Now You See It: A Toby Peters Mystery (6 page)

“Turban,” I said.

“Yeah, with this green piece of glass right in the middle, here.” She pointed to a spot just over his forehead, and added, “He’s dead. Cunningham. I could tell, right?”

“He is,” I confirmed. “You know why he was in the women’s dressing room?”

“Gwen’s boyfriend,” she said.

“Gwen?”

“She’s the tiger lady, the one in the tiger costume,” Marie said.

I remembered her. She was very pretty and very young.

“Dead man is about forty-five, overweight, and looks a lot like Charles Laughton,” I said.

“He’s also rich,” she said. “Gives … gave her lots of stuff, you know?”

That explained a few things. Cunningham was seeing a girl in the show. Cunningham used a false name. Cunningham pretended he was wealthy. Now Cunningham was dead. The police were on the way. I wanted to find Gwen.

“Police will be here soon,” I said. “Stay here. You want company?”

The “yes” nod.

“I’ll send someone in.”

I went out the door. The pack was waiting for me. Jeremy was on the landing now, protecting the door of the dressing room where Phil was looking for whatever he could find.

I motioned for Jeremy. He pressed his way through the crowd on the narrow landing, and I told him to sit inside with Marie till the police came. He went through the door and I asked, “Which of you is Gwen?”

No one answered. People looked around at each other.

“The girl in the tiger costume?” I tried.

“Gone,” came a voice from the stage level below.

I looked over the railing and down at an old man with an open white shirt and a pair of wide suspenders.

“Gone? Where?”

“Out there,” said the man, pointing a pipe toward the stage door. “You went up the stairs,” he said, pointing the pipe at the stairs, “and she went flying out, running like a banshee was snapping at her heels.” He was pointing toward the stage door again.

On cue, the stage door opened and two uniformed cops came in.

“What is going on?” said Blackstone, stepping off the stage and looking at the cops and then up at me. “I need Peters back on the roller right now. I have a very impatient lion and more impatient audience, and I need something that resembles silence.”

“Man’s been murdered,” I said to the cops and Blackstone.

The backstage crowd went silent.

Blackstone said, “Who?”

One of the cops said, “Where’s the body?”

“In there,” I said, pointing at the dressing room door and then to Blackstone, “A man named Cunningham.”

“Why? Who did it?”

The cops were hurrying up the clanging stairs, muscling past performers and stagehands. The cop in the lead was florid and heavy, one of the wartime retreads. The kid behind him looked like my fourteen-year-old nephew.

Blackstone’s questions were good ones.

I didn’t have the answers.

“Did anyone see a guy with a beard wearing a turban with a green stone in it?” I asked.

“I did,” said Jimmy Clark. “He was up on the landing next to the dressing rooms right before the buzz saw act.”

“Went out that door,” said the old man with the pipe, pointing once again at the stage door. “Couple of minutes ago right behind the tiger lady.”

“Sara,” Blackstone called in a loud whisper and pointed to a blonde girl in a Little Bow Peep costume. “You’ll appear instead of Mr. Peters. Now all I need is some new patter.”

“The double whoops,” Pete said, leaning over the rail.

Blackstone raised a finger, nodded, motioned for Little Bow Peep to move behind the curtains, and went back onstage.

        
Hand half a pack of playing cards to two people with the cards faced down after you have dealt out two piles. Have each person take a card from his or her deck, look at it, and place it in the other person’s pile. Have each person shuffle the half deck he or she has. Place on pile on top of the other. Look at the cards. Pull out two. Lay them facedown. Have the two people turn over the cards. It will be the two cards they have selected. Put the packs together, shuffle them, and then spread them out to show that it is a regular deck. How it’s done: Take a normal pack of cards. Alternate a red card with a black card. When you deal out the two packs, one will be all black and the other all red. When each person puts the card he or she has chosen into the other pack, there will be one red card in the black pack and one black card in the red. Look through the pack and pick the two cards
.

—
From the
Blackstone, The Magic Detective
radio show

A
THIRD COP
I
HADN
’
T SEEN
was stationed at the stage door. I knew the routine. No one in, no one out, till the detectives came and said otherwise.

“I need Gwen Knight’s address fast,” I told Peter Bouton, looking down at the cop at the door and hearing the other two cops going into the dressing room where Phil was waiting with Cunningham’s body.

The cop at the door was familiar to me. I didn’t remember his name. He had been transferred to the Wilshire District when the Hollywood force had been juggled after a hush-hush about uniforms on the take from bookies that hung around Columbia Pictures studio. He looked up at me. Recognition.

“Downstairs,” said Bouton.

I followed him down the wobbling metal steps and into a small office lined with rusting file cabinets surrounding a small banged-up wooden desk.

“I leave my stuff in my briefcase whenever we …” Pete began as he shuffled through a pile of papers reaching behind the desk. “Here.”

He pulled a battered briefcase from behind the small desk and opened it. He found the sheet he was looking for.

“Not what I thought,” he said. “The other girls are staying at the Arlington Arms. Gwen is staying with someone … her sister … on Beverly, the Bluedorn Apartments.”

He found a pencil and a small pad of paper and wrote the sister’s name, address, and phone number on it. He handed it to me. I glanced at it, pocketed the sheet and said, “Thanks.”

I left the small office, ignoring the eyes of the cop at the door, and headed for the stage. Blackstone was pointing a wand at some black enamel boxes. The buzz saw trick was over. I could only see the sides. I moved behind the curtains and down the stairs into the audience. People were looking at me. I glanced back. Blackstone saw me and said with a wave of his hand, “Ladies and gentleman. The man who was cut in half by the buzz saw.”

The audience applauded. I bowed as I went up the aisle.

“Uncle Toby,” Nate called out.

I waved at my nephews, grinned at the audience, hurried through the doors and into the lobby. No cops on guard. I almost bumped into Calvin Ott, who was entering the theater. He was dark-blue suited and grinning.

“Mr. Peters,” he said. “How is the show?”

“You missed the best part,” I said.

He looked at my uniform and shook his head.

“Welcome to show business,” he said.

He moved around me and went inside. I wondered what the hell he was doing there, but I didn’t have time to ask. I went around the corner to my car and squeezed in.

Changing out of the Chocolate Soldier costume would have been nice, but I didn’t have the time. I made it to the address on Beverly in eleven minutes. It was an apartment building, The Blue-dorn, six stories, white brick, nice bushes and front lawn, slightly on the classy side, which meant there was a doorman.

He was lean, blue uniformed, no cap, thin white hair brushed against his scalp to the right.

“I’m here to see Gwen Knight. She’s staying with her sister, Evelyn.”

“You working an apartment door around here?” he asked looking at my uniform.

“Yeah,” I said. “Boyleton Arms.”

He shook his head.

“What’s it about?”

“Miss Knight was at the Boyleton a little while ago,” I said. “She left her keys.”

I took out my own keys and jiggled them. He held out his hand.

“I’ll give ’em to her.”

“Got to do it myself,” I said. “No offense. Manager told me I had to give them to her myself. You know how it is?”

“She in a show there or something?” the doorman asked. “She came runnin’ in maybe a minute ago wearing one of those … a tiger costume or something.” He ran both hands up in front of him fluttering, as if that would create a clear picture for me of what she was wearing.

“Right,” I said. “She’s in a show. Blackstone the Magician at the Pantages.”

He put down his hand, shrugged, and said, “Four-twelve. Elevator’s on the left.”

“Anyone else come in here from the show in the last ten minutes or so?” I asked.

“Why?” he asked suspiciously.

“She was with a guy with a beard, turban,” I said.

“No guy like that,” he said. “I don’t see why….”

I pocketed the keys, went through the lobby door, and headed for the elevator. There was no one in the small lobby. The elevator doors were closed. I pushed the button and watched the brass arrow move down 4-3-2-1. There was a ding and the doors slid open.

She was sitting on the floor, her back against the rear wall, sleek in an almost skin-tight stripped costume. Both of her hands were pressed against her stomach.

“He shot me,” she said, eyes open wide in surprise.

Blood was beginning to seep through her fingers. She looked down, saw it, and then looked back at me.

“I think maybe he killed me,” she said.

The elevator door started to close. I held it back with both hands and reached for the switch to turn it off.

“I’ll be right back,” I said and ran to the doorman.

“Call an ambulance, quick,” I said.

“What?”

“She’s been shot.”

“Who?”

“Just call an ambulance. Hurry.” I turned and called back, “Elevator.”

Gwen Knight had gone pale. There was more blood. I’ve seen plenty of blood, much of it my own. I knelt next to her and gently moved her hands.

“I’m dying right?” she asked.

“No,” I said.

“You’re just sayin’,” she said.

“No, I can see the bullet. It didn’t even break your rib. Just keep your hands on it to stop the bleeding.”

“It was a little gun, you know?”

“A little gun.”

“Like …,” and she moved her hands, bloody palms facing each other to show how little the gun was that shot her.

I placed her hands back on the wound.

“Like they use in the show. Pellets,” she said. Her eyes rolled back. “I think I’m going to throw up.”

“Why did he shoot you?” I asked.

“I saw him coming out of my dressing room,” she said. “I went into the dressing room and there was poor Robert.”

“Dead?”

“Almost,” she said. “You’re sure I’m not dying?”

“Positive,” I said, though I was thinking more along the lines of ninety-five percent that she would be all right. “He say anything?”

She closed her eyes and said, “The guy with the turban?”

“No, Robert.”

“Yeah, but it didn’t make any sense.”

“What did he say?”

“Wild on Thursday.”

“Wild on Thursday?”

“What did he mean?”

“Search me,” she said.

She tried to shrug, but it sent a twitch of pain through her.

The doorman came running up and looked down at Gwen, whose eyes moved back in focus. She had great, even white teeth.

“They’re comin’,” he said. “Ambulance. And the cops.”

“Thanks,” I said, and then to Gwen, “The one who shot you?”

“Same guy who shot Robert,” she said. “Sure I’m not dyin’?”

“Sure, cross my heart,” I said.

“That guy I told you about with the beard and turban,” I said to the doorman.

“Nobody like that came in in the last four hours,” said the doorman. “I’d have remembered.”

“Forget the turban and beard,” I said. “Anyone come in who didn’t live here?”

“Yeah.”

“Who?”

“You.”

“Besides me.”

It was faraway and beyond the lobby doors, but I heard a siren on the way.

“No. Yes,” he said. “A doctor, just a few minutes before you. On his way to make a house call on Mr. Collins. Hey maybe I should call up there and he can come down and….”

“You check with Collins before you let him in?”

“No, the guy looked like a doctor, gray hair, glasses, nice suit, one of those pebble leather doctor bags.”

“He asked for Mr. Collins?”

“Yeah, well I thought he said Cowens, but I asked him did he say ‘Collins’ and he … I let the shooter in, didn’t I?”

“Looks that way,” I said.

“Shit.”

He stepped back and shook his head.

“And I’ll bet you’re not a doorman,” he said.

“No, I’m not,” I confirmed. “I’m a private detective.”

“Shit.”

His hands were on his hips now, and I figured he was wondering how he would look without his uniform and without a job.

“Hey,” said Gwen. “Remember me? I’m the one was shot.”

“Let’s get your sister,” I said.

“Not home.”

The siren was close, very close now. It whined down, and the lobby door rattled. It was two uniformed cops and Detective John Cawelti of the Wilshire District. I put it together fast as the doorman ran back to let them in. I had asked Pete Bouton at the Pantages where Gwen lived. He had told the cops. I hadn’t asked him not to. They had come after me. Wounded woman. Hated private detective.

I got into the elevator, flicked the switch, and pressed the button for the fourth floor. As the doors closed, I could hear the sound of at least three sets of feet clapping against the tile floor.

“What’re you doin’?” Gwen screamed.

I held out my hand to calm her.

“Getting out at four, sending you back down to the lobby. “You’ll be alright.” The elevator started up. “You never saw the guy who shot you and Cunningham?”

She closed her eyes tightly.

“Hurts?” I asked.

“No, I’m trying to think. There was something familiar about him, but … I don’t know. I’m gonna live, right?”

“I don’t know if you’re going to live
right
, but you’re going to live.”