A Fatal Glass of Beer (25 page)

I made it past Cawelti’s door and met a detective I knew named Albergetti with a uniformed young cop. They were coming out of the squad room.

“I told you,” Albergetti, a hound-faced veteran, was saying. “Never hit ’em in the face. It shows in the mug shot. Sometimes you can’t help it, but the rule is ‘never.’ Stomach, chest, legs, high on the arms, ass, okay, but not the face.”

The young cop nodded seriously and I went into the squad room. It was busy for a weekday afternoon. Busy and almost as loud as the downstairs lobby. There were familiar faces of weary detectives—Allen, Rashkow, Malloy, Davis. The smell was of sweat and carry-out food, with the faint lingering scent of not quite fully cleaned-up vomit. The windows were dirty. The floors needed more than the nightly sweeping and occasional mopping by the janitor, and the walls were covered with newspaper clippings, photographs, and memos stuck up with thumbtacks.

I knew that Cawelti had ordered the detectives to clean up the place and clear the walls. They had ignored him. Had my brother told them the same thing, they would have done it. No one wanted to be on the receiving end when Phil Pevsner went violent.

I made my way though crying women, pleading teenagers, old-timers who sat with arms folded or at their sides, giving tired lies the detectives took down on their report sheets. Uniformed street cops were supposed to take care of the minor misdemeanors. If it got to the squad room and a detective, it was supposed to be a felony.

I looked around for Steve Seidman, my brother’s partner for more than twenty years, but I remembered that Steve was gone. The tall, pale man, who always wore his hat and said as little as possible, had applied for a transfer when Cawelti took over. He finally got it. When Cawelti made that special mistake that he was sure to make, Steve would come back. Meanwhile, my brother was riding it out at the Wilshire, and Cawelti was smart enough to leave him alone.

I knocked at Phil’s door and he said, “Come in.”

Phil was leaning against the desk in his small office. The desktop was filled with reports and notes and more waiting in his
in
box. His jacket was off and draped around the chair behind the desk. The collar of his wilted white shirt was open, as usual, and his tie was loosened to give him plenty of room to breathe. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbow. Phil was almost fifty-three. He was my height, built like a brick, and had short, bristly gray hair he liked to run a thick hand across when he was thinking.

Phil’s arms were crossed and he didn’t seem surprised to see me.

“I’m thinking seriously,” he said, “of knocking Cawelti’s head about two inches into the wall.”

“I’d like to be here when it happens,” I said.

“He took a bribe,” Phil said. “I had a clean collar, felony, assault, Wally Range. And Cawelti let him walk after he talked to the perp’s lawyer, Johnny Andrews.”

“Figures,” I said.

Phil looked at the wall and looked at me.

“Around noon today,” I said, “were you in the squad room yelling that you were going to tear someone’s head off and throw his lawyer out the window?”

Phil looked at me, arms still folded, thought for a few seconds, and nodded.

“I thought so,” I said.

“What the hell is this about, Tobias?” Phil said.

“Someone in the squad room called me around noon and threatened to kill me if I didn’t drop the case I’m working. I heard you in the background. That someone has already murdered two people.”

“Lester Burton and Albert Woloski,” said Phil. “You’re working for W. C. Fields.”

I walked over to the chair in front of Phil’s desk and sat down. He was standing over me. There was a time not long ago when I took pleasure in pushing Phil into a temper blast, even if I were the target. But I had lost the urge over the past year or so with Ruth’s illness. Phil’s and my relationship had gone through a series of small changes. We got along a little better, but it was a lot less exciting.

“Who told you?” I asked.

“Cawelti brought in an FBI agent this morning,” he said. “Cawelti turned him over to me.”

“His name was Walter McEvoy,” I said. “Tall, blond.”

“Belongs in movies,” Phil said.

“What did he want?” I asked.

“Information about Burton and Woloski,” Phil said. “And about you and Fields. Any records we had. I gave him what we had, and he gave me his card and said he’d be in touch.”

I must have taken on a strange expression, because Phil said, “What are you thinking?”

“Maybe McEvoy called me,” I said. “Maybe he threatened me.”

“An FBI agent? Why?” asked Phil. “Besides, I watched him leave.”

“Okay,” I said. “Then who? One of the detectives out there? I know their voices. A suspect being questioned? Detective walks away for a minute and he grabs the phone, calls and threatens me? Maybe McEvoy stepped back in just before you threatened to tear someone’s head off?”

“Place was packed,” Phil said. “I was shouting at Allen. I didn’t look around, but I’d bet he wasn’t.”

“You’d lost your temper,” I said.

“That’s pretty obvious.”

“Which means …”

“I didn’t pay attention to anything but what I was mad about,” he said. “All right, it could have been McEvoy. Maybe he just doesn’t want you interfering with an interstate double murder and fraud.”

“So now the FBI is threatening people with death if they get in the way?” I asked.

Phil shrugged. He had threatened many people who got in the way of one of his investigations.

“I know who was here,” said Phil with a sigh. “Steve. He came by and went to lunch after he got me back to near sanity. Steve’ll remember any unfamiliar face in the squad room. He’s got a memory like a German camera.” Phil turned, picked up his phone, and dialed a number. He handed me the receiver.

“Yeah?” came Seidman’s voice. “Who is this?”

“Toby,” I said. “I’m in Phil’s office.”

“Phil okay?” he asked with concern.

“Phil’s fine,” I said. “I’ve got a question. You were here at noon?”

“Yeah.”

“Phil went a little …”

I looked at Phil, who shrugged, unfolded his arms, and moved back behind his desk, where he sat heavily.

“Cawelti is driving him nuts,” Seidman said. “Between you and me, Toby, I’m doing some off-duty work on Cawelti. Finding his fingers in pockets. Trying to prove it. It’s coming.”

“Steve, when you were here today, was there a good-looking blond guy making a call when Phil started yelling?”

“McEvoy?” said Steve. “Phil introduced me to him, but he was gone when Phil started in.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure,” Seidman said.

That killed one great theory. So I went for another. “Anyone in the squad room you didn’t recognize?”

“Just suspects, witnesses, and perps,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Sure,” said Seidman. “Keep an eye on Phil till I find a way to get rid of Cawelti and come back.”

“I will,” I said and we hung up.

“It’s got to be one of the detectives, or a uniform,” I said. “McEvoy was gone.”

“It’s not one of the detectives,” Phil said. “And you know it. And it wasn’t Cawelti. He wasn’t in the squad room, and you’d recognize his silly-ass chirp.”

“Tell Ruth I might have to be out of town this weekend,” I said. “If not, I’ll come to dinner next week with Anita, if she wants me, and take the boys out to a movie or something.”

“I’ll tell her,” Phil said, swiveling his chair toward the window, which had a beautiful view of a brick wall about a dozen feet away. His hands were behind his head. “Tobias, you know the story—O. Henry—about the leaf the artist painted on the wall across from a dying girl’s room, painted it so it looked like it was on the tree. She thought it was real. She thought she was going to die when the last leaf fell. That’s why he painted the leaf.”

I think he had it a little wrong, but I kept my mouth shut.

“O. Henry did time,” Phil said, looking at the brick wall. “And he could write stories like that. I’d like to find an artist to paint a leaf for Ruth.”

“Ruth’s okay,” I said.

“No,” he said. “She’s not. She’ll be fine for a while and then it’ll start again. Doctor’s told me. I’m telling you. I think she knows. If I take a long leave, she’ll know why and it’ll make things worse.”

“I’m sorry, Phil,” I said.

“I know,” he said. “What I said this afternoon, about tearing off heads … I can’t take the idea that there are worms walking the streets, hurting people, stealing, worms with healthy bodies who don’t give a damn about anything, anyone. Yeah, I want to tear their heads off. You got anything else to discuss?”

“No,” I said.

“Ruth asked me if we could take the kids to services,” he said. “There’s a synagogue not far from us. Off Victory, just before you hit Van Nuys.”

“I know it,” I said.

“I’ve never been,” he said. “And I know you haven’t.”

“A couple of weddings,” I said.

“That’s not what I mean.”

I knew what he meant.

“Our father never went,” he said, “I don’t think he was too happy with God when mom died when you were born. But I don’t think they went to a synagogue before you were born either. I guess we’ll go.”

I had nothing to say except, “Anita and I’ll see you, Ruth, and the kids this weekend, if I’m in town … I’ll let you know as soon as I know.”

And I left.

I didn’t like Phil this way. I wanted the angry Phil back, the Phil who had broken my nose twice, the Phil who had tossed me around and who I could goad into an explosion. Jeremy once told me that Phil and I related the way we did because it meant emotion and contact—not particularly the most healthy contact, but contact. I thought he was right. Now we were losing even that.

I stood in the squad room looking at the detectives, uniformed cops, everyone. No one looked up at me but Big Buxbaum, who paused in his discussion with a skinny Mexican kid with tears in his eyes. Buxbaum gave me a nod, and then nodded at Phil’s door and shook his head.

I nodded back in understanding.

It hadn’t been Buxbaum who had called me. Buxbaum had a high voice and a thick New York accent he had never lost.

I gave up.

I made it past Cawelti’s door, down the stairs, and back to the street, inclining my head at the overburdened Connie Keratides at the desk, who was now dealing with a huge woman who wanted the police to immediately go to her apartment and arrest her husband for beating her up. Connie nodded and let her talk.

Back in the Crosley, I checked my gun and headed for the Faraday Building. The lobby was eerily quiet. I checked my watch. It told me a lie, as it always had. I wondered if it had lied to my father. I was in no hurry. I took the elevator and watched the floors go by and looked down at the lighted lobby through the bars. The trip was long and I was trying to make sense out of what had happened, when the elevator stopped with a little jerk on the sixth floor.

I went to our office. The door was open. The lights were on and Violet Gonsenelli wasn’t there. I went into Shelly’s parlor. Shelly was sitting with his head in his hands, the top of his bald pate pointed at me. He was still wearing his white, bloodstained lab coat and holding a cigar between his fingers.

Beside him stood the massive Jeremy Butler, who raised an eyebrow at me as I stepped forward. Jeremy wore dark slacks and a short-sleeved blue shirt which showed the enormity of his muscles.

“How are Alice and Natasha?” I asked.

He said his wife and daughter were fine and that he had just written a poem about the toddler. I told him I’d like to hear it.

“Toby,” said Shelly, looking up. “Pity.”

His thick glasses were slightly cockeyed.

“Better than that, Shel.” I said, and then I said to Jeremy, “The office next door, the little one the bookie moved out of?”

“Investment counselor,” Jeremy corrected.

“Right,” I said. “What’s the rent?”

“For you? Twenty-five dollars a month, furnished.”

“Wait,” said Shelly, getting out of his chair. “I don’t want you to move out. We’re friends. Allies.”

“I’ll be right on the other side of the wall with Violet,” I said. “I’ll stop in every day and Violet will be right next door every day, so if Mildred drops by she’ll know where to find her.”

“That won’t satisfy Mildred,” said Shelly.

“I didn’t think it would,” I said.

“And who could I sublet your office to?” Shelly said mournfully.

“It’s not an office,” I said. “It’s a broom closet with a desk and two chairs. When can I move in?” I asked Jeremy.

“Two days,” he said. “Give me time to clean and paint it. Two months in advance is customary.”

I had a wallet jammed with cash from Fields, and a fat account in the bank. People were threatening to kill me and I didn’t know what the hell was going on, but I was making some money for the first time in years. I handed Jeremy two twenties and a ten.

“I’ll sign the lease whenever it’s ready,” I said.

“We have no need for a lease, Toby,” Jeremy said. “When you want to leave, simply give me a month’s notice, and you have my word that I will not raise your rent or eject you.”

“Good enough for me,” I said.

“There’s some furniture in the office,” said Jeremy as Shelly groaned. “The tenant left hurriedly. You may keep what you can use with the stipulation that if he returns for it, you turn it over. Experience, however, tells me that we will not be hearing from the investment counselor.”

Shelly had returned the cigar stub to his mouth and was weeping.

“Shelly,” I said. “I’ve known you long enough to know when you’re faking it.”

Shelly stopped crying and looked disgusted.

“You can walk out on Mildred instead,” I reminded him.

“Never,” he said. “God help me, I love the woman.”

“Love is not rational,” Jeremy said. “Come, I will give you the keys.”

“Betrayed,” Shelly said. “By a man I trusted. A man I called my best friend.”

“I’m moving right next door, Shel,” I said. “Cheer up. I’ll treat you to dinner at Manny’s and a beer or two at Tucker’s.”

Shelly nodded morosely.

“I’ll move everything out tomorrow,” I said.

I took a second, went into my cubbyhole office, and picked up my mail and messages. None of it looked too important. I took it anyway.