Think Fast, Mr. Peters

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “I’m an actress,” she said. “And I love the poem.”

  With that she looked at me once, smiled, showing white teeth, touched Jeremy’s arm and moved past him through the door, closing it behind her.

  “Great exit,” I said.

  “I …” began Jeremy with a loss for words I had never seen before.

  “Jeremy, do you think sex can be meditation?” I said, getting out of my chair to get dressed.

  “It is located in the wrong chakra,” he said, “but … it may be possible. Actually, it would be a paradox, a contradiction, but all paradoxes and contradictions are not contractions at all but an indication that we have set up boundaries that do not exist. So, perhaps sexuality can be a form of meditation.”

  The last few lines were uttered with Jeremy looking at the closed door through which Elisa had exited. I wondered what Jeremy and Alice’s lovemaking must be like. I settled on monumental.

  I didn’t understand much of what Jeremy said, but it always sounded good when he said it, and it always seemed to make sense. I just couldn’t hold on to it.

  “Can you hang on a minute, Jeremy? I’ve got a call to make and then I have something to tell you.”

  Jeremy indicated that he could wait and began to pick up debris as I called Sal Lurtzma’s office. The phone rang and Sal answered.

  “Sal, Toby. What does it look like?”

  “Like the oversize xylophone I gave my sister’s grandson last year,” he answered.

  “Sal, I’m talking about the Peter Lorre audition.”

  “The Peter Lorre audition, right,” Lurtzma answered and behind him I heard the hollow sound of some instrument. “I thought you meant the marimba. Got a guy here right now, Jose something …”

  “Econecho,” came a voice beyond Sal’s.

  “That we can change,” Sal said. “Anyway, Toby. Guy plays classical marimba but that’s not it. He can make the marimba talk, say words. Honest to God, great act. He plays awhile and then stops all of the sudden to have the marimba talk. Give a listen here.”

  “Sal, will you …?” I tried but Sal was not to be stopped where an act was on the line.

  “Make it say hello like before,” I heard Sal say somewhere away from the phone. He was probably aiming it toward Jose.

  A reverberating trio of notes came over the telephone lines and probably lost something in electrical translation. It didn’t sound anything like hello.

  “Now,” Sal said excitedly in the background, “make it say good-bye.”

  “Not so easy,” came Jose Econecho’s voice.

  “Life is not easy,” said Sal seriously. “But we endure.”

  More notes on the phone. It didn’t sound like a word to me.

  “Well?” bubbled Sal coming back on the line. “Did I tell you or did I tell you?”

  “You told me, Sal,” I said. “It’s a miracle. What about the Peter Lorre audition?”

  “All taken care of,” he said. “Hitching Post Theater tomorrow morning, but it’s got to be bright and early. Eight in the morning. You know the Hitching Post?”

  “Hollywood and Vine,” I said. “Everyone knows the Hitching Post.”

  The Hitching Post showed only Westerns, old Westerns, new Westerns, any Westerns.

  “They got a special for kids Saturday,” Sal said. “Triple Don ‘Red’ Barry bill. They change the posters tomorrow. We’ve got to be out by ten.”

  “Ad in the Times?” I asked as Jeremy continued to straighten up the place.

  “No time, no time,” Sal whined. “And no need. I got the word out to all the agents. It’s a network. And Jimmy Fiddler’s mentioning it tonight. You’ll be up to your tuchus in Peter Lorres, Toby. You really think Jose’s got something special? Level with me?”

  “I never heard a talking marimba act before, Sal. I’m overwhelmed,” I said.

  “Great, fine. Bring me a check or cash to the audition.”

  “Remember the Maine, Sal,” I said and we both hung up. I turned to Jeremy who was standing nearby, having picked up whatever could be picked up.

  “Shelly’s been kidnapped,

  I said. Jeremy, who had been dreaming of Elisa, looked at me.

  “To keep me from looking for the person who killed a couple of Peter Lorre impersonators,” I explained. “It has something to do with Mildred running away with one of the impersonators.”

  It was Jeremy’s turn to be confused by me.

  “I don’t follow you, Toby, but I assume you want some assistance from me or you would not have given me news that might needlessly cause distress. It isn’t like you.”

  “Tomorrow morning, eight, at the Hitching Post Theater,” I said. “I’m holding tryouts for a Peter Lorre look-alikes. It’s the real thing. I’m doing it for a company called Miracle Pictures.”

  “You are also, “on how perceptive your killer is.”

  “The one I talked to on the phone isn’t too perceptive,” I said, putting on my shoes.

  “It depends,” he said, “on how perceptive your killer is.”

  “The one I talked to on the phone isn’t too perceptive,” I said putting on my shoes.

  “Then …?” asked Jeremy.

  “Peter Lorre, the real one, is my client. He’ll be there. I’d like you to be there and keep an eye on him in case …”

  “I understand,” said Jeremy. “Of course, I’ll be there.”

  “More than that Jeremy,” I said. “I’ll give him a call and I’d like you to meet him someplace, anyplace, and come to the Hitching Post with him at about a quarter to eight.”

  “Yes,” said Jeremy.

  “Yes,” I said. “Thanks, Jeremy.” I picked up the phone and pulled out my notebook with Sidney Greenstreet’s phone number in it. Greenstreet answered it himself after four rings.

  “This is Toby Peters,” I said.

  “Ah, yes, the detective,” he said. Dreadful business. Dreadful. Peter should be more concerned, far more concerned. He is taking this all too lightly.”

  “I’ll try to impress him with the seriousness of the situation,” I said soothingly.

  “That would be most solicitous of you,” said Greenstreet. “He’s like a son to me.”

  “I’ll take care of him,” I said.

  “A son,” Greenstreet repeated absently and then, rousing himself from his thoughts. “I’ll get him to the phone.”

  Five minutes later I had the plan worked out with Lorre and Jeremy and was on my way out the door. I had one more stop to make. I felt like Elmer Blurt. I didn’t want anyone to be home but I had to make the stop because it was my job.

  Twenty minutes later, after listening to the last ten minutes of “People Are Funny” and the first ten of “Lightning Jim,” I was parked in front of the Minck house in Inglewood, a house to which I had never been invited because of a head-on dislike Mildred Minck and I had felt toward each other from the moment she first walked into Shelly’s office and found that I had set up shop in the broom closet.

  After she had made her distaste evident on that first encounter, I had suggested variously and sweetly that she could pass for Shelly’s mother, that she could pass for Rondo Hat-ton’s sister, and that it was a pity that able-bodied women couldn’t serve in the infantry.

  I got out of the car and felt my stomach rumble with hunger. All I’d had in it for more than five hours was two cups of coffee, a slice of baclava, and a dish of flan. There were lights on in the house but I still had hope. I walked to the door, rang the bell, and heard Mildred shout, “Answer the door.”

  11

  Mildred’s hulk of a brother, Michael, opened the door and didn’t look at all happy to see me. He was wearing a sullen pout and a plaid shirt that he had not tucked into his gray pants. His hair was uncombed and falling into his eyes and he needed a shave.

  “What do you want?” he asked through clenched teeth.

  “I want to talk to you and Mildred,” I said amiably.

  “We don’t want to talk to you,
” he said defiantly.

  “I didn’t think you would,” I said. “We haven’t exactly been friends and I don’t think Mildred remembers me in her prayers every night. This is about murder and about your brother-in-law.”

  “She threw him out,” Lebowitz said, guarding the door.

  “Who is it, Michael?” Mildred called irritably from inside. “stop making that noise. I’m listening to something.”

  “It’s Peters,” Michael shouted back.

  “He can’t come in here,” she screeched.

  “You can’t come in,” Lebowitz said, turning to me triumphantly.

  Enough is enough. My father used to say that. What he usually meant was that he was at a point where most sensible people would have screamed, rebelled, started throwing things, or given up. But my father was a born victim. When he said “Enough is enough,” he usually meant that he was preparing himself for far more than what a sensible person would endure. I don’t know what his breaking point was. He never got there. He just died in bed one night when he was sixty-five. However, I am not my father, though I wear his watch. I stepped forward quickly and pushed against the door as hard as I could. The door hit Lebowitz in the shoulder and chin and sent him flying back into the hallway against a closet. I caught the door rebounding toward me, stepped in, and closed it.

  Lebowitz pushed himself away from the closet, touched his face, and looked at his hand for blood. There wasn’t any.

  “What is going on out there, Michael?” came Mildred’s voice, but she didn’t come running to see.

  “Get out of here,” Lebowitz hissed.

  “I want to talk to you and Mildred,” I said. “Can I help you?”

  I reached out to help him straighten up but he pushed my hands away as if they were attacking snakes.

  “I’m calling the police,” Lebowitz said, staggering into the living room.

  I followed him. It was all Mildred’s house. There wasn’t a sign of Shelly in it. It was neat, white, clean. The furniture was covered with clear material that made it plain no one was to sit on it. The lamps were polished steel and the pictures on the wall modern, colorful, and representing nothing I recognized. On top of a white endtable sat a fat, white porcelain Buddha. I was sure the rest of the house was as unlived in as this room.

  Lebowitz reached for the phone on another white endtable.

  “Ask for Lieutenant Seidman at the Wilshire district station,” I advised, looking for something halfway comfortable to sit on and finding nothing. “I’ll just have a seat and wait.”

  Lebowitz bounced the phone in his hand and glared at me.

  “Deeper in the small house, a door opened and Irene Rich’s voice came sweetly over the radio saying, “Dear John, today I …”

  “What is going on, Michael?” Mildred bleated. “I’m trying to listen to my show.”

  “Mike,” I said, “either call the cops, answer your sister, answer my questions, or try to throw me out.”

  Lebowitz put down the phone and stepped back toward me.

  “I could tear you in half, Peters,” he said- looking down at me.

  He hadn’t gotten any smaller since I had last seen him, but he hadn’t gotten any braver either.

  “Problem is, Mike, you’d have to fight to find out and we both know you don’t have the heart for it,” I said gently. “The time to throw me out was before you moved for the phone. You went for help. Get your sister in here.”

  Before he could spit something out Mildred came stomping into the living room. Her hair was up and shiny as if it had been glued in place. She wore a pink robe that did not flatter her. It would have taken a high-priced escort from La Douce Escort Service on Pico to flatter Mildred. The radio had either been turned off or down or she had closed a door before billowing out to the living room.

  “Peters, you get out. Get out of here,” she said, pointing at the door in case I didn’t know where to find it and might consider a mad rush through the locked windows. “Michael, throw him out of here.”

  “We’ve been through that, Mildred,” I said. “Michael isn’t throwing anybody out and he’s not calling the police. Sheldon’s been kidnaped.”

  She stopped, open-mouthed, her hand still pointing toward the door.

  “I’ll call the police,” Michael announced. “Milly, I’ll call the police.”

  “Shut up and sit down, Michael,” Mildred said, her face pale. “But not in here. This room is for guests.”

  She gulped and her hand came down to her side. I wondered what guests merited sitting on this immaculate, uncomfortable furniture.

  “Let’s go into the kitchen,” she said, and closed her pink robe around her with a shudder.

  “After you,” I said, and she led the way down a short corridor and to the left into a metal kitchen. The chairs had metal legs and seats made out of the same green, artificial material as the top of the table, which also had metal legs. The whole room was green and metallic, including the refrigerator and the cabinets. No food was showing. Everything was behind closed doors and the place looked as if it had just been completed for a window display.

  “Cozy,” I said, pulling out a chair that squealed over the shiny green and white linoleum floor. I sat and looked up at Mildred.

  Michael hovered over another kitchen chair, unsure of what to do. I had the feeling that, in Shelly’s absence, little brother was playing a role he had escaped from long ago, and found himself falling into with horror and a desire to run.

  “Sit down, Michael,” Mildred commanded, hugging herself. Michael sat. “Now,” she went on looking at me. “What this about Sheldon being kidnapped? No one has contacted me about ransom. I think this is one of Sheldon’s tricks to win me back. Actually, I think it’s one of your tricks, and you’ve put him up to it.”

  “No trick,” I said. “I’m the one against the wall, not you. Whoever took him wants me to stop looking for your boyfriend’s killer.”

  “No one asked you to look for Peter’s killer,” she said with tears starting in the corners of her eyes. Her voice was something between the death sound of a dying grackle and static on the Blue Network.

  “The real Peter Lorre is paying me,” I said. “And whoever killed your friend used my gun. I’m still a suspect. Shouldn’t you be worrying about your husband here?”

  “We’ll call the police,” she said. “I still don’t believe you, but we’ll just call the police. I still think you killed Peter. Sheldon didn’t want me to have my freedom, and he paid you to kill my lover. There, I said it. I’m glad I said it. Michael will call the police.”

  “Me?” cried Michael. “Why me? He’s your husband.”

  “I’ve already told the police,” I said.

  “Then what do you want?” croaked Mildred. “Peter is dead. It’s all over.”

  “Sheldon, your husband,” I reminded her. “I’d really like to get him back alive. Maybe you can tell me something about Lowry that will help, like who Steinholtz might be.”

  “He never mentioned any Steinholtz,” she said, pulling out a chair and sitting on it. “Michael, I need Kleenex.”

  Michael jumped up as if he’d sat on a Whoopie Cushion and hurried across the room.

  “And tuck in your shirt, Michael,” she yelled after him.

  “Lowry,” I reminded her when Michael was gone.

  “He lied to me. He deceived me. I’ve always been lied to and deceived by men. I thought he was Peter Lorre. I really did. He told me he was. He seemed so … right. Even after I found out I couldn’t give him up and go back to Sheldon. You, even you, can see that.”

  “I see that you could have killed him,” I said. “You or your weasel brother. You felt deceived. You wanted revenge. You’ve got a temper and a weak brother.”

  Michael came scurrying back into the room, Kleenex in hand. He handed them to Mildred, who looked at his shirt. Michael quickly tucked it in. I didn’t think I saw a murderer in the kitchen, but you never know till the final bell rings.
r />   “What did you know about Lowry?” I said. “Relatives? Anything? Where did he live?”

  “He was currently traveling,” Mildred said touching her nose with a tissue. “He had a room in the Ravenswood on Rossmore in Hollywood, a very nice room.”

  “What number?” I asked.

  “Seven oh four,” Mildred said. “I’ve already told the police everything, everything. I bared my soul to them, to that zombie of a detective who never smiled or showed the slightest warmth.”

  “Lieutenant Seidman,” I said. “He’s a sweetheart.”

  “I don’t want Sheldon to be killed,” Mildred announced, crumpling her Kleenex in her palm and folding her white-knuckled hands on the green table top.

  “I’m sure that will make him happy if I can get the news to him,” I said.

  “I don’t want him killed,” she said, “but I can no longer live with him, not now that I’ve tasted life for the first time. I’m still a woman with needs. I want to live.”

  It sounded like a bad Norma Shearer imitation to me, but I wasn’t going to argue with her. The way I figured it, taking into account my vast experience as a marriage counselor, Shelly would be better off without her, but I could be wrong. I’d been wrong once or twice an hour most of my life.

  “I can understand that,” I said. “Did Lowry say anything the day he died? Anything that showed he was upset, excited?”

  “Nothing,” Mildred said.

  “He was happy,” said Michael.

  “Well, yes,” said Mildred, “but that was because we had reconciled our differences.”

  “He said he was going to make some money,” Michael said.

  “How?” I asked Michael who seemed to have run out of information and sank down in his uncomfortable chair with a shrug. Mildred mustered a disapproving glare and Michael sat up and ran a hand over his hair.

  “I don’t know,” Mildred answered with a sob. “It happened so suddenly. In the morning he had been cold, distant, upset that I wouldn’t give him …” She hesitated.

  I guessed at what she wouldn’t give him and I was sure it wasn’t sex.

  “… money,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said, holding her head up to show her red eyes.