Fala Factor (13 page)

“You can come up to the house for a little while,” she said, touching my cheek.

“Well,” I said, “maybe for a little while.”

This time no dripping water fell on our heads. She pushed me back gently onto the operating table, where my head hit the gun. I moved the gun and made room for her. With a dead parrot in the next room, we did something like making love on an animal examining table.

When we were finished, which was not long after we started, she put on her underpants, bra, slacks, sweater, and gun, and I put on her husband's suit.

“We'll get another one of Roy's suits for you at the house,” she said, smiling and touching my nose.

“Is your name really Anne?” I said.

“Laura Anne,” she answered.

“I've got a phone call to make,” I said.

She kissed me and told me to go ahead and make the call from the clinic and then come up to the house, where she would have a surprise waiting for me.

“I'm not up to another surprise right now,” I said with a stupid grin.

“We'll see,” she said, backing out of the door.

I called Mrs. Plaut's, praying to the ghosts of dead parrots that she would not answer the phone. My prayers went unanswered.

“Yes?” she asked the phone in that voice that made it seem as if she couldn't understand how any human sound could come from a machine.

“It's me, Mrs. Plaut, Toby Peters.”

“Yes,” she said reasonably.

“Can you hear me?”

“Yes,” she repeated.

“Good, please get Gunther on the phone,” I said, dropping my voice only slightly from the level I used to threaten boxers who were safely busy in a ring a stadium away.

“Is anyone there?” Mrs. Plaut said, making it clear she had heard nothing of my end of the conversation.

“Gunther Wherthman,” I screamed.

“Mr. Wortman,” she said, “will you please answer this madman. I can make no sense of him.”

“Can I help?” came Gunther's voice.

“Thank God,” I sighed. “Gunther, I won't be able to make it back for dinner.”

“That is most unfortunate, Toby. I am preparing a buttery quiche and have purchased several bottles of Lucky Lager beer which, as I recall, you are fond of.”

“The fact is,” I said, feeling guilty, “I may not make it back to the boarding house at all tonight.”

“May I ask,” he said, pausing to frame his question with dignity, “if it is a business situation or a young lady.”

“It's business and the lady isn't exactly young, but neither am I.”

“The quiche will hold till tomorrow,” said Gunther. “In fact, my aunt who taught me the recipe believed that it tasted best on the second day. Take care of yourself, Toby.”

The hole in my pants, or rather Olson's pants, was large enough to shove a dead parrot through, but the thought didn't appeal to me. I thought of getting a veterinarian for the shepherd with the missing ear, but the resident vet was dead. Laura Anne Olson might have a suggestion. The dog and I weren't exactly friends, but I'd been in his position enough times to know how it feels.

I trotted up the pathway to the house and stopped short. There was a car parked at the door, a car I had seen parked in front of Jane Poslik's apartment earlier that day. If it was Mrs. Olson's car, I had a few questions about her travels. If it wasn't, then she might be inside with a visitor she at least wanted to meet. I tried the front door. It opened and I stepped in.

“Anne,” I shouted. “Laura?”

Something, someone moved in the living room. I stepped toward it carefully, considering a run to my glove compartment for my .38, but there might not be time.

“Anne,” I repeated, staying out of the doorway that would set me up in backlight for whoever might be standing or sitting in the shadows beyond.

Someone was in the room, in the distant corner in a chair. The figure stood up and moved into the light.

“Anne, huh?” said Cawelti with a smirk. “Laura.”

“Where is she?” I said, moving forward to meet him.

“Who, Mrs. Olson?”

“You know that's who I mean.”

“She's dead,” he said.

I looked up at the spot where water had leaked through the ceiling two nights before and took a step toward the hallway. If I hadn't stopped to call Gunther, I would have been with her, but it had only been a minute or two and Cawelti was here. Something was wrong.

“Is this a sick joke of yours, fireman?” I asked, turning to him again.

“No joke, little brother,” he grinned. “She's dead. Died two days ago, on Tuesday, in the Victor Hotel just off Wilshire, private room and a bath. Just found the body today. Very messy.”

“Cut the crap Cawelti, I saw her five minutes ago down in the clinic, and there was nothing wrong with her. She—”

“—wasn't Mrs. Olson,” he finished. “That's why I'm here. Laura Olson, middle name Faye, was about fifty, short, fat, and no beauty. The woman who was here when you were parading in the negative was another broad, if there was really someone here.”

“You're full of—” I began.

“She took you in.” He chuckled, looking down at my pants. “The way Captain Pevsner figures it, if she exists someplace outside of your troubled mind, she and someone else did in Olson just as you came knocking at the door. She came downstairs to keep you busy while he finished the job and then they set you up. That's the way your brother figures it, but I'd like to keep you involved.”

“Let's go find her,” I said, turning to the door.

“Come on, Peters, as far as I figure, there is no ‘her,' just you. You're a sorry sight.”

We were a few feet apart by now and all it would take was the wrong word. He searched for it.

“The way I figure it, you were playing with yourself,” he said, looking down at my pants leg.

“Let's go to the station and talk to the captain,” I said.

“Day off,” Cawelti said, enjoying the moment.

“Seidman,” I tried.

“Home, sick, tooth problem. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?”

“How badly do you want a nose like mine,” I said, sweetly.

“I'm ten years younger and twenty pounds heavier than you are, Peters,” he answered.

“And I've got a bad back and a weak skull, fireman, but I've got something you don't have. I'm the most stubborn terrier you ever ran into. I don't give up. I just keep coming. You knock me down and I get up again. I get up and up until you're too tired to move your arms and you ask for mercy and I stomp on your face.”

Something was in Cawelti's eyes now that told me he thought he was looking at a crazy man. That was just what I was shooting for. What I told him was the truth. I'd take twenty in the gut to give one good one back. I could live with the twenty, but I had found that the other guy would usually do whatever he could to keep from getting that one good one.

“You're nuts,” Cawelti said.

“I do my best.” I grinned. “Someone shot some animals in the clinic. You'd better call a vet.”

“Get out of here,” he said, not backing away but not pushing for the fight. If he was going to lay into me, it would be in front of an audience, someone who could pull us apart after I got hurt and before he did.

When I got back to my car, the note was still there. A man was standing in the doorway of the house nearby apparently waiting for me and the package the message on my car had promised. I waved to him, got in my car, and drove away.

I stopped at a pay phone and called a North Hollywood number. My sister-in-law Ruth answered.

“You're coming for dinner tomorrow, aren't you, Toby?” she said.

“I'm coming,” I answered. “Listen, I've got two tickets for Volez and Yolanda tomorrow night. You and Phil can go. I'll sit with the kids.”

“I don't know,” she said, her voice making it obvious that the idea excited her. “Let me ask Phil.”

She put down the phone and wandered away and then I heard light breathing on the other end.

“Smush,” said a little voice.

“Lucy?” I said. “This is Uncle Toby.”

“Lock,” she said and clobbered the phone with her pet lock, a lock that had found my head more than once with velocity well beyond what you could expect from a two year old. She had her father's arm and probably his disposition.

“Terrific,” I said. “Get Mommy.”

“Toby?” came Ruth's voice. “He said okay Can you come early for dinner then, about four?”

“I'll be there,” I said.

When I hung up, I checked at a nearby restaurant and found out that it was almost five in the afternoon. I had expected a night with someone who called herself Anne Olson. A tailor on the corner was closing his door when I caught him and persuaded him with an ugly look and the promise of a good tip to let me in. It took him about five minutes to sew up the tear in Olson's pants.

“Good as new,” he said, stepping back to admire his work after I had the pants back on and he had two bucks in his hands.

“You want to come around with me and tell that to everyone who thinks different?” I asked.

“It's what I tell them all,” said the tailor, tucking the two bucks away. “And it is good as new, better, only it don't look so good. Looking and being good is different,” he said with some slight European accent.

“You got a point,” I agreed and went back to my car.

My session with the fake Mrs Olson should have left me satisfied, but I couldn't hold back the urge to get over to Spring Street and Levy's Restaurant. My appetites were up and to avoid figuring out what was happening in the Fala case, I decided to make an assault on a Levy corned beef sandwich and on Carmen the cashier.

The corned beef proved easy, complete with pickle and a chocolate phosphate. Carmen proved to be, as always, Carmen. She sat dark, placid, a counter fighter with formidable front, and large brown eyes.

“You're voluptuous,” I said, holding up the line of three people behind me wanting to pay their tabs.

“You're holding up the line,” she said without a smile.

“Phil Harris is still at the Biltmore Bowl,” I whispered. “Name a night.”

“Come on, bud,” a guy behind me whimpered.

Carmen gave me a look that could with imagination be read as a smile. She was a widow of great reserve and resistance and I was probably one of the more resistible elements in her life.

“No wrestling this week?” she asked softly.

“Thursday at the Eastside Avenue over on Pico,” I said. “I'd like to get together before that.”

“I am sure you would,” came the voice of the guy behind me, “but I've got a show to get to.”

“The wrestling match next Sunday,” she said, ringing up my bill.

“I can't wait,” I said.

“You'll wait,” she said, promising nothing. So it would have to be five days before my next assault on the Mona Lisa of the restaurant world.

“Ain't love grand?” said the little guy who was late for his show as he plunked down a half a buck to pay for his sandwich.

“Ain't it,” I agreed before stepping outside to see the sun coming down over Spring Street. I got back in my car, ignoring the bruised far side, and drove up to Eleventh and then across to Broadway, where I found a parking space right in front of the Peerless Book Shop. I'd been in the place a dozen times or so, twice to look for books and ten times to look for leads on missing people or people with not too savory reputations.

The Peerless Book Shop had a good collection of cheap used books. There were also some new ones that went for used prices because the owner, Morris “Academy” Dolmitz, would, from time to time, pick up four or five hundred copies of some title from a source he didn't want to know too much about. When I walked in this time, the place was piled with copies of John Steinbeck's
The Moon is Down
and Robert Frost's
A Witness Tree
. There were other books all over the place, in boxes, on shelves. If Academy had to rely on book sales, he would have been a poor man. As it was, his main income came from bets he placed in the back room.

No one was in the shop but Academy, who sat behind the counter on his stool, his mop of white hair falling into his eyes, a white zippered sweater over a red flannel shirt covering a little pot belly. Academy was around sixty-five and had seen and heard it all.

“What can I do you for?” he said, looking up at me with tiny gray eyes and a smile of even false teeth.

“I'm looking for a fella,” I said.

“I deal books,” said Academy, holding out his hands, “not fellas. You know that, Peters. Ask me one. You know what I mean. Ask?”

He sat up, waiting.

“Best actor, 1934,” I said.

“Victor McLaglen,
The Informer
,” he said, in disgust. “Give me a hard one for chrissake. Whatdya think I am, a dumb putz here?”

“Best cartoon, 1935,” I said.

“
Three Orphan Kittens
, Walt Disney, Silly Symphony. One more.” He grinned, eyes open wide.

“Sound recording, 1929,” I said.

Academy was bouncing in his chair like a kid.

“You're a good one, Peters, a good one. Douglas Shearer, MGM, for
The Big House
.”

“I'm looking for a mountain named Bass,” I threw in, and Academy stopped grinning. His mouth closed tight, and his false teeth went clickety-clack. “You can't miss him.”

“Not a familiar name,” he said through his teeth, trying to go back to his book.

“Your memory's suddenly failing you?”

“It happens like that,” he said with a shrug. He opened the book and pretended to go back to his reading. I reached over the counter, closed the book, and looked at it.

“That's a dirty book,” I said.

“It's a classic,” he answered, reaching for the book. “What do you think you are doing here anyway?”