Bullet for a Star: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book One)

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “What’s this all about?” Robinson said somewhat angrily, standing.

  “That’s the picture you want to buy,” I said, rising, with one hand on my toy pistol.

  “Mr. Peters, if that’s your name,” said Robinson evenly, “if this is a Raoul Walsh gag, I don’t find it funny. The picture we are dealing for is a painting, a painting of a girl by Modigliani and, possibly, another painting by Cézanne. Are you or are you not from the Frizzelli Gallery in Beverly Hills?”

  “No,” I sighed, “I’m from the Toby Peters detective agency, a one-man operation, me, and I’m investigating an attempted blackmail.”

  “Strange,” said Robinson with a slight nod.

  “I recognize the photograph,” said Lorre. “I think I know what Mr. Peters is here about.”

  “Then, Peter, I leave it to you. I’m going to call and see what happened to the man from the gallery. I’ll meet you later to deal with him.” Then Robinson turned to me to take my hand, “My mistake, Mr. Peters. Please forgive me.”

  “My pleasure,” I said, taking his hand.

  He walked toward the darkness, away from the set and turned momentarily to speak to me.

  “By the way, I think you should take care of that back. It could be something serious. If you’d like the name of a good orthopedic man, let me know. I used him myself when I took a bad fall in the death scene of Bullets or Ballots.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Robinson,” I said, “I’ll think about it.” “That means, no,” said Robinson, disappearing into the darkness. “It’s your back.”

  “Donald Siegel told me you might look me up,” said Lorre, moving back to sit at the edge of the desk, “but until I saw the photograph of the girl, I didn’t connect your name with the incident.”

  “Could I ask you a few questions,” I said.

  “Certainly,” he answered, his wide eyes opening and his hand moving out expansively. “If I may ask you a few afterward.”

  “Agreed. First, do you recognize the girl in the picture?”

  “No,” said Lorre, “never seen her. Doesn’t look like the type I usually see with Princey, but it’s hard to tell.”

  “Can you tell me your feeling about how everyone reacted when the photograph showed up?”

  “I was just finishing a rather mediocre goulash,” he said, “when the envelope arrived. It was addressed to Errol. He took it, grinned and handed it to Sid Adelman. Sidney turned many colors, the most becoming of which was magenta.”

  I looked at him, but his face betrayed no hint of irony. I was sure he was enjoying himself.

  “Well,” he continued, “I took the picture from Sid, glanced at it, thought it was second-rate pornography—I’ve seen infinitely better in Germany—and handed it to Harry Beaumont, who turned in one of the worst performances of an undistinguished career.”

  “Siegel said he did a reasonably good job of hiding his reaction,” I put in.

  Loire shrugged. “I found it too broad. Harry doesn’t think terribly well on his feet.”

  “You’d say Beaumont was upset by the picture?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “Angry?”

  “No, but upset, agitated. Donald took it next, seemed unimpressed and handed it back to Adelman. May I ask what has happened, or would it be none of my business?”

  I told him most of what had happened, including the murder of Cunningham. I left out the session with Brenda Beaumont and the fact that the girl in the picture was Lynn Beaumont. I included the visit from Bruce Cabot and Guinn Williams.

  Lorre sat quietly for a few moments.

  “You know, Mr. Peters …” he began.

  “Toby,” I said.

  “Toby, I have been in a great many murder films here and in Germany. I’ve studied the criminal mind somewhat, at least the devious criminal mind, since I have frequently been called upon to play deviates—have you ever seen Crime and Punishment or M or Mad Love?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Mad Love’s the one where you put on that stiff, mechanical costume and pretend you’re the dead man. Scared hell out of me.”

  “Thank you,” he grinned. “That madman would do anything for love. I would suggest, from what you have told me, that someone wants the photograph not for blackmail, but to protect the girl in the picture.”

  He had a point.

  “But,” I said, “someone, supposedly the murderer, made another blackmail call today.”

  “Ah,” said Lorre, “perhaps you are dealing not with one, but with two people.”

  “Two people?” I said.

  “The killer who wanted to protect the girl, and someone who got his wretched hands on the negative and is trying to continue Cunningham’s blackmail.”

  “It’s certainly possible,” I said, “but in that case …”

  “In that case,” continued Lorre, advancing on me and taking my arm, “the killer will want desperately to get the negative and that picture in your pocket. And I would suggest that the killer is someone who loves that girl very much. Enough to kill Cunningham and make an attempt on Errol simply to avenge her honor.”

  We headed toward the darkness away from the dim night light of the set.

  “Mind if I ask what this office is for?” I said, looking back.

  “Not at all,” said Lorre. “It’s one of the first sets for a movie I’m doing. Should be shooting it in the near future. It’s called The Maltese Falcon.”

  “I saw the picture,” I said. “With Ricardo Cortez. Why make it again?”

  “A very clever young writer named John Huston has convinced the studio to do it with him directing. I don’t know if it’s a good idea or not, but it has an excellent role for me.”

  “This is something more like a detective’s office that the one in the Cortez pictures,” I said, “but it’s still a palace compared to mine.”

  “That’s what I wanted to ask you about,” said Lorre, leading me to another set where he turned on an overhead light. It was a hotel room. “For background, can you tell me what it’s like to be a real private investigator.”

  I sat on the sofa, and he sat next to me.

  “By the way, this is a set for the movie,” he said. “The detective, Spade, will sit where you are sitting. There’s a very nice scene between him and—do you remember the Guttman character?”

  “Yes,” I said, “the fat man, but he wasn’t fat in the Cortez movie.”

  “He will be in this one,” said Lorre, “a very amiable gentleman from the theater named Green-street.”

  “Who’s going to play Spade?”

  “George Raft, I think,” said Lorre, rubbing his eyes. “Please forgive me. I’ve been working rather hard, and I have to get back to another set. But can you tell me something about being a private detective?”

  I rubbed my back and straightened up in the sofa. Lorre was looking at me intently, but I didn’t have anything profound to say.

  “It’s a job for a lazy man with muscles and not too many brains,” I said. “The pay stinks, most people think you’re a few levels below a pimp, and the people you usually meet are welchers, petty thieves, angry runaway wives and husbands who try to belt you, alcoholics and other not-very-pleasant social types. The cops hate you; the clients don’t trust you; and the people you look for or find would be happy to see you dead. I own an old car that’s falling apart. My clothes are falling apart. I’m falling apart. I get hit a lot and I eat badly.”

  Lorre’s eyes were wide.

  “Fascinating,” he sighed, “then why do you continue to do it?”

  “Every once in a while, like now, it makes me feel really alive,” I said. “It’s something cops feel a lot, good cops, and private investigators feel once in a while.”

  I took his hand.

  “Be careful, Mr. Peters,” said the thin man holding on to my hand.

  “I’ll be careful.”

  The stage had been soundproof, and I didn’t know if it was still raining. My watch said 7:30. I stepped outside, and it was
still raining, but not as heavily. The sky was still a mass of darkness threatening to go wild again, and thunder rumbled far away.

  I had half an hour to get to my brother’s office. I decided to stop back to my apartment first. I should just about make it. I didn’t want to carry a toy gun and the two photographs into a police station.

  As I drove through Griffith Park my back continued to ache, and the green Dodge kept tailing me. There’s wasn’t much I could do about either problem.

  At my apartment building, I parked in an illegal zone in front of the door and dashed into the lobby. The green Dodge pulled past looking for a parking space.

  It would have been nice to take a hot bath, but I knew I didn’t have the time. I didn’t want to keep Phil waiting. He wouldn’t understand. In addition, I didn’t want to be in the apartment long enough for my friend in the green Dodge to find me. I had no gun. He may have had my 38. I had some pictures. He may have wanted them.

  I turned the key in my lock, and the door flew open. I was pulled into darkness. The small light next to my bed went on, and I was thrown on my unmade bed. The sudden pull and the hard board under my mattress had done my back no good, and I had a feeling things weren’t going to improve.

  Three men stood over me around the bed. I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt when I call them men. One was short, shorter than me, but built like a dark mailbox. He was bald and had no neck. He looked quite stupid in spite of his suit and tie. The second man I saw was grinning, but there was nothing funny. He was tall and slightly on the thin side. He wore a jacket, no tie and the meanest odor I’d ever met. The third man was familiar, but I couldn’t place him. I wanted to remember their descriptions in case I survived. The third man was very big and broad, with grey hair and the smashed nose of a former fighter. It even beat my nose as a disaster area.

  “No trouble, Peters,” said the former fighter holding out his hand. “You give us the photograph of the girl and you stay alive.”

  His voice was deep and rasping, as if years of shouting had turned his vocal cords to gravel. It was very effective.

  I managed to pull the Woolworth gun from my pocket.

  “Sorry boys,” I said trying to sound tough and confident, “but you are going to move across the room and sit very quietly while I call the police. And while we’re waiting for them to pick you up on a breaking and entering, maybe you can tell me who asked you to pay me this visit.”

  They didn’t move.

  I aimed the gun at the mailbox, who neither moved back nor grinned. The tall grinner giggled.

  Mailbox reached over and pulled the gun from my hand.

  “The photograph, Peters, quick,” said the croaker with the grey hair.

  I sat up, started to go for my pocket and put everything I had behind a punch to the mouth of the mailbox. He took a step back, his mouth bleeding, while I made a move toward the door. My bad back slowed me up. The croaker grabbed me. I threw an elbow at his stomach. He turned and took it in the side, but held on. The tall grinner belted me in the lower back, over the kidney. He was either wearing brass knuckles or a roll of nickels in his fist. The pain in my back was electric. I moaned and slumped down. The mailbox moved toward me, wiping a touch of blood from the corner of his mouth with an ugly fist. I was going to be dead or very sick.

  He pulled his tree-stump hand back to mash my face when the door burst open.

  Bruce Cabot and Guinn Williams were standing in it. Cabot was grim, his arms out at his side. Williams was squinting at the mailbox.

  The croaker dropped my arms, and I leveled a left to his groin. He went back against the wall.

  Williams, his curls bobbing, went for the mailbox, who showed his teeth. Williams’ closed fist thudded off the bald man’s skull, and the stricken man went down, his head bouncing on my wooden floor. Williams shook his first and went for the down man.

  Meanwhile, the tall giggler had stopped giggling and had pulled out a tall knife. He held it low as if he knew how to use it and had come up against other bellies before. He was behind Williams. Cabot reached out, grabbed the giggler’s hand, pulled him around and grimaced as he threw a right into the man’s stomach. On the way down, the tall man took a swing with the knife at Cabot, who backed away.

  The grey-haired croaker was behind me pulling at my jacket and hitting me in the neck with his fist. I was trying to get back on my feet. Williams and Cabot pulled him off. The giggler and mailbox headed for the door.

  “Let them go,” I gasped.

  The croaker was in good shape. He pulled away from the two actors and came up with a gun in his hand. It wasn’t mine, but it wasn’t a toy. The first shot missed my head, but I don’t know by how much. It hit a lamp behind me. Cabot and Williams dropped to the floor, and Williams started up to go after the croaker who was leveling the gun at me again.

  My hand touched something on the floor, the broken lamp. The shade was demolished. Still on my knees I threw the lamp at the croaker. At ten feet, he wasn’t likely to miss a second time.

  The lamp caught him in the neck and head. The gun went off, the bullet smashing into my bathtub in the next room and making an eerie sound as it ricocheted.

  The croaker fell backward with the smashed lamp and went out of the closed window. Glass flew across the room, and I felt a splinter hit my hand.

  Williams and Cabot went to the window. It was three floors down and he might survive, but I doubted it.

  “He’s not moving,” said Cabot.

  “I didn’t think he would be,” I groaned.

  Williams came back to help me up.

  “What were you two doing here?” I said.

  “How about, ‘thanks,’” said Cabot, taking my arm and helping me to the nearest chair.

  “Thanks,” I said, “I think you saved my life. But …”

  “Errol asked us to stay with you, keep an eye on you,” said Cabot. “He thought you might run into trouble. He likes you.”

  “You driving a green Dodge?”

  “Right,” said Williams, “you spotted us?”

  “Well, you’re new at this. Now, you two better get out of here.”

  Cabot cocked his head:

  “The police?”

  “I’ll tell them what happened, and they can come and talk to you if they want to,” I said, looking at my hand. “If they call tell them you came to see me on business. Don’t mention Flynn. Tell the truth about the fight.” My hand was bleeding slightly. I took a handkerchief from my pocket. “The other two won’t be back. They were hired muscle and brass, and the man who rented them is all over the sidewalk on Eleventh Street. Thanks, I mean it.”

  They left. I could hear noises in the street. The rain had stopped. A crowd was gathering around the body.

  I reached for the phone and dialed my brother’s office.

  “Lieutenant Pevsner,” came the familiar voice.

  “Phil, it’s Toby.”

  “Where the hell are you? I said eight. It’s five after.”

  “I know. I’m going to be a little late.”

  “Oh no, you’re not,” he hissed.

  “Then you better come over here and get me,” I said, rubbing my kidney where the giggler had struck me. “I think I’m about to be arrested for throwing a guy out of my apartment window.”

  I hung up as Phil started to say, “Shit,” but I let him get no farther than “Sh …” It sounded like a call for silence, and I needed a few minutes of that before I saw him.

  Before an overcautious beat cop made his way up to my apartment with a gun in his hand, I did a few things.

  First, the photograph of Brenda Stallings Beaumont and Cunningham, or Deitch, if you want to be accurate, went into the pages of William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. Remember, Bill Faulkner and I were in this together. Then, I put the picture of Lynn Beaumont’s head in my wallet, back to back with a picture of my former wife. The toy gun went in a bottom drawer and a bandage went on my hand. Then the cop, a sweating, chunky redhead,
found me calmly putting pieces of furniture in place.

  At 9:30, I was sitting in my brother’s office. The rain had moved south. If the giggler hadn’t played hamburger with my back, it would have been back to near normal. My confidence was returning.

  My brother made me wait half an hour. I wasn’t about to be caught looking at anything on his desk, so I sat going over the whole screwy case. I didn’t get anywhere.

  At 10:15, my brother came in followed by a thin guy with a very white face, sandy hair and a gray suit. Phil slammed his door shut on the voices outside. It seemed to be a busy night for the L.A. police.

  “This is Sergeant Seidman,” said Phil, slapping his worn manila folder on the desk. “He’s going to take notes on what we say.”

  Phil stood glaring at me.

  “How’s the family?” I said with a slight smile.

  My brother’s hand happened to be on a wire mesh box for memos. He threw the box in my direction. Memos, reports, photos and junk mail went flying. The box sailed past my nose crashing against the wall. The voices outside stopped for a few seconds and then went on.

  Sergeant Seidman looked at neither of us. He pulled the second chair a few feet further from me and calmly sat down. Phil sat down too and pulled his tie even further open. He pointed a finger at me and turned pink.

  “Toby, you just answer my questions. No jokes. No lies.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “Your full name?” continued my brother. Seidman lifted his pencil to write.

  “Toby Peters.”

  “Not your alias,” said Phil, opening the file. Then to Seidman, “His full name is Tobias Leo Pevsner. His alias …”

  “My professional name,” I interjected.

  Seidman wrote nothing. He didn’t give a shit for a family argument.

  “You’re a private investigator?” Phil went on.

  “I’m a private investigator. Offices on Hoover.”

  I went for my wallet to get a business card. I still had a few thousand of them. They’d been given to me as payment by a job printer whose sister-in-law had stolen his 1932 Ford. I’d found her and the Ford in San Diego. It had taken me a week. She had done a bad job of disappearing with a delivery man. It’s hard for people to suddenly disappear. You have to give up everything, every tie with your past, or a good cop or private investigator with a little time will get that string on you and pull you in.