Down for the Count: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Ten) (11 page)

Lipparini’s name wasn’t on Ralph’s list, but there was an M. L. Automobile Sales in North Hollywood. I hadn’t thought about it when I had first looked at it; it just seemed like a place where Howard might have picked up a Lincoln or a big Packard. Now the name made sense. I dug out the nickel I had planned on using the night before to call Carmen, dropped it into my pay phone, and dialed the number.

“M. L. Auto,” a woman’s voice chirped.

“I’d like to talk to M. L.,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” she said, sounding as if it was the saddest duty she might have in a lifetime, “but there is no M. L. Would you like to speak to our sales or service manager?”

“No,” I said, “I want the finance manager, the boss, Mr. Lipparini.”

“Whom shall I say is calling?” she asked after a pause.

“Toby Peters,” I said.

“I don’t think he is in right now, Mr. Peters,” she said.

“Tell him it’s the guy who danced with his stooges last night.”

I played with the tip of a pencil, trying to scratch it into a point I could use while I waited. I didn’t have to wait long.

“Peters?” The voice was deep, the name said languidly.

“Right,” I said.

“You’re dead,” he said.

“You want to hear a corpse talk?” I answered.

There was no sound on the other side, but the line stayed open. He didn’t hang up. So, I continued.

“I’ve been through Ralph Howard’s papers,” I lied magnificently, “and I have evidence that you and he were involved in a deal to fix some fights, that you owned a piece of the fighters Howard supposedly owned on his own. I’m putting things together and I find the possibility that Howard made you unhappy, maybe he couldn’t fix the contracts, or set up an exhibition with Joe Louis, or pay back some money he owed you fast enough, or … It can go on. But suddenly the day before yesterday Howard meets two guys who look suspiciously like a pair of the walking radios you had at Reed’s last night. And Howard is now dead. It wouldn’t look good for you if people I know at the L.A.
Times
got this.”

“You can’t …” he began.

“Collect from a dead man,” we finished in unison, and I went on alone to say, “I know the line. Something happens to me and the envelope of Ralph Howard’s letters and business dealings with you gets mailed to the district attorney by a friend of mine.”

“No one’s going to hurt you,” he said, taking forever to say it. “You upset Jerry a little last night. He’ll get over it.”

“And?” I said, pleased that I was no longer a dead man.

“And,” he went on, “I didn’t have Howard killed. He owed me, yes, he owed me. Maybe I juiced him a little, had someone chase him around in a car on a Saturday night, a nice new Pontiac maybe, but I didn’t have him killed. You know my motto.”

“Engraved on my cheek,” I said. “Let’s talk.”

“We’re talking,” he said. “But you talk about me paying you for those Howard papers and we stop talking. I don’t go in anybody’s pocket.”

“No money,” I said, turning my chair around with a rusty squeal to look out the window. “Information. You think it’s possible a pair of your boys might have gotten overly enthusiastic about their job, accidentally did Ralph Howard in, and then decided not to take the responsibility?”

“No,” he said simply, and then after a long pause: “They do what I say, no more, no less, or they have a long swim in the ocean.”

“I’d like to talk to that trio from last night,” I said. “You name the place and I’ll be there.”

I thought he had gone out for a hot dog. There was nothing on the line for a minute or two and then he said, “Here, half an hour. Come alone. I’ll give you ten minutes, and then I don’t want to hear from you or see you again ever.”

“Half an hour,” I said and hung up.

I was five minutes late. No-Neck Arnie had just been putting the finishing touches on my new gas gauge and I had to wait.

“Putting one of those things in ain’t easy,” he said, wiping his hand and holding it out for payment.

“It ain’t cheap either,” I answered, shelling out two tens and two singles.

The gauge worked fine. Arnie had thrown in a full tank of gas and a warning about rationing, which led me to believe that the cost of running my car would be going up.

M. L. Auto was on Sherman Way just off of Laurel Canyon Drive. It was big and bright with lots of windows and three rows of used cars in the outside lot. The lot and the showroom didn’t seem to be overrun with customers. Two guys who looked like salesmen looked at me when I came through the front door. Then they glanced at each other to see who would get me. Neither seemed eager for the possible sale. Finally, the shorter of the two put his left hand in the pocket of his nicely pressed trousers, touched his bow tie, and ambled toward me past a shiny ’38 Oldsmobile. He wasn’t young and he wasn’t full of car salesman energy. His black hair was brushed back and he had nice heavy bags under his eyes.

“Hi,” he said, holding his hand out.

“Hi,” I returned, shaking his hand.

“My name is Jerry,” he went on. “We’ve got nothing new. Won’t be anything new till the war ends, but we have some good-as-new pre-war models, fully reconditioned, real rubber tires.”

“I’m here to see Mr. Lipparini,” I said. “I’ve got an appointment and I’m late.”

Jerry hadn’t been smiling, and he not-smiled even more and took his hand out of his pocket with a bit of respect. “Up the stairs, first door,” he said, pointing to a carpeted flight of wooden stairs against the wall. He returned to his fellow salesman in the corner.

I found the door at the top of the stairs, knocked, and a woman’s voice told me to come in. The office was carpeted, with wood-paneled walls, pictures of cars, cozy. The blonde behind the desk looked cozy and warm, too. She was about twenty, had on a businesslike green dress and a nice smile, showing white teeth. Leaning against the wall behind her was my old friend Moe. He had changed suits but not dispositions. His arms were folded, but his eyes were aimed at me, which wasn’t too bad. It was the little smile I didn’t like.

“Mr. Peters?” the blonde said.

“He’s Peters,” Moe confirmed. She looked at Moe and then back at me, still smiling.

“Mr. Lipparini has been expecting you,” she went on. “Just knock and go right in.”

I knocked and went right in.

Lipparini was seated behind a big black desk. No trouble recognizing him. I knew him from his pictures in the papers. The happy grin under a small nose. The thinning hair combed sideways to make it look like more, but instead making him look like a man who was trying to fool himself. He was about sixty and in reasonably good shape. His gray eyes looked like they belonged in a different face, or else the real Monty Lipparini was wearing a mask and only his real eyes were visible. I didn’t want that mask to come off. I had the feeling that people who saw the real face turned to stone or worse.

“Peters,” he said, shaking his head. “Hell of a world. Hell of a world.”

“Hell of a world, Mr. Lipparini,” I agreed, though it didn’t look like such a bad world for him. I tried to ignore Curly and Larry standing to the right of the desk. Larry’s scar looked fleshy and his face puffy, like a little kid who’s just been caught going through the pockets in the coat room.

“I just heard on the radio the Japs bombed some place called Dutch Harbor in Alaska. Nineteen planes. That’s the first raid on the United States.” He looked genuinely concerned, at least his face did. His eyes were watching me.

“Pearl Harbor,” I said.

“Right,” he agreed, standing up and plunging his hands in his pockets. He was wearing a shirt and tie but no jacket. His sleeves were rolled up and ready for work. His arms were dark and hairy. “I mean the first attack on the coast, the continent, America, not some island a million miles away. They hit Alaska and then they hit Seattle or Frisco or Los Angeles. You know what would happen? You remember what happened in February?”

He looked at me and I nodded. The air-raid sirens had gone off about two o’clock in the morning. I had rolled out of bed to check the windows, and when I saw searchlights aiming into the sky, I’d gone downstairs to join the other tenants of Mrs. Plaut’s boarding house. We stood and watched without knowing what was going on. Far away someone was pumping ack-ack rounds at the moon, and an air-raid warden came running down Heliotrope holding his metal pot on his head with one hand and telling us to go in and turn out the lights. It went on like that for two hours, till the sun came up. The next morning the L.A.
Times
told us foreign bombers had raided Southern California. There was even a report that a plane had been shot down near 185th and Vermont. It turned out that no planes had flown over California or been shot down, though there were casualties. Three people were killed in car crashes when they tried to get out of the city to avoid the oncoming Japanese. Two others had heart attacks. Air-raid wardens went down non-fatally all over the place after running into walls or civilians. The ack-ack had destroyed roofs, lawns, cars, and a Chinese restaurant.

“Christ.” Lipparini went on pacing behind his desk. “If the Japs really came … You want coffee or something?”

“No thanks,” I said. Curly and Larry didn’t say anything.

“I’m trying to be a little friendly here,” Lipparini said. “You called me pushing and I’m trying to make it a little friendly.”

“Coffee would be great,” I said.

“Okay, that’s better.” He picked up one of the two phones on his desk, pushed a button, and said, “Mr. Peters would like a coffee.… I don’t know. Give him cream and sugar.” He hung up, still standing, gave the two standing men a disgruntled look, and turned his attention back to me.

“I didn’t have Howard killed,” he said. “I didn’t even have him worked on. I was thinking about it, but I didn’t. And my boys didn’t do it on their own.”

He looked at Curly and Larry, who didn’t look back.

“If I found out they did, they’d be swimming for Japan.”

“I thought you didn’t get rid of people,” I said.

“I said,” he corrected, “I don’t get rid of people who owe me. If my people spin on me, they owe their skins, and the only way I can collect it is if I take it from their bodies.”

It was a pleasant image but I didn’t want to dwell on it. I might owe my skin to Monty Lipparini some day. I considered not going on, saying good-bye, and searching for a new suspect. The light might not be as good on the street, but it would be a lot safer. There was a knock at the door and the bouncy blonde came in, smiling at all concerned, and handed me a cup of coffee. I took it, said thanks, and she left. Lipparini watched me. Curly and Larry watched me. I drank some coffee and smiled appreciatively. It was too sweet.

“How you like it?” Lipparini asked, cocking his head as if my answer was very, very important.

“Good coffee,” I said, taking another sip. The answer was right. It widened Lipparini’s grin and he pointed to the empty chair in front of his desk. I sat down.

“I’m going into the coffee business,” he said. “Cars are too damn much trouble during a war. I’ll keep this place going but what the hell, you can’t get parts, tires, gas, cars. But coffee, that I can get. I’ve got a source in Cuba. What you’re drinking there is M. L. coffee. I got a couple of guys working on an ad for the radio. We’re going to be on the Milton Berle Show. M. L. coffee, one sip will make the war seem far away. How do you like it?”

“Great,” I said.

He was around the desk now, leaning close to me. It was hard to get the cup to my mouth. He looked at me for a few seconds and backed away. “What happened to your face?”

“A cop shoved me,” I said.

Lipparini nodded knowingly. He had been shoved by cops. “The way I figure it,” he said, “the only one who figured to gain from this Ralph Howard’s getting it is Howard’s widow. How about that?”

“She didn’t do it,” I said, putting the empty cup down on the desk. Lipparini nodded and Silvio, who I had thought of as Larry, leaped forward to pick up the cup and wipe the ring I had left with his pocket handkerchief.

“Parkman,” Lipparini said, holding up a finger.

“Why?” I asked.

“Howard owed him. I don’t kill people who owe me but that doesn’t mean other people have my ethics.”

I wasn’t getting far this way. All I was getting was cheap coffee and weak ideas.

“How were you going to fix the fight with Louis and Teeth Guzman?” I asked.

To my right Curly, who I now knew was Mush, sucked in his breath. Lipparini stood back and looked at me as if I were insane. His smile left for a second and came back.

“You’re a crazy man,” he said.

“Humor me.” I grinned.

“You know boxing?” he said. “More coffee?”

“I know boxing,” I answered. “No more coffee.”

“Ever see Louis fight?”

“Roper, 1939,” I said. “Louis put him away in the first.”

“Okay,” said Lipparini. “But first Roper tagged Louis with a left, hurt him. And Galento. I saw that one. Galento went down in the fourth, but he had Louis down. See what I mean? Some bum of the month could get lucky.”

“Or,” I contributed, “some bum of the month could be helped to get lucky.”