“Anne,” I shouted. “Laura?”
Something, someone moved in the living room. I stepped toward it carefully, considering a run to my glove compartment for my.38, but there might not be time.
“Anne,” I repeated, staying out of the doorway that would set me up in backlight for whoever might be standing or sitting in the shadows beyond.
Someone was in the room, in the distant corner in a chair. The figure stood up and moved into the light.
“Anne, huh?” said Cawelti with a smirk. “Laura.”
“Where is she?” I said, moving forward to meet him.
“Who, Mrs. Olson?”
“You know that’s who I mean.”
“She’s dead,” he said.
I looked up at the spot where water had leaked through the ceiling two nights before and took a step toward the hallway. If I hadn’t stopped to call Gunther, I would have been with her, but it had only been a minute or two and Cawelti was here. Something was wrong.
“Is this a sick joke of yours, fireman?” I asked, turning to him again.
“No joke, little brother,” he grinned. “She’s dead. Died two days ago, on Tuesday, in the Victor Hotel just off Wilshire, private room and a bath. Just found the body today. Very messy.”
“Cut the crap Cawelti, I saw her five minutes ago down in the clinic, and there was nothing wrong with her. She-”
“-wasn’t Mrs. Olson,” he finished. “That’s why I’m here. Laura Olson, middle name Faye, was about fifty, short, fat, and no beauty. The woman who was here when you were parading in the negative was another broad, if there was really someone here.”
“You’re full of-” I began.
“She took you in.” He chuckled, looking down at my pants. “The way Captain Pevsner figures it, if she exists someplace outside of your troubled mind, she and someone else did in Olson just as you came knocking at the door. She came downstairs to keep you busy while he finished the job and then they set you up. That’s the way your brother figures it, but I’d like to keep you involved.”
“Let’s go find her,” I said, turning to the door.
“Come on, Peters, as far as I figure, there is no ‘her,’ just you. You’re a sorry sight.”
We were a few feet apart by now and all it would take was the wrong word. He searched for it.
“The way I figure it, you were playing with yourself,” he said, looking down at my pants leg.
“Let’s go to the station and talk to the captain,” I said.
“Day off,” Cawelti said, enjoying the moment.
“Seidman,” I tried.
“Home, sick, tooth problem. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
“How badly do you want a nose like mine,” I said, sweetly.
“I’m ten years younger and twenty pounds heavier than you are, Peters,” he answered.
“And I’ve got a bad back and a weak skull, fireman, but I’ve got something you don’t have. I’m the most stubborn terrier you ever ran into. I don’t give up. I just keep coming. You knock me down and I get up again. I get up and up until you’re too tired to move your arms and you ask for mercy and I stomp on your face.”
Something was in Cawelti’s eyes now that told me he thought he was looking at a crazy man. That was just what I was shooting for. What I told him was the truth. I’d take twenty in the gut to give one good one back. I could live with the twenty, but I had found that the other guy would usually do whatever he could to keep from getting that one good one.
“You’re nuts,” Cawelti said.
“I do my best.” I grinned. “Someone shot some animals in the clinic. You’d better call a vet.”
“Get out of here,” he said, not backing away but not pushing for the fight. If he was going to lay into me, it would be in front of an audience, someone who could pull us apart after I got hurt and before he did.
When I got back to my car, the note was still there. A man was standing in the doorway of the house nearby apparently waiting for me and the package the message on my car had promised. I waved to him, got in my car, and drove away.
I stopped at a pay phone and called a North Hollywood number. My sister-in-law Ruth answered.
“You’re coming for dinner tomorrow, aren’t you, Toby?” she said.
“I’m coming,” I answered. “Listen, I’ve got two tickets for Volez and Yolanda tomorrow night. You and Phil can go. I’ll sit with the kids.”
“I don’t know,” she said, her voice making it obvious that the idea excited her. “Let me ask Phil.”
She put down the phone and wandered away and then I heard light breathing on the other end.
“Smush,” said a little voice.
“Lucy?” I said. “This is Uncle Toby.”
“Lock,” she said and clobbered the phone with her pet lock, a lock that had found my head more than once with velocity well beyond what you could expect from a two year old. She had her father’s arm and probably his disposition.
“Terrific,” I said. “Get Mommy.”
“Toby?” came Ruth’s voice. “He said okay Can you come early for dinner then, about four?”
“I’ll be there,” I said.
When I hung up, I checked at a nearby restaurant and found out that it was almost five in the afternoon. I had expected a night with someone who called herself Anne Olson. A tailor on the corner was closing his door when I caught him and persuaded him with an ugly look and the promise of a good tip to let me in. It took him about five minutes to sew up the tear in Olson’s pants.
“Good as new,” he said, stepping back to admire his work after I had the pants back on and he had two bucks in his hands.
“You want to come around with me and tell that to everyone who thinks different?” I asked.
“It’s what I tell them all,” said the tailor, tucking the two bucks away. “And it is good as new, better, only it don’t look so good. Looking and being good is different,” he said with some slight European accent.
“You got a point,” I agreed and went back to my car.
My session with the fake Mrs Olson should have left me satisfied, but I couldn’t hold back the urge to get over to Spring Street and Levy’s Restaurant. My appetites were up and to avoid figuring out what was happening in the Fala case, I decided to make an assault on a Levy corned beef sandwich and on Carmen the cashier.
The corned beef proved easy, complete with pickle and a chocolate phosphate. Carmen proved to be, as always, Carmen. She sat dark, placid, a counter fighter with formidable front, and large brown eyes.
“You’re voluptuous,” I said, holding up the line of three people behind me wanting to pay their tabs.
“You’re holding up the line,” she said without a smile.
“Phil Harris is still at the Biltmore Bowl,” I whispered. “Name a night.”
“Come on, bud,” a guy behind me whimpered.
Carmen gave me a look that could with imagination be read as a smile. She was a widow of great reserve and resistance and I was probably one of the more resistible elements in her life.
“No wrestling this week?” she asked softly.
“Thursday at the Eastside Avenue over on Pico,” I said. “I’d like to get together before that.”
“I am sure you would,” came the voice of the guy behind me, “but I’ve got a show to get to.”
“The wrestling match next Sunday,” she said, ringing up my bill.
“I can’t wait,” I said.
“You’ll wait,” she said, promising nothing. So it would have to be five days before my next assault on the Mona Lisa of the restaurant world.
“Ain’t love grand?” said the little guy who was late for his show as he plunked down a half a buck to pay for his sandwich.
“Ain’t it,” I agreed before stepping outside to see the sun coming down over Spring Street. I got back in my car, ignoring the bruised far side, and drove up to Eleventh and then across to Broadway, where I found a parking space right i
n front of the Peerless Book Shop. I’d been in the place a dozen times or so, twice to look for books and ten times to look for leads on missing people or people with not too savory reputations.
The Peerless Book Shop had a good collection of cheap used books. There were also some new ones that went for used prices because the owner, Morris “Academy” Dolmitz, would, from time to time, pick up four or five hundred copies of some title from a source he didn’t want to know too much about. When I walked in this time, the place was piled with copies of John Steinbeck’s The Moon is Down and Robert Frost’s A Witness Tree. There were other books all over the place, in boxes, on shelves. If Academy had to rely on book sales, he would have been a poor man. As it was, his main income came from bets he placed in the back room.
No one was in the shop but Academy, who sat behind the counter on his stool, his mop of white hair falling into his eyes, a white zippered sweater over a red flannel shirt covering a little pot belly. Academy was around sixty-five and had seen and heard it all.
“What can I do you for?” he said, looking up at me with tiny gray eyes and a smile of even false teeth.
“I’m looking for a fella,” I said.
“I deal books,” said Academy, holding out his hands, “not fellas. You know that, Peters. Ask me one. You know what I mean. Ask?”
He sat up, waiting.
“Best actor, 1934,” I said.
“Victor McLaglen, The Informer,” he said, in disgust. “Give me a hard one for chrissake. Whatdya think I am, a dumb putz here?”
“Best cartoon, 1935,” I said.
“Three Orphan Kittens, Walt Disney, Silly Symphony. One more.” He grinned, eyes open wide.
“Sound recording, 1929,” I said.
Academy was bouncing in his chair like a kid.
“You’re a good one, Peters, a good one. Douglas Shearer, MGM, for The Big House.”
“I’m looking for a mountain named Bass,” I threw in, and Academy stopped grinning. His mouth closed tight, and his false teeth went clickety-clack. “You can’t miss him.”
“Not a familiar name,” he said through his teeth, trying to go back to his book.
“Your memory’s suddenly failing you?”
“It happens like that,” he said with a shrug. He opened the book and pretended to go back to his reading. I reached over the counter, closed the book, and looked at it.
“That’s a dirty book,” I said.
“It’s a classic,” he answered, reaching for the book. “What do you think you are doing here anyway?”
I held the book away from his hand and he sat back, shaking his head. “Peters,” he clacked. “You know I got a button down here and you know I can push it and you know two guys’ll come through that door and squash you like a rose between the pages of a bible.”
“Colorfully put, Academy, but I’ve got questions and a big mouth,” I answered, handing him the de Sade. “You know my brother’s a captain now?”
“I know,” he said. “Things like that I know. It’s my business. What are you, threatening me or what?”
“Threatening you,” I agreed.
“So that’s the way it is,” he said, feigning defeat. “Human nature. All these books, you know, they’re about human nature. I know human nature.”
“And who won the Academy awards,” I said impatiently. “Bass. He worked for you. I want to know why you hired him, where he is now, who his friends are, or who else he’s been working for.”
“Ten bucks,” said Academy, folding his arms on his chest.
“Come on Academy,” I said. “You don’t need my ten bucks.”
“Principle’s involved here, Peters,” he said. “I give you something for a threat and pretty soon every bit player on the avenue’s in here paying in closed fists and loud voices instead of cash. I’m running a business here. Know what I mean?”
I fished out the ten and handed it across the counter.
“Bass is a putz,” he said.
“Everybody’s a putz to you. Give me something hard.”
“Bass is special putz,” he said. “Doesn’t show a temper. Cold, a little dumb, one of those that likes hurting. You know the kind?”
“I’m waiting for news here, Academy,” I said impatiently.
He clacked his teeth and went into the spiel.
“He did about four months in the back room. Customer named Martin, got an office around here someplace, sometimes a customer, recommended him. Bass was some ways okay. He collected for me when a guy came up slow with the gelt. Trouble was when Bass collected, the guy he collected from didn’t show up here anymore. He was making guys pay but he was losing me repeat customers. You need a kind of festive atmosphere back there,” he said, nodding over his shoulder at the solid wooden door. I’d been back there once.
“There is no way short of Cedric Gibbons and an MGM crew of making that dirty brown betting room festive,” I said.
“You know we got free coffee going in there all the time?” he went on. “So, I told this Martin that it would be nice if Bass found another job. I didn’t want, you might guess, to tell Bass myself. Anyway, this Martin guy says it’s all right, he’s got a good job for Bass working for some animal doctor.”
“Two questions,” I said, holding up two fingers. “Where does Bass live and how do I find this Martin?”
Dolmitz puffed out some air, clacked his teeth and said, “Bass lives some place on Sixth near Westlake Park. I don’t know the address. Martin’s got an office around here is all I know. He’s maybe fifty-five, young guy, thin, gray hair, not too big, wears those little glasses like Ben Franklin. I don’t know what he does. That’s the best you get from me, pally.”
“That wasn’t ten bucks’ worth,” I said, holding out my hand for change. Dolmitz’s hand went under the counter where I knew the button was.
“Take a book or two,” he said. “We’ll call it even.”
I grabbed a copy of The Moon is Down and the Frost poems and went for the door.
“You want to know who won best film editor in 1938?” he called, as I went to the door, the books tucked under my arm.
“Ralph Dawson for The Adventures of Robin Hood,” I said. He had come up with the wrong question. I had been on the security force at Warners when Dawson won. I’d seen him come back with the Oscar in his hand.
“Son of a …” Dolmitz began, but I was on the street before he could finish.
“Half an hour later I was back at Mrs. Plaut’s knocking on Gunther’s door.
“Come in,” he called and turned around in the small chair at the small desk where he worked.
“Did you eat yet?” I said. “I had a change in plans.”
“No,” he said with a small smile. “I wanted to finish this troublesome passage. The quiche is best at room temperature, in any case. I shall bring it right in with the beers.”
Back in my room I set the table, took off Olson’s jacket and tie, and turned on the radio. The quiche was great. So was the beer. We ate and listened to “Truth or Consequences” and I gave Gunther the Steinbeck book, for which he thanked me.
“Gunther, if you’ve got time tomorrow, you could do me a favor and go down around Broadway and Eleventh and try to track down a guy involved in the case.”
Gunther, after finishing the final small morsel of quiche on his lap, agreed with enthusiasm, and I told him what I knew about Martin.
“You’ve had a busy day, Toby,” he said, sympathetically. “I’ll go back to my work and leave you to your rest.”
“A good dinner, Gunther, thanks.”
Gunther gathered his plate and his book and had made it to the hallway when we heard the phone on the landing ring. I ran past him to beat Mrs. Plaut in case she might be hovering around. I caught it on the third ring.
“Hello,” I said, “Mrs Plaut’s boarding house.”
“Toby Peters, please,” said a man’s voice I had heard somewhere but couldn’t place.
“You’re talking to him,�
� I said.
“You have been making some inquiries about me,” he said. “I don’t like that at all. I would prefer that you stop.”
“I can’t stop, Marty,” I said. “I’ve got a client. Why don’t we just get together and talk it over. I’ve got some questions about who scrubbed Doc Olson and his wife, who the lady pretending to be Mrs. Olson was, and what you have to do with a hulk named Bass.”
“I was afraid you wouldn’t listen,” he said patiently. “But I wanted to give you the opportunity. What happens next will be your responsibility, not mine.”
“Is that the way it works? You drop the bomb and if I don’t get out of the way, it’s my fault?”
“Something like that,” he said.
“Give back the dog and I stop looking,” I said. “Maybe I don’t care who gave Olson and his wife a bath.”
“You care,” he said. “I know that sound in your voice. We have nothing further to discuss. You have my sincere warning and, if it will do any good, you have my assurance that what I have done has been for the security of our country.”
“And which country is that?” I said.
“The United States of America,” he answered and hung up.
8
No one tried to kill me on Sunday morning, but then again I didn’t try to find Martin or the fake Mrs. Olson. I read the L.A. Times over a couple of bowls of Wheaties and a cup of coffee. I went right for the funnies after finding out that the Japanese were a few miles from the Chinese border. Dixie Dugan, Mickey Finn, Texas Slim, and Dirty Dalton kept me company through breakfast. I had to wait for the bathroom because Joe Hill the mailman was taking a bath, but some time after ten I got in, shaved, washed, and made ready.
I was dressing in my room when Mrs. Plaut burst in with a bundle in her arms. She paid no attention to my near nudity and plopped the bundle on the sofa.
“Found this on the doorstep this a.m.,” she said.
“Thanks,” I said, getting into my pants. She just stood there in her blue paisley dress and waited. There would be no getting rid of her till her curiosity was satisfied. I started to put on my shirt.
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