“Next street over, turn right,” said the oldest woman with a shy smile. “Can’t miss it. You’re W. C. Fields.”
“You have extracted a confession,” he said. “And though my band of weary travelers and I will be in your fair city but an hour or so, I shall always remember the kind reception of your small but character-steeped town.”
“Quite a day for us already and it’s still morning,” said another woman. “Normally we wouldn’t all be out and catch you coming down the street if it weren’t for the shooting.”
“Shooting?”
“About an hour ago,” said the oldest woman. “Some crazy fool, not from town or an Indian, stood right out in the middle of the street shooting a pistol. Shot the window right out of a car just driving a few yards farther than you are now. Driver just sped up. The man in the street kept shooting. Before the state police could get here he was gone, went running to a parked car.”
“What did he look like?” asked Fields.
“Sort of like a … I don’t know … a monkey face, sort of,” said the youngest one.
“Jessie was closest,” said the eldest woman. “She saw best.”
“Had a crazy look in his eyes,” said Jessie. “Looked right in my face and then ran for his car.”
“What kind of car?” asked Fields.
“Don’t know,” said Jesse. “Dark, kind of regular size. I’m not so sure about cars.”
“I think it was a Ford,” said the woman who hadn’t spoken.
“Thank you, ladies,” Fields said, pulling his head back into the car and turning to Gunther. “Drive on, and step on it.”
When we were out of earshot of the ladies, Fields said, “The Chimp’s lost what little was left of his mind. I knew I should have brought my shotgun.”
Gunther drove to the corner, turned right, and found the bank without any trouble, a small white adobe building nestled between a two-story office building with a bakery on the ground floor, and a radio store, in whose small window on a white carpet stood a full-speaker, stand-up, parlor model brown wooden Philco. The sign next to it, in big letters, a different color for each line, read: “The latest in sound technology, pick up shortwave and hear what our boys overseas are listening to, a smart and beautiful addition to any living room.” Next to the magnificent Philco was a shelf of small plastic, wood, and cardboard-covered table models and portables.
Fields was out of the car and through the front door of the bank, with Gunther and myself right behind him. It was one hell of a small bank, the smallest yet. I wondered what had brought Fields through Rifle, Colorado, to make his deposit in the first place.
There was a single teller’s window and a single desk across from it with two chairs in front of it. Behind the teller’s cage stood a woman. At the desk sat another, older woman. There were no customers. There were no offices, though there was a rest room in the rear of the bank next to a barred window. The walls were white and could use another coat, but the place was neat and clean. Behind the woman at the desk hung a portrait of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.
Fields walked quickly to the woman at the desk, who took off her glasses and looked up at us calmly. She was no more than forty, dark and pretty with a slight hook to her nose. She was wearing a white blouse under a gray jacket and matching skirt.
“Yes?” she said.
“The president,” Fields replied.
“I’m the president,” she answered. “Belle Starr.”
“Belle … are you any relation to the original bearer of that name?”
“None,” she said. “My father, president of this bank before me, who fancied that he had a sense of humor, thought it would be funny to name me Belle, after the notorious thief.”
“Asked about your name frequently, are you?”
“At least by every stranger whom I have the pleasure of talking to,” she said.
Fields sat across from her. I motioned to Gunther to sit in the other chair and drew one up from the corner of the room. Belle Starr was a pro. We were all unshaven. Gunther was three feet tall and I looked more than ever like a desperate man aiming for the FBI’s most-wanted list.
“Has a stranger been in here today to make a withdrawal?” asked Fields.
“No,” she said.
Fields smiled. I wondered why Albert Woloski had skipped the bank and chosen to go nuts in the street.
“And yesterday was Sunday. You weren’t open, didn’t open?” Fields went on.
“Right,” she said, showing no open curiosity.
“I want to make a withdrawal on an old account,” Fields said.
“I know our depositors’ names, even those going back many years,” she said. “I worked here when I was twelve. My father was president of the bank, as was his father. We have no account in the name of W. C. Fields.”
“Used a pseudonym,” Fields whispered, holding a finger to his lips and looking across at the teller, who was pretending to write something. “Incognito.”
“Fine,” said Miss Starr. “If you’ll just give me your bankbook …”
“Lost,” said Fields.
“That shouldn’t be a problem,” Belle Starr, bank president, said. “What name did you have the account under and how much did you deposit?”
Fields was smiling as he reached his hand into his pocket for his sheet of paper, and then the smile departed.
“Gone,” he said. “Lost it last night during the … lost it.”
“I’ve got to have a name so I can locate the account and we can check your signature before I can approve the withdrawal,” Belle Starr said sympathetically.
“You can see I’m W. C. Fields,” he said, searching all of his pockets and coming up with cash, some of it in rolls, some of it loose.
He piled objects from his pockets onto Belle Starr’s desk: cash, a wallet, a Ping-Pong ball, a small box of Smith Brothers cough drops, but no note.
“Let me think,” he said, looking up at the ceiling. “Clarence Barnacle.”
Miss Starr shook her head.
“Silas Jones Jorgan?”
“No,” she replied.
In ten minutes of thinking, he came up with Thomas Bladderstone, Uriah Heep, Horatio Fizkin, Samuel Slumkey, Eustace McGargle, Augustus Winterbottom, Harold Bissonette, Ambrose Wolfinger—
“That sounds familiar,” she said.
“Want to hear more?” he asked.
“That might be quite enough,” she said, rising and going to the door next to the teller’s window.
The teller opened the door next to her cage, let President Belle Starr in, and closed the door immediately.
“Progress,” said Fields. “We’ve beaten the scoundrel.”
Miss Starr, glasses firmly perched on her nose, came out of the teller’s door about two minutes later with a large book in her arms. She brought it to her desk as the teller closed the door behind her. Book in front of her, Miss Starr said, “We cross-reference alphabetically every year.” She went down a line of names and numbers. “Here, Ambrose Wolfinger.”
“I’ll take it in cash. Large denominations,” said Fields.
“We’ve got to check the signature now,” she said, returning the book to wherever it had come from behind the teller’s door.
It took her about five minutes this time and she came out with a sheet of paper. She sat and said, “This was in the file for 1919.”
“Bad year for the Germans,” said Fields. “Pretty good year for me.”
She took a form out of her desk and made an X on it.
“Sign there,” she said. “Ambrose Wolfinger.”
Fields signed. She examined the signature carefully and said, “Some slight differences, but I’ve seen thousands of signatures. These match.”
“Splendid,” said Fields, rubbing his hands together and looking at me in triumph. “Close the account.”
Miss Starr nodded and took the sheets to the teller, who looked over at our trio. A look of something like disbelief crossed her face and
disappeared quickly.
Belle Starr was back in less than a minute with a white envelope which she handed to Fields, who opened it. It was full of bills. We sat quietly while he counted.
“One thousand and forty dollars?” he said, looking up.
“Most of that is interest,” she said. “There’s a statement inside.”
Fields took out the statement, looked at it, put it back, and stuffed the envelope and his belongings into his pockets. “Must have been short of cash at the time,” he mumbled.
Miss Starr said nothing. She folded her hands in front of her. I was learning that that was what bankers do to show they were being polite and not going on with the job of running the bank till we left. Fields rose and began to do just that.
Gunther said thank you. Miss Starr smiled after him.
“A little over a thousand dollars,” said Fields, standing in the street. “We beat the Chimp for a thousand dollars. He’s got a bagful, close to half a million, but, by Godfrey, we beat him this time. On to …”
“Panguitch, Utah,” Gunther said. “But I must bathe, shave, and change my clothing.” Gunther looked more than half asleep.
“Quite right, a quick stop at the nearest hostelry,” said Fields.
“And we should have a mechanic examine the automobile,” Gunther said.
“Minor technicalities,” said Fields with a wave of his hand. “We have had one small victory. We shall have another and recover my lucre. And we shall point a finger at that murderous knave the Chimp …”
“Albert Woloski,” I corrected.
“Point a finger at Albert Woloski, who is not worthy of the normal Homo sapiens name, and say, ‘Thou art the man.’ I’ll drive to Utah. Our intrepid Mr. Wherthman will sleep.”
I’d seen enough of Fields’s driving. “I’ll drive,” I said. “After we clean up and have a garage look at the car.”
Fields reluctantly agreed. We found a gas station with a mechanic, who marveled at the car and said he’d look at it while we freshened up. He was thin, not too old, and wore a baseball cap. He was a mass of grease and oil. He recommended the Sundance Hotel half a block away. We each carried a suitcase and headed for the Sundance. An hour later, after sharing a single room with a single bath and changing, we were back at the gas station.
“Did what I could,” he said. “Good car. Should run all right and I can get you windows and do some body work if you give me two, maybe three days.”
“Don’t have the time, my man,” said Fields. “We are on the trail of a fiend.”
The garage man wiped his hands and nodded. Fields paid him a reasonable fee, with every repair listed in clear print. And then we were on our way again, with me driving, Gunther asleep in the backseat in his three-piece suit, and Fields sipping his way across the state line. I followed the map and headed for Panguitch, Utah.
Chapter Ten
The time has come to take the bull by the tail and face the situation.
We had to stop three times on the way to Panguitch, all three times for water and oil for the car. Both were leaking at a slow but steady rate. There were other things wrong with the Caddy, but Fields didn’t want to think about them now. His icebox was safe and he had plenty of time to refill it while Gunther and I grabbed a bite at one of the combination diner/gas stations where we were invariably told by the man who looked under the hood that the car needed some serious attention.
“When we reach Los Angeles,” said Fields. “We’ve no time to dawdle.”
When we had left our third gas station in Utah, Fields said, “You notice how every garage establishment with which we have dealt in this state has an attendant who looks exactly like the previous garage attendant? It’s like that Bugs Bunny cartoon with the turtles who all look alike and plant themselves along the race route to beat out the rabbit. Always admired that family. The turtles. Clever con man using triplets could conjure up some sort of real scam not dissimilar to the rabbit’s plight. I shall ponder the issue.”
Panguitch is located on Route 89 between Capitol Reef National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park. We made it without anyone taking a shot at us, but we had not made good time in spite of Fields’s urging through the speaker in the backseat. He had taken to closing the sliding window between us to cut down on the wind blowing in through the windshield. For most of the trip he had settled into almost a running commentary to me.
He warned me about turns in the road, oncoming traffic, impending lights, speed limits, and the dangers of drinking water. Gunther did not wake up. I drove, slowly, steadily. At one point Fields shouted, “Hurry up. We’ve got a crazy chimpanzee somewhere behind or ahead of us and another bank to get to.”
I tried to pick up speed. Instead I picked up a metallic knocking which sounded as if it would be happy to get far worse. After ten miles, Fields relented and allowed me to slow down.
“Should be driving myself,” said Fields.
It was twilight in Panguitch when we clanked into the town, another small town like the ones we had been in before. The main difference was that this one, located between two national parks, was designed for tourists. There were people in the streets, and the stores, restaurants, and bars—called “saloons” now that we were officially in the West—were open. Almost everything looked open but the bank which, according to the sign on the door, closed down at four in the afternoon and opened in the morning at nine.
We checked into a hotel that was supposed to remind its customers of the wild days of the past. The walls were wood. The beams on the ceiling were exposed. The chairs in the lobby were dark, gnarled wood with cushions. But it was the walls that got to Fields. They were filled with the mounted heads of animals.
“Jack Barrymore had hideous things like that in his house,” said Fields. “Don’t think he shot one of them. They always gave me the heebie-jeebies. What is that thing, a skunk?”
“That’s a wolverine,” the dour woman behind the desk said, looking over our odd trio and turning the book for us to sign in.
“Any of those things in the bedrooms?” he asked as he signed the register with a flourish.
“No,” she said. “Payment in advance. Three dollars for each room.”
Fields dug in his pocket, came up with a handful of bills, found a ten, and handed it to her.
“Keep fifty cents for yourself,” he said. “A small gratuity in exchange for your assurance that my room will not look like Buffalo Bill’s slaughterhouse.”
She was thin, dark, probably some Indian in her and lacking in a sense of humor or a sense of anger, at least any she showed. She handed us the keys.
“You wouldn’t happen to know the name of your bank president,” Fields asked.
“Douglas Mutter,” she said.
“Could you get him on the phone for me?” asked Fields with a smile.
“Nope,” she said.
“The reason?” asked Fields.
“Off hunting, be gone most of the night,” she said.
“You’re sure,” said Fields.
“Went with my husband,” she said. “No business of yours, but my guess is they’ll be doing more drinking than hunting.”
“Drinking is a much more humane endeavor,” said Fields.
“Yeah,” she said. “You kill yourself slow instead of killing the animal fast. My Alex didn’t start drinking much till they told us our boy, Robby, was missing on one of those islands in the Pacific.”
“And you?” Fields asked. “Do you take solace in the occasional drink or two?”
“I have the Lord,” she said.
I expected a quip from Fields. There was none.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I hope the lad turns up safe and sound. Is there a vice-president of the bank?”
“Alex,” she said. “I run the hotel pretty much, and he works at the bank.”
“Then we’ll simply have to wait till the gates of gold open in the morning,” said Fields.
“Bank opens at nine,” she said. “Providing
Doug Mutter and Alex or either one of them is sober enough. A good dose of Fletcher’s Castoria and fifteen or twenty minutes in the bathroom with the newspaper usually sets Alex right. Either way, one of them always manages to be here on time with a pressed suit and smile. They always manage.”
“Pardon me,” said Gunther. “Could you direct me to a reliable garage that might still be open?”
“Andy Swerling’s place is down to the left two blocks, turn right,” she said.
“I’ll take the car there as soon as I get my things in my room,” he said.
“And I shall freshen up and visit yon saloon,” said Fields, pointing through the hotel window at a place across the street. “Do they, perchance, have a pool table?”
“They got a pool table,” the clerk said, looking at the names Fields had signed in the book. “You’re W. C. Fields?”
“I am,” Fields admitted with a humble smile.
“The gospel singer?”
“No, madam,” he said, holding his hat and his temper. “You are thinking of Raymond W. Fields of Wichita, Kansas, who engages not only in the hideous profession of gargling, which he calls music, but insists on spewing forth ditties suggesting such unnatural things as temperance and abstinence from worldly pleasures and satisfying dysfunctions.”
The woman simply stared at Fields till he gave up.
“Meet me at the saloon,” he said to us as we moved across the lobby to the stairway. “We’ll have a drink or two and some petit fours of Ritz crackers topped with patriotic squares of Prem.”
“Woloski,” I reminded him as we walked down a corridor, searching for our rooms.
“The Chimp? Crazy son of a bitch is probably somewhere in the desert in Nevada, shooting at prairie dogs in the moonlight.”
“Or he could have gotten here before us and worked his broken-finger scam at the bank,” I said. “Or he could be sitting outside somewhere waiting to take a shot at you.”
“Let him try,” said Fields. “The blood of generations of my ancestors rises within me, liberally mixed with more than half a century of alcoholic refreshment. My dander is up—whatever that means,” he said, looking at Gunther, who was too exhausted to even listen.
A Fatal Glass of Beer Page 15