Poor Butterfly tp-15

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “I will release this information with supporting evidence to the press in the morning,” said Souvaine.

  “Probably boost ticket sales,” I said. “Between you and me and Deacon Ortiz here, tickets aren’t going so well. A little publicity might spice things up. Now please ask Mr. Ortiz to step out of the way.”

  “If murder and assault are going on in that building,” cried Souvaine, “then I point the finger at the true Judas, the company of Satan’s minions who are trying to stir up rumor and tales of the violation of God’s laws to draw in the unwary.”

  “You change your story awfully fast. Reverend,” I said.

  “I’ll use what I must,” he said.

  “Ever done any acting?” I asked, looking not at Souvaine but at Ortiz, who still blocked me.

  “A bit,” he said, behind me.

  “Tell Deacon Ortiz to move now,” I said.

  “I’m not finished talking to you,” Souvaine said, his voice rising. “And I will thank you to respect the Lord and his humble representative by facing me when I talk to you.”

  Mr. Ortiz reached out with his right hand for my shoulder. Mr. Ortiz was faster than I thought, but he did not expect my right knee to come up into his groin.

  “No,” screamed Souvaine behind me.

  Ortiz grunted, his hands moving between his legs as he bent forward. I shoved him out of the way. At least I tried to shove him. He didn’t shove easily. He grabbed my shoulder. I faked a second kick to his again uncovered groin. He didn’t let go, but a reflex did make him loosen his grip. I pulled away, unzipping my new jacket. I opened the door, pulled my arms out of the sleeves, and let Mr. Ortiz stagger back a step, holding an empty jacket.

  “No more violence in the house of God!” Souvaine shouted.

  Ortiz stumbled after me into the hallway. Bertha was standing there with a fresh pitcher of lemonade and a frightened look on her face.

  “Go with the photograph of J. Minor at the beach,” I said, moving past her to the front door. Ortiz grunted behind me as I threw it open and went down the stairs. My back, never in a good mood, threatened and warned but I couldn’t listen. It was raining harder now. I ran across the street to the Crosley and got the door open. I was in the seat with the door locked when Ortiz reached the car. I started the engine and smiled at him; he moved to the front of the car. My smile stayed where it was but I had no faith in it.

  People were coming out of the Church of the Enlightened Patriots. I didn’t look in their direction. I looked for help on the street. There wasn’t any. Ortiz was now holding the Crosley up by the front bumper, the wheels clearing the ground. I put the gears in reverse and let out the clutch. The car jerked backward and Ortiz fell forward, his face banging into the hood of my car. I was going at a good clip in reverse when about fifteen people, led by the Reverend Souvaine, emerged onto the street, looking at me. Most of the people were old. Most of the old were women.

  Ortiz was standing now, blood dripping from his nose, rain trickling down his face. He picked my jacket up from where he had thrown it on the street. As I made a U-turn I watched him rip the jacket in two. For the first time since I had met him, Mr. Ortiz was smiling.

  I drove fast enough and far enough to feel sure no one was following me, and then I pulled over to enter the loss of one jacket in my notebook under expenses. There was a park on my left and a small hotel called the Stanyon on my right. I’d used enough gas, met enough new friends, and had enough to eat for one day. In addition, I was wet. I reached behind the seat and pulled out my battered suitcase. I considered leaving the package I had bought in the car, but decided against it.

  There were no people in the lobby, just purple chairs with curlicued wooden legs. Behind the registration desk a woman with gray-brown hair lacquered back who looked a little like Rosalind Russell was going through a pile of cards. She looked up at me as I approached and gave me a no-nonsense “Can I help you?”

  “A room,” I said, putting my suitcase on the counter.

  “You have a reservation?” she asked, still sorting her cards.

  “No,” I said. “I’ve got money and a bad back.”

  “Veteran?” she asked.

  “Of many wars,” I said. “You always ask if your patrons have war records?”

  “No,” she admitted, putting her cards down. “I’ve just had a bad day. I’m sorry. How many nights will you be with us?”

  “Probably just one. I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll take it a day at a time.”

  “That seems to be best nowadays,” she said, handing me the registration book. I took it and wrote in my name and address.

  “Eight dollars a night,” she said.

  I pulled out a ten-dollar bill and placed it on the counter. She took it, gave me change, and handed me a key.

  “Room twenty-one, up the stairs,” she said.

  I picked up my suitcase and headed up the stairs just off the desk. When I glanced down at her, the woman was staring at the hotel entrance as if another customer had come in after me. But there was no one there.

  The room was small, clean, and had a bathroom with a good-size tub. I got undressed, inspected my scars, and turned on the radio. Mary Martin sang me a song, asked me to drink Royal Crown Cola, and told me to buy war bonds and stamps today. I turned the volume up and listened to “Abie’s Irish Rose” on the Blue Network while I soaked in a hot tub.

  I was dozing when the phone rang. I got out dripping, wrapped a towel around myself, turned down the radio, and picked up the phone.

  “Mr. Peters? It’s Mrs. Allen on the desk. One of the guests has asked that you turn down your radio. And you left a package on the desk. Would you like me to have it brought up to you?”

  “Radio’s off,” I said. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I just found out my husband is missing in the Pacific,” she said. “Shall I send the package up?”

  “No,” I said. “Open it.”

  “Open …? I don’t think …”

  “Please. It’s safe.”

  I could hear the sound of crinkling paper as she fished the small box out of the bag. Then I could hear the box open.

  “It’s a hat,” she said.

  “Basque beret,” I said. “I sell them. Please accept it as a gift from the company. If anyone asks where you got it, tell them. The tag is inside the hat.”

  “I can’t …”

  “Gift from a satisfied customer,” I said. “I won’t turn the radio on again. I hope your husband is okay.”

  “Thank you. Good night.”

  The beret had been for Vera. I could get her something else.

  I went to bed. Sometime later I heard a knock at the door. When I opened it my old friend Koko the Clown was standing there in a Basque beret. He had a package in his hand. He handed it to me, but it was a ghost package. I couldn’t hold it. It slipped through my hands, had no substance. As I bent to pick it up, Koko waved and into my room poured laughing people. It was a surprise party for me. Bertha Minor carried a tray with a gigantic pitcher of lemonade. Koko drank it and turned yellow. Ortiz held out two closed fists and asked me to choose. I picked the right He turned his palm up and opened it. There were three bloody teeth. Souvaine danced in with Lorna Bartholomew, whose neck was painted blood red. Raymond Griffith arrived in neatly pressed overalls and a bright neon blue tie. He was pulling a wagon full of tools. Koko and Raymond handed out the tools, and the people in the room began to bang them together to make music. Stokowski, wearing only his underwear, arrived with a violin and began to play after giving me a wink. John Lundeen came out of the bathroom, a towel around his ample waist. He looked as if he were singing, but no sounds were coming from his mouth. I tried to tell them all to be quiet, that Mrs. Allen’s husband was dead.

  And then the door flew open and everyone went quiet. He was standing there, a figure draped in a black cape, wearing a black wide-brimmed hat and a white ma
sk that covered the top half of his face. He swept into the room, cape billowing, showing a red lining:

  The Phantom beckoned to me with a white-gloved right hand. I moved toward him. I was frightened, but when I was close enough I reached up quickly and pulled the mask off. The Phantom was my father. But he shook his head no and another mask appeared. I took that one off and the Phantom was my brother Phil. Another mask. This time the Phantom was me, and this scared the hell out of me. I woke up.

  I started to reach for my father’s watch and remembered that it wouldn’t tell me the time. I picked it up anyway. The sun was up so I called the desk to ask for the time. Mrs. Allen didn’t answer. The guy said she had left for the day.

  “Was she wearing a little beret?” I asked.

  “I … yes,” he said. “I think so.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Five minutes after eight.”

  I was shaved, dressed, and out of the hotel ten minutes later, wearing a slightly wrinkled white shirt and the same pants I had worn the day before. Time was wasting. I had an opera to save.

  7

  I recognized the car as soon as I turned the corner and saw the Opera building. It was Gunther Wherthman’s black Daimler. Gunther had never fully explained to me how the car had come into his possession. It was simply there one morning, a specially modified model with raised pedals and seat to accommodate his size. The car, he said, was a gift he had been unable to refuse. And that was all he had ever been willing to say.

  I parked behind the Daimler, got out and locked the door. Shelly Minck was engaged in conversation with the pickets from the Church of the Enlightened Patriots. There were five of them this morning. All of them were old. Sloane and Cynthia were among them. Bertha was missing. I’d half-expected Ortiz.

  Some of the workers had paused on their way into the building to watch the show. Part of the show was the heavy-set bald man with the muscular neck who stood silently, almost in a trance, on the second step, watching Shelly argue with the pickets. But Jeremy Butler would have been of only minor interest if the man standing next to him had been more than three feet tall. Jeremy was wearing a white shirt and a tan windbreaker. Gunther, as always, wore a three-piece suit and a perfectly pressed tie.

  Gunther was the first to see me. He touched Jeremy’s sleeve and Jeremy awoke from his reverie. I joined them on the steps, shook their hands. Their grips were about the same in intensity. Jeremy, the former wrestler, was careful to control his shake, to keep it firm but gentle. Gunther wanted to demonstrate that there was a man inside the little body.

  “I don’t want to appear ungrateful,” I said, “but what is Shelly doing here?”

  “Ellis couldn’t get away,” said Jeremy. “Albers and Gray were not in their office. Stowell and Warren don’t like San Francisco. Dr. Minck heard me calling them and volunteered. I found it impossible to dissuade him.”

  “We’ll live with it. Politics or religion?” I asked, nodding at Shelly, who was arguing with all the pickets at once.

  “Teeth,” said Jeremy.

  “Thanks for coming,” I said. “How was the drive?”

  “Without notable incident,” said Gunther. “If possible, however, on the return I would prefer if Dr. Minck would travel with you.”

  “What’d you do with Dash?”

  “Your cat,” said Gunther, “is under the protection of Mrs. Plaut, who pledged to respect his needs and dignity.”

  I was tempted to say that Dash might well be in mortal danger if he had a sudden taste for canary. Instead, I thanked Gunther and turned to Jeremy.

  “Alice?” I asked.

  “Alice is doing well. She may have twins.”

  “Twins?”

  I tried to imagine two little Jeremys or two Alices … or one of each.

  “I’ll get Shelly,” I said, moving toward the little crowd.

  “… look ridiculous,” Shelly was saying. He was wearing a wrinkled and food-stained plaid sport jacket over a purple short-sleeved pullover shirt. His pants were pulled up to his stomach.

  “Toby,” he said, seeing me. “I’m glad you came. I’m trying to explain something to these people here. You, open your mouth.”

  He was talking to Sloane, who seemed completely confused by this cigar-chomping man who kept pushing his thick glasses back on his nose. Sloane started to protest.

  “Will you just do it?” Shelly said irritably. “I’m trying to make a point here. God, Toby, these people … Okay. Okay. That’s fine. Look at those dentures. They look real to you?”

  A few of the picketers looked at Sloane’s teeth. One woman shook her head somberly.

  “See. See there,” said Shelly triumphantly. “What’d I tell you? You old people need false teeth that look like teeth, not like false teeth. And you need false teeth that don’t smell. Any of you have dogs? You know what a dog’s breath smells like?”

  “Shelly,” I said. “We’ve got to go.”

  “A second, Toby,” he whispered, touching my arm and adjusting his cigar and glasses. “I’m doing missionary work here. You can close your mouth now,” he said to Sloane, who closed his mouth. “I’m going to give each of you a card.” Shelly pulled a stack of crunched business cards from his jacket pocket and began to hand them out. “You write to me and order, first, my Minck Mouth-So-Sweet Powders. You mix them with water, cola, Green River, Squirt, whatever, then gargle with it and drink it. Made especially for old guys with dentures. And if you want a set of dentures that look like real teeth instead of discolored fence posts, make an appointment with my secretary and plan a trip to Los Angeles.”

  “God doesn’t care about such things,” said a bent-over old man holding a picket sign that read: JAPANESE SOLDIERS KILL BABIES. IS THAT SOMETHING TO SING ABOUT?

  “God likes bad breath?” Shelly asked, removing his cigar and pointing it at the man. “God likes silly-looking false teeth? God sent you here to carry those signs and act like jerks, and he sent me to see to it that you look like human beings and don’t smell like cocker spaniels. Think about it.”

  Shelly moved to the man who had complained and pulled the calling card out of his hand.

  “Let’s go, Shel,” I said, taking his arm.

  “All right, all right.”

  “Mouth-So-Sweet Powder?” I asked.

  “Buy some bottles, slap a few labels on, mix some stuff up,” he said.

  “Make an appointment with your secretary?” I went on.

  “I use a high voice when I answer the phone,” he explained.

  We moved up the steps toward Jeremy and Gunther.

  “You’re trying to sell those people the same stuff you’re working on for dog breath, aren’t you?” I whispered.

  “Works just as well on people,” he said, putting on a false smile and waving back at the picketers. “I’ll be careful with it. I haven’t really got it fully developed yet.”

  The show was over. The workers were heading into the building or setting up on the steps. We entered the lobby. It looked further along today, but that might have been either my imagination or better lighting.

  We ducked under some scaffolding and headed for the marble stairway.

  “Nice place,” Shelly said. “What time’s the next decapitation?”

  “Samuel Varney Keel,” said Gunther. “This is distinctly his work. He could never decide in which century he wished to place his faith. His buildings have the rococo design of the sixteenth century, poorly blended with museum memories of Greek and Roman statuary. There, up there, even an bit of ersatz ancient Egypt. And his edifices are pocked with hidden chambers and passages drawn from English Gothic tales.”

  “Interesting,” I said as we hit the top of the stairs where we had found Lorna Bartholomew crying the day before.

  “Keel died quite mad,” said Gunther. “I translated a brochure on San Francisco architects. This is how I know such things.”

  “Looks okay to me,” Shelly said. “Little dark. Some nice paintings of girl
s in the woods, or movie posters, could brighten it up.”

  “What do you think, Jeremy?” I asked as we paused in front of Lundeen’s office.

  “There is an aura of death,” said Jeremy. “I felt it outside. I feel it more strongly in here. It reminds me of the House of Usher.”

  “That would probably have pleased Mr. Keel,” said Gunther.

  Shelly looked as if he were going to say something but decided to keep it to himself. I knocked and Lundeen sang for us to enter.

  Long sheets of paper covered the floor, desk, and table. Lundeen stood over the table looking down, a handkerchief in his hand to dry his palms. Gwen was asleep in an overstuffed chair in a corner, a sheet of paper on her lap, her mouth open.

  Lundeen looked at the four of us. His jaw dropped. He touched his stubbly face, closed his mouth, and pulled himself together.

  “My colleagues,” I said, and introduced everyone. Lundeen was quite an actor. He smiled politely and shook each hand.

  “Welcome, gentlemen,” he said. “Mr. Peters, Gwen and I have spent the night going over the statements you asked us to obtain. Gwen will put it all together after she has some rest. But as far as we can tell, everyone from the custodial staff to me and the Maestro were seen either when the plasterer was being killed or when Lorna and you were attacked. It must have been someone from the outside.”

  “I would like to examine these reports, if I may,” said Gunther.

  “Yes, of course,” Lundeen conceded.

  Shelly had wandered over to the sleeping Gwen. “Good teeth on this girl,” he said appreciatively, coming back to us. “Slight overbite.”

  “What now?” asked Lundeen. “Vera, Marty Passacaglia, the Maestro, and the orchestra will be here in the next few minutes. What do we …?”

  “My colleagues are experienced at this kind of thing,” I said, pretending to look at one of the sheets of paper.

  Lundeen rubbed his eyes and looked at us with disbelief.

  “Got some questions,” I said, looking up. “Last night I ran into the Reverend Souvaine, the guy behind the picketers. He said he’s going to drop a publicity bomb today, that he has proof Stokowski is a liar-that he isn’t Polish, that he can’t play the violin-that he has been fooling around with women for years.”