“And Doc Minck just had some bad news,” she said. “Not clairvoyance this time, Tobias, just looking at his face.”
“Right again, Juanita,” I said, hoping she would go back to her taco and wipe the spot of guacamole off her chin, which she did, but it didn’t stop her from talking.
“Who was it?” she said.
“Who was who?” I asked before I could stop myself. I nodded to Manny for the usual.
“The man who made the call. The killer. He was in the room. Somebody talked to him, helped him. He’s dark, determined. And he wants more.”
“More what? Money?” I asked.
“What are you two talking about?” Shelly asked.
“Who knows?” Juanita said with a shrug. “I can’t control this stuff. I told you a hundred times. It comes. I tell you what I see. Bingo. Bango. You believe me. You don’t believe me. We’re friends so I don’t charge you. And one more thing. You’re going to a wedding. Soon.”
“Whose?” I asked
“Don’t ask,” she said, opening her wide mouth for a bite of taco. “Just don’t ask. Hold it. There’s a black bag, like a doctor’s bag, full of money.”
“I don’t suppose you could tell me where it is,” I said as Manny brought us our tacos and drinks and went back to his stool to smoke, read Collier’s magazine, and listen to the radio, which was playing music so quietly I wasn’t sure it was on.
“No,” she said. “Wish I could. If I could do that, you think I’d be in a dinky office in an old office building? I’d be finding money all over the place. Not that I’m complaining about my lot in life. Manny, I’ll go for another double. The night is young.”
I called Anita. She begged off on tonight. She’d had a long day and, as much as she wanted to see me, she needed sleep even more. Working a diner alone is close to working a chain gang.
About an hour later, over a third beer at Tucker’s, about halfway down the block and across the street from the Faraday, Shelly’s voice no longer made it into my consciousness. I just nodded as he professed his love of Mildred, the unfairness of life, and the ultimate end of the dental profession when someone finally discovered a preventive for tooth decay.
And suddenly, it came to me. A boom. A big bang.
The pieces fit. Sort of. And I had a fairly good idea who my killer was. I drank up quickly, hustled Shelly into a cab, and went to work. I had a hell of a lot of work to do and needed some help doing it.
Chapter Fourteen
Never try to impress a woman. Because if you do, you’ll be expected to keep up that standard the rest of your life.
I still had my key to the old office. It was after ten and I went in as quietly as I could, groping my way in the dark past the reception room, across Shelly s parlor and into my broom-closet office. I turned on the lights, and while I made my calls I looked through my mail. The only thing of interest was a far-from-cheap engraved invitation to the wedding reception of Anne Peters to Preston Stewart at the Beverly Hills Hotel. No RSVP was necessary. Just show up. The reception was tomorrow. I wasn’t invited to the wedding itself but my name was. Anne’s name, before we were married, was Mitzenmacher. She could have used her second husband’s name, but since he had been a murderer who owed a lot of people money when he died, she used “Peters,” when it suited her. Like when she married someone else.
I put the invitation in my pocket and called Violet Gonsenelli. Shelly had given me her phone number. He was more than a little soused at the time. Violet was home, listening to the radio and about to take a shower. I told her about moving into the new office and working for me. She asked for a raise. A small one. I agreed and I told her she’d find a key to 613 on the narrow ledge over the door. It wasn’t the best place to hide a key, but I wasn’t really hiding it. There was no chance that anyone would be breaking into 613 that night, and if they did, they wouldn’t find anything but old office furniture. I told her the first thing she should do was get the phone working.
“I hope Doctor Minck will be okay,” she said.
“We’ll be next door to comfort him in his moments of need,” I said.
“Met his wife the other day,” said Violet. “Could see what was coming right away. Not the first time. Jealousy is a painful and incurable disease.”
“You make that up?” I asked.
“No—Archie Bohanan, Angelo’s trainer,” she said. “He was talking about title holders, but the same thing applies. Know what I mean?”
“I know what you mean. War news is good. Very good,” I said.
“Angelo’ll make it,” she said. “Juanita told me. At least I think she told me.”
“See you tomorrow sometime,” I said. Then I called Fields’s house and a man answered. “Can I talk to Mr. Fields?” I said.
“He be sleeping in his barber chair,” the man said quietly, in an accent that sounded like an Irish farmer in a low-budget feature.
“Wake him,” I said.
“I be needing this job,” he said. “Got one leg, a wife, and three kids, and I like to think I’m not a stupid man.”
“How about Miss Michaels?”
“Went home hours ago,” the man said.
“Is there anyone there who’d dare wake the great man?” I asked.
“No,” the man said. “I’m just the handyman. Everyone else is gone for the night, and I’ll be taking my leave when I finish packing my tools.”
“Not unless you’ve fixed that damned leak,” came Fields’s voice over an extension phone.
“There be no leak,” said the handyman.
“I’m inebriated, not deaf,” said Fields. “I know a leaky faucet when I hear one. Years ago in Bombay I opened a fortune cookie that told me I would someday be plagued by a leaky faucet. The day has come. I should have known that one cannot escape an Oriental curse. Never ate Indian food again, though it was a Chinese restaurant. There is a leak. I hear it plop-plop-plopping in the bowels of this accursed hovel.”
“I’ll look again,” said the man wearily. “I’ll fix it. And then I’ll be leaving.”
“Back to the waiting bosom of your family,” said Fields. “I see it now. Little Tiny Tim rushing up to you and leaping into your arms. The smell of lentil soup in a great pot over the open fireplace. Your red-cheeked wife giving you a tender embrace.”
“I’ll be fixing the leak,” the man said calmly, hanging up the phone.
“Phone woke me, Peters,” he said. “Phone and the dripping. Now I’ll have to read and play some pool for a few hours before I do battle with Morpheus once more.”
“Did you hide the bankbooks?” I asked.
“Brilliantly,” he said. “No living being could find them. Put them all in an old box my dear mother gave me, brought all the way from England by my father, who was, I may have told you, of Cockney extraction, a race given to distrust nurtured by the realities of city life. The box and its contents are now sequestered in a location known to none but me.”
“I’ve got a few calls to make. Then I’m coming over.”
“Ah,” he said. “Perhaps you’d like to engage in a few friendly games of Ping-Pong. Stakes of a pittance to make the joust interesting?”
“I think someone may try to break into your house tonight and take the books,” I said. “If they don’t find them, they may try to convince you to tell them where they are.”
“Then call out the constabulary,” he said. “And cling to the hope that they will be able to bungle their way through the night without accidentally shooting me.”
“I’ve got no proof yet,” I said. “The police aren’t going to come out without a hell of a lot more than I’ve got. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
“I’ll have my trusty shotgun at my side while I sit enthralled by the adventures of Peregrine Pickle.”
I had never called Steve Seidman at home, so it took me a few minutes waiting for the operator to track him down. I dialed; the phone rang. I let it ring and keep ringing until Seidman finally answered.
“Steve?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Toby.”
“I’m in the middle of a shower,” he said.
“Everybody’s showering tonight,” I said.
“American ritual,” he said dryly.
“Life and death,” I said.
“Always is,” he said. “I’m dripping on the rug. Talk.”
“Remember I asked you if there was a blond FBI agent on the phone in the squad room at noon?”
“Yes,” he said.
“And you said you didn’t see anyone in the room but detective’s, uniforms, suspects, and witnesses?”
“Right,” he said.
“Could you give me the name of every detective in that room at noon?”
“Yeah.”
He rattled off the names of six detectives and two uniformed officers. I recognized them all and wrote the names on the back of an envelope containing a bill for a carton of Energine Cleaning Fluid, which I never ordered and never received.
“You have phone numbers for all of these?” I asked.
“You plan on telling them where you got the numbers?”
“No,” I said.
“They’ll figure it was Phil,” he said.
“I’ll say it was Cawelti,” I said.
“He’ll come after you when he finds out,” Seidman warned.
“I’ll risk it,” I said.
There was a pause while Seidman put down the phone. Then he was back. “Rug’s a wet mess,” he said.
“It’ll dry,” I said.
He gave me the phone numbers of all eight officers.
“Thanks,” I said. “You’d better get back in the shower.”
Seidman hung up and I began calling. The first three I called all sounded suspicious, including Buxbaum, but they answered my question. I got no answer to the fourth detectives phone, but I hit pure gold on the fifth, Rocco Allen.
“Noon today,” I asked him when his wife put him on the phone. “Did someone use your phone?”
“What kind of question is that?” he asked with definite irritation. “You get me out of bed with my wife when we … What kind of question?”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But it’s important.”
“And you couldn’t wait till tomorrow?”
“No,” I said. “When my brother came into the squad room yelling, were you at your desk?”
“No, I was getting coffee for us at the machine, in the corner.”
I knew where the machine was.
“You said ‘us.’ There was anyone at your desk when you went for the coffee?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said.
And then he told me who and why, and I had the biggest piece of the puzzle, one with a face on it. I thanked Rocco, asked one more question, got an answer, and apologized.
“What’d he do, make an obscene call while I got the coffee?” asked Rocco.
“Something like that,” I said.
“You got me into something here, Peters,” he said. “Now I’ve got to tell Cawelti about this call. If he finds out I didn’t tell him …”
“Tell him, Rocco,” I said. “Sorry about getting between you and the wife.”
Rocco grunted and hung up.
I made one more call, long distance, and confirmed what I had discovered. It was all over but saving Fields’s life and maybe getting back his money. Juanita had mentioned a doctor’s black case. We’d see.
Something made me look up. Jeremy was there, filling the doorway, black slacks, yellow pullover. He had used his passkey and amazing ability, at his size and weight, to move quietly across the darkened reception nook and dental office.
“Saw the light,” he said.
“Last-minute business,” I said, getting up. “I’m done. Got a man who’s about to be robbed and maybe killed.”
“You want company?” he asked. “Alice and Natasha are asleep. I always go for a walk now.”
“Alice won’t like it,” I said. “It might be dangerous.”
“I have spoken to Alice,” he said. “I have, I hope, convinced her that danger and even death are not to be hidden from. They surround us waking, sleeping, can come anywhere and anytime. To hide from them is folly. To face danger is to affirm the freedom of one’s life.”
“So you want to come with me?” I said.
He nodded.
I turned off the light and we left the office. He locked the outer door and I moved to 613 to put the key on the ledge over the door for Violet.
“I expect to be working in there before Mrs. Gonsenelli arrives in the morning,” said Jeremy.
“I told her it’ll be there,” I said. “She’s got some setting up to do.”
He nodded his approval.
Our next stop was the glove compartment of the Crosley, where I retrieved my gun and holster. It was late, traffic was light. I unzipped my jacket, took it off, and put it on top of the car. Then I quickly put on the holster and gun and zipped myself back into my jacket. Jeremy said nothing. We both knew we were going to be driving in his car. He didn’t fit in mine. His was a prewar Oldsmobile that he kept in humming condition.
“Who are we hurrying to save?” Jeremy asked as we drove and I gave him directions.
“W. C. Fields,” I said.
“I’ve seen two of his movies,” Jeremy said. “Is he like that?”
“The way he is in the movies? Yes. Even more,” I said.
“Hiding,” said Jeremy. “Each act of selfishness, each drink, each joke at the expense of another hides his fear of vulnerability. Getting close to him must be impossible. The walls he has built are too high, deep, and painted with a heavy coat of alcohol. He hides. He hides behind a persona that he has become trapped within and can no longer get out of.”
“Could be,” I said.
“I find his movies deeply sad,” Jeremy said as we kept driving.
“I don’t think he’d be happy to hear that,” I said. “He thinks they’re comedies.”
“Comedy does not mean we must laugh,” said Jeremy. “It is the reverse of tragedy. It suggests that life can continue with hope.”
“Never thought of it that way,” I said, unzipping my jacket so I could reach my .38 more easily.
What I was thinking about was whether I could shoot anywhere near as fast and as straight as the killer we might be about to face. I didn’t think I could. He had had more practice.
It took us less than fifteen minutes to get to Fields’s house on DeMille Drive. We parked in the driveway. I didn’t see any cars I didn’t recognize. Below us the city, which had blinked wildly at night before the war, was nearly dark.
We went down the tiled walkway. A bird cackled. A single light was on over the door. I knocked. No answer. I rang. No answer. I motioned for Jeremy to follow me and we moved around the house.
“Dogs?” Jeremy asked calmly.
“Fields hates dogs,” I said.
We found a window. Locked. We found another window. Locked but with a small metal latch. I tried to push it up quietly. Jeremy touched my shoulder and I moved out of the way. He pushed gently but firmly, his hands on the glass. The latch strained and gave way with a small pop as it tinkled to the floor inside. Jeremy opened the window. We climbed in.
We were in a bedroom. At least it looked that way, with the little moonlight we had. There was certainly a bed in the room. I bumped my shin on it and reached down to feel the low bedpost and mattress. Light came through beneath the door. We moved toward it and I opened it as slowly and silently as I could.
We were in a hallway I recognized. Lights were on all over the place. Then we heard voices. I recognized both of them, particularly Fields’s nasal whine, but I couldn’t make out the words. I motioned for Jeremy to follow me as I took out my gun and moved to the living-room door. It was closed. I put my ear to the door but I still couldn’t make out the words.
“I think we should go in,” said Jeremy softly. “A man in there is threatening Mr. Fields and Mr.
Fields is in turn threatening the man.”
Jeremy hadn’t even put his head near the door. The door was a two-part slider. I reached down for the handle and opened it quietly. The man whose back was to us was too busy with Fields to hear us, but Fields, dressed in his silk kimono with the dragons, was facing us. He was a pro, showed not a sign that we had entered.
Fields was holding his shotgun. The man with his back to us was holding a pistol. The pool table was between them.
“The bankbooks—you live,” said the man. “Once more, where did you hide them?”
“You are in no position to demand my property,” said Fields. “My weapon is as easily discharged as yours.”
“Have you ever killed?” the man asked as we inched forward across the room.
“Birds,” Fields replied. “Detest the creatures. I’d like to shoot a dog or two, and maybe a baritone, but I’ve never had sufficient legal excuse.”
“I’ve killed more than twice,” the man said. “I don’t think you can do it.”
“Perhaps we shall see,” said Fields. “I’m a somewhat ancient but dapper codger whose entrails are perplexed and weary from years of alcohol. I could drop dead any second. Maybe right now. I can see my senseless head hitting the cue ball, which, if I fall correctly, will hit the nine, which, in turn, will hit the twelve, which will carom off the right side and have just enough left to cross the table and drop gently into the corner pocket on your right. It would be an honorable end. My only regret would be that it was not witnessed by someone who could report it to the press so it could appear in my obituary. I can see the headline: ‘Fields Takes Final Shot and Calls It Right.’”
The man in front of us was tall. His hand was steady.
“I’ll tell you exactly what I’m going to do,” the man said. “I’m going to shoot you once in the gut and drop down below the table while you pull the trigger. Then I’ll wait to be sure you’re dead or dying. If you’re alive, I’ll shoot you again. Then I’ll search all night till I find those bankbooks. You could save me time and work and your own life …”
“I’m giving it some thought,” Fields said, stalling for us to make a move.
“It could have all been so simple,” said the man. “Should have been. The lights were out. I came in with a door pick. I went to your office. And the bankbooks were gone.”
A Fatal Glass of Beer Page 21