Smart Moves

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  The FBI might have a no-visitor-of-any-kind notice on Albanese, or they might just let us up and grab us at the door, or maybe we could make it to the bedside if we were lucky. Part of me wished we didn’t make it. Part of me wanted to believe the Bureau could do no wrong, but Craig and Parker did not inspire confidence.

  “Room two-thirty-one,” she said, putting down the phone and handing us a card. “Elevator at the end of the hall. He is no longer critical but the doctor in charge says you should stay for no more than five minutes.”

  “Thanks,” I said with my least sincere smile.

  “Blessa you, lady,” Shelly said, clasping his hands together. I grabbed his arm and pulled him down the hall toward the elevator.

  “Pretty good, huh?” he said, beaming and looking back at the receptionist, who had turned to another visitor.

  “Best supporting actor,” I agreed.

  We got up to two with no trouble. At the nursing station we showed our pass and we were escorted to Albanese’s room by a burly blond guy with muscles, who was dressed in hospital whites. I figured him for FBI, figured that he would march us to the guy in charge, and I’d have to explain about Craig and Parker. They’d call Craig and Parker, find out I was all right, and then boot Shelly and me out of the hospital. But the orderly led us right to Albanese’s room.

  “Craig and Parker called, right?” I guessed.

  “I wouldn’t know,” the blond said with a slight Southern accent. “You’ve got five minutes. I’ll be right out here waiting.”

  We went in and I closed the door behind us. Albanese was alone in the room, on his back, his eyes closed. The small Philco table-model radio next to the bed was turned on and a bass announcer’s voice was saying, “against the Chinese and British lines. And that’s the eleven A.M. news bulletin from the New York Times. Stay tuned every hour on the hour to WMCA, 570 on your dial for the latest news.”

  I turned off the radio and looked down at Albanese, Shelly at my side, breathing heavily. I think it was Shelly’s breathing that woke Albanese. His eyes clicked open, focused on the ceiling, then turned in our direction, while his head kept pointing upward. Only when he saw us did he start to slowly crank his head toward us. Shelly was a puzzle to him. His eyes said I looked vaguely familiar. He looked even younger lying there than when I had first met him.

  “How are you doing?” I said. I could see how he was doing.

  “I was shot,” he said softly, so that I had to lean toward him to catch the words. “I believe it was you who shot me.”

  “What did he say?” asked Shelly.

  “He thinks I shot him,” I explained. Then to Albanese I said, “I didn’t shoot you. It was a guy named Povey, the one you thought was a movie director.”

  Albanese looked around anxiously. I put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Don’t worry,” said Shelly with a smile. “Povey’s dead. Knife this big right through him.” Shelly’s hands were spread far enough apart to hold a baseball bat. Albanese looked even worse.

  “Can you answer a few questions?”

  Albanese nodded, closed his eyes, and opened them again. “Yes, I believe I can. The doctor said I’d be laid up rather a long time. I’ll probably lose my part in Othello. I would have made a most convincing soldier.”

  Since he didn’t know he had been on the verge of a pink slip when Povey shot him, I nodded in sad support.

  “We were in it last night,” Shelly said proudly. “Soldiers. I think Toby played your part. We weren’t professional enough. Robeson said he really could have used you on that stage. I had one of those pike things. Like this.” Shelly spread his hands the same distance apart as he had for the knife that had killed Povey.

  “Shell, go ask the orderly if we can get a cup of water for Alex.”

  “Sure,” said Shelly, fixing his glasses. And then to Alex, “you’ll be fine, fella. I’ve seen them in worse shape than you.” With these words of comfort, Shelly left the room.

  “He’s a doctor?” Albanese asked in confusion.

  “A dentist,” I said. “But some of his patients are in worse shape than you are.”

  “I’ve mucked things up, I’m afraid,” he said, closing his eyes and starting to drift off. “No role, no moving picture.”

  “You saved my life,” I said. “And you helped catch a Nazi assassin. You can do more, too. You can give me information to catch the rest of the gang or spy ring, or whatever it is. Just slowly, carefully tell me whatever you can about the other people who worked with Povey on the movie you were in …”

  “Axes to the Axis,” he recalled with a smile. “I really did have several fine scenes in the film. Pity they’re gone.”

  “Pity,” I agreed, leaning even closer as the lids of his closed eyes began to flutter. “Tell me what you can about the people who made the movie.”

  He talked. I missed some of it. He repeated some. Some didn’t make much sense. I didn’t interrupt, even when he gave me the plot of the movie he didn’t make. When he was finished, I asked a few questions. He answered. The last word he said before he drifted into sleep was “hair.”

  The door behind me opened and the blond orderly stepped in. “Time’s up,” he said.

  Shelly tried to move past him into the room, but the orderly filled the door and kept him out.

  “I try to tella him I gotta get in, buta no,” said Shelly.

  “Drop it, Shell,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  The orderly stepped back and moved to check on Albanese. “Hold it,” he called.

  Shelly looked like he was going to run. I grabbed his jacket and held on tight. The orderly checked Albanese and, satisfied, turned to us. “Okay. You can go.”

  I didn’t have much to say on the way back to the subway, and even less on the train. I let Shelly talk. He didn’t seem to notice my silence. He pondered on the possibility of a joint career, dentist and actor. “The acting dentist,” he tried, trippingly on the tongue. “The first acting dentist.”

  “Edgar Buchanan,” I muttered. “He’s a dentist.”

  “Nothing wrong with being second,” mused Shelly as we rocked uptown. In spite of Easter, the subway wasn’t very crowded. The few passengers were better dressed than we were, but neither of us seemed to mind. We got off the subway two stops early and ate hot dogs and Pepsis at the corner stand. Shelly breathed in three koshers with the works. I looked at the clouds.

  “Let’s get back and brush our teeth,” Shelly said, after gulping down his second king-size Pepsi.

  “I just rinsed my mouth with cola,” I said.

  “Not the same thing,” he said.

  “I’ve got other things on my mind,” I said, starting up Broadway toward the hotel.

  “More important than your teeth? More important than your body? Your teeth go and then …”

  “… your mouth, your gums, your whole body. And then where are you?”

  “Right,” he said, “where?”

  “In New York trying to figure out how to outsmart a killer.”

  “That’s changing the subject,” said Shelly, with the superior smile he usually reserved for helpless patients reclining awkwardly in his dental chair back in the Farraday Building.

  People of various sizes and ilks passed us. We walked through Times Square and Shelly suggested that we stop off for dessert at Streifer’s, which was about a half block away. He still had memories of our seven-course dinner for seventy-five cents. I had memories of the person with the hat who had followed us there, tailed us to the theater, and killed Povey. “No dessert,” I said. “I’ll watch you.”

  “It’s not the same when you do it alone,” he said, looking longingly down Forty-fourth as we kept walking.

  “True of a lot of things, Shell.”

  “Don’t worry about Einstein and Robeson,” he said reassuringly. “The FBI will take care of them. Enjoy the city, the sea air, the good food. Hey, it’d take an Einstein to figure out who killed Povey.”

  “Maybe that�
��s who we should ask.”

  “We’ll just go brush out teeth and have a nice walk down Fifth Avenue. Maybe I’ll give Mildred a call,” Shelly went on. “That’s it. I’ll give Mildred a call. What did you say about Einstein?”

  “Nothing important,” I said. “Let’s go brush our teeth and call Mildred.”

  15

  When we got back to the Taft after lunch, Shelly tried to call his wife in Los Angeles. Mildred wasn’t home or wasn’t answering.

  “At her sister’s,” Shelly said, hanging up. He called the sister, who said she hadn’t talked to Mildred in a week.

  “A friend’s,” Shelly said, putting down the phone with a shrug. “I wanted to tell her about the convention.”

  “You can surprise her with it all at once when we get back,” I suggested. “Meanwhile, let’s get into those tuxedos and over to the Waldorf.”

  Lady Macbeth from Leone’s Costume Shop had been right. The tuxes fit us perfectly. Shelly looked like a waiter, and I looked like a hood at the testimonial dinner for Little Caesar. It felt like the cardboard backing was still in the shirt, and a few stray pins were waiting to get me, just when I thought I had them all out and neatly stowed in the hotel ash tray.

  “Shell, I can’t guarantee that this is going to be a quiet afternoon and evening with a string quartet,” I said, trying to stretch the stiff white collar so I could breathe.

  Shelly was busy admiring himself in the mirror over the dresser as he replied, “Hey, it won’t kill me, but if it does, I can live with it. How do you think I look?”

  “Like Eugene Pallette in The Male Animal,” I said.

  “I know that name,” said Shelly, looking at me.

  “A movie star,” I said, looking at my reflection but not admiring it. “Let’s go.”

  The phone rang as we were about to leave and Shelly waddled back, his tails flapping in the hope that it might be Mildred or a mad dentist with a scheme for making false teeth out of synthetic rubber. It was neither.

  “For you,” Shelly said, disappointed, glancing one more time at his rotund reflection in the mirror and holding out the phone for me. I took the phone and a look in the mirror, seeing nothing there that would account for the pleased smile on his face as he adjusted his shiny black collar. Did he see Robert Taylor where I saw Eugene Pallette?

  “Toby?” It was Pauline’s voice. I feared another assault on my bachelorhood.

  “Pauline, we’re on the way out. We’ve got to get to the Waldorf.”

  “Carmichael is looking for you,” she said. “He called in about twenty minutes ago and said he was on the way, that it was important and I should tell you to wait for him.”

  “We’ve got to go, Pauline,” I said, examining myself in the mirror over Shelly’s shoulder to see if and how much my gun showed under the jacket. It showed. I unbuttoned the jacket. It was better but not perfect. “Carmichael can find us at the Waldorf. I’ll talk to you later.” I hung up before she could tell me more. I prodded the Narcissus of the Taft Hotel and he reluctantly parted from his reflection and went to the door.

  Tuxedos bring you respect. They also earn you some snickers and odd stares if you look like stand-ins for Abbott and Costello. We were the comic relief of Easter Sunday. We were a few light-moments away from the war news. We were nothing special in the Manhattan Easter light show. The doorman got us a cab and held the door open. The only other person who had ever held a car door open for me was a hood from Chicago who, along with his partner, had taken me for a ride and a talk about my rude behavior. The partner had stood behind us with his hand in his pocket, holding on to a pistol of European origin. But the doorman, ah, the doorman at the Taft recognized gentry, even comic gentry. As we got in the cab, I felt like Herbert Marshall.

  “You guys doin’ some kind of practical joke or something?” the jowly cabbie said, looking over his shoulder at us.

  The doorman closed the door and backed away.

  “We’re going to the Waldorf for a private concert,” said Shelly.

  The cabbie shrugged and looked into his rearview mirror so he could pull out onto Seventh. “No skin off my nose,” he said.

  The ride was short and the cab fare about what I expected. I entered it in my notebook as Shelly got out of the cab. The doorman at the Waldorf hurried to open the door for us. “Good afternoon,” he said, big-chested and blue-uniformed with braid.

  “Good afternoon,” Shelly said, adjusting his cuffs. “We’re here for the concert, the charity concert.”

  “Certainly, sir,” the doorman said. “Which charity do you represent?”

  “We don’t represent any chairty,” Shelly said, grabbing for his glasses as they slipped down his nose. “We …”

  “Excuse me,” the doorman said, moving past us to open another cab door.

  “Let’s go, Shell,” I said, taking his sleeve.

  Shelly glared back at the doorman who had forgotten us and mumbled, “Charity, charity. Do we look like charity cases?”

  “We don’t look like patrons of the arts,” I said, and pushed through the door into the lobby. The lobby looked like an MGM set. People were crowded together, talking like extras. You couldn’t make out what they were saying but you could hear the busy hum. A waiter in a red jacket danced gracefully past carrying a tray covered by a starched white cloth in one hand. Signs indicated that there were restaurants all over the place. I moved from under a fancy chandelier hanging from the ceiling and toward the busy desk. No one backed away from us, but I felt a few glances.

  The guy behind the desk looked as if he had just stepped out of a barber shop. His dark hair had one wave, not a strand out of place. He wasn’t young. He wasn’t old. He wasn’t skinny. He was elegantly slim. “Yes, sir?” he queried with a small professional smile and both hands resting gently on the desktop, ready to spring into action and meet any request we might have.

  “We’re here for the relief concert,” I said, “the Einstein-Robeson concert.”

  “Yes,” he said. “The extra waiters aren’t scheduled to arrive till three.”

  “We’re not waiters,” Shelly said. “Look at us. We’re guests, guests. Do you know whose guests we are?”

  The clerk’s mouth moved. It was too good a straight line to pass up but he was too good a clerk to take it. He was a class act. “I’m sorry, sir, I don’t know.”

  “Albert Einstein,” Shelly said, looking around triumphantly to see if anyone was listening to us. No one was.

  “Your names?” the clerk said.

  “Peters,” I said. “Toby Peters. You can check with either Professor Einstein or Mr. Robeson about us.”

  “Certainly, sir, I’ll do so. Meanwhile, if you’d like to wait in one of the lounges or the lobby till the parties arrive …”

  Shelly put on his pouty bulldog face. A trickle of sweat rolled over his white collar as he prepared to growl. I pulled him away and told the clerk we would have a drink and be back.

  “I’m not accustomed to that kind of treatment,” Shelly grumbled as I dragged him away. He kept his eyes fixed on the clerk, who was on to other problems.

  “You are accustomed to that kind of treatment and worse, Shell,” I said, nodding at a tall woman in black with a small white dog in her arms. “We’re both accustomed to it. Let’s get a couple of beers and complain while we wait.”

  We were in the middle of the lobby, people bubbling around us, when I heard my name called from behind. I let go of Shelly, turned, and didn’t see anyone I knew. Then the voice called, “Peters, Mr. Toby Peters.”

  I grabbed the caller by the arm as he moved past me into the lobby. “Hey,” I said. “I’m Peters.”

  The kid, a blond who looked as if he should be a lifeguard, examined me from floor to head and said, “A Mr. Carmichael would like you to join him in room three-two-four-one as soon as possible.”

  “Okay,” I said, “thanks.”

  The kid held his hand out. He didn’t want me to shake it. I fished into my poc
ket, where I’d thrown my loose change. The pocket was stiff and the fit too snug. I struggled for change doing a little dance while people moved around us. I managed a couple of quarters with lint and handed them to the blond kid.

  “Thank you, sir,” he said politely, pocketing the change.

  “You like this work?”

  “Sure,” he said, “but this is my last week. I’m taking next week off and then I’m going into the army.”

  “Good luck,” I said.

  “I hope the fighting’s not over before I can get into it,” he said. “I want a crack at the Nazis.”

  I felt like coming up with an extra few quarters, but they wouldn’t change his mind, save his life, or make me feel any better. I wished him good luck again and turned back to find Shelly. He was doing something with his face when I found him standing in front of a mirror near a bank of phones.

  “What are you doing with your face, Shell?” I asked.

  “Ecmo-plasmics,” he explained, looking up. “Variation on dynamic tension. You know, the thing Charles Atlas does on the backs of comic books? I’ve got the literature back at the hotel. Dentist named White in Mississippi thought it up. Tightens teeth, strengthens gums, and you can do it anywhere.”

  “If you don’t care about people thinking you’ve lost your mind,” I said. “Let’s go. Carmichael, the house dick from the Taft, wants to see us.”

  Shelly got up, still making faces, and almost bumped into a woman in a frilly white blouse, who backed away from him in fear. We found the elevators and made it up to the thirty-second floor. The room was around to our left. We padded down the carpeted corridor, and I kept trying to find some space in my collar, which was cutting into my neck.

  There was no answer at the door of 3241.

  “Shelly, cut out the exercises,” I said, knocking again. “It looks …”

  “Grotesque,” he said. “It’s supposed to. It means I’m doing it right.” He looked like a bloated gargoyle.

  Something moved behind the door. A shuffle. A sound.

  “Tightens everything,” Shelly explained. “You see here?” He pointed a stumpy finger at his jaw. “It puts tension on the muscle here. Now if …”