capable of, as there would have been no other way for her to succeed in the industry, but now that I knew just how much of it was acting, I found her abilities rather impressive.

  About an hour in, there was a scene in which her character confronted the man who’d led her along and was now about to go off on a cruise with another woman. I watched as Leonora plead her case and then had to suffer the man’s cold reasons for rejecting her. As he finished failing to let her down easy, the camera moved in for a close-up on Leonora’s face.

  And that was when I saw it.

  Tears rimmed her eyes, her whole face a gateway of emotion.

  It was the same look she’d given me in my office on the day she’d presented me with the first blackmail letter.

  Not just the same look, though.

  They were the same tears, too.

  “Son of a bitch,” I said.

  A woman two rows in front of me turned sharply and shushed me. I would have muttered an apology, but that would only have made her angrier. Instead, I ignored her and got up from my seat, making the springs squeak louder than my cursing had been. Without looking to see if that got another reaction, I made my way to the aisle and out to the lobby.

  Back out on the street, I hustled around the corner and through the doorway that led to the stairs and the businesses above the theater. Taking them two at a time, my mind reeling as pieces of the last week’s puzzle clicked into place, I didn’t notice the sound of footsteps descending the stairs toward me—which is how I just about ran smack into Peggy at the landing between the second and third floors.

  “Jed!” she exclaimed as she rounded the corner.

  Her expression told me there was something urgent going on.

  “What is it?” I asked, alarm in my voice as my mind flashed on all the boogeymen I’d been imagining during my sleepless night.

  “The police,” she said, a little out of breath. “They’re upstairs.”

  “Who? Merwyn?”

  She shook her head, her face suggesting that the name meant nothing to her. “O’Neal,” she said. “And her partner.”

  Crashaw, I thought. I would have preferred O’Neal to have come alone, as her partner made no bones about his dislike and distrust of me.

  “What’s it about?” I asked as I started moving past her, ready to continue bolting up the stairs, my revelations about Leonora now firmly on the back burner.

  “I don’t know. She wouldn’t say. Just that she wanted to see you right away. I tried calling downstairs to get them to go fetch you, but they didn’t answer in the box office, so I—”

  “Thanks, Peggy,” I said, cutting her off. “I get the picture.”

  “Also…” she said as I was about to continue up the stairs.

  I looked into her eyes and saw trouble looking back at me.

  “What is it?”

  “Right before the detectives walked in, I got a call from Guillermo.”

  Osvaldo, I thought, picturing him dead in a ravine, a coroner’s van parked on the windy mountain road while the police discussed how to retrieve the body. “Bad news?” I asked, wondering how we were going to get Carmelita through this.

  “I don’t know. Maybe. He just said to tell you that he’d gone home and found the German’s book missing.”

  Chills ran up my neck. I think I’d rather have heard about Osvaldo meeting his end.

  “Does that make sense?” she asked. Her expression told me she was trying to read my face, which I expect was either a blank page or a sudden wash of signals she couldn�
��t fathom.

  Hesitating a moment as I wondered again whether the culprit had been Elsa, Osvaldo, or both, I said, “Yeah. Yeah, it makes sense. Thanks, Peggy.”

  Then, without saying another word, I started my two-at-a-time ascent again. Peggy fell in right behind me, not letting her heels or skirt slow her down.

  Outside the office door, I took a second to collect myself. Out of breath and sweating just a little, I knew I wasn’t going to recover anytime soon, so I gave Peggy my best self-deprecating smile and reached for the knob.

  O’Neal and Crashaw hadn’t bothered to sit in Peggy’s absence. They stood in the middle of the lobby, keeping a respectful distance from Peggy’s desk, most likely to prevent anyone who came in from thinking they’d been snooping. Still worried about what I was going to hear, I tried reading O’Neal’s face as Peggy walked in behind me. I was hoping for a smile but I got nothing but seriousness.

  “Detective,” I said.

  “Mr. Strait,” O’Neal said. “Can we talk?”

  She nodded her head toward my office door, and I responded by saying, “Of course.” Then I stepped forward and showed them in.

  I didn’t wait until they were all the way inside to start talking. Crashaw was halfway through closing the door for privacy when I turned to the two of them and said, “Is this about what happened last night in Chavez Ravine?”

  O’Neal raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything right away. She nodded toward my desk and the chairs on either side of it. “May we sit?” she asked.

  Sitting was the last thing I wanted, but I said, “Sure.” Circling my desk, I pulled out the second-hand swivel chair where I spent most of my time in the office and watched as O’Neal took the seat across from me, Crashaw pulling up a third chair and looking none too happy about having to play furniture mover.

  “I’m afraid I haven’t heard anything new about Chavez Ravine,” O’Neal said before Crashaw had a chance to get settled.

  “You haven’t talked to Merwyn?” I asked impatiently.

  The eyebrow jumped again. “Jack Merwyn?” she asked.

  “Yes. That’s him,” I said, recalling the name on the business card I’d been handed in Guillermo’s front room the night before.

  O’Neal shook her head. “I don’t know anything about Chavez Ravine or anything Jack Merwyn is working on. That’s not why we’re here.”

  “All right,” I said. It pained me to have to sit on the information that something valuable had been taken last night from Guillermo’s house or, maybe, his workshop, and I worried that whatever the detectives were here about, it was going to turn into something irritating. She was about to start setting hurdles I’d need to jump over when all I wanted was a sprint to the finish line. Impatient though I was, I managed to say, “When we’re finished, I’d be grateful for a minute of your time.”

  “Let’s see how this goes,” she answered with a smile whose meaning was pretty obvious—play ball with me, it said, and I’ll return the favor.

  “Fire away,” I said, hoping that I was keeping my agitation from being too obvious.

  She cleared her throat. “It’s a bit out of the area I normally work, but this morning I caught sight of a missing person report from North Hollywood. The reporting party was Daisy Culpepper.”

  I furrowed my brow. “The car,” I said after a moment’s thought.

  “That’s right,” O’Neal said. “The one you were troubled by the other day.”

  I nodded. “I’m convinced that was just a coincidence. I still don’t know who was tailing me, but I’m reasonably sure it wasn’t a housewife from North Hollywood.”

  “How do you know she’s just a housewife?” Crashaw asked. “There might be more to her.”

  “There might,” I said, determined not let the other detective get me flustered. Then, making it obvious that I was turning my attention away from him and toward O’Neal, I said, “Who’s the missing person?”

  “Her husband, Carl.”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “You sure?” she asked, her tone a bit skeptical.

  She had my interest. I wanted her to get to the point, but I also didn’t want to rush her. There was no telling what angle she was working here or why she’d bothered to drag her partner downtown to interview me. If there was some mud smeared across my name in this, I figured it would be smart to keep her as close to being on my side as possible. And acting impatient with her now wasn’t going to help achieve that goal.

  “Absolutely,” I said. In the back of my mind, I was still thinking Osvaldo? Elsa? Both?

  She nodded and took a little notebook out of her jacket pocket. “We found the car in a parking lot off the Santa Monica pier. This was inside it. Would it surprise you to know your name is on about twenty of the pages?”

  “My name?” I asked, incredulous. All thoughts of who had pilfered the Klaus Lang’s notebook turned into smoke and went right up my mental chimney. Instead, I started thinking about the possibility of there being another Jed Strait in the area. It wasn’t that uncommon a name, so the chances were good. But what if this other Jed Strait was lurking around the edges of my life, a Jed Strait who, like me, had ended up in the wrong world and was looking for a way to reclaim his existence? I felt my face grow flushed at the thought.

  “Well? Does that surprise you?” O’Neal asked.

  I shrugged, hoping the gesture looked normal and nonchalant. “There could be other Jed Straits, right?”

  “When you were the one who had me run the plates on his wife’s car?” she asked.

  I sighed. “Guilty. I don’t know the guy, though. What kinds of things were in these notes?”

  She turned a few pages in the notebook. “Mostly your whereabouts. Hollywood. Let There Be Darkness. An address up in the hills. Something about a blonde and something else about a brunette. His writing’s a bit tough to decipher. Practically code.”

  Code, I thought, and the questions about Klaus Lang’s notebook raced back into my mind. It was getting crowded in there.

  I shook my head. “Sorry, but none of this clicks, Detective.”

  “None of it?”

  “Afraid not.”

  “What about…” She turned another page in the notebook. “The name Carson Mulvaney?”

  “Mulvaney?” I asked. If I’d wanted to hide my surprise, I had just failed. My tone was all incredulity, and my expression was probably the same.

  “That clicks?” she asked.

  “Unfortunately. How is he tied up in this?”

  She smiled a little at this. Then she said, “Carl Culpepper is Carson Mulvaney. Mulvaney is the pen name he writes under. How do you know him?”

  It was too much. I couldn’t keep all the plates spinning and still play the game of cat and roach with the detective. In another situation, I would have weighed the information I could keep to myself against the things it would be advantageous to let her in on. In this situation, such a balancing act was beyond me, so I spilled what I knew and hoped that honesty would get me through.

  “Carson Mulvaney hired me as a consultant. He said he was writing a book. A mystery. With a private detective as the main character. I was providing him some background and technical information.”

  The detective was nodding as she listened, but her eyes were on the pages of her notebook rather than looking at me. When I stopped speaking, she looked up and said, “Another Day, Another Doll…exactly what kind of technical information are you providing, Jed?”

  I shook my head in disgust and irritation. “It’s a terrible idea, and I’ve already distanced myself from what he’s doing. If the thing ever gets published, I’m going to make sure he removes any mention of me from the finished product. It’s laughable.”

  “I don’t know…” O’Neal said, a hint of a smile on her lips.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “Just some of these notes. From what I can read…” She flipped through a few pages and then read, “Strait’s go
t ‘em lined up—the blonde, the brunette, and the burlesque dancer. What do they see in him?” She looked at me, her smile wider. “It’s a good question. You got an answer?”

  “Unbelievable,” I said, anger swelling. “This son of a bitch has been following me and spying on my clients. And he thinks I’ve been—” I stopped myself, realizing the anger wouldn’t play well if it was aimed at the subject of a missing person report.

  O’Neal appeared to be thinking the same thing, as her expression had changed from amused to serious. “You got a problem with this guy, Jed?”

  I couldn’t deny it. “A professional problem. Strictly.”

  She nodded. “You wouldn’t be looking to preserve the honor of your lady friends, would you?”

  “From Carson Mulvaney? Not hardly.”

  “Who’s the brunette?” O’Neal asked.

  “I’m not sure I’m at liberty to say. She’s associated with a case. Not an actual client.”

  “She complain to you about Carl Culpepper?”

  “No. Why would she?”

  Again, she shrugged. “Play ball with me and I might tell you.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that, but all I could offer was, “I am playing ball, detective. Every kind. What more can I possibly give you?”

  She closed the little book and looked at me. “You’re telling me you didn’t know Culpepper was following you.”

  “Well…I didn’t know. I suspected,” I said although the name Culpepper was going to take some getting used to after having known the man as Mulvaney for weeks.

  “Any idea what he was doing in Santa Monica?” O’Neal asked.

  I lifted my hands and then dropped them, indicating that I was holding onto nothing. “No idea,” I said. “Sorry.”

  “And the case you were working that he was snooping on? Can you tell us about it?”

  I let out a long breath and said, “I’m not going to get too specific. No names. It was a blackmail case. It’s over now.”

  “You found the blackmailer?”

  “That’s a little more specific than I want to be,” I said, “but I can tell you for sure that Carson—I mean, Culpepper—isn’t mixed up in it.”