The Pitiful Player (A Nick Williams Mystery Book 14)

by Frank W. Butterfield

  Carson said into the phone. "Did you get that?" He looked at me with an expression of annoyance. After a couple of beats, Carson said, "Good. Justifiable homicide. Rogers broke into the house. He was shot by..." He looked up at Carter again.

  "Anita Wilson."

  "Get that?" He waited and nodded. "Yeah. She's a lady private dick. Got a license and everything." He smirked at me.

  I didn't respond.

  "Works for Consolidated Security up in San Francisco. You know. The outfit that's all queers." He had the decency to look out at the dark sky through the window as he snickered. We were standing in the kitchen.

  For whatever reason, Carson, who'd been the detective who showed up at John Gilbraith's house on Wednesday night, had been sent out after Mike had called the police. I knew that L.A.P.D. had districts or zones like the San Francisco police did. I was sure that we weren't in the same district as Gilbraith's house, although we might have been.

  Carson had, to his credit, listened respectfully as Mike had walked him through the series of events. He'd talked to Anita, almost respectfully, but with some condescension in his voice. It was almost as if he wanted to believe her but hadn't quite made up his mind to do so.

  An officer, last name Lee, had been dutifully making notes, following the detective around as he talked to everyone. While Carson was on the phone, Officer Lee was standing nearby, trying to look disinterested but smirking at all of Carson's comments as the lieutenant called in his initial report.

  "Right. You can call back over here for at least an hour or so."

  He looked at Carter again who said, "Crestview 4-2210."

  Once Carson had repeated that to whoever he was talking to, he hung up and looked around. "This is one fancy place. Belong to you, Mr. Williams?"

  "In a way. It's owned by my trust."

  "Trust? Huh. Sounds like some sort of tax shelter scheme. Maybe I should call in the Internal Revenue."

  I shrugged. "Sure."

  Carson narrowed his eyes at me. "I just might, at that."

  Mike, who had been leaning against the wall with his arms crossed and watching Carson call in his report, snorted and said, "Cut the crap, Lieutenant. If there's a tax dodge going on, that has to do with Bank of America. And knowing them, there's nothing going on. So call the Internal Revenue. Have a field day, if it floats your boat." He shifted and continued, "Now, would you like for us to tell you why Juan Zane was here in the first place?"

  Carson took out a Camel and lit it up. "Sure. Go right ahead. I'm sure it's all about someone sucking someone's dick."

  Mike shook his head. "Nope, as entertaining as that might be for you, it's about the big narcotics distribution ring that none of you bozos have been able to break for fifteen years."

  Carson took a puff and exhaled. "That so?"

  I nodded. "Yeah. That's so. We can tell you how it operates and who's involved. Looks like it's gonna be your lucky day."

  Carson raised an eyebrow and said, "Well, Rhonda, have at it." He smirked. "That is what you all call yourselves, isn't it? Rhonda? Mary?"

  Officer Lee guffawed and then coughed.

  I sighed. "If you think you can actually listen for five minutes, I can break it down for you real quick. Otherwise, we'll just call the Times and the L.A. Examiner and tell them how it works."

  Carson took out another Camel and lit it using the end of his first cigarette. Once that was done, he dropped the first one on the floor and stubbed it out with his shoe. "Go ahead. Tell me all about it."

  I took a deep breath and said, "It starts with a phone call."

  "Really?" smirked the lieutenant.

  Mike said, "Forget it, Nick. Maybe there's someone working narcotics who would be interested."

  Carson shrugged and said, "If you'll excuse me, I have a murder to wrap up." He dropped his second cigarette on the floor, only half-smoked like the first one, and stubbed it out. He then nodded at Officer Lee and made his way into the living room. "I like 'em this way. No loose ends."

  Tom, who had been standing in the living room asked, "You don't care why Juan Zane took the time to drive up Beverly Glen and came here, to this house?"

  Carson shook his head. "Nope. Breaking and entering and shooting first. He got what he deserved. I've got other things to take care of. This is simple. I like that. My chief will like that. In case you haven't heard, juvenile delinquency is everywhere. That's what the papers are complaining about, morning and evening. This story is gossip column stuff. Notorious fag breaks into house of even more notorious fag." By then, he was standing in front of the painting, with its two bullet holes. He took out another Camel and lit it. He grinned. "You know the best part of this story?" None of us replied and he didn't seem interested in any answer. "It was a goddam girl who saved your faggot asses. That's what the papers are gonna write about." He took a long drag on his cigarette, exhaled, and picked a piece of tobacco from between his yellow teeth. "I'm gonna love talking about this story when I get back to the station."

  Tom asked, "This is the West L.A. division. You work Central. Why are you even here?"

  "Who are you, again?" asked Carson.

  Mike replied, "He works for us."

  "Yeah, but you're not from San Francisco. You're from around here."

  Tom nodded. "That's right."

  Carson looked at me. "You doing business down here?"

  I nodded. "Yeah."

  He frowned. "I better not run into any of your queers again."

  "Fine," replied Mike. "But why are you here?"

  Carson took a long drag on his cigarette. "Because I'd already been exposed to your buddy here." He pointed at me. "The captain at West L.A., once he found out whose house this was, called my captain. And my captain thought it'd be good for me to make sure nothing else was going on. And, since nothing else is, we'll be done here in less than an hour and you all can go back to doin' whatever the fuck you were doin'."

  With that, he looked around for an ashtray. Seeing none handy, he walked up the steps and flicked his butt down on the stone floor and pressed his scuffed-up brown brogue on it and grinned over at me as he did.

  . . .

  The lieutenant was right. It only took an hour for the body to be removed. The only reason it took an hour was because of the time it took for the boys in white coats to make it up the hill and find the house. While we waited, we all stood out on the patio with Mike leaning against the frame of the sliding-glass door, keeping an eye on Carson and Lee.

  Once the boys in white were gone, Carson flicked his card at me and said, "Call me if any other queers come up and try to storm this powder room." He and Officer Lee left with a chuckle between them and that was that.

  We all gathered in the living room. Hans, who had been in the master bathroom, had somehow thought the gunshots were champagne bottles popping since that's what capitalists do, apparently, and had emerged confused and indignant about the whole matter. We'd sent him and Oscar home before the police arrived.

  As everyone helped themselves to beer, wine, or bourbon, I looked at Tom and asked, "What the hell was that all about?"

  He shrugged. "I can't tell you. I've worked with some hard-ass cops before, but I've never seen that."

  Mike, who had lit up a cigar, puffed on it and said, "There's not much to it, Nick. Carson was probably hacked off at being sent up here. He was also preening like a goddam peacock, doing a tough-guy routine that was for Officer Lee's eyes, primarily." He held up his left hand and wiggled his ring finger. "Did you see?"

  I nodded. "Yeah. No wedding band."

  Anita said, "Who would marry that guy?"

  We all laughed at that.

  Mike walked into the kitchen and said, "I take him at his word on just about everything he said. He couldn't be bothered about narcotics. The case, as far as justifiable homicide is concerned, is an open-and-shut matter. His captain will be happy to tell his commander that the case is closed." Mike re-emerged from the kitchen with a tumbler of bourbon in his
right hand and his cigar in his mouth. "Pretty straightforward."

  Carter, who was looking at the holes in the painting, asked, "So where does that leave us?"

  Mike took a sip of his bourbon and said, "I don't think there's any question who killed William Fraser."

  "Really?" I asked. I still had plenty of questions.

  Nodding, Mike said, "Sure. It wasn't Juan Zane. He came up here to protect someone. And that someone wasn't the butler."

  "Humphries," said Carter.

  "Who else could it be?" asked Anita.

  I said, "For a while today, I thought it might have been some rogue Bureau agents down here but Walter cleared that up."

  Walter shook his head. "No, Mr. Williams. All I said was that William Fraser told me he hadn't had any contact with them back in March. I never asked about any recent contact."

  "Fair enough," I said.

  Tom piped up. "Look. There's one aspect to this case that I think has been kicked aside. And that's probably my fault."

  "What?" asked Mike.

  "Fraser was strung out on something besides Mary Jane. That's why he kept coming to the beach. He told me, more or less, that he'd been smoking reefer. But he didn't act like anyone on pot that I've ever seen before. And I think it was bothering him."

  "What could it've been?" asked Carter.

  Howie said, "There's a kid in one of my classes who told me he'd used a new kind of marijuana cigarettes, pre-rolled, that had been sprayed with an anesthetic called Sernyl."

  "What did it do?" asked Tom.

  "He said it gave him euphoria. But he said that the best way to take it was to only smoke about a third of the cigarette at a time, otherwise he said he couldn't function. He'd start hallucinating and would lose time, stuff like that. He offered me one and I turned him down. It sounded scary."

  I asked, "Do you know if he got that from Baldwin 2602?"

  Howie shrugged. "I don't. He never told me."

  Looking at Anita, I asked, "Were you able to figure out the menu?"

  She nodded. "Some of it. Monday is for marijuana. Tuesday is for heroin. Wednesday is for some sort of sleeping pill that I've never heard of. Friday was for something called P.C.P. I don't know what that is."

  Howie said, "That's the chemical name for Sernyl."

  "Were all the prices ten dollars?" I asked Anita.

  She shook her head. "Monday was always ten. Tuesday was twenty, which seems like a lot of money, although I don't know. Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were five."

  "What was Thursday?" asked Greg, who was sitting on the floor by the fireplace.

  Anita shrugged. "I never could figure that out."

  "How did you figure out the others?" That was Mike.

  "Monday was obvious. I had a call for Tuesday and the caller used the word, 'horse,' so I knew that was heroin. The same with Wednesday and Friday. It was what the caller said that gave me the clue."

  I asked, "How were those kinds of calls explained to you?"

  Anita smiled. "We had a small book for certain numbers. For instance, there was a Crestview number where we were told to say, 'No one is home. Can I take a message?' That sounds normal, right? But Mrs. Peterson, she trained me yesterday, she said that it had to be said in exactly that way. I only took a couple of those calls. The callers were men and they left messages with just their phone numbers. But there was nothing in the book for Baldwin 2602—"

  "Very smart," said Mike.

  Anita nodded. "Yes. Mrs. Peterson seemed a little annoyed by those calls. She said that it was for some sort of casting agency but that the callers never sounded like actors to her and that they said some really crazy things. My second Baldwin call was from a man. While she was training me, Mrs. Peterson was plugged into my line and could hear the caller. She would quietly prompt me, if I needed it. So, the second Baldwin call was from a man and he said he was looking for work on Tuesday. I took his phone number, like I was told, and when I confirmed it back to him, he asked me if Tuesday was for horse. I looked over at Mrs. Peterson. She just rolled her eyes and told me to disconnect, so I did. She explained that if they started talking about weird things, like a horse or a woman's name, to just get the phone number and the day and put that on the form and hang up on them. She seemed to think that there was something strange about the calls but she didn't appear to be worried about them. Just annoyed."

  "But they're selling more than just five drugs, right?" That was Greg.

  Anita nodded. "If I stay there another few days, I could probably figure out the other codes. On one of my calls, a woman asked if I had a day that might be better. Mrs. Peterson told me to write down 'BB' but she also laughed and said that she didn't understand what could be better if they never asked for a specific day in the first place."

  I looked at Howie who was nodding. He said, "That's the code for the black pills that keep you up."

  Tom said, "Black Beauties."

  Howie and Anita both nodded.

  I said, "We could talk about this all night but we still don't know who killed William."

  Walking over to sit on the white brick ledge and next to Greg, Mike said, "Yes, we do. You never let me explain."

  "Sorry, Mike."

  He grinned. "That's fine. Look. Juan Zane came over to kill you. That much is obvious."

  Carter walked over to the chair where I was sitting and put his hand on my shoulder. "How do you know he was after Nick?"

  "Who else could it be?" asked Mike.

  "Might have been me," replied Carter. "I'm the one who interrupted their lovemaking. And I'm the one who said that we had to leave."

  Mike nodded. "Yeah, but, from what I understand, Juan Zane could have anyone in town that he wanted. He didn't come here because he was rebuffed. He came here to kill the person who was threatening to pull down his little empire. Walter? Tell everyone what you found yesterday."

  Walter, who was leaning against Howie's shoulder, sat up and said, "Um, I made some inquiries and discovered that Mr. Zane, Mr. Rogers, that is, has a steady income in the form of bearer bond deposits to his Mutual National Bank account."

  Tom asked, "How did you find that out?" He sounded impressed.

  I looked over at Tom and, before Walter could reply, said, "There are some questions we don't wanna know the answers to."

  He grinned at me and said, "Message received, loud and clear."

  I looked at Walter. "So, he's not living on a trust or an annuity?"

  Walter shook his head. "At one time, his account at Mutual National was pretty healthy, but he was wiped out in the 1937-38 recession. He was heavily invested in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudanese Railway, which was later discovered to be a Ponzi scheme. Most of the shareholders were Americans and when the recession hit, too many of them wanted to sell their shares. Mr. Rogers was left with about ten thousand dollars after everything was settled. But in 1940, he started making large cash deposits. By the end of the war, the deposits started showing up in the form of bearer bonds."

  "No one at the bank thought that was strange?" asked Anita.

  Walter shrugged. "Mutual National is now looking into matters, or so I've heard." He grinned slightly.

  Carter, who sat down on the floor by my legs and put his head on my lap, said, "So, who killed William?"

  Mike replied, "It can only be one person. John Taylor. Juan Zane's confidant, right-hand man, and one-time lover. And the man who has been running the narcotics business for a while now."

  Carter asked, "Why not the butler? Or the new kid?"

  "When Chief Anderson called me on Sunday and told me to tell Nick to keep away from the case, one thing he told me was that the body had been moved. After everything you've said, I don't think Humphries could have done it. As for the new kid, what did he have to gain?"

  "Maybe William was in love with or making the moves on John Taylor," replied Carter.

  Mike shook his head. "John Taylor is good for two kinds of people. The fresh meat that he gathers for Juan Zane and w
ho, if they're lucky, he'll help get into the movies. William Fraser didn't need that kind of help. He was set. He'd been cast in a movie being produced by a man with access to deep pockets. Fraser knew that Nick had to keep him employed and busy because that was the deal Nick made with the U.S. Attorney in San Francisco."

  "What deal?" asked Tom.

  Mike grinned. "In order to not be extradited to England to face criminal charges for that little thing that happened in Hong Kong, the U.S. Attorney in San Francisco made Nick promise two things. One of those things was to hire William Fraser."

  "What was the other one?" asked Tom.

  "Something that's not relevant to this case." Mike's voice was cutting and clear.

  Tom grinned. "Got that message, too. Loud and clear."

  "You said that John Taylor is good for two kinds of people. One is the fresh meat kind. What's the other?" That was Carter.

  "The other is anyone who wants to buy narcotics. Whoever started that system was not John Taylor. But he's now in charge, as Nick overheard. And my guess is that William figured out how the system worked. That's why he's dead."

  "Then why hasn't John Taylor come after Nick?" That was Greg.

  Mike looked at me. "He just did and he sent Juan Zane to do it for him."

  "What?" That was Carter, Greg, and Tom, in unison.

  "Sure," said Mike. "John Taylor was Juan Zane's connection to the real world." Mike crossed his arms and stretched out his long legs. "My guess is that John Taylor got the old guy riled up today. Or maybe someone from Mutual National called Juan Zane and told him that inquiries were being made about his accounts and the deposits being made."

  Carter shook his head. "John Taylor had to know there would be at least two of us here, if not more."

  Mike nodded and smiled grimly. "You bet. This gets Juan Zane out of the way."

  "How did you figure all of this out?" asked Howie.

  Mike shrugged. "I didn't. Or, what I mean is, that I had an inkling but I wasn't sure. I knew if I just said I knew that we'd all figure it out together."

  I could see Howie roll his eyes. And I agreed with him. But Mike was right. What we'd uncovered together was most likely the only possibility. As I thought about that, I could feel a knot in my stomach forming. "What's John Taylor doing right now, Mike?"