Fala Factor (14 page)

I held the book away from his hand and he sat back, shaking his head. “Peters,” he clacked. “You know I got a button down here and you know I can push it and you know two guys'll come through that door and squash you like a rose between the pages of a bible.”

“Colorfully put, Academy, but I've got questions and a big mouth,” I answered, handing him the de Sade. “You know my brother's a captain now?”

“I know,” he said. “Things like that I know. It's my business. What are you, threatening me or what?”

“Threatening you,” I agreed.

“So that's the way it is,” he said, feigning defeat. “Human nature. All these books, you know, they're about human nature. I know human nature.”

“And who won the Academy awards,” I said impatiently. “Bass. He worked for you. I want to know why you hired him, where he is now, who his friends are, or who else he's been working for.”

“Ten bucks,” said Academy, folding his arms on his chest.

“Come on Academy,” I said. “You don't need my ten bucks.”

“Principle's involved here, Peters,” he said. “I give you something for a threat and pretty soon every bit player on the avenue's in here paying in closed fists and loud voices instead of cash. I'm running a business here. Know what I mean?”

I fished out the ten and handed it across the counter.

“Bass is a putz,” he said.

“Everybody's a putz to you. Give me something hard.”

“Bass is special putz,” he said. “Doesn't show a temper. Cold, a little dumb, one of those that likes hurting. You know the kind?”

“I'm waiting for news here, Academy,” I said impatiently.

He clacked his teeth and went into the spiel.

“He did about four months in the back room. Customer named Martin, got an office around here someplace, sometimes a customer, recommended him. Bass was some ways okay. He collected for me when a guy came up slow with the gelt. Trouble was when Bass collected, the guy he collected from didn't show up here anymore. He was making guys pay but he was losing me repeat customers. You need a kind of festive atmosphere back there,” he said, nodding over his shoulder at the solid wooden door. I'd been back there once.

“There is no way short of Cedric Gibbons and an MGM crew of making that dirty brown betting room festive,” I said.

“You know we got free coffee going in there all the time?” he went on. “So, I told this Martin that it would be nice if Bass found another job. I didn't want, you might guess, to tell Bass myself. Anyway, this Martin guy says it's all right, he's got a good job for Bass working for some animal doctor.”

“Two questions,” I said, holding up two fingers. “Where does Bass live and how do I find this Martin?”

Dolmitz puffed out some air, clacked his teeth and said, “Bass lives some place on Sixth near Westlake Park. I don't know the address. Martin's got an office around here is all I know. He's maybe fifty-five, young guy, thin, gray hair, not too big, wears those little glasses like Ben Franklin. I don't know what he does. That's the best you get from me, pally.”

“That wasn't ten bucks' worth,” I said, holding out my hand for change. Dolmitz's hand went under the counter where I knew the button was.

“Take a book or two,” he said. “We'll call it even.”

I grabbed a copy of
The Moon is Down
and the Frost poems and went for the door.

“You want to know who won best film editor in 1938?” he called, as I went to the door, the books tucked under my arm.

“Ralph Dawson for
The Adventures of Robin Hood
,” I said. He had come up with the wrong question. I had been on the security force at Warners when Dawson won. I'd seen him come back with the Oscar in his hand.

“Son of a …” Dolmitz began, but I was on the street before he could finish.

“Half an hour later I was back at Mrs. Plaut's knocking on Gunther's door.

“Come in,” he called and turned around in the small chair at the small desk where he worked.

“Did you eat yet?” I said. “I had a change in plans.”

“No,” he said with a small smile. “I wanted to finish this troublesome passage. The quiche is best at room temperature, in any case. I shall bring it right in with the beers.”

Back in my room I set the table, took off Olson's jacket and tie, and turned on the radio. The quiche was great. So was the beer. We ate and listened to “Truth or Consequences” and I gave Gunther the Steinbeck book, for which he thanked me.

“Gunther, if you've got time tomorrow, you could do me a favor and go down around Broadway and Eleventh and try to track down a guy involved in the case.”

Gunther, after finishing the final small morsel of quiche on his lap, agreed with enthusiasm, and I told him what I knew about Martin.

“You've had a busy day, Toby,” he said, sympathetically. “I'll go back to my work and leave you to your rest.”

“A good dinner, Gunther, thanks.”

Gunther gathered his plate and his book and had made it to the hallway when we heard the phone on the landing ring. I ran past him to beat Mrs. Plaut in case she might be hovering around. I caught it on the third ring.

“Hello,” I said, “Mrs Plaut's boarding house.”

“Toby Peters, please,” said a man's voice I had heard somewhere but couldn't place.

“You're talking to him,” I said.

“You have been making some inquiries about me,” he said. “I don't like that at all. I would prefer that you stop.”

“I can't stop, Marty,” I said. “I've got a client. Why don't we just get together and talk it over. I've got some questions about who scrubbed Doc Olson and his wife, who the lady pretending to be Mrs. Olson was, and what you have to do with a hulk named Bass.”

“I was afraid you wouldn't listen,” he said patiently. “But I wanted to give you the opportunity. What happens next will be your responsibility, not mine.”

“Is that the way it works? You drop the bomb and if I don't get out of the way, it's my fault?”

“Something like that,” he said.

“Give back the dog and I stop looking,” I said. “Maybe I don't care who gave Olson and his wife a bath.”

“You care,” he said. “I know that sound in your voice. We have nothing further to discuss. You have my sincere warning and, if it will do any good, you have my assurance that what I have done has been for the security of our country.”

“And which country is that?” I said.

“The United States of America,” he answered and hung up.

N
o one tried to kill me on Sunday morning, but then again I didn't try to find Martin or the fake Mrs. Olson. I read the L.A.
Times
over a couple of bowls of Wheaties and a cup of coffee. I went right for the funnies after finding out that the Japanese were a few miles from the Chinese border. Dixie Dugan, Mickey Finn, Texas Slim, and Dirty Dalton kept me company through breakfast. I had to wait for the bathroom because Joe Hill the mailman was taking a bath, but some time after ten I got in, shaved, washed, and made ready.

I was dressing in my room when Mrs. Plaut burst in with a bundle in her arms. She paid no attention to my near nudity and plopped the bundle on the sofa.

“Found this on the doorstep this a.m.,” she said.

“Thanks,” I said, getting into my pants. She just stood there in her blue paisley dress and waited. There would be no getting rid of her till her curiosity was satisfied. I started to put on my shirt.

“I'm late for church,” she said.

“I'm sorry,” I said, getting my second arm in and moving to the bundle without buttoning up. T
OBY
P
ETERS
was printed on the outside of the brown paper wrapper in neat letters. I pulled off the string and found my neatly pressed suit, the one I had traded with Doc Olson. The torn sleeve had been neatly repaired. Lying on top of the suit was a card on which was written in what looked like a feminine hand:
Sorry, really
.

“It's your suit,” said Mrs. Plaut, disappointed.

“I'm sorry it's nothing more exciting,” I apologized, and Mrs. Plaut left in disgust.

For about an hour I sat making notes and trying to sort the case out. Nothing came so I finished dressing, hung my suit in the closet, and went out into the late morning with a book under my arm. The sun was bright and the two little girls who lived next door to Mrs. Plaut were throwing a ball against Mrs. Plaut's steps.

“My mother says you're a criminal,” said the younger girl. She was about eight and wore pigtails. There were blue ribbons in her pigtails.

The older girl, about ten, looked embarrassed, and whispered, “Gussie, no.”

“I'm a private detective,” I said.

“My mother said you kill people,” the girl went on, looking up at me.

“Only them what needs killing, little lady,” I said in my best Harry Carey. “Now if you'll excuse me, I've got my work to do.”

My work consisted of a run up to Burbank with some worry about how much gas might be left in my gaugeless tank. Rationing was soon going to officially cut me to five or six gallons a week. I knew I could get more through Arnie, but I wasn't sure I could pay the price.

Jeremy was parked halfway down the block where he could keep his eye on the stairs leading up to Jane Poslik's apartment. I parked behind him and walked over to lean through the window and hand him the Robert Frost poems and the paper bag I had stopped for on the way.

“Tea, hard rolls, and some poetry,” I said, handing him the bag. “Your favorite.”

“You are very thoughtful, Toby,” he said, laying aside the pad of paper he had been writing on and taking the book and the package.

“Right, very thoughtful. I send you out on a Sunday morning to wait for the Frankenstein monster and I go off for dinner with the family,” I said.

“Sunday is like any other day to me, Toby. It holds no special significance. The sun is warm. I am relaxed and this is a good place to work and to read. Forget your guilt. Would you like a roll?”

I declined and he told me that Jane Poslik had gone out an hour earlier to pick up a newspaper but was now safely back in her apartment. No one had come or gone.

“I'll relieve you this evening,” I said.

“I would prefer,” Jeremy put in, examining the first roll, “that you devote your time to finding the person who threatens this woman. That would be more effective than protecting her at the point of her greatest vulnerability. It's a simple principle of wrestling.”

“Okay,” I said. “I'll keep at it.”

When I arrived at my brother's small house on Bluebelle in North Hollywood, it was about three. Lucy greeted me at the door, her hands behind her back probably concealing her padlock. Nate and Dave, my nephews, were seated in the small dining room playing with toy soldiers. Nate was almost fourteen and Dave about eleven. I picked Lucy up carefully to avoid hidden locks and said hi to the boys.

“Uncle Tobe,” Nate called. He touched something in front of him and a toothpick flew across the table mowing down a lead soldier. Dave groaned.

“How's it going, Huey and Dewey?” I said, pinching Lucy's nose gently.

“Okay,” said Nate. “I'm smashing him. He's the Nazis.”

“No I'm not, Nate. You're the Nazis.”

Ruth came in, skinny, tired, with tinted blond hair that wouldn't stay up and a gentle smile.

“Toby, you're early,” she said.

“I'll go away and come back,” I said, starting to put Lucy down.

“No, Uncle Toby,” Dave said.

Phil came through the front door, a package in his arms, and grunted at me.

“Take this and put it on the kitchen table. Make yourself useful.”

I put Lucy down, took the package, and went into the kitchen.

“How's Seidman?” I said over my shoulder.

“Minck almost killed him,” Phil said, following me in after picking up his daughter, who stuck her finger in his hairy ear. “He has a hell of an infection. An oral surgeon at the university is taking care of him. Steve may kill that dirty dentist when he gets out of the hospital.”

The rest of the afternoon went fine. Lucy clipped me once on the shoulder with a wooden toy. We listened to a baseball game on Nate's short wave. The Red Sox snapped a thirteen-game Cleveland winning streak, 8–4, in Boston. Charlie Wagner was the winning pitcher. Bobby Doerr had three hits. Pesky picked up a couple and Ted Williams had one. Foxx and DiMaggio were blanked. Nate, a Red Sox fan, was happy.

Ruth had made turkey, salad, iced tea, and a jello mold with little pieces of pineapple in it.

“Remember when I used to think you killed people every day,” Dave said after dinner. “That was dumb. No one kills people every day except maybe in the war. My dad doesn't even kill people every day.”

“Dumb, dumb, dumb,” Nate said, looking at the ceiling.