Tomorrow Is Another day tp-18

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  "Hand."

  "Juanita, I don't…"

  Juanita reached over Shelly and took my hand, spinning me around on the stool.

  You couldn't miss Juanita. Orange-and-gold billowing dress, colored beads around her neck, jangling bracelets and silver earrings the size of a burrito. Juanita's hair was dark and wild, her weight was her own business, and her age was somewhere over the rainbow. Juanita had an office in the Farraday. Juanita was a seer. Don't make the mistake of calling her a fortune teller. Many had slipped. All had regretted it.

  "Nothing new here," she said, running a red fingernail across my palm. "But you're givin' off something. Like my second husband Ivan just before he went north, never to be heard from again."

  The news blared, customers babbled, dishes clanked, and Juanita said, "You got his game wrong, Toby."

  "Who?"

  "Who?" she repeated sarcastically. "Whoever's giving you a hard time. Whoever's playin' a game with you. He's got his finger up your you-know-what and he's spinnin' you around, pointing your head the wrong places."

  "Thanks," I said.

  "The stars," she said, looking into my eyes. "All the stars will be in one place as you stand in the grove. Someone wants you to go to the grove. He wants you watching stars in the grove."

  "The grove?" Shelly asked as Manny plopped the tacos and drinks on the counter.

  "The grove," she repeated.

  "Orange grove?" I tried.

  "A grove where the fruit is hard as a turtle shell," she said. "Don't go to this grove, Toby. Juanita is tellin' you straight from the heart. Don't go. Finish your tacos and I'll read the crumbs. Maybe there's more."

  "Another time, Juanita," I said.

  "Suit yourself," she said with a jangling shrug.

  "How's your sister?"

  "Okay," she said. "Arthritis. Bad season. Watch yourself, Toby."

  "I will, Juanita," I said.

  She bustled out of Manny's, humming something I didn't recognize. Juanita had a way of being right about things, but I'd never been able to make sense of anything she told me till it was too late. It's like being told the winner of the Kentucky Derby in a code you know you can't break.

  "You believe in that stuff?" Shelly asked.

  I swiveled back around and reached for my first taco.

  "Wipe your face, Shel. You got sour cream on your chins."

  Chapter 9

  Victor Spelling was, according to the desk clerk, a resident of the Carlton Arms. It took another five bucks of Clark Gable's money for me to find out that his room number was 342, that he had been at the Carlton Arms since January second. Spelling paid on time, said little, and often walked out in a tux and tie.

  "Think he's a waiter at some big restaurant," the clerk said, trying to earn his bribe or urge me into an even bigger one. "Don't know which one, Toby."

  It was late in the morning on Monday and business was slow. Only one person, an old man in a shaggy brown suit, was sitting in the lobby. The old man was sitting in a red-leather chair, his chin forward against his chest, his eyes closed.

  The furniture was all red leather in the Carlton Arms lobby. A trio of ceiling fans ground around, redistributing the muggy air. The clerk dabbed daintily at his brow with a handkerchief.

  The clerk was named Sandy Mixon. He had a round, red face, a thick neck, very little hair, oversized teeth, and a great desire to please. We had never, as far as either of us knew, met before this morning, yet I was his old pal Toby, and he was…

  "Sandy, what if I told you Vic and I were old friends, high school…"

  "He's about ten years younger than you, Toby."

  "I was slow in high school, Sandy. Math is my nemesis."

  The old man asleep in the red-leather chair snorted. Both Mixon and I looked at him. The old man's eyes opened wide. He looked around, confused, saw us, blinked, and went back to sleep.

  "Can you add five more to what you've already put in the pot?"

  "What'll it buy me?" I asked.

  "A bellboy who'll open room 342, a Band-aid for that little cut on your forehead, and my further assurance that you are not deficient in your math skills," said Mixon. "I taught arithmetic to third-graders in Fresno. That was three months in '37. Worst winter of my life, and you're talking to a man who grew up and grew cold in Hibbing, Minnesota."

  "Keep the Band-aid," I said, peeling off another five and handing it to him. "It gives me character."

  Mixon examined the bill, flattened it with the side of his hand, folded it, and wedged it into his jacket pocket with the other bills.

  "For free," Mixon said, leaning forward and dabbing his neck with his handkerchief. "Another guy was looking for Spelling today. Short, big arms, white hair, bad skin, worse attitude."

  "Tools Nathanson," I said.

  "Name rings no bells," said Mixon, standing erect. "Slow man with a dollar. Said he'd be back. Said I should say nothing to Spelling about his having been around. He slipped me three Washingtons. I said I'd shut up. Truth to tell, I don't talk to Mr. Spelling either way."

  "Key," I said.

  Mixon pulled a set of keys from his pocket and said, "I assume you're simply going to surprise your old friend and talk to him."

  "I like that assumption," I said.

  "And I like my job," said Mixon. "I don't want to go back to the multiplication tables in Fresno, if they'd even take me back."

  "Key," I said.

  "This is a decent hotel," Mixon said, looking around as if he'd never seen the lobby of the Carlton Arms before. "You can get a clean room for a buck a night, no questions asked."

  "It's the Plaza of Los Angeles," I said. "Key."

  Mixon nodded knowingly and hit the bell hi front of him. A girl with freckles and a maroon uniform with polished-brass buttons appeared and looked for my luggage.

  "Connie," Mixon said. "Please let Mr. Peters into room 342. He's an old friend of Mr. Spelling's."

  Connie smiled, showing large dazzling-white teeth, and took the offered passkey from Mixon. I nodded to Mixon and followed the bouncing Connie, who hurried across the lobby. The sleeping old man in the rumpled brown suit seemed to sense us coming, opened his eyes again, gave me a look of disgust, and tried to lift himself from the chair.

  "Noise," he grumbled. "How can a man rest with…"

  He waved his arms around and sank back, staring across the lobby at a painting on the wall of a young woman filling a pitcher with water at an outdoor fountain.

  "Mr. Walters," Connie said, nodding at the old man. "Used to be a movie writer. Bronco Billy Anderson, even Chaplin. Long before my time. Talks a lot about somebody named John Bunny. Elevator or stairs?"

  "Up to you," I said.

  She nodded brightly and started up the carpeted stairs, bounding with energy. I wanted her to slow down, but I didn't want to tell her. So I did my best to bound.

  She waved and said hello to a naval officer and a woman with him old enough to be his wife. She greeted an overly made-up old woman dressed in a draping gossamer which was more appropriate for Cairo in 1914 than Los Angeles in 1943.

  "Mrs. Forbes-Hughes," said Connie over her shoulder, bounding ever upward. "You look great today."

  "Thank you," Mrs. Forbes-Hughes of ancient Egypt said to Connie.

  "Third floor," Connie announced as I came up the last four steps and stood at her side, trying not to breathe heavily.

  "Are you always like this?" I asked, panting and trying not to show it, which is not easy.

  "Like what?" she said, striding down the hall.

  "Like one of those birds in Snow White. Katharine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby."

  "Movies," she said, nodding in understanding as she strode on. "My mom told me when I was four to keep positive, keep moving, keep my eyes open, and always, always smile in public and have a good word for everyone."

  "Must take a lot out of you," I said as we stopped in front of 342.

  "I'm still young," she said. "Nineteen in April. I figure if I
can keep a positive attitude till I'm twenty-one, it'll be natural and I won't have to work so hard at it."

  "Must make your parents proud," I said, waiting for Connie to open the door.

  "Dad died last year. Rabaul."

  "Sorry," I said.

  "Thank you," she said, opening the door. "How much did you pay Sandy?"

  I stepped in. Her voice had been bright, alive.

  "I…"

  "Doesn't matter," she said, holding up a hand and looking around the room. "It was more than you had to pay. Sandy is a talker. Can't stop talking. You want bun to tell you something, just wait. If you outlast him, you don't have to pay him."

  "Fifteen dollars," I said, looking at the tired furniture.

  "I don't make that in a week," she said, moving to the door.

  I fished out another five and held it out.

  "Nope," she said. "Make it two if you have change. If you don't, I do. I'm not out to cheat you, just make an honest living and enough to go to U.S.C. next year." '

  I found two singles and gave them to her.

  "You know Spelling? The guy in this room."

  "Can't get a smile out of him," Connie said, tucking the singles into her pocket. "Not bad looking. If he made a pass, I wouldn't fumble, but I'd have to get a smile out of him first."

  "Maybe I can make him smile when he gets back," I said, moving to the armchair near the window and turning it so it faced the door.

  "I don't think I like the way you just said that," she said. "You're a bill collector?"

  "Something like that," I said. "He owes a dentist for some work."

  "You have a son?" she asked, standing in the doorway.

  "No," I said sitting. "Why?"

  "Don't know," she said with a shrug. "You're kinda cute for an older guy. I wondered if there was one at home like you, only younger."

  "Home is a single room in a boardinghouse on Heliotrope," I said, closing my eyes. "There's a cat there named Dash, a Swiss translator three feet tall, and a deaf landlady."

  "You want to meet my mother? She's a widow."

  "I know," I said. "I'll let you know."

  "She's a fine-looking lady," Connie said. "Younger than you, I think. She has spunk like me."

  "I don't know how much spunk I can take, Connie," I said.

  "Am I too much?" she said with a grin full of white teeth.

  "Not in small doses."

  "He usually gets home about three or four," she said. "Then he goes out again, maybe at six-thirty, in the soup and fish till late, long after I've gone home. My mother's a great cook. Greek."

  "Thanks, Connie," I said.

  "Think about my mother," she said on her way out.

  "How do you know I'm not a bluebeard who'll love your mother, take her money, and chop her head off?"

  "You're a pussycat," she said, closing the door.

  I sat for about two minutes in depression, an old guy with no sense of humor, no son, no wife, and too weary to meet a woman with spunk. Depression. Then I started to think about Tools Nathanson. How had he found Victor Spelling before I did? Tools didn't strike me as graduate-school material. Yet he had tracked down his boss's or partner's killer without the help of Mame Stoltz at M-G-M or Sheldon Minck's patient file.

  I took my.38 from my shoulder holster, opened it, and checked to be sure the bullets weren't rusty. I almost never use it and I never remove the bullets. I could lie and say I kept them in at all times because I never knew when I might need some protection. The truth was I was too lazy to remove the bullets when I wasn't using the gun.

  I searched Victor Spelling's room. It didn't take long. He kept little there-clothes in the closet, toothbrush and green Teel, a razor, some magazines. No notes, no diary, no letters.

  There was a crumpled LA. Times on the night table next to the bed. I picked it up as I sat again. If Spelling kept the schedule Connie reported, I had a few hours.

  In the next twenty minutes, I learned from Hedda Hopper that Cole Porter's Let's Face It! might be coming to Los Angeles with Jose Ferrer and Vivian Vance, that there was a one-dollar dinner special with charcoal broil at the Pixie on LaBrea, that Mohandas K. Gandhi was in the eighteenth day of a planned twenty-one-day fast to obtain his unconditional release from internment at Poona, that Nazi puppet authorities hi the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia were threatening the Czechs with ever-harsher punishments if they didn't cooperate more fully with the anti-Allied war effort, that Congressman Will Rogers, Jr., would match wits tonight on "Information Please" with Clifton Fadiman, Oscar Levant, John Kiernan, and Franklin P. Adams.

  Footsteps were coming down the corridor outside of room 342.1 dropped the newspaper when the steps stopped in front of the door across from me. I took out my.38 and held it in my lap. Someone fiddled with the door and it popped open.

  "I was just thinking about you," I said, holding up the.38 where Tools Nathanson could see it.

  He stood surprised in the open doorway, his jacket open, 'a thin screwdriver in his hand. He looked at me for an instant and thought. I figured he was wondering about simply closing the door and getting the hell out of there, but there was something else on his mind. He stepped in, closed the door, and put his little screwdriver back in his tool belt.

  "You set Karl up," Tools said, taking a step toward me. He was wearing a pair of brown trousers, a black sweater, and a sport jacket that almost matched the sweater but was no match for the trousers.

  "Have a seat. We'll talk about it while we wait for Spelling."

  Tools clanked two steps toward me and pointed his pudgy finger toward my face.

  "You set Karl up. Came in with that bull-shit story while your pal Spelling waited for Karl to step out."

  "That's stupid, Tools," I said with an intolerant sigh.

  "Stupid? I follow you and find you in his room a couple of hours after Karl was blown to pieces, sitting there, waiting for him."

  He took another step toward me. I leveled the pistol at his face. He waved it off.

  "You're not shooting me," he said. "Not if you're tellin' the truth about this Spelling. And if you ain't, you'll shoot anyway."

  He was right. I put the pistol back in my holster and folded my arms.

  Tools sat next to me.

  "I want him to come through the door. I want to nail the son of a bitch to the wall, file his fingers to the bone, screw his kneecaps together, and staple his eyes shut," Tools said, taking a large pliers from his tool belt. "Start, now. Tell me what's going on."

  I started. I went over everything, told him about my contact at M-G-M, how I got where I was standing. Then I sat back and watched his face as he tried to understand what he had just been told.

  "Because of Karl's initials?" he finally said. "You think Spelling killed him because his initials fit? His life didn't mean anything but the name his old man gave him?"

  "Maybe," I said. "Or maybe Karl just happened to be in the wrong movie at the wrong time."

  Tools shifted on the sofa, looked at me as if he might see something that would make more sense than he was hearing.

  "What're you, nuts?" he said, leaning over to poke me with a stubby finger. "I'll tell you how I found Spelling."

  The door came open. I hadn't heard footsteps, a key in the lock. Spelling was standing there, black trousers, a white shirt with short sleeves, a look on his face like a startled animal.

  I went for my gun. Tools got to his feet. Spelling fumbled in his pocket. Before Spelling could get his hand out of his pocket, Tools was lumbering toward him. Spelling took a step back into the hall. I was out of my chair by now, but it didn't do me much good. Spelling kicked the attacking Tools right in the face with his dark oxfords. Tools staggered back into my arms. Tools had something in his hand, a screwdriver. I tried to hold him. I couldn't. Spelling's eyes met mine and he grinned as Tools charged again. Now Spelling had a gun in his hand. The hell with it. I aimed my.38 in Spelling's general direction. Spelling fired once. The bullet cracked the ceiling
. I took a shot at Spelling's head as Tools tackled him. I missed. Spelling fired again as Tools, sitting on his chest, brought the screwdriver up. The shot hit Tools's chest and came out on the other side, moving toward me. I was diving behind the sofa.

  Two more shots ripped through the sofa near my face. I went down flat. Two more bullets, lower. Both were close. He could have climbed over the sofa, firing. He might have landed on my head.

  "The grove," Spelling cried out.

  The hell with it again. I stood up, gun leveled as Spelling ran through the open apartment door. I shot, but he was out of sight. I hurried past Tools's body and stepped into the corridor. Spelling was almost at the stairwell. He turned toward me, weapon aimed at my face.

  "Too much left to do," he said. "I liked you when we started, but you're beginning to irritate me, Peters."

  I took another shot at Spelling. It crashed into plaster right next to the elevator and he darted down the stairs. I went after him. He was almost to lobby level. I moved as fast as I could and missed him when I got there.

  I looked at Mixon behind the hotel desk.

  "Which way?" I asked.

  "Who? Spelling? No way. He just went up to his room three, four minutes ago."

  The sleeping old man who wrote movies for the likes of Bronco Billy shouted, "Goddamn it all. A man pays his rent. A man deserves to rest." He looked at me, saw the gun in my hand, and said, "That does it."

  I turned around and next to the elevator found the stairs to the basement.

  "Call the cops," I yelled over my shoulder. "And an ambulance. Guy's hurt in Spelling's room."

  "Oh, shit," Mixon moaned behind me.

  The stairway down to the basement was dark, narrow, and bore no connection to gracious living. Something banged ahead of me. I plunged down by the light of the low-watt bulbs and found myself in the basement, the dark basement.

  "Spelling?" I said.

  No answer.

  "Spelling," I repeated, stepping forward, gun held high. "Come on out. We'll talk."

  "Nothing to say," Spelling's voice came from who knows where.

  I stepped forward on my toes, moving toward where I thought the voice might have come from.