A Fatal Glass of Beer (4 page)

“Man’s a genius,” Fields whispered to me behind his hand. “Don’t want to praise him too highly. Might go to his head.”

“I think we got the right tooth,” Shelly said, turning to us and wiping his hands on his bloody smock. His eyes were huge behind his thick lenses.

“A consummation devoutly to be wished,” said Fields. He tipped his hat to the barely conscious woman and headed for the door, while I told Shelly it looked like I was going out of town for a few days on business.

“Understand perfectly,” Shelly said, reverting to his abysmal Fields imitation. “I’ll hold down the corpus delicti.”

In the reception room Violet smiled up at us from her desk, where she was confirming appointments for Shelly’s patients. It would ever be a mystery to me why anyone allowed themselves a second visit to Sheldon Minck’s Tower of London, but they did. Occasionally.

“Pleasure to meet you,” Fields said.

“I’ll write to my husband and tell him I met you,” she said. “He thinks you’re funny.”

“Armstrong takes Beau Jack, ten bucks straight up,” I reminded her.

Violet nodded solemnly; Fields and I left.

“Note,” he said as we closed the door and stood on the railed landing of the sixth floor of the Faraday Building, “she said her husband likes me. It has been a source of irritation that women, as a gender, are not particularly responsive to my wit. They prefer a popinjay ballet dancer like Chaplin to honest misogyny.”

“Hard to understand,” I said, remembering that my former wife, Anne, had refused to see Fields movies with me, claiming that they made no sense, weren’t amusing, were nasty to women and small children. I had agreed with her, but I still thought he was funny.

Fields moved to the railing and held his straw hat to his head to insure that some indoor breeze wouldn’t take it down six flights to the lobby.

I was about a dozen feet away from him now and had a good look at the great man. I knew he was over sixty and that he had looked pretty much the same in movies for the last twenty years as he did now. His stomach was a bit larger, his nose probably a little more red, though I had never seen it in color before today.

“Long drop,” he said.

The Faraday echo answered, “Drop.”

Fields turned around, pleased.

“You came up on the elevator?” I asked.

“Indeed,” he said, heading for the black steel cage. “Trip took almost as long as a Zambesi safari I was once on with Applejack Strainfinger, the great one-armed white hunter. Almost got me killed.”

We got in the elevator. I pressed the button and we started slowly down.

“Rhino charged right at me when I wasn’t looking. Applejack had a mastodon of an elephant gun which he had trouble bringing to his remaining good shoulder. The rhino stampeded closer and I gave serious consideration to addressing ancient and all-too-often fickle gods. The native bearers had all fled. It was just me, Applejack, and the rhino. When the beast was no more than two pool-tables’ distance away, Applejack fired. The beast fell at my feet. Left the carcass to the natives, took the horn, had it pulverized into an aphrodisiac which dissolved admirably in a martini.”

The noises of the Faraday accompanied us as we slowly ground downward in the steel-barred elevator cage. Arguing, musical instruments, laughter, singing, the clacking of an occasional typewriter came from offices on each floor. The Faraday was not the class location of downtown L.A. Just off the corner of Main and Hoover, it was home, often a very temporary home, to talent agents, jewelry distributors, quacks, music teachers, baby and publicity photographers, and a fortune-teller named Juanita the Seer, who was standing before the elevator when it came to its usual jerky stop on the main floor.

“W. C. Fields,” she said as I opened the door. She held out her hand.

“Don’t,” I said, but it was too late. Juanita had touched him.

“Madame,” he said gallantly as he stepped out, removing his straw hat, “I can say that, outside of the stage itself, particularly a certain Kitty Majestic who did a magic act, I have never witnessed a female as confidently clad.”

Juanita was somewhere around Fields’s age. She had gone through three husbands back in New York. Her second husband had been half owner of a trio of successful men’s shops. Juanita was financially set, but a few years after her third marriage, to a candy distributor in the Bronx, she got the calling. She claimed that one morning she just woke up and knew things. Husband number three died two weeks later in a subway accident, and Juanita moved west.

And here she stood, ready for work, gypsy costume of yellow flowing skirt, billowing red blouse covered with a repeating pattern of fruit ranging from mangoes to bananas. She wore a massive string of multicolored stones around her neck and a turban of gold. Her earrings matched the stones in her necklace, and her dark lipstick came close to the cherries on her blouse.

“Confidentially—” Juanita said. “And Toby knows this—I wear all this stuff for the customers. They want a little show, a little color with a glimpse of their future. So, I’ve got a table, crystal ball, the whole
chozzerai
.”

“Garbage,” said Fields. “Picked up a smattering of the Yiddish tongue in my sojourns.”

“You got it,” she said.

“We’ve got to go,” I said, gesturing Fields onward toward the door, but he stood watching Juanita, who touched the stones around her neck and said, “He or she is dead.”

“Dead?” said Fields.

“Let’s go,” I urged.

“The one you’re looking for,” she said.

“Hipnoodle?” he asked.

“Not yet, but soon. And another one. Two dead men. One’s been dead for some time. The other soon will be. See it as sure as I see you now. There will be a quest,” she said matter-of-factly. “Then you’ll find out the one who’s sending you on your journey is dead, has been for a while, can’t say exactly how long. Wait, another one’s gonna die. That’s three. This death stuff is creepy. Gives me the
shpilkes.
Sorry, gotta go now, got a couple of Mexican brothers upstairs waiting for advice on how to stay out of the way of the cops.”

She closed the elevator door and headed up.

“What in the name of Godfrey Daniel was she talking about?” Fields asked.

“I’ve come to believe in Juanita,” I admitted as we walked across the lobby, the elevator rising behind us. “The trouble is that I can’t figure out what she’s telling me till it’s over and too late.”

“Cassandra,” Fields said, nodding his head in understanding. “I too have witnessed soothsayers, one particularly in Mozambique who had such powers, probably from indulging in too much catawhowoo, a beverage so pungent and alcoholic that even I had trouble consuming more than a few moderately sized gourds of the brew. That soothsayer could truly see the future, but only when he was completely soused. Man couldn’t hold his liquor.”

His car was parked at the curb, a large Cadillac with a driver. We got in the back, closed the door, and Fields reached for the built-in bar as we drove away.

The driver was big, his head covered in thick, darkly matted hair, his neck a cord of muscles.

It wasn’t far to DeMille Drive, where Fields rented a large house across the street from Cecil B. DeMille, an early settler after whom the street was named. The house and street were on a hill and when we stepped out of the car and closed the door, Fields grunted, “Gonna fire that driver. The Chimp’s got a bad attitude. Good solid Christian, cross around his neck, the whole business. Disapproval in his eyes and an accent he claims doesn’t exist but I’m sure is German.”

We walked up a tiled path with arched trellises covered with flowers. The path was about fifty feet long.

“My Chinaman keeps the posies fresh,” he said. “She’s away visiting her sister for a few weeks. My hope is to conclude this business before her return.”

“Chinaman?” I asked.

“Carlotta, my companion, my loyal rock in the midst of a turbulent sea of human thievery, chicanery, and wars both personal and national. She wore a Chinese outfit one of the first times I saw her. Called her Chinaman ever since. She retaliates by calling me Woody. My friends call me Bill, and the world at large is expected to call me Mr. Fields. Home.”

We were standing in front of a big dark wooden door. He was fumbling for his keys when it opened. A large man in a black suit stood within. His face and body were definite and unfortunate reminders of a long-necked bird.

“How did you know I was here?” Fields demanded. “Spying again?”

The man didn’t answer. He turned and disappeared into the house.

“Can’t remember his real name,” Fields confided in a whisper that echoed through the house, “but I call him the Baltimore Oriole. I’ve fired him and hired him and the Chimp at least six times. They display none of the respect I demand of my servants. I won’t tolerate it, but it’s the one thing I admire about the creatures.”

Fields placed his cane gently into a hollowed-out elephant’s leg and hung his straw hat next to about a dozen other hats on pegs in the front hall. We moved to the left. I expected a living room, and I think it was originally intended as one. Along one wall was a half-size bowling alley. In the center of the room was a pool table. There was a cue shelf on the near wall which included a variety of both straight and oddly twisted cues. The high chairs that are found along the walls of many pool halls lined the walls of the room. The ceiling above the pool table was definitely sagging. Fields caught me looking at it.

“Fella I rent this place from says I should repair it,” he said. “I say it’s his responsibility. We’ll end it all with swords, pistols, or in court.”

“What’s upstairs, over the table?” I asked.

“Ping-Pong table,” he said. “Best money can buy.”

He led me through a bizarre labyrinth of rooms on the way upstairs, including a workout room with weights and a steam box. Another bedroom had nothing in it but a barber’s chair.

“Sleep in that sometimes,” he said, nodding at the chair. “Go out for haircuts. I’ve always had trouble sleeping, from the time I was a kid. I can usually sleep on a pool table or in a barber chair. Beds and I are in a constant state of combat.”

Finally, we arrived at a far-flung chamber that Fields said was his office. He found a key, opened the door, and we stepped in. He closed the door behind us and moved to a battered roll-top desk. He rolled the top up. On the desk was a microphone, and next to it was a square speaker with a series of buttons.

“Place is completely wired, even the pathway to the house. I can hear what’s said anywhere and, through hidden speakers, talk to people in any room.”

He looked at me with pride and I made the mistake of asking why.

“Why? Thieves, glad-handers, salesmen, my own servants who might say dastardly things behind my back. Once caught a pair of dinner guests insulting me. I came on the speaker and told them there’d be no mooched dinner that night and they could turn around and go to the Tastee Pup.”

Fields patted his microphone and smiled with satisfaction.

“And there,” he said, “is the table where I kept my bank-books.” Twenty or more bankbooks were still strewn across the table.

“I figured it for an inside job. Fired all the servants except the Chimp and the Baltimore Oriole, the most likely suspects,” he said. “I want to keep an eye and ear on them.”

Fields went into a cubbyhole in his desk and came out with a black folder, which he handed to me.

“List of banks, names I used. Most of the amounts. Secretary put it together before the bastard took my bankbooks. Never used a bank in Philadelphia, though. I’m eccentric but I’m not crazy.”

I took the folder, opened it, and found three pages of single-spaced, neatly typed columns listing the name of the bank, the town or city, and the name he used to make the deposit. A
few
of the accounts were actually in his name, but most of them were under names like Ogle P. Thurp, Dedalus Krim, Mahatma Kane Jeeves, and Cormorant Beecham the Third. The amounts, which seemed to vary from a few hundred to as much as ten thousand dollars, were lined up with each bank name. A few of the amounts were missing.

“And there,” Fields said, pointing to the wall next to his desk, “is my map of the war.” I looked at the map on the wall. It was covered in thumbtacks of different colors. There was a blotch of red over most of France. Fields looked at the map with pride.

“Secret code,” he whispered. “I can predict the progress of the war from troop movements, sizes of armies, number of jeeps, the seasons. Red spot on France is my own blood. Stuck myself with a tack. Bled all over France for my country. Like some advice?”

I nodded and Fields continued to whisper.

“Hoard. Canned goods. I’ve got thousands of cans in the cellar. I tried eggs. Bought thousands. Don’t particularly like the damned things myself and they all rotted. Showed them to Jack Barrymore before he died and he asked where they came from. From a hen’s ass, I told him. I miss that son of a bitch Barrymore.”

Fields turned away from me and looked at his war map. The phone rang. Fields was lost in thoughts of John Barrymore, rotting eggs, or the progress of General Patton.

“Phone,” I said.

“Ah, yes,” he said, coming out of his reverie and moving to his desk, where he picked up the phone.

“William Claude Dukinfield’s residence,” he said. “Yes, W. C. Fields. And you are?” He got his answer and covered the mouthpiece with his palm. “Philadelphia police.” He looked visibly shaken. “You know how much I stole from Philadelphia merchants when I was a boy? They’ve probably been after me for decades.”

I took the phone. “My name is Peters,” I said. “I work for Mr. Fields.”

“Detective Belcher,” he said. He had a high voice and seemed to be in a hurry. “We checked your address and your Hipnoodle. No clothes, no bags, no food. Landlady says he called and reminded her that he’s paid up till the end of April and she should leave the place alone. If he comes back, she says she’ll call me. I doubt it. Sorry.”

“Thanks, Belcher,” I said.

“Belcher?” Fields asked. “Ask him his first name.”

“Mr. Fields wants to know your first name.”