A Fatal Glass of Beer (23 page)

I got out the last of my fresh underwear and socks and a clean blue short-sleeved cotton shirt that didn’t go too badly with my dark slacks. I got undressed, looked at myself in the mirror, and wondered how that man could be me. In almost half a century of life, I was still a little surprised by the tough, broken-nosed, ruffle-haired man in front of me. Part of it was the stubble on my chin, neck, and cheeks, but most of it was me.

I turned on the hot water in the shower, ignored the pink scale in the corner that would tell me what I already knew. I had eaten too much, exercised not at all, and put on a few pounds in the last week.

The water felt good, hot, and relaxing while I washed, shaved, and shampooed. I let the hot water beat down on my aching lower back three or four minutes. I just stood there with my eyes closed and began to sing my usual medley of shower jingles:

“Don’t despair, use your head, save your hair with Fitch shampoo.… Rinso white, Rinso white, happy little washday song.… Oh, the big red letters stand for the Jell-O family.… Buy Eversharp, try Eversharp for writing pleasure …”

A voice crackled into the room.

“No singing in my abode,” came Fields’s voice. “I consider it a far greater sin than blasphemy in a Catholic church. Peters, get dressed and get back up here.”

The crackling stopped. I got out, dried myself, found the hidden speaker and microphone in a vent in the ceiling, and got dressed, taking an extra few seconds to comb my hair. With my bag repacked and my zipper jacket back on, my .38 under it tucked neatly in my holster, I made my way back up to Fields’s office and knocked.

“It’s open,” Fields shouted.

I went in. Fields was behind his desk, wearing an ornate dark kimono with dragons on it. It looked to be silk. So did the sash around his ample middle. He held a drink in his hand and his nose was covered with white cream. Miss Michaels was seated across the desk from him. His chair was decidedly higher than hers. In fact, her chair looked like one Gunther might be comfortable in. She had a pad out and a pencil in hand.

John Neuenfeldt, the accountant, was still hunched over his pad and the bankbooks.

“Have a seat, Peters,” Fields said, swiveling so he could take a look at his war map on the wall. “I’m just concluding a few essential missives.”

I put my bag down and took a seat, a solid walnut chair with curved arms.

“Read that back to me, my dear,” he said. “I’ve momentarily lost myself in the solar system of my unconscious.”

“Dear Chinaman,” Miss Michaels read. “All is well here except for the nightly attacks by the Kickapoos. I too was under the impression that they were a peaceful tribe and had all been slaughtered by land-grabbing Comanches, but history as written is a sham.”

“Ah, yes,” said Fields, taking a sip. “Let us continue. ‘We are having no trouble fighting off the attacks with my shotgun. I’m down to two drinks before breakfast, am exercising regularly, and weighing movie offers which keep coming in as I endeavor to finish my script about the man who inherits a zoo. I’ll see you next week. Don’t bring me a new tie. I miss you.’”

“Signed?” Miss Michaels asked.

“Woody,” Fields said, looking at me and Neuenfeldt to see if we were going to react. We didn’t. He went on. “Letters to the presidents of all the banks on the list you prepared, the ones we went to, with the exception of the last two. ‘Dear Sir or Madam, a lawsuit will be forthcoming and you know why.’ Sign it ‘W. C. Fields, unwitting dupe who should have been protected by an institution that should have shown greater perspicacity.’”

Miss Michaels looked up as John Neuenfeldt let out a small sigh and straightened, no longer writing, his eyes on the notes he had made on the pad in front of him.

“To the president of the Borden Dairy Company,” Fields went on as Miss Michaels began to transcribe. “‘A traitor on my staff, who has yet to be identified with certainty, put several spoons of your Hemo concoction in a medicinal beverage in the hope, I expect, of sneaking some of the vitamins and claimed nutrients into my finely tuned internal organs. I have my suspicions about who it was, but I’ll keep them to myself until I have compiled sufficient evidence.’”

He paused to glance at Miss Michaels, who sat placidly waiting for him to continue.

“‘However,’” he went on, ‘“it may delight you to know that the resultant liquid concoction was surprisingly palatable. So, here is my recipe, which I offer to you for use in your advertisements featuring the grinning cow, providing I am given appropriate credit, a letter of gratitude, and a gratuity of no less than five thousand dollars. Mix a martini and add three teaspoons of Hemo. Stir thoroughly. Drink quickly and follow up with a Hemo-less martini. I hope you fully appreciate this suggestion, which should net you at least half a million new buyers of your product. Yours cordially, W. C. Fields.’ Another letter to Ken Murray …”

“I’m finished,” Neuenfeldt interrupted in a weary tenor.

Fields turned to face the accountant as if he had forgotten the man existed. “The result?”

“I’ll recheck my figures,” Neuenfeldt said, “but I’d say, within two thousand dollars, that a total of over three hundred thousand, seven hundred and forty dollars was stolen from your accounts. The two-thousand-dollar leeway is necessary only because the rate of interest may have varied since the time you made your deposits.”

Fields waved Miss Michaels from the room, saying, “We’ll continue our epistolary ventures later. I’ll call.”

She got up and left, closing the door quietly behind her.

“If you called me in before the bankbooks were taken,” said Neuenfeldt, rubbing the bridge of his nose, “we could have saved it all with phone calls. Told each bank you were withdrawing your money and that we were sending appropriate documentation, which I could have prepared. Checks would have come right back to you.”

“How much didn’t they get?” Fields said, pointing to the remaining bankbooks.

“Whoever took your bankbooks,” said Neuenfeldt, pad in his lap, turning now to fully face Fields, “just grabbed a big pile, didn’t check the balances, which wouldn’t have been accurate anyway, since they didn’t include interest.”

“How much do I have left in those accounts?” Fields said, waving at the pile of books.

“Again,” said Neuenfeldt, “I’m within a few thousand dollars, but I’d say somewhere over five hundred and fifty-six thousand dollars.”

“Plan,” said Fields, turning to me, apparently having no idea, or not caring, how bizarre he looked in his silk kimono and his white nose. “I hide those savings-account books. Big John prepares the documentation and I sign the right letters after Miss Michaels prepares them.”

Neuenfeldt got up slowly, tucked his pad into his briefcase on the desk, and said, “I’ll prepare a report this afternoon on how we can quickly put a hold on the untouched accounts and on how to get your money out of each account. I’ll bill you for my services later.”

“How much?” said Fields when Neuenfeldt, moving lightly on his feet for a heavy man, had almost reached the door.

“Five hundred dollars,” said the accountant.

“Five hund—” Fields began. “I’ll take you to court. You don’t get a penny over one hundred. Any judge will be in tears once he hears I’ve lost more than a quarter of a million smackers.”

Neuenfeldt was unshaken. He sighed deeply and turned to Fields. “Five hundred or no report, no instructions on how to proceed. Just fifty dollars for my visit today and a recommendation, if you want it, on several other accountants you can call in. I doubt if they’ll charge you less, and it’ll take them valuable time to figure out this whole mess.”

“Five hundred dollars,” Fields said after a brief hesitation. “Send your bill.”

Neuenfeldt nodded and left the room. I was alone with Fields.

“I’ll hide the bankbooks,” said Fields, looking at me. “You start working on finding my stolen lucre and who killed Burton and the Chimp.”

“Same pay,” I said.

“Same pay,” he said.

“If I don’t come up with leads in a week,” I said, “the deal’s off and we let the police follow up. Beyond that, you’d be wasting your money.”

There was a knock on the door as I reached for my suitcase and prepared to leave.

“Come in,” shouted Fields. “Man can’t get a moment’s solitude to compose himself in this Gothic manse.”

Miss Michaels appeared at the door. There was a man behind her. She left him standing, hat in hand, as she crossed the room and handed Fields a card. Fields looked at it and indicated that she should give it to me. The card was white with a black seal in the middle. It had the name Walter McEvoy in the left-hand corner in dark ink. Under his name was simply the word “Agent,” and in the lower right-hand corner was inscribed, “Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

I put the card in my jacket pocket as McEvoy stepped in. Miss Michaels closed the door as she left and we looked at the FBI agent. Around forty, well built, neatly pressed dark suit, white shirt, and dark tie. He had a good-looking round face and neatly barbered yellow curly hair.

“And what service can I perform for the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” said Fields. “My discord with the Internal Revenue Service is between me and them. I will continue to deduct the cost of billiard balls, regardless of whether armed federal officers attempt to intimidate me.”

“Mr. Fields,” said McEvoy calmly, hat in hand, almost at attention. “The Philadelphia police informed us of the murders and the thefts. Had you come to us before you—”

“I don’t need any more advice on what I should have done,” said Fields, taking another sip. “What are you going to do now?”

“Get a complete statement from you,” he said. “And the men who accompanied you. We’ve already checked on Lester Burton’s story. It appears to be true. Since Albert Woloski was an ex-convict, we’re checking out known criminals with whom he might have been affiliated. We’ll get descriptions. We’re already trying to find fingerprints and any other evidence we can work from.”

“This is the famed criminologist, Toby Peters,” Fields said, pointing to me.

McEvoy nodded in my direction.

“Mr. Peters and a Swiss midget accompanied me on my failed voyage,” said Fields.

“May I sit?” asked McEvoy.

Fields pointed to Miss Michael’s small chair. McEvoy took the one Neuenfeldt had vacated instead and turned it to face us.

“I’d like your statements individually,” he said, placing his hat on the desk next to the pile of bankbooks. “And without the other person present.”

It was reasonable police procedure. I nodded to Fields, who said to me, “Peters, why don’t you go dally at the billiard table? I’ll call you when we’re done here.”

I picked up my bag, went out, closed the door, and did as Fields suggested. I can play pool better than I can shoot a gun, but not much better. My brother once suggested that I have my eyes examined. Maybe he was right. I found a cue and fooled around. It wasn’t more than fifteen minutes before I heard Fields’s voice from somewhere in the room.

“Remain where you are, Peters,” he said. “Agent McEvoy will be down forthwith. I will retire to my boudoir for more epistolary missives and contemplation.”

Instead of the speaker clicking off, I heard Agent McEvoy say, “Thanks for your time and I’d appreciate having that list of banks where you still have money, as soon as possible. We can put a stop on any attempts at withdrawal. I’d also strongly suggest that you put these remaining bankbooks someplace safe and very soon. Whoever this person is, he’s a double-murderer now.”

Then the speaker clicked off.

Fields had not told the FBI agent of Accountant Neuenfeldt’s plan to do just about what the FBI was planning.

I stood at the billiard table, waiting for McEvoy, who appeared in less than a minute, walking tall. I went to one of the high stools against the wall and sat down while he flipped pages in his notebook, went over his Fields notes, and looked at me.

“Shouldn’t take too long,” he said with a sympathetic smile, glancing around for a normal chair. There were none.

He placed his hat on the pool table and sat on the stool next to mine. He asked questions. I answered. He knew what he was doing. He closed the notebook, got down, shook my hand, and said, “We’re spread pretty thin now. Most of our manpower is concentrating on espionage, sabotage, infiltration. But I’ve assured Mr. Fields that we won’t neglect this case and that we hope to recover his money.”

“In short,” I said, “you can take over for me.”

“That’s between you and Mr. Fields,” he said, picking up his hat and moving toward the hallway and the door. “I can let myself out.”

When I heard the front door close, I said, “You get all that?” I heard the low hum of the hidden microphone when Fields had turned it on.

“Every utterance,” came Fields’s voice.

“You still want me on the case?” I asked.

“The man who leaves his fate to the federal bureaucracy is the man who has a faith which is unthinkable to even a moderately trained orangutan. Go forth and find the bastards who killed the Chimp and Jack Barrymore’s man. And finding the money they’ve already taken wouldn’t be a bad idea either.”

“McEvoy’s right,” I said. “Put the rest of the bankbooks someplace safe. I’ll keep you posted.”

“The criminal has broken two commandments,” came Fields’s voice, godlike, though surrounded by static. “First, thou shalt not kill more than a fifth. Second, thou shalt not steal except from other comedians.”

I found a phone in the hallway and called a Black Top cab. I was tired. I didn’t know where I was going to start my search. I was scrubbed, shaved, and ready for a few days of sleep.

When I got to Mrs. Plaut’s Boardinghouse on Heliotrope, the good woman was standing on the front porch, aproned, as straight as the broom she carried, and apparently waiting for me.

“Saw the cab pull up,” she explained. “Doubler began to chirp.”

Doubler, I assumed, was the latest name for her bird. I had no intention of asking why she had given it the odd name.

“He is a bird of wondrous powers as yet not fully explored,” I said, lugging my suitcase up the steps and pausing before the front door. She blocked me with her small, thin, and not at all frail body.