“Yes,” I said.
“Could we have an autograph?” the brunette said.
I looked at Astaire, who nodded.
The woman came up with a pad of paper from her purse and placed it in front of the startled Willie Talbott.
“If you’d just write, ‘To Gretchen from her friend Brian Aherne.’”
Talbott took the pad and the fountain pen Gretchen offered and signed.
“Thank you,” said the woman with a grin, looking at the autograph and inscription and showing it to her friend, who said, “I thought you spelled your name ‘Aherne.’”
“That’s my stage and movie spelling,” Talbott said. “The traditional family spelling is ‘Ahurn’ and I promised my mother before she died that I’d always use the family spelling, even in contracts.”
“You don’t have an English accent?” the blonde said.
“Lost it years ago. Now …” Talbott said with a sigh, “I have to fake it. I could tell you about the family history if you’re really interested.”
The blonde looked at her friend, who encouraged her with a nod.
“Well, I can give you my …”
“Remember you’re leaving town, Mr. Aherne,” I reminded Talbott.
“Right,” he said. “Sorry, ladies.”
The women nodded their good-byes and walked away, looking at the autograph.
“You don’t look anything like Brian Aherne,” I said.
“People think I look like Sonny Tufts,” said Talbott, finishing the last crumb on his plate and wiping his hands on a paper napkin. “Well, if you’ve got the five hundred, I’m ready to go home and pack and give you the list.”
“The man has hutzpab,” said Astaire.
“Chutzpah,” Talbott corrected. “With a ch at the beginning and you make the ch sound like you’re trying to bring something bad up that you ate for lunch.”
“Thanks for the Yiddish lesson,” Astaire said, looking at me.
“We can go now, Mr. Aherne,” I said.
Talbott searched around for something else to eat, didn’t find it, and stood reluctantly. “Two-fifty in advance and the rest in cash when I hand you Luna’s schedule and give you my ideas about who to look for?”
“We’ll have to stop at my bank,” said Astaire, also rising.
Talbott kept talking as Astaire drove and listened to the radio. “Songs by Morton Downey” came on and Raymond Paige’s Orchestra played a smooth introduction to “Old Man River” after the announcer told us of the joys of drinking Coca-Cola. I didn’t even bother to grunt at the pauses in Talbott’s patter. My behind was now a tender red welt that felt every pebble under the tires. Talbott’s apartment in Venice was in a three-story pink building about two miles from the Pacific Ocean.
Astaire cruised past the entrance and we scanned the street, looking for the bulldog and the Saint Bernard. There was no sign of them or any other creditors, at least none that Talbott recognized, though he thought the two sailors with a young, overly made-up girl between them looked suspicious.
“Pull in there,” Talbott said, pointing to a driveway between two apartment buildings that looked just like the one he lived in.
Astaire pulled in and we went down a narrow concrete path to an open space and three garage doors. “I’ll turn the car around,” Astaire said.
I nodded, and Talbott leaned forward from the back seat to say, “Look, I know you’re damn good, but anyone can learn. Right? So, I’ll throw in a couple of special steps I learned at the feet of the great one.”
“You’ll teach me some dance steps?” Astaire said, looking over his shoulder at Talbott, who nodded.
“Steps I learned from Harvey Burke himself.”
“Harvey Burke?”
“Himself,” said Talbott, opening the door. “Two-fifty up front. We’ll stop at your bank on the way to the bus station.”
Astaire pulled out his wallet and came up with, “Two hundred and four.”
Talbott took the money and stuffed it into his pocket. “You know Harvey Burke’s pancake-and-picture method, right?” he said, looking at Astaire and then at me.
“We’ll talk about it later,” Astaire said.
Talbott got out of the car and so did I. A throbbing tuchus made it tough to keep up with Talbott, who went through a heavy white door and started up a flight of steel steps. We clanked upward in the early-afternoon light that beamed down through a dusty skylight. At the third-floor landing we went through another door and down a corridor past apartments on both sides.
After a right turn we went through a fire-exit door, across a gravel-covered roof, and stepped over the low wall where two buildings pressed against each other. Across this roof and then over another low wall.
“What the hell are we doing, Twinkle-Toes?”
“Making sure,” he said as we headed for a steel door on the third roof.
“You come this way a lot?” I asked.
“When skies are cloudy and gray,” he said with a confident grin.
I didn’t care for this new air of confidence. I followed him down a short flight of stairs and along a corridor. He stopped at an apartment. Down the hall someone was playing Buddy Clark’s “Hugo and Igo.”
“That’s the stairway down,” he said softly, gesturing. “Keep an eye and ear on it. Somebody comes, give me a call and we’ll get the hell out of here. It’ll only take me a couple of minutes.”
He went in and closed the door while I waited in the corridor.
Buddy Clark sang on and two minutes passed, or what seemed like two minutes. My old man’s watch on my wrist seemed to indicate that time had gone backwards.
I tried the handle of Talbott’s apartment. It was open.
The place was a mess. Twinkle-Toes may have been a lousy housekeeper but this was abusing the privilege. Someone had been through the place, tossed and turned it.
“Willie,” I called, stepping over a faded tan pillow that had been thrown from the sofa against the wall.
No answer.
The place wasn’t big. Living room, kitchen combination, and what looked like a bedroom on the left. The door was closed. I avoided a purple table lamp on the floor. The lamp had lost its shade. I turned and picked up the lamp. I didn’t know if I would need a weapon.
I opened the door and looked into Talbott’s bedroom, a horror of seduction-purple velvet and dirty white. The bedding and mattress had been ripped to shreds. My lamp and I went to the closed door beyond the bed. I tripped on a small radio but kept my balance. I pushed open the door and found a small empty bathroom. The window over the tub was open. I went for it and heard a shot. There was a narrow space between Talbott’s apartment building and the next one. I could imagine Talbott, who knew the best ways in and out, inching his way to the windowsill and then reaching up to the roof and pulling himself up. There was no way I could make it through that space, even if I were thirty and didn’t have a sore ass.
I could hear footsteps on the gravel of the next roof. I dropped the lamp and hurtled through the maze of bad taste that littered the floor. I ran down the corridor and up to the roof the way we had come. I looked to my left, saw nothing, and then looked right, where Talbott lay sprawled facedown on the next roof, his left knee bent, his right hand over his head as if he were about to demonstrate one of those steps he had promised Astaire. There was nobody else in sight, but the door to the roof a few feet from Talbott was open.
The space between the two buildings was only a couple of feet. I climbed on the wall and jumped and tumbled, rolling over on my right shoulder and tearing my poplin jacket.
I ran to the edge of the roof at the rear of the building and leaned over. A small space between garages. No people. I ran to the front of the building. Someone was getting into a dark car right below me. The car was parked in front of a fire plug. I didn’t see the face of the person getting in the car, but I did see his or her gloved hand. It was clutching what looked like a leatherbound ledger book. The car door closed with
a slam and the driver screeched out of the space and down the street.
Talbott wasn’t moving. I got down on one knee and turned him over.
The hole in his shirt was black and the blood that stained his chest was thick. No doubts here—Willie Talbott was dead. I went back over the roofs and followed the trail Talbott had taken to get to his apartment.
In the garage turn-around Astaire was leaning back on the front fender of his car, his arms folded. He stood up, looked beyond me, and saw no Twinkle-Toes.
“I thought I heard a shot,” he said.
“Talbott’s danced his last bad samba,” I said. “He’s dead and I think the killer got away with Luna’s appointment book. Let’s go.”
“Where?” he asked, opening the door.
“To my car,” I said, going around the hood and heading for the passenger side.
We got in and closed the doors. Astaire started down the narrow driveway.
“Needless to say, I have some questions, Peters,” Astaire said, turning right when we hit the street. Behind us a small gathering of neighbors on the sidewalk looked up at the building where Talbott lay dead. One of them was pointing.
“I probably don’t have very good answers. I’ll take my car, go to the cops, tell them what happened. I’ll leave you out of it. You’ve got nothing to tell them that I can’t. The way I figure it, Talbott got the appointment book and went out the bathroom window. I think he figured that if he could get five hundred from you, he might be able to get a lot more from someone whose name was in that book. That someone was waiting for Talbott on the roof, was familiar with Talbott’s exits, shot him, took the book. Of course, I could have it all wrong and the bulldog and Saint Bernard you took apart just caught up with him and were in a bad mood, but they didn’t know about the appointment book, at least I think they didn’t.”
“So? …” asked Astaire.
“We’ve got two dead dancers,” I said. “And no idea who killed either one of them.”
“I’m going with you to the police,” Astaire said as we headed back toward Los Angeles.
“What’ll it get you? Some very bad publicity? Who is it going to help? I’ll tell you what. Give me a couple of days and if the police or I don’t turn anything up, I’ll set up a meeting between you and a homicide detective. Three days.”
“You said ‘a couple.’ That’s two.”
“Okay, two days. Then you can go to the police and ruin your career.”
He drove me to my car around the corner from the now-ownerless On Your Toes Dance Studio and I headed for the Wilshire Police Station, which was a long way from Venice. My behind was sore. My stomach was upset. I’d lost a witness and let the killer get away. My jacket was torn and my ex-wife was marrying a movie star. I took off the jacket and placed it on the passenger seat. Exhibit A. I was not having a good day.
I parked behind the Wilshire station in a spot reserved for patrol cars and went through the rear door, passing a pair of uniformed police, one too old, the other too young. A wartime phenomenon.
“Russ,” I said to the older cop. “How are things?”
Russ paused, and his young partner, who I didn’t know, looked impatiently at his watch.
“Remember my kid, Charlie? You met him at Sonny’s bar a couple or so times?” Russ asked.
“Sure I remember him.”
“Just got back home. Wounded, but safe. Arm won’t move great.” Russ demonstrated how his son’s arm would be moving. “But what the hell. He’s back in one piece and for good with a Purple Heart.”
“That’s great,” I said.
“Russ,” the young partner said.
“Right,” Russ said. “Gotta go, Toby. Say, you know what’s gnawing at Phil? He’s got a bug up his ass the size of Tarzana.”
“No,” I said, and Russ and his partner headed for their car.
I went down the damp, dimly lit corridor, past the downstairs meeting and interrogation rooms and up the badly worn stairs. Then past the squad room, where shrill nervous voices and deep bored ones came through the closed double doors along with the smell of stale food. My brother was back in his old office at the end of the squad room. When he had been promoted to captain, he had moved into an ugly brown square across from the squad room. The captain’s office would have been enough to drive a monk nuts. He had gone back to his closet-sized office after his demotion for failure to deal effectively with the local business people. He seemed to be happier back with the boys, though it was hard to tell when Phil was happy. I couldn’t remember ever seeing him smile.
The squad room was busy. A thin kid who needed a shave was seated next to Jay Buxbaum. The kid was probably Mexican. He had an accent. He was pointing to his own chest and saying, “You really saying I did this thing? That what you’re saying?”
“That’s what I’m saying,” said Buxbaum, evenly settling his three hundred pounds back in his chair.
At another desk near the window, two detectives, Winslow and Ho, were leaning over a pale man. They were whispering. The pale man was shaking his head. I nodded at a detective named Ponsetto and made my way to Phil’s office. I knocked and he said, “All right.”
I took that for a “come in.”
Phil had his back turned to me and was looking out the window. Phil never took the time to look out windows. There were too many criminals out there who needed a good hit in the head and there was too little time to get to them all. Besides, the view from Phil’s window was a brick wall five feet away.
I stood in front of his desk. He didn’t turn to face me but he did say, “Sit down.”
I would have preferred to stand, but I didn’t want to remind him that I had been spanked by a giant Indian. I sat. Phil continued to look out the window for about two minutes. Then he sighed and swiveled in his wooden chair to face me. He put his hands on his desk and looked at me.
Phil was nearing two hundred and fifty pounds. His hair was gray and getting whiter by the week. His neck was thick and his collar was open, the blue tie dangling awkwardly down his shirt.
“You okay, Phil?”
He looked at me without blinking.
“Phil?”
“I like my work,” he said. “I didn’t like being a captain. But where you’ve got a vacuum, it has to be filled.”
“Have you been drinking, Phil?”
“No,” he said. “But I’ll probably have a couple of beers when I get home. The vacuum is the captaincy. It’s been filled by the all-damn-knowing chief of police. Do you know who the new captain of the Wilshire is? You want to guess?”
“No,” I said.
“Guess,” Phil insisted.
“Perkily from the Hollywood,” I tried.
Phil shook his head. I tried to think. I came up with six more names, all of which got me the same response.
“Claudette Colbert,” I said.
Phil held up a hand to show that he was not to be trifled with.
“I give up,” I said. “I mean, I’m enjoying the game but I’ve got something I’ve got to talk to you about.”
“Cawelti,” he said. “That son of a bitch on the take is my boss.”
John Cawelti, he of the plastered-back, bartender-combed red hair and bad complexion, had, when the chance came, tried to nail me for everything from stealing the collection money at St. Vincent De Paul’s to murder. John Cawelti and I had a long and rotten history.
“Shit,” I said.
“I’ve asked for a transfer. I don’t think they’ll give it to me. Steve’s asked for one too. He might get his. I can retire early, but …” He let it trail off and sighed. “Okay, Toby, what do you want?”
“Something that’ll make you look good,” I said. “A third-rate dance teacher named Willie Talbott was shot on an apartment roof in Venice a little over an hour ago. Luna Martin used to work for him at the On Your Toes Dance Studio. Someone tossed Talbott’s room looking for something. I’d say the two murders might be connected.”
Phil grunted.
“In fact,” I went on. “I’m sure they’re related.”
I told Phil the story about my going to the studio, finding Talbott, making the deal for Luna’s appointment schedule, and then going with Talbott to his apartment and missing his murder. I left out the part about Fred Astaire being with me. Phil grunted, pulled a pad of paper out of his desk drawer, which was no mean feat since there was nowhere for Phil to back up to have enough room to open the drawer more than a few inches. Phil took some notes and looked up at me.
He pursed his lips, stared at me, and hummed a few bars of what sounded like “Tiger Rag.” Then he looked down at his pad and said, “You interfered with a murder investigation by not going to the police as soon as you knew about this appointment book. You left the scene of a murder though you were the only witness. You’ve been present at two murders in one day.”
“I really didn’t see …”
“I know that, Tobias. That’s your problem.”
My real name is Tobias Leon Pevsner. Toby Peters is my professional name. Philip Martin Pevsner does not approve of his brother dropping the family name. Phil doesn’t approve of a lot of things, but this one is a favorite.
“Find Steve out there,” Phil said, waving his hand toward the noisy squad room. “He’ll take your statement.”
We sat silently. Phil turned back toward the window and put his hands behind his head, his thick fingers locking. I got up.
“Maybe you’d feel better if you just threw something at me, Phil. You know, like the good old days.”
“Get out,” he said.
“Look …”
“Out,” Phil repeated.
I got out, found Steve Seidman. He was walking toward his desk in the corner near the window. He looked even more pale and thin than he had that morning.
“I’ve got a statement, Steve. Phil said I should see you.”
Seidman got behind his desk and motioned me into the battered wooden chair next to it.
“Mind if I stand?” I said.
“Suit yourself.”
The Mexican kid started to yell. “He thinks I stabbed Jorge,” he screamed above the noise of the squad room. “I din stab Jorge. I don’ know who stabbed Jorge, but it wasn’t fuckin me.”
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