“The other night,” I said. “What did you see?”
“Police asked me this,” he said. “I’ll tell you the same. I was standing about here. Even with the buzz saw, I heard the shot. I knew it was a shot. I’ve heard lots of shots.”
“Army?” I asked.
“Yeah, a grunt. Infantry. Got this,” he said, touching his leg, “getting off a landing barge on a little island near Guam. Didn’t even make it out of the water. Jap shell hit about then yards away from me, went in, blew. Never got to the island.”
He didn’t look a minute older than eighteen.
“The shot,” I reminded him.
“Oh yea. I heard it. “I was standing there with Meagan and Joyce. I looked up, saw Gwen running down. Saw this guy up there. Turban, beard. I think he had a gun in his hand.”
“A pellet gun?” I asked.
“Don’t think so,” he said. “Looked bigger, heavier. Anyway, he came running down the stairs behind Gwen. I knew something bad had happened. Just had the feeling. Her tiger tail was wagging. You know?”
“I know.”
“The man?”
“Stage right and gone,” he said. “If I could run, I would have gone for him.”
“He had a gun,” I said.
“Yeah, right. Well maybe I wouldn’t have gone for him but I like to think I would have.”
“Did the guy with the beard look familiar?”
“Well maybe, yeah, sort of,” he said plunging his hands into his pockets. But I can’t place him.”
“Keep trying,” I said.
“I will,” he said.
He rubbed his hands together, took in a breath and picked up the box again.
I found Pete Bouton standing in the wings to the right of the stage. His arms were folded and he was watching his brother slowly go over a number in the act, one that involved swords and a colorful big box that was about the size and shape of an outhouse.
“High,” Pete said. “Anything?”
“Not yet,” I said.
He looked out on the stage.
“Want to know the real trick?’ he asked. The real skill?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Timing, practice, confidence, making it look easy. Don’t let them see you sweat. We used to work together on stage, but I’m more comfortable making things work, watching from the wings.”
“You were in the wings when Cunnningham died?”
“I was. I didn’t hear the shot, but I did hear people talking behind me. I turned. There were four or five people. Joyce, Meagan, Al Grinker, looking toward the stairs leading up to the dressing room. They tell me Gwen ran down. They tell me a man in a beard and a turban came out of the dressing room with a gun.”
“But you didn’t see this?”
“Not from here,” he said. “Just the people looking up.”
I looked back. I could see the bottom of the steps but nothing of the upper landing where the dressing rooms were.
I looked at Bouton who was definitely worried.
“I don’t like this dinner thing tonight,” he said. “When Ott showed up here after the shooting, he was wild, threatened Harry. But my brother doesn’t back away from a challenge.”
“Ott’s got some kind of surprise,” I said.
“So has Harry,” he said.
I talked to everyone I could find who had been there when Cunningham was shot. They all told pretty much the same story. The only difference, and it was a big one, was that some of them said they thought they saw the man with the beard and gun come down the stairs and either go into the shadows stage right, through the door to the outside, or saw him move the other way outside the dressing room. Some said he was holding a gun. Some said he wasn’t.
I went up the stairs, passing a girl in blue tights. Her hair was pulled back and tied in a kind of tail. She reminded me of Ann Miller, which reminded me of Ann Preston who used to be Ann Peters.
“You looked cute in that costume the other night,” she said as she passed.
“Cute is what I aim for,” I said.
There were two doors beyond the dressing room where Cunningham had been killed. One was a closet with no windows. The other was a storage room with no windows. Around the corner was a dead-end alcove. The alcove was small. Over the railing were rungs fitted into the wall, a ladder down to the stage level and up to the roof.
I didn’t bother to climb down. It would just take me where I had been. I went up, pushed the trapdoor open, climbed out, and looked around. Nothing much to see. I walked around the roof to see if there was some way onto it. There was—a fire escape. So, the guy in the turban could have climbed up the fire escape and through the trapdoor. I checked my watch. Useless. It had been my father’s. It kept its own time. I had another stop I wanted to make but I wasn’t sure I had time. I had a tuxedo to put on, shoes to polish, maybe a murder to stop.
I went back down the stairs, waved at Raymond Ramutka who leaned against the wall near the rear door, probably remembering the score of Tosca.
I decided to make a quick stop.
I checked the phone booth and found a listing for The Pelle-grino Agency, Robert Cunningham, confidential investigations. The address was on San Vicente. When I got there, I walked into The Pellegrino Bar.
The Pellegrino Bar wasn’t exactly a dump. The neighborhood was just good enough to keep it from getting a label like that. It was small, dark, clean, and smelled of beer, even when no one was drinking it. The dark windows were glowing with neon beer signs, one of which for Falstaff flickered in the first stages of death.
Early afternoon. One customer at the bar. None in the four booths to the right. Customer and barkeep looked over at me when I came in. The customer, short, round, and needing a shave, was about sixty. He was wearing a gray cap worn off to the side. He wasn’t trying to be rakish. He looked as if he were about to burp. Both of his plump hands went to the glass of beer in front of him as if he were afraid I was going to snatch it from him.
The bartender was a woman. She was huge, sad of face, and did not look particularly happy to see another customer come in. A voice on the radio said the British had crossed the Odon River after beating back nine Nazi attacks. The bartender changed the station. The Dorsey brothers’ band was halfway through I Should Care.
I went to the bar. The bartender moved slowly in front of me, hands on the bar. She was supposed to say, “What’ll it be?”
But she didn’t. She didn’t say anything. Just glowered at me.
“Pepsi, ice,” I said.
“And?” she asked.
“What makes you think there’s an ‘and’?”
“Three in the afternoon, weekday, you order a Pepsi,” she said.
“Maybe I just came for the quiet surroundings and friendly atmosphere,” I said. “Maybe I’m just thirsty.”
“And maybe I’m standing back here waiting for Hal Wallis to come in and discover me,” she said.
“Cunningham,” I said. “Telephone book says this is his office.”
“Back booth over there,” she said. “Paid five bucks a month to sit there a few hours a week and for me to take messages. I answer the phone ‘Pellegrino.’” If they asked for Cunningham, I let him know or took a message.”
“You’re using the past tense,” I said.
“Because he’s dead,” she said.
“Cops have been here, right?” I asked.
She just looked at me. “One nasty son-of-a-bitch,” was all she said.
“Red hair, bad skin,” I guessed.
“That’s the one.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Okay,” she said, leaning toward me over the bar. “Now I know what game we’re playing. I’ll get your Pepsi. You decide on the going rate for answers.”
She moved down the bar. The pudgy drunk held up his hand for service. She ignored him. He burped loudly. He almost lost his cap.
“You’re not a cop,” she said.
“I’m not a cop,” I agreed, reaching fo
r the Pepsi. In spite of two cubes of ice, it was still warm.
“He left two wooden fruit crates full of stuff,” she said.
“Did the cop look through them?”
“He did.”
“He take them?”
“Nope.”
“I’d like to look through them.”
“Not a problem,” she said, smiling a smile I did not like, a smile that was about to cost Harry Blackstone some money.
“Ten bucks.”
“Forty,” she said.
“Thirty,” I countered.
“I’ve got no time for games,” she said.
I looked at the drunk who was about to fall off his stool. I could see that she had a lot to do. I opened my wallet and counted out forty dollars, all tens. She took them, tucked them into a pocket and said, “The Pepsi’s on me. Come on.”
She went to the end of the bar and pointed at the rear booth, Cunningham’s office. I sat in it with my Pepsi and faced the front door. The dark wooden table was a jumble of rings left by countless glasses and the burn marks of enough cigarettes to kill the population of Moscow, Idaho.
In less than a minute, she came from behind the bar with a crate in her hands. She placed it on the table in front of me and then went back for a second crate. Then she moved behind the bar again, leaving me looking at a full-color picture on the end of the crate of a smiling blonde with frizzy short hair and impossibly white teeth. The blonde was holding a glass of orange juice and above her head were the words, “Sun Drenched Direct From Florida.”
I spent the next hour drinking warm Pepsi, watching the drunk, exchanging glances of less-than-love with the bartender, and discovering something interesting among the letters, notes, candy wrappers, and bills that were the legacy of Robert Cunningham.
I discovered that Cunningham had lots of bills that didn’t look as if they had been paid. I also learned that he couldn’t spell. Examples included: instatution, sirvalence, proseed, cab fair, and naturul.
If there was anything worth taking, Cawelti had probably taken it. But I kept looking. I almost missed it. A scrap of paper torn out of a notebook. It was unwrinkled and might have fallen to the bottom of the pile when Cawelti was going through the contents of the boxes. Cunningham’s handwriting was as bad as his spelling, but I could make it out:
A Thousand and One Nights, Wild, Thursday at eight. Culumbia.
Cunningham had said “Wild on Thursday” to Gwen before he died. Tomorrow was Thursday. I had a pretty good idea of what it meant, but I didn’t have time now to check. I folded the sheet, put it in my wallet, finished my third Pepsi, made a trip to the gents’ and waved good-bye to the barkeep and the drunk, who smiled.
I had a tuxedo to put on, a party to go to, and a magician to protect.
Chapter 11
A number of items are placed on the table. No limit to the number of items. You work with an accomplice who goes to the corner and covers his or her eyes or even goes in another room. The victim points to an object on the table. The accomplice returns. The magician points to each object saying nothing and pointing in the same way. The accomplice correctly identifies the object as the one selected when the magician points to it. Solution: Be sure there are objects of a number of colors, including black. Point to a black item as you go around only if the next item is the correct one. If the victim has chosen a black item, it makes no difference, just so the accomplice knows that the chosen object will be pointed to after the first item the magician points to.
—From the Blackstone, The Magic Detective radio show
“YOU LOOK ELEGANT,” Anita said, stepping back.
We were in her apartment, and I was standing in front of her full-length mirror.
She was either blind or being kind.
The stiff in the mirror looked like the uncomfortable bodyguard for a mobster. The tux was black and pressed. The black bow tie had been tied perfectly by Anita. My shoes were shined. My hair was brushed back and glistening with Vitalis. It was my face that gave me away. It was the middle-aged face of an ex-boxer who had taken at least eight or ten too many blows to the face. I had never been a boxer, but I had lost more than my share of battles. My nose was flat. My cheeks were rough, and you didn’t have to look too closely to see a small white scar over my right eye and another one just left of my chin. It was a good face for someone in my business.
“First time,” I said, looking at myself.
“Not bad,” said Anita, moving to her couch and reaching for the glass of iced tea she had left on the nearby table.
“Hard to breathe,” I said.
“It’s supposed to be tight,” she said. “Sleek lines. Elegant. You planning to find a place for a gun under that jacket? It would show.”
“No gun,” I said.
Phil would have a gun. Phil could shoot. I owned a gun, a .38. I kept it in the glove compartment of the Crosley. I seldom carried it. The people I might try to protect were in as much danger from me as from some bad guy with a grudge.
“You’re a scrapper, not a shooter,” Shelly had once consoled me when I had been shot by my own gun. “Some of us are born with the knack,” Shelly had said.
That was before Shelly had shot and killed his wife with a crossbow in a public park.
“You want to throw something on fast,” I said, turning to her.
Anita sipped some iced tea and shook her head.
“I’m tired. I can’t throw something on fast, and it’s a little late to ask me,” she said.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“And I thought you said it was for men only?”
“It is,” I said, “but I have clout with all the wrong people.”
“I pass,” she said.
Anita was wearing a robe, green, maybe silk. I think it had belonged to her former husband. It was too big on her. I didn’t ask.
“I’m going to listen to Baby Snooks and The Aldrich Family and get to bed early,” she said. “Do me a favor Toby.’”
“What is it?”
She got up, walked over to me, put her arms around my neck, and kissed me. When we finished the kiss, she said, “Survive.”
“That’s my plan,” I said.
I got to the Roosevelt just before six-thirty and parked half a block away on the street. Not much of a space, but enough for the Crosley, which is a little bit longer than a refrigerator lying on its side.
The lobby was bustling with men in tuxedoes, men and women in military uniforms, a few elegant young women with elegant older gentlemen of a comfortable ilk. My tux-clad group was in a corner behind a wall of low potted palms. The wall didn’t protect us from glances and a few stares.
Phil looked uncomfortable, his thumb wrestling with his collar, his face pink and turning red. Shelly somehow managed to look rumpled, probably because his tux was a size or two too large. Pancho Vanderhoff, looking reasonably dapper, gave me a pleading look. Jeremy’s tux made him look even larger than he was, but he seemed reasonably comfortable, as did Gunther. We had all, except for Gunther who owned his own, borrowed our tuxedoes from Hy’s For Him. I had spent occasional nights alone in the dark aisles of Hy’s lying in wait to catch occasional employees who snuck back in after hours to cart off merchandise. This entitled me to a discount and the loan of a suit from time to time, on the condition that I returned it without a spot so Hy could clean, press it, and sell it for new.
Jeremy and Gunther were sitting. The rest were standing.
“You’re late,” Phil said.
“I’m on time,” I said.
“Let’s go over it one more time,” Phil said, tugging his collar.
We went through the plan, each of us saying where we’d be sitting and what was expected of us.
“Okay,” said Phil. “Let’s go in.”
Phil had arranged for the door to the small ballroom to be locked. We walked down a corridor, made a right turn, moved down the hall and turned right into the kitchen. The temperature went up about twenty degrees. Coo
ks were cooking. Waiters were waiting. They paused to look at us as we marched single file past ovens and steel-topped tables with Phil in the lead.
The ballroom was empty. Phil checked to be sure the tables were where they were supposed to be. When he was satisfied, he turned his collar and moved to the small platform against the wall. There was a table with a set-up for two on top of a white tablecloth that hung to the floor. A wide solid dark wooden podium stood to the right of the table on the platform set back almost to the wall. There was a rectangle of blue cloth pinned to the front of the podium; it had gold trim and the words “Greater Los Angeles Association of Magicians” stitched onto it in matching gold. Phil checked the podium, checked under the tablecloth.
“Jeremy, no one comes through the kitchen but waiters,” he said. “Understood?”
“Perfectly,” Jeremy said.
“Look for bulges,” Phil said. “Weapons.”
Jeremy nodded.
“Everybody sit down,” he said.
They went to their assigned seats. Phil and I went to the ballroom door. Phil checked his watch. We could hear voices on the other side of the door. A few people tried the handle.
“You’d think you’d find one magician out of the sixty out there who could open a locked door,” I said.
Phil tugged his collar angrily, grunted, and opened the door. I stood on one side. He stood on the other. They came in one at a time, handing us their invitations. Phil and I checked for weapons. The magicians were of all ages, but mostly over fifty, and wore their tuxedoes as if they put one on every night, which some of them probably did. They were fat, thin, bushy-haired and bald. They had beards, mustaches, or were clean shaven. They chatted their way in, smiled as if they had a secret, and made their way to their tables. A few table-hopped. Some nodded across the room or held up a hand.
Ott, in a white tuxedo, didn’t come in till everyone was seated. In his hand was the black satchel he had shown to me and Phil, the one containing ten thousand dollars. He was accompanied by his assistant, the little guy named Leo, who took Ott’s black cape when Ott was sure that all eyes were on him. The cape came off with a swirl. There was a beat of silence as the assistant took a seat near the door and Ott marched to the platform without looking at any of his fellow magicians. He sat in one of the two chairs, placed the satchel on the floor next to his chair, and looked at the empty seat next to him, Blackstone’s seat. Then Ott looked at the door.
Now You See It: A Toby Peters Mystery Page 11