Buried Caesars

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  Zanzibar wasn’t around this morning. No one was around, not even delivery men and late-arriving Farraday tenants. Everyone seemed to have taken a long Labor Day weekend in spite of the President’s urging to keep working. I locked the Crosley, hoping that no one would step on it or put it in their pocket and walk off. The pouch and Mrs. Plaut’s chapter were under my arm, and I carried a paper bag of stuff I’d picked up at Roscoe Wheat’s All-Night Eats in my hand.

  Jeremy Butler wasn’t in the hall of the Farraday when I went through the rear door and pushed open the double doors near the rear stairwell. Jeremy was my landlord, a massive, bald, former pro wrestler who dabbled in poetry and had recently been wed to the equally massive Alice Pallice, former pornographic printer, now reformed protector of her husband’s oeuvre. Great word, oeuvre. Gunther had taught it to me. I pulled it out privately at moments like this and said to myself, “I may look like a pug but, baby, I can pull out a word like oeuvre with the best of them.”

  It didn’t make me feel any better. The hallways usually smelled of Lysol. Jeremy waged a valiant war against the grime of the Farraday and its denizens. A good part of his and Alice’s day was spent Scrubbing and rousting bums like Zanzibar Al. Today the Farraday didn’t smell like Lysol and there were signs that filth was establishing a small beachhead of candy bar wrappers and empty beer bottles in the dark corners. A private Guadalcanal just off Tenth Street.

  I bypassed the elevator and walked up the six flights. I only took the elevator when I had an extra ten minutes and a lot I wanted to think about. I didn’t want to think about anything this morning. All I wanted to do was call Ann.

  Shelly hadn’t changed the sign on our door overnight. The sign had been through changes and variations, but it was now back to what it had been when I moved in more than five years earlier:

  DOCTOR SHELDON MINCK, DENTIST, D.D.S., S.D.

  PAINLESS DENTISTRY PRACTICE SINCE 1916

  TOBY PETERS, INVESTIGATOR

  He had learned his lesson. There were no new creative initials after his name. I’d made him remove the M.D. minutes after he had it painted on in gold.

  “It means Master of Dentistry,” he had whined. “I’ve got a certificate somewhere. I paid eleven bucks for it. Guaranteed.”

  The lights were on in the dental office beyond our small reception room but Shelly wasn’t there. I was disappointed. God help me, I was so desperate that I wanted to see Sheldon Minck. God heard my silent prayer. When I opened the door to my office, Shelly stood reading something he had obviously taken from the open middle drawer of my desk.

  Shelly’s improvisation was pathetic. Shelly is rotund, bald except for a thatch of graying hair, short, seldom without a cigar in his mouth, and almost always in need of a clean white dental smock. He looked at me through his thick glasses, mouth open, cigar in one hand, and then looked down at the sheet of paper in his hand as if he were surprised to see it there.

  “Don’t tell me,” I said, putting the bag on the table and kicking the door shut behind me. “Someone dragged you in here, forced you at gunpoint to go through my drawers and then, just as I was coming in, went through the window and down a rope ladder.”

  Shelly bit his lower lip, actually considering the possibility of clinging to my story or some variation on it. He eyed the bag, smelled the coffee and decided to go for something near the truth.

  “I thought something happened to you,” he said, putting the paper back in the drawer. “I was looking for clues.”

  “You know my phone number at the boarding house,” I reminded him, moving behind my desk as he moved the other way. My office is not spacious. There is enough room for my desk and chair and two other chairs, one in the corner and one in front of the desk. That’s it. On one wall hangs my California private investigator’s license and a photograph of me and my brother when we were kids. My father, the Glendale grocer, stands between us, an arm around each, grinning painfully at the camera, probably holding Phil to keep him from ripping off my ear. Squatting next to me is our German Shepherd, Kaiser Wilhelm, who was renamed Murphy in 1916—which also happened to be the year Sheldon Minck began to practice dentistry on an unprepared public. To the left of the door was a square less dirty than the rest of the wall where a print of a smiling girl had once hung. I had put it up because it reminded me of someone. I had taken it down for the same reason. I was not in a good mood.

  “Got coffee in there?” Shelly asked, pushing his glasses back up his nose and pointing at the paper bag.

  I ignored his question, folded my hands and fixed him with my best Lionel Barrymore dyspeptic frown.

  “Come on, Toby,” he bleated. “I didn’t stop for breakfast. I had to get here for a patient.”

  I didn’t believe him. If the world were crying in pain from a massive abscess, Sheldon Minck would stop for breakfast. And Sheldon was having some fine breakfasts since being thrown out of his house by his wife, Mildred. Mildred had run off briefly with an actor who pretended to be Peter Lorre. The ersatz Peter Lorre took her for a bundle before he got shot, not by Mildred. Naturally, Mildred’s response upon returning home was to kick her husband out.

  Now Sheldon Minck resided temporarily in the Ravenswood Hotel on Rossmore in Hollywood. He had wanted to move into Mrs. Plaut’s vacant room till he “worked things out with Millie,” but I’d threatened him with certain death if he dared to move into Plautland. A man needs some refuge.

  “Help yourself, Shel,” I said, nodding at the bag on the desk as I sat in my chair and pushed the drawer closed. Sheldon gave me a nervous twitch of a grin, put his cold cigar on the edge of my desk and plunged his hand into the bag, coming out with a paper cup of lukewarm coffee, a limp cheese Danish and an egg and tomato sandwich on white. He sat across from me and I pointed at the bag, which he pushed toward me with his left hand as he held the Danish in his right.

  “Dinner on me tonight,” Shelly said, reaching his now-free left hand for the coffee. “Ahern’s on Wilshire has a T-bone dinner for eighty-five cents. Soup, two vegetables, ice cream, coffee and potatoes. And the Carthay Circle has Mrs. Miniver.”

  “I’m busy tonight, Shel,” I said, after I put down Mrs. Plaut’s manuscript and opened the pouch on the desk in front of me. “I thought you were busy wooing Mildred.”

  “Mildred’s on vacation in Canada,” Shelly said around bites of his sandwich. He had already flushed down the Danish.

  “Vacation from what?” I asked.

  “You know,” he said, pointing his cup around the room. “Everything. Our separation. Everything.”

  “Shel, I’d like to chat, but I’ve got to get to work on this.” I pointed at the papers on my desk.

  “Can I help?” he asked, jutting out his jaw and trying to read the top sheet in front of me upside down. “Things are kind of slow today.”

  “You want to read the latest episodes in Mrs. Plaut’s memoirs?” I asked, pushing the sheaf of rubber-band bound papers toward him. “That would help me. Just read them and summarize. It will give me some room to save the world and earn a few bucks.”

  He took the pages with a shrug.

  “What kind of sandwich is still in there?” he asked, playing with the bag.

  “Tuna on wheat toast,” I said. “I’m on a health kick.”

  “You gonna eat it?” Shelly asked.

  “No, I was planning to plant it and start a Victory garden. Take it, Shel, and …”

  The door to our outer office opened and Shelly reached for the bag. I beat him to it and retrieved a raspberry sweet roll. Then I pushed the bag toward him. He grabbed it and hurried out the door with his cache of sandwich and manuscript to greet what we both hoped was a patient.

  I couldn’t tell much about the patient with the door closed, other than that it was a man. I could hear the scrape of Shelly’s X-ray machine, the sound of voices, and then Shelly’s grating imitation of Nelson Eddy singing “Shortnin’ Bread.”

  The biography of Andrew Lansing in the packet was b
rief, uninspiring and, at first glance, not very helpful. He had been born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1912. Had an older sister. His father sold real estate. Lansing got a bachelor’s degree in engineering from the University of Illinois, moved to California, where he worked in a contracting office in San Jose for a few years, and then moved to Los Angeles where he got involved in Republican politics. He was unmarried. A photograph of Lansing showed a round-faced, sober man with a baby face. He looked as if he were about to cry. His hair was combed back but a wisp had been allowed to drop down onto his forehead. There was a bit of pouting Bonaparte in the face of Andrew Lansing.

  Most of the papers were lists. There was a one-page list of all of Lansing’s nine addresses since birth, ending with one in Pacific Palisades, a house which he shared with someone named Melvin Grady Hower. Another included the names and addresses of each of Lansing’s employers since he left college, and the names and addresses of Lansing’s living relatives—most of whom were in Illinois—and the names and addresses of possible Lansing friends. The last was a very short list. Major Castle had done one hell of a job, almost too good a job. I had too many names, too many leads.

  The report on the actual theft was as concise as the biography and lists. A small group of individuals, unnamed, were working at the Beverly Hills home of one of the individuals, planning the eventual campaign of a certain high-ranking military officer. When the meeting ended everyone went home except, of course, the gentleman who lived in the house. It wasn’t till the next morning that he discovered the documents had been taken from his safe—a safe to which he, Lansing, and no one else held the combination. The gentleman involved immediately called a member of the military who had been at the house the night before. The military man, with some volunteers, went to Lansing’s house. Lansing had cleared out. There was no sign of his roommate Hower. The high-ranking military officer had been contacted. He issued orders and indicated that he would find a way to come to California.

  No names, dates. MacArthur’s name wasn’t mentioned once in any of the material I had been given. They had closed the door a little late to keep the wombat inside, but at least they had closed it.

  I had paused to look out the window and finish the last of my tepid coffee when the phone rang. Precisely ten hundred hours.

  “Peters,” I said.

  “Major Castle,” he said. “Report.”

  “I’ve read the material,” I said.

  “Go on,” he urged.

  “I had a coffee and a raspberry sweet roll,” I added

  “Did you have any ideas?” he asked.

  “One or two,” I said.

  In the background, Shelly had switched to “Amapola” in his Caruso croak.

  “And your plan of attack?” Castle said.

  “I’m preparing grids and counterchecks,” I said, looking down through my only window at Zanzibar Al, who stood next to my car. I got up and he waved at me. He pointed to my Crosley and I nodded and held up a finger. He nodded back to let me know that we had a deal. “I’m cross-indexing names, addresses, contacts, and will have agents checking possible intersections. Other agents will methodically make contact with each person on the list, starting with the most likely but missing none. All will be supplied with copies of Lansing’s photograph and informed that if he is located they should get back to me immediately. I have a safe phone number they can call and I can check every hour on the hour, day and night.”

  “Sounds good,” Castle said.

  “Thanks,” I said, and thought if he was buying all that crap I had a couple of Leland Stanford memorial gold spikes to sell him cheap.

  “I’ll check back with you at seventeen hundred hours,” he said.

  “One of my assistants will be here if I am out,” I said.

  He hung up and so did I.

  My supply of Toby Peters low-cost special agents was limited, especially if I wanted to make a few bucks on this deal. My pool included a fat myopic dentist, a retired wrestler, a midget who was temporarily out of town, and maybe Zanzibar Al, who was permanently out to lunch.

  If I wanted to pay a few bucks I could get Jack Ellis, who normally made his living as a hotel dick but had some free time since his disability. A trio of sailors on leave had thrown him down an elevator shaft. Jack had been hearing opera arias at odd times since then. There were a few down-and-out investigators in my league who I could get cheap but I’d have to tell them too much. MacArthur didn’t want anyone to know he was in the States.

  That left me, my Crosley, my .38, my bad back and my determination. I had no doubt that I could find Lansing. That wasn’t the problem. The question was, could I find him before he spent all the money or turned what he knew over to someone who might use it to ruin MacArthur’s political future? I had only one method. Start in the most obvious place, ask questions and follow leads, the good ones, the bad ones, the silly ones, the impossible ones. Follow leads till you found what you were looking for or till your client said “enough.”

  Lansing’s most recent Los Angeles address was the one in Pacific Palisades he shared with Melvin Grady Hower. Castle had already been there and probably had someone checking the place from time to time, but Major Castle wasn’t as devious as I was. I finished my sweet roll, swept the crumbs into my drawer, stuck my Dick Tracy badge into my pocket and considered taking my .38. I decided against it.

  When I stepped into the dental office, Shelly was singing “Mimi” in a blubbery Maurice Chevalier accent, his lower lip jutting out. The patient in Shelly’s chair watched him with faint amusement. There was something familiar about the thin man with the not-too-clean white cloth around his neck. He seemed to be about my age. His white hair was cut short and combed straight back and up. His mustache was darker than his hair but showing signs of gray. He looked like a gaunt but elegant scarecrow. I had at least twenty pounds on him though he looked like he might have an inch or two on me. His brown eyes turned on me and seemed to see something I wasn’t aware of.

  “Open, open, open,” Shelly said, and the gaunt man dutifully opened his mouth, his eyes never leaving mine. Shelly leaned over him, a particularly lethal, narrow and sharp steel instrument in his hand. I should have left but I wanted to place that face.

  Whatever Shelly did, it must have hurt, but the man in the chair didn’t move.

  “Just a second now,” Shelly said, his face now blocking that of the thin man in the chair. “Here we … go. Got it.”

  Shelly turned to me triumphantly, his glasses slipping down his moist nose, the bloody instrument in his hand. The man in the chair closed his mouth.

  “That will do it for today, Sam,” Shelly said to the patient. “I’ll check the X-rays and we’ll work on those teeth. Quite a challenge.”

  Shelly plunked the bloody instrument in the crowded sink, found his cigar in the ashtray and put it to his lips. A job well done.

  The man in the chair removed the now-bloody white cloth from around his neck and got up. He wore a tweed suit and dark tie, confirming that he was much too elegant for the Farraday.

  “One week,” the man said in a soft, determined voice.

  “One week and your mouth will look like Gable’s. You have the guarantee of Dr. Sheldon Minck,” Shelly said, leaning back on the sink, cigar in his mouth.

  “Day after tomorrow at seven in the morning,” the man said, glancing at me.

  “At nine, Sam,” Shelly said with a wave.

  The man moved past me through the reception room and out the door. When it closed, Shelly beamed.

  “See those duds, Toby? The man has money. Right off the street. Rush job. Mouth’s a mess. Alcohol, drinking. Do you know what he wants?”

  “Pain,” I ventured.

  “No,” sighed Shelly. “He wants me to put his mouth in shape so he can join the army. At his age.”

  “What’s his name, Shel?” I said.

  “Sam.”

  “Sam what?”

  “Sam. I don’t know. I’ll have him fill out a
card when he comes back. He gave me fifty bucks cash in advance. Who needs names? But you want names, I’ll get you names. You know where I put those cards?”

  He moved to a file cabinet covered by a mess of old magazines, bills, letters that had never been answered, and searched the top of each drawer in the hope that a blank patient card would magically appear.

  “Didn’t bat an eye when I told him what it would cost,” Shelly gloated. “Not an eye. Come to think of it, he didn’t bat an eye when I worked on him, and he didn’t want gas. Said he had some lung problems. Can’t take gas. Man’s a class act, Toby. Take my word for it. A banker or something.”

  “Lucky he found you,” I said, moving to the door.

  “Lucky,” Shelly agreed, finding an ancient dental journal that looked promising. “Want to know where I went yesterday?” he went on, moving to the dental chair.

  “Not particularly,” I said, opening the door to the reception room.

  “Suit yourself,” Shelly said with a grin I didn’t like. “Suit your very own self.”

  I didn’t like his I’ve-got-a-secret smirk, but I didn’t have time to deal with it. I left the office and went into the empty corridor. Somewhere, probably in Madame Sylverstre’s School of Music on the fourth floor, a man was singing scales in a desperate but elusive search for eight consecutive notes. I moved down the stairs slowly, no plan in mind other than to get to Pacific Palisades and do what I had to do.

  Hoover Street was crowded with late-morning shoppers, soldiers, sailors and marines in uniform, and young women shoppers carrying packages. The non-package-carrying women would hit the streets just before dark and they would be selling, not shopping.

  I turned the corner at Tenth, went halfway up the block and turned into the alleyway. This wasn’t the most direct route to my car. It would have been easier to go out the back door of the Farraday the way I had entered, but I’d heard the slight creak of linoleum when I hit the third-floor landing. By the time I had reached the Farraday lobby I was fairly sure I was being followed. When I turned the corner on Tenth I was certain. I stopped in the alley and waited.