Think Fast, Mr. Peters

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  The phone on the landing was ringing when I stepped into the hall with the towel draped around me and a handful of toiletries. I padded barefoot to get it before it woke anyone up who didn’t have to be up.

  “Hello,” I said. “This is Mrs. Plaut’s boardinghouse. Can I help you?”

  “Peters?”

  “Yes,” I said, recognizing the Mickey Mouse voice from the day before.

  “You didn’t stop,” he said.

  “I told you I wouldn’t. Hey, I’ve got to get dressed. I’ve got somewhere to be in less than two hours. I haven’t got time for you.”

  “We’ll kill the dentist. I swear we will,” the caller said, trying to be calm.

  “No, you won’t,” I said. “Look, I’ve really got to go. If I don’t have some clean socks, I’m going to have to rinse the ones I’ve got on and I’m not sure I can dry them on my hot plate in time. But I am glad you called. I found a photograph of Steinholtz in Lowry’s apartment.”

  “You’re bluffing,” the caller said, frightened. “We tore the head off of that picture.”

  “You’re right,” I said grinning because he had confirmed that the photograph was Steinholtz. “I’m bluffing. You have any more information for me? How about putting Minck on the phone?”

  “He won’t wake up,” Mickey Mouse whined. “And he snores. I had to spend the night here with him and I didn’t get any sleep. He talks and talks and talks. You know what he talks about?”

  “Teeth,” I said.

  “Teeth,” the kidnaper confirmed. “In his sleep, he says crazy things about teeth, people with missing teeth, fake teeth. He’s driving me nuts.”

  “Let him go,” I said. “I’m going to catch you soon anyway.”

  “No, you’re not,” he cried.

  “Hey, I’m in a good mood and you’re ruining my morning. You like cereal?”

  “Cereal?”

  “Yeah, cereal,” I said. “Helps me get to sleep at night and start the morning. I’m going to borrow some milk and have some Wheaties. Try it. It might make you feel better.”

  “Peters,” he shouted.

  “Quiet,” I said. “You’ll wake Shelly. Good-bye.”

  I hung up. So far my strategy of dealing with the kidnapers seemed to be working. I tried not to think about whether I’d have enough nerve to try the same thing if they had taken Gunther or Anne or Mrs. Plaut. I knew there was no chance of their taking Jeremy. They had probably taken the wrong hostage, but it wasn’t the first mistake they’d made.

  I had half a small bottle of cream I had planned to use for coffee. I dumped it on a bowl of Wheaties and drank the coffee straight without sugar. I had no sugar left. Mrs. Plaut had confiscated my sugar ration book and I had half a month to go till I got a new booklet of stamps.

  After I put the dishes in the sink, rinsed them, and straightened the room, which meant putting the mattress back on the bed and throwing the blanket more or less evenly over it, I put together enough pieces of clothing to look respectable. No one could tell the difference between a navy blue sock and a black one unless they bent down and looked. The brown slacks were close to clean and reasonably unwrinkled. The white shirt had all the buttons and the frays in the collar were in the back where they couldn’t be seen unless you were the kind of person who looked at people’s socks and collars. The pants almost matched the orange and blue tie a former client who now taught at the University of Illinois had sent me. The jacket was blue, tweed, too heavy for the weather, and maybe dark enough to pass in a badly lit theater. It was the best I could do and better than I usually did. I put Shelly’s glasses in my pocket, tucked his Buddha under my arm, and went out to meet the day and Mrs. Plaut.

  She was on the porch in her gray dress and pink sweater. She sat on the porch swing clutching the photograph of Eleanor Roosevelt in her arms.

  “Mr. Gunther informed me that you were rising to greet the dawn,” she said. “Were it anyone but Mr. Gunther I would have cast doubts, but he’s a reliable little gentleman, much like my late mister.”

  “He is that,” I said. “I’ve got to catch a killer, Mrs. Plaut.” I looked at my father’s watch but didn’t bother to check the time to see how many hours off it might be.

  “You can drop me on Alvarado in front of Mr. Cannon’s shop,” she went on, getting out of the swing. “He will repair Marie Dressler. Recall, Marie Dressler would not be in need of repair if someone had not shot at you.”

  It was a small enough price to pay. I wondered if Mr. Cannon opened his shop at seven in the morning but I didn’t ask.

  “I shall walk back from Mr. Cannon’s,” she announced, walking ahead of me down the white wooden steps.

  On the drive, Mrs. Plaut, clutching her beloved photograph, filled me in on the scrap rubber situation.

  “One cent per pound will be paid for rubber,” she said. “And the rubber can be turned in at the service station. It will then be shipped to Akron, Ohio, where it will be reclaimed.”

  “That’s nice,” I said.

  “This automobile is very small,” she observed, squirming.

  “It saves gas and rubber,” I said.

  “Grease will be collected starting late in June,” she went on, looking through the front window toward that wonderful June day. “Grease and fat for a penny a pound. We shall keep our empty tin cans and fill them. It’s the glycerin in the fats.”

  “The glycerin,” I said politely, reaching over to turn on the radio. She turned it off before it could hum into action.

  “Glycerin, which can be refined into nitroglycerin,” she explained. “I’ve already volunteered our services, yours and mine.”

  “I’m honored, Mrs. Plaut,” I said.

  “We will go door to door and have insignias I can sew onto our jackets very like the ones the air-raid wardens wear,” she said.

  “Do we get tin hats like the civil defense workers?” I asked.

  “That,” she said as I pulled over in front of Cannon’s on Alvarado, “would be pointless. In case of an air raid, we will stop collecting grease and do our best to find shelter.”

  When she got out, I turned on the radio, listened to confirmation that the Japanese had landed in the Aleutians and the news that General Tinker had died in the Battle of Midway. I turned off the radio and headed up Hollywood, past Grauman’s and around the corner on Vine where I found a parking space without too much trouble. It was a little after seven and the people who prowled the area weren’t up yet except for the usual stray sailors who never seemed to know where to go or what to do.

  There was already a line in front of the Hitching Post, about twenty-five men. The line was a little ragged. They didn’t know the rules here but they had been to auditions before. Some of them were talking in clusters. Many of them were smoking. Some of them even looked a little like Peter Lorre. I moved through them and tried the doors. Since I didn’t look like a Peter Lorre imitator, one of the waiting men near the door said, “You know anything about this job?”

  “It’s straight,” I said. “I’m doing the hiring.”

  “What does it pay?” he said.

  I looked at him and decided he was no double for the dead Lowry or Peter Lorre. He was too big, too heavy, and his eyes were too small.

  “Not much,” I said.

  “That’s more than I’ve got, buddy,” he said.

  I knocked at the glass door of the Hitching Post again and something moved in the lobby. A pair of figures moved toward me out of the darkness near the popcorn and candy stand. One of them was Fat Sal Lurtzma. The other guy was about Sal’s age, with a sagging, sad hound face. They opened the door and I walked in.

  “Toby, this is Wayne. Wayne is responsible. Wayne, this is Toby,” said Sal. “Toby, give me the fifty. Give Wayne ten and I’m on my way. I’m not used to getting up this early. It was in the L.A. Times this morning and Jimmy Fiddler mentioned it last night. I got the word out. Even Millman is sending some people over.”

  “You did fine, Sal,
” I said, “but I haven’t got the cash.”

  “Cash,” Wayne insisted with his mouth almost closed.

  “What?” I said.

  “He said ‘cash,’” Sal answered, rubbing the mop of hair on his head nervously. “Wayne used to be a ventriloquist, damned good too. I handled him. Don’t handle ventriloquists anymore though. Now Wayne does some theater managing. I told him ten, Toby.”

  “You didn’t tell me, Sal,” I said, fishing out my wallet and handing Wayne two fives, which left me four singles.

  “Thanks,” said Wayne, pocketing the money. “I’ll get the lights on.”

  Wayne walked away and Sal whispered, “He was funny but a lousy ventriloquist, lousy.”

  “I can see he was funny,” I said.

  “Fifty dollars cash,” Sal said. “I got a tip on the first race at Aqueduct. Sturdy Duck on top with Mervyn LeRoy to place or show.”

  “Mervyn LeRoy’s a director,” I said.

  “And a horse,” he said. “Don’t change the subject. Fifty bucks. Cash on the line or the deal’s off and there are Peter Lorres lining up out there.”

  I looked out the glass windows. The number of Peter Lorres had doubled in the few minutes I’d been inside smelling last night’s popcorn and talking to Sal. One of the Lorres, however, was advancing to the door with Jeremy Butler right beside him. I hurried over to open the door and let them in.

  “I’m sorry we are a bit late,” Lorre apologized, “but I prevailed upon Mr. Butler to have a bit of breakfast. Mr. Butler is a remarkable gentleman.”

  Lorre was dressed completely in black, black shoes, pants, jacket, and knit shirt with no tie. Jeremy wore dark slacks and a loose gray sweater.

  “Mr. Lorre,” Sal Lurtzma oozed, stepping forward to take the actor’s right hand. “I’m Sal Lurtzma, the agent. We met before, at a fund-raiser for Chinese orphans at the Beverly.”

  “Pleased to meet you again, Mr. Lurtzma,” Lorre said with an amiable smile. “I remember the charming lady you were with.”

  “We’re not together anymore,” Sal said, almost crying. “It’s a long story, a sad story worthy of a film.”

  “Not now, Sal,” I said, and then to Lorre, “Have you got fifty bucks with you? Sal wants his fee for setting this up.”

  “I can wait,” said Sal, pulling his hands back as if the idea of accepting money from Peter Lorre was unthinkable.

  “Nonsense,” said Lorre, pulling out his wallet and counting five tens. “You deserve immediate payment and our thanks.”

  Sal took the money without counting it, shifted it to his left hand, and took Loire’s right again.

  “Listen, if you’re ever in need of representation,” Sal whispered, a line of sweat forming on his upper lip, “remember the name of Sal Lurtzma.”

  Lorre grasped Sal’s hand in both his hands and whispered back, “I shall not forget.”

  Lurtzma let go, looked at me and Jeremy triumphantly, and walked out the door of the Hitching Post.

  “You really remember Sal from some charity thing at the Beverly?” I asked.

  “Of course not,” sighed Lorre. “But it is always safe to refer to a charming lady. It is flattering whether true or not. Seldom will a man deny to himself or to you that he might have been in the company of a charming woman or at least one that someone found charming.”

  “I’ll try to remember that,” I said. “Jeremy told you …”

  “Yes,” said Lorre. “He informed me quite clearly.”

  Jeremy, who had placed himself between Lorre and the glass doors, nodded and said, “I suggest we move away from these glass doors into a more protected area. It is one thing to accept our fate and quite another to tempt it.”

  “But,” said Lorre, surreptitiously pulling out a silver case and removing a cigarette, “if our fate is written then we cannot tempt it, only fruitlessly seek to avoid it, in which case we become a source of amusement for the gods.”

  “But,” Jeremy said solemnly, “as Schopenhauer said, ‘We must live and act as if we have a choice, a control over our futures, or we will simply sit in the corner and wait for death.’”

  “Or,” said Lorre blowing out a puff of smoke, “enter into a state of meditation like certain Buddhist priests who attain the blissful state of Nirvana.”

  “Hey, guys,” I said. “This is great, fascinating, but until that great come-and-get-it day, I’d like to keep my client alive, save a dentist, and eat regular. Let’s get this going.”

  “As you wish,” said Lorre.

  We moved through the lobby, past the decor of saddles and horses, past the posters of Buck Jones, Colonel Tim McCoy, Hoot Gibson, Tom Tyler, Kermit and Ken Maynard, Wild Bill Elliott, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers and Tex Ritter. The lights had been turned on in the theater and we walked up the aisle and climbed the steps to the stage.

  “Before we start,” I said. “Take a look at this.”

  I pulled the photograph I’d taken from Lowry’s desk out of my jacket pocket and handed it to Lorre. His eyes opened with interest.

  “This was taken many years ago in Vienna,” he said. “I was doing Faust with the Vienna repertory company. That would be 1925 or ‘26. Where did you get this?”

  “In a hotel room of that man,” I said, pointing at Lowry in the picture. “That’s the man who got killed on Wednesday morning, the one who was doing an imitation of you.”

  “Klaus-fueler,” Lorre muttered.

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “Mean? No, that was his name, Ernst Klausfueler. he was a second cousin,” Lorre explained, trying to hand the picture back to me. I pushed it back toward him. “I haven’t seem him in more than fifteen years.”

  “Here he used the name Kindem or Lowry,” I said.

  “A man of many names,” Lorre said. “Not uncommon in our profession. Lorre is not, as you know, my name. Klausfueler understudied me a bit and did nonspeaking roles because of the superficial family resemblance. He really wasn’t very good. I never really liked him.”

  “The other man,” I said.

  Lorre looked at the photograph.

  “His head is missing,” Lorre said.

  “His name is Steinholtz,” I said. “Klausfueler or Kindem or Lowry said his name just before he died. I think Steinholtz killed Lowry and maybe wants to kill you.”

  Lorre looked at the photograph again.

  “The name is vaguely familiar,” he said, furrowing his brow.

  “Maybe if you saw him again you could put a face to that body,” I said.

  “Perhaps,” Lorre said. “Steinholtz. It … I remember. Yes, of course. Steinholtz. He was a brownshirt.”

  “A Nazi,” I said.

  “Yes,” said Lorre. “He hung around the theater, but there was something about him. I think he was not very highly regarded by his fellow Nazis. He appeared to be embarrassed by their antisemitism. At least that is what I recall about him. I only knew him a short time and then he disappeared. There were rumors that he had been thrown out of the Nazi party by Hitler himself, but we heard so many stories …”

  “Can I let them in?” called Wayne from the back of the theater. “We got to get this rolling. We got Don ‘Red’ Barry coming in at eleven and the kids’ll start lining up by ten or ten-thirty.”

  “Let them in,” I said, and Wayne walked through the doors at the rear of the theater while I told Lorre to sit off-stage with Jeremy where he couldn’t be seen.

  “If you see Steinholtz or anyone who could be Steinholtz, tell Jeremy. He may not be coming up to audition but he might be sitting in the audience looking for you.”

  Lorre and Jeremy moved into the darkness to the left of the stage and I stood in front of the curtain as a horde of Peter Lorres swept into the theater.

  “Sit anywhere,” I shouted. “Anywhere. You’ll all get a chance.”

  Wayne came back when the fifty or so Lorres were seated and looked up at me, trying to catch my eye. Some of them looked pretty good. Others looked nothing lik
e Lorre, but had a look of threat of despair in their eyes.

  “You want me to give out numbers?” Wayne called.

  “Numbers, right,” I said.

  “Want me to shuffle them up?” Wayne called.

  “Of course,” I said. “Shuffle them.”

  Wayne had the numbers ready. He marched down the aisle passing them out. Peter Lorres groaned, laughed, muttered, sighed when they took their pieces of paper and I made a mental note to give Wayne a bonus with Lorre’s money.

  “What is this job?” came a voice from the audience.

  “Movie,” I said. “Finishing a movie. The lead died.”

  “Peter Lorre died?” came another voice, which sent a murmur through the hall.

  “No, a guy named Lowry died. Low budget movie. He was doing a Peter Lorre imitation in the movie,” I said.

  “What studio and what does it pay?” came another voice.

  “Pays five hundred for a week of work and you get costar billing. Miracle Pictures,” I announced.

  “Miracle?” groaned two or three voices familiar with the company.

  About ten or twelve Lorres got up and were headed for the door.

  “Hold it. Wait,” I called. “You can go if you like but I want to ask you something first. All of you. Has anything happened to you in the last week, any of you? I mean any accident, anything like that?”

  The departers hesitated and the actors all looked around at each other.

  “In addition to Lowry, another Lorre imitator was killed yesterday, a third got shot at, and a fourth had a minor accident that might not have been an accident,” I said.

  “What?” a voice came incredulously.

  “No joke,” I shouted, “just think.”

  “Someone pushed me in front of a car a few days ago,” came a voice.

  “A display of Coke cases almost fell on me in Ralph’s this morning,” came another voice.

  A third man stood up and claimed that a shot had been taken at him.

  A fourth and fifth got up, shouting that bombs had been placed in their cars.