"I know,” I said. “My wife had two."
"And then Sunshine's release was delayed. Because it stunk, Nola decided. She got real worked up about it. On top of her depression, it was too much. Next thing I knew, she was dead and I was stuck with the kid."
Not a very sentimental summing up, but I let that pass. “He's the one I'm looking for,” I said.
"Well, you can just keep looking.” She ground her cigarette under a dainty heel. “I don't like your story, the little I've heard of it. Nola didn't leave any property lying around. I knew where every nickel was stashed. Who really sent you?"
Not what business but what person. There was only one who'd be interested, as far as I knew. “It wasn't Morrie Bender,” I said.
She'd been bracing herself to hear that name, and it still made her jump. She was halfway to the lunch wagon before I could get off the bench.
"I'll never tell you anything,” she said as she backpedaled. “You or Bender, either. I'll die first."
* * * *
8.
I knew Paddy would be critical of my approach to Rita Koenig. For one thing, I hadn't once mentioned Grauman's loss. And I hadn't tried to bribe her, if you didn't count the pack of cigarettes. Paddy would have lit her first one with a five-dollar bill just to catch her eye.
But I thought my boss would approve of what I did next, which was to stop at a corner store on the same street as Koenig's boardinghouse and buy two very cold bottles of Coca-Cola. Armed with those, I ambled to the boardinghouse itself, where Marjorie Main's understudy was still fighting her losing battle against the weeds.
She turned down the offer of the little bottle opener from my pocketknife and dispatched her bottle's cap by rapping it expertly against the stone sill of one of her windows. But she did accept my story that I'd gotten turned around and hadn't been able to find Koenig's diner. She patiently repeated her instructions and had me parrot them back.
That left us with most of our Cokes to finish. We'd just about killed them when her curiosity finally got the better of her.
"This isn't some trouble for Rita, is it?” she asked.
"Could be,” I said.
"With the kid? She's had all the trouble she needs from that skunk. I told Rita him moving down to L.A. was a big mistake."
"It might be about him.” I took an envelope from my pocket—my phone bill—and pretended to study it. “What's his name?"
"Peter Thorpe."
"Nope,” I said. “Different trouble."
I walked back to the mom-and-pop where I'd left the Corsair and used the store's phone to call Hollywood Security. The woman who answered, Peggy Maguire, Paddy's wife and the firm's secret brain trust, promised she'd have a line on Peter Thorpe by the time I got back.
I called her again from a roadside booth on the coast highway around Castellammare. Her directions took me into the hills above West Hollywood, to a house built out over the edge of a canyon.
A late-model Continental convertible was baking in the driveway, though the house had an attached two-car garage. The Mark III could have belonged to a visitor, of course. Or there could have been two even more valuable cars in the garage. But I was hoping the space was otherwise occupied. I tried the overhead door. It was locked.
I moved from there to the front door. The man who answered it was dressed for cocktails at the yacht club in white flannels and a dark blue blazer. He was blond and slight and nervous.
"Peter Thorpe?” I asked.
He stammered his yes. I showed him my card and asked if he'd be willing to help with an investigation I was conducting. He said yes again, making a real project of it this time. By then I was sure I'd come to the right place. As I backed him into the low-ceilinged living room, I decided to skip the foreplay.
"Those slabs you had lifted from Grauman's warehouse, got ‘em handy?"
If my question surprised Thorpe, his reply really shocked me. He reached into a side pocket of his blazer and pulled out a gun. Or almost pulled it out. It was a snub-nosed revolver, and its hammer got caught on the corner of the pocket, as hammers will. I had time to grab his wrist and tag him on the chin, more or less simultaneously.
In my haste, I hit him harder than I had to. He would have collapsed into his white buck shoes if I hadn't had a firm grip on his gun hand. I steered him to an armless sofa and disentangled the revolver, which I put in my own pocket.
Then I hunted around until I found the connecting door to the attached garage. The space beyond the door was empty except for something that looked like a card table draped in canvas. I pulled off the tarp, and there was Nola Nielsen's concrete autograph, resting on a pair of sawhorses. She'd had tiny feet and the handwriting of a ten-year-old, if you could judge a person's writing by how they did with a stick in wet cement. I looked everywhere but down in the canyon for the other two slabs. There was no sign of them.
By then, Thorpe was sitting up. “It's mine,” he said. “I have a right to it."
His speech was a little thick, but I'd evidently cured his stammer. “Are we talking about the gun or that little souvenir in the garage?"
"She was my mother. I don't have anything of hers.” He contradicted himself by looking toward a low-slung fireplace. Above it hung an old photograph of a striking young woman with bobbed platinum hair and a smile that curled wickedly at the ends. Nola Nielsen.
"You have her money,” I said, looking around the rest of the room. The bric-a-brac alone was worth as much as my car. “Rita Koenig could use some of your spare change, by the way. Things are a little tight for her just now."
"She's gotten all of my mother's money she's going to get. She sponged off Nola when she was alive, then she lived in style off my trust fund. Living right on the beach, like she was the movie star."
"She's moved inland since,” I said.
"I don't care where she is. She got a year more on the gravy train than she was entitled to. That's more charity than she deserves."
"How did she manage that?"
"By lying to me and everyone else about my age. Her and that shyster trustee. I should have prosecuted them. They controlled the trust fund until I turned twenty-five. That's how my mother set it up. Rita always told me I was born in 1930. That kept me under her thumb until 1955. But when I finally got to see my mother's papers, I found my birth certificate. I was really born in 1929. Rita'd cut herself in for an extra year of easy living."
That revelation nearly did to me what my right cross had done to Thorpe. But I came out of it faster.
"Your birth certificate say where you were born?” I asked, almost conversationally.
"Of course,” he said. “New York City.” He added proudly, “My father was a Broadway director. Richard Thorpe."
"His name appear on the birth certificate?"
Thorpe's stammer made a comeback. “No. He and my mother weren't..."
"How did you find out about him?"
"Aunt Rita told me. My name was always Thorpe. She told me how I'd come by it. It was about the only time she was ever honest with me.
"She had Nola cremated, Aunt Rita did. And then scattered her ashes in the ocean. So I don't even have a grave to visit. When I saw the TV story about mother's slab being in Grauman's warehouse, I knew I had to have it. I even picked out a spot down in the canyon where I was going to have it set. A place where I could plant flowers."
"What happened to the other two slabs?"
"I told them to dump them out in the desert somewhere."
"Told who?"
"My gardener set it up for me. He said he knew a guy who knew a guy who'd do it, but I think he just hired his relatives. I told him to take both slabs—they talked about two on the television. That way the theft wouldn't point to me. Then, when he delivered my mother's slab, he said there'd been three. Tried to get me to pay extra. I sent him packing."
A fancy blue phone occupied an end table near Thorpe's sofa. I pointed to it with the snub-nose, which I'd produced without snagging my pocket.
"Time to call him and apologize,” I said.
* * * *
9.
Thorpe was able to reach his gardener friend. With my encouragement, he worked out a price for recovering the two discarded slabs and returning them to Grauman's warehouse bright and early the next morning.
"Tell them to ring the bell this time,” I said.
I then used the blue phone to report my success to Paddy. My partial success. “It's a no-questions-asked deal,” I said. “They'll be getting back two of the items. Gabrielle's and the one with the knee prints."
"Why only two?"
"The third was damaged beyond repair."
"I see,” Paddy said. “Well, I don't think they'll kick about that. I'll be anxious to hear your full report. Anything else you want to tell me now?"
"Hold the line.” I gestured with the gun toward the front door and said to Thorpe, “You mind?"
He didn't. He'd been a new man ever since I'd told the lie about his mother's slab.
When he was gone, I said, “How much leverage do we have with Grauman's?"
"Plenty,” Paddy said, “since they still want Garbo's name kept out of this. It's going to take two postmen to deliver our bill. Why?"
I broke open the revolver and shook the shells out onto the carpet. “This morning you mentioned doing Gabrielle a good turn."
"Having her reinstated, you mean? Or is the word I want ‘reinstalled'? Leave it to me."
Outside, Thorpe was staring at his Continental as if he didn't recognize it. “Why did you say that?” he asked. “About Nola's slab?"
"I thought she'd like you to keep it,” I said.
I was feeling altogether too soft by then. As a pick-me-up, I tossed the gun at him and told him that I'd be back if the other two slabs weren't delivered by noon the next day.
* * * *
10.
I could have gone home to mow the grass with a clear conscience. Instead, I drove north along the coast to the little town of Vesta. It was early evening when I arrived, a beautiful, still evening, the sky cloudless, the ocean a big blue pond that happened to reach all the way to Japan.
Koenig had finished her shift at the diner. She wasn't at her boardinghouse either. No one was. I played a hunch and stopped at the little corner store to ask after the nearest public beach. On its edge, I found her. She was sitting with bowed head on a bench that was the twin of the one I'd used earlier in the day. I sat down beside her and took out my pipe.
"Who invited you?” she said, sniffing a little. She'd been crying.
"That's a long story, Nola."
"What did you call me?"
"Nola. As in Nola Nielsen.” I finished filling my pipe and brushed the stray bits of cavendish off my pants.
That gave my companion plenty of time to come up with a reply. The best she could do was, “I'm Rita Koenig."
"I don't think so. I think Koenig died in a sealed garage almost thirty years ago. I'm afraid you helped her with that."
I got my pipe going and dropped the spent match in the sand at our feet. “Here's how I figure it. Way back around nineteen twenty-eight, you found yourself in a bad spot. You were pregnant, and the father of the child you were carrying was a gangster named Morrie Bender. You'd already had enough of Bender, but he wasn't ready to let you go. You knew if he found out about the kid, he might never be ready. Worse, the kid would grow up with a gangster father.
"So you ran away to New York, a town that was off-limits to Bender. You gave out the story that you were being coached for the talkies, and maybe you were. But you were really there to have the kid on the sly. You came back after a year and brought the kid with you. Set him up someplace quiet with a nurse or a nanny or both and got back to making movies. Bender had gotten over you, so everything had worked out fine.
"Then Rita Koenig, your paid-companion pal, spoiled the whole deal. She knew the truth, of course, and she threatened to go to Bender. She started bleeding you. She cut herself in for a slice of everything you'd tucked away.
"Meanwhile, Sunshine's release was delayed. All around you, silent stars were dropping like matinée Indians. You decided that you were through anyway and that you might as well throw over the whole setup.
"So Koenig took your place in the garage. Did you dope her or get her drunk or just whack her on the head?"
Nielsen opened her purse and pulled out a twist of paper and cellophane, all that was left of the cigarettes I'd bought her. I produced a purchase I'd made when I'd stopped to ask for directions to the beach: a fresh pack of Old Golds.
She looked at the peace offering and said, “I told you this afternoon I wouldn't talk."
"That's when you thought I worked for Morrie Bender.” I told her then why I'd really come to Vesta, the mystery of the missing slabs, complete in ten installments. Somewhere around episode six, she took the cigarettes and lit one gratefully.
When I'd finished, she sniffed again, collected herself, and said, “I got Rita drunk. It wasn't very hard."
"What about her hair? I'm guessing Koenig was a brunette, since you are now."
"I got her to dye hers that last afternoon. That wasn't very hard either. She'd always wanted blond hair. She'd always wanted anything I had, including Morrie Bender. I couldn't trust her not to tell him about Peter, even with me paying her. I was afraid she'd do it just to get back in with him."
"Did you and Koenig look that much alike?"
"Enough. And I saw to it that the body wasn't found right away."
"And that it was cremated. And you changed your son's age to make it impossible for Bender to work out that he was Peter's father. You had to get the guy who ran your trust to go along with that."
"The trustee was a pal of mine, a real pal, a lawyer who worked for my studio. When Peter found out his real age, he thought we'd done it to cheat him. That was fine with me."
"How is it he never recognized you? He's got your picture hanging up in his house."
"Does he? By the time he was old enough to ask about his mother, I'd already changed. I'd dyed my hair and started to wear the glasses I'd needed for years. And I was careful to tell him that I looked a lot like his mother. He threw that in my face later. Said I was giving myself airs. Like the cottage by the sea I didn't deserve. I've always loved the ocean. Just being able to sit near it every night means a lot to me."
It was about all she had left. “Why don't you tell Peter the truth? He'd give you your cottage back."
"Would he? Would you do a favor for somebody who told you your father was a thug and your mother was a murderess? Anyway, I deserve to be punished."
She looked into my face for the first time, maybe to see if I had any thoughts of my own on the subject of her punishment.
I had, as it happened. My thoughts were of Nola's last picture, Sunshine, and its unexpected success. How had she reacted to that? Well enough at first, maybe. But how about years later, when the son she'd done so much to protect had walked out on her? And how about now, during the long shifts at a greasy spoon? Did she ever think of Sunshine and wonder?
I stood up. “Sorry to have bothered you, Miss Koenig."
As I turned to go, she asked, “How did you recognize me?"
I hadn't. My tip-offs had been the birth certificate she'd lied about and her declaration to me that afternoon that she'd die before she told anyone the truth. She hadn't sounded like a clapped-out guardian then. She'd sounded like a mother.
But I played along. “I've seen your footprints in cement, remember? I'd know those size sixes anywhere."
She smiled for the first time in our acquaintance. The smile curled at the ends, just like it had when the world was young.
Copyright ©2006 by Terence Faherty
[Back to Table of Contents]
CANDY CANE WARS by James Powell
Art by Ron Bucalo
* * * *
James Powell's latest Christmas story for us is a tale of espionage behind enemy lines and the threat of bi
ological warfare. As always, elements of the story can be traced to interesting bits of information the author has picked up over the years. For instance, “just before or dur-ing World War I,” he tells us, “there was an English music hall song about Gilbert the Filbert, the Kernel of the Nuts.” (This story's Colonel De Filbert!)
Near midnight, with a light rain falling, the tall officer in military greatcoat and plumed shako entered the ruined village just behind the lines. Gilbert de Filbert, colonel of the Nutcrackers, quickly found the estaminet he was looking for in the cellar of a ruined cottage. A small horseless caravan with “Porcupine Brothers Circus” emblazoned across its canvas side stood near the steps down to the entrance.
The colonel paused for a moment to turn his weary, lantern-jawed face skyward, wondering again why it was always bad weather and Christmas Eve when the Mouse King's gray minions and his Ratavian allies faced the soldiers of Toyland in the trenches. Then he went down into the smoky, low-ceilinged cellar.
A sharp-eyed, sharp-nosed, stubble-faced hedgehog behind the bar polished a questionable glass with a dubious rag.
Beyond the few empty tables a fire burned in the fireplace. A booth stood in either chimney corner. In one sat a solitary figure hidden in a hooded moleskin cape. In the other, five wooden soldiers whose faded and chipped paint marked them as veterans of the Candy Cane Wars laughed and drank with a jolly, if shopworn, nest of matryoshka dolls.
De Filbert slung his military greatcoat across the bar and set his shako on top of it. When he'd stroked the rain from his fierce moustache, he pointed to a bottle. Then he complained, “Landlord, this place stinks of mouse."
"Well, now, it would have to, wouldn't it, Colonel?” replied the hedgehog, bringing the bottle and a glass. “The Mouse King's people occupied this sector for a long time, didn't they?"
"Vermin,” said the nutcracker, downing his drink and making a face to match his moustache.
As the owner refilled his glass, the colonel nodded disapprovingly at the floor. “A bar floor without sawdust is like a Christmas tree without tinsel,” he complained again.
The hedgehog shrugged. “There's a war on, in case you hadn't heard.” He moved away to resume his dubious polishing.
EQMM, January 2007 Page 7