High Midnight: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Six) (13 page)

Gelhorn didn’t hear or didn’t want to hear. A plea entered his voice. “Some people behind this aren’t happy with Cooper.”

“So they tried to kill me and maybe got rid of someone who was protecting me or looked as if he was. All a little warning to Cooper to give in.”

“For Christ’s sake,” laughed Gelhorn in hysteria. “Killing people to make a movie? Are you out of your mind?”

“It’s been done,” I said, looking at Kermit Maynard for support.

“I didn’t kill anyone or have anyone killed or order anyone to kill or …”

“You know a squat guy with a high voice?” I said.

“Lots of them. Casting books full of them,” he said. “You making a movie?”

“No, looking for a killer.” I got up. “How’s the horse?”

“He’ll recover, thank God. I think our interview is over,” said Gelhorn. “Miss Lloyd, please show Mr. Peters the way out.”

“If I take a step backward, I’ll be out,” I said.

“Then,” said Gelhorn, “take a step backward by all means.”

Miss Lloyd lumbered behind me, spreading germs. I eased past her, got a last look at Gelhom’s glaring eyes and left the premises of Max Gelhorn Productions. Things were making a little sense. I needed the squat man to put it together. Sooner or later he’d find me.

I made a few stops. First I went to Levy’s to have a sandwich and a cup of coffee and tell Carmen the cashier sweet things. She was a buxom widow who made a pastime of frustrating me. She never quite said no, but something always managed to keep us from getting together.

“You’re really working for Gary Cooper?” she said while ringing up the bill on an early diner. The diner tried not to show that he was listening to our conversation. He was a thin guy with no chin.

“Cross my navel,” I said. “He’s been fooling around with a wrestler named Crusher Morgan. They want to get married, but Crusher’s wife won’t let him go. I’m trying to talk Crusher’s wife into letting the mug go so he and Cooper can go away together.”

The diner wanted to stay to hear more, but he had no excuse. He had to depart to retell the tale or maybe savor the secret knowledge for the rest of his days.

“Why do you do things like that?” said Carmen, lifting the corner of her mouth.

“I don’t know,” I said seriously. “It just comes out. We still on for the fights tomorrow night?”

“We’re on,” she smiled. I reached over and touched her hand. It was dark and a little rough.

“The manager’s giving me a sour look,” she said, glancing over my shoulder.

I took the hint and departed, stopping only at the A & P, unable to resist the sign in the window that said Ann Page Spaghetti was on sale, two 1-pound cans for 13 cents. When I got back to my rooming house, A & P treasure in hand, I was musing over ways to lure the squat man out for another try at me so I could trap him. Everything I could think of was dangerous.

Mrs. Plaut was nowhere in sight. Gunther’s room was silent. I guessed that it was around six. The day was dark, but the sun was still there.

My first reaction when I entered my room was that the cops had finished with Costello’s body and had returned it to me, but it wasn’t Santucci lying over my table. Even from a bad angle, I had a good idea of who it was. I closed the door behind me, went to the table, put down the package and tried to convince myself that this hadn’t happened before. I could see now that it was the squat man, his high voice stilled for good. A knife was in his back, a little higher than the one that had been in Costello, but just as deadly. It was also my knife. I was now out of sharp knives.

I did the only sane thing I could do. I put a chair in front of my door to keep out sudden visitors and sat down to a bowl of Post Toasties with milk and sugar. I kept looking at the body, hoping it would tell me something. I didn’t taste the cereal. Only then did I go through his pockets and find nothing. Someone had taken his wallet. I had the feeling the police would not accept this as a routine robbery.

If I could have carried him, I might have lugged him to my car and dropped him in Barnsdall Park under an olive tree. I might get caught, but it would have been better than having the police find me here with my second body in as many days. It was then that the knock came at the door. I had been too busy trying to get some information out of the corpse by simply staring at him to hear the footsteps.

“I’m sick,” I said. “Come back later.”

“It’s the police, Peters,” came the unpleasant but familiar voice of Officer Cawelti.

“My clothes are off,” I said.

“Open the damn door,” he shouted, “or we’ll kick it in.”

“You have a warrant?” I said, considering someplace to hide a big body in a small room.

“I don’t need a warrant,” he yelled. “I have reason to believe a felony is in progress in there.”

“You got a friendly phone call,” I said, walking to the door. He was already pushing at it when I removed the chair. Cawelti came skidding in, his gun out. An old cop in uniform was right behind him with his gun out.

“Aha!” Cawelti grinned evilly, spotting the corpse.

“Very good,” I said. “You spotted him right away. Excellent police work.”

“Make jokes, you son of a bitch,” he said as he laughed with dancing eyes. “Now I’ve got you. You’re running a goddamn butcher shop and your brother isn’t going to get you out of this one.”

“You want a confession?” I said. The uniformed cop had crossed over to the squat man to be sure he was dead. He nodded to Cawelti.

“You want to confess?” Cawelti said, a bead of joyful sweat forming on his brow.

“Come on, I didn’t kill him. Who do you think called you?”

“A citizen doing his duty. Maybe your accomplice, who had a rush of guilty conscience. I don’t give a turkey’s toe,” gloated Cawelti, indicating with his gun that he wanted me to turn around. I turned around and I knew he was pulling out his handcuffs.

“Hands behind your back,” he said.

The old cop was going through the corpse’s pockets. I knew Cawelti had to be looking at my wrists. I turned as fast as I could, chopping at his left arm in the hope that he had shifted the gun so he could put the cuffs on with his right hand. I was right. The gun sailed across the room and hit the old cop. I shoved Cawelti back, and he tumbled over my mattress on the floor.

“Now hold it,” ordered the old cop, reaching for the gun he had put away, but I went for the door and was out with no shot behind me. I could hear them scrambling as I went down the stairs three at a time. Mrs. Plaut was on the porch, looking up at the sky.

“Beautiful crisp night,” she said.

“Beautiful,” I said, dashing down the stairs into it.

“Is there a problem, Mr. Peelers?” she shouted as I ran down the street I could hear Cawelti thunder onto the steps behind me.

“Stop,” he shouted, which struck me as a stupid thing to say, but what choice did he have. I didn’t stop. I got to my car and pulled away just as Cawelti, his plastered hair hanging over his eyes, raised his gun and took a shot at me. The bullet hit the top of the Buick and raced into the early evening. He shouldn’t have been shooting at me on a residential street, but he didn’t care. For all I know, the next shot probably killed an innocent stroller. I went around the comer and headed for Melrose Avenue.

I had to admire whoever was knocking off the hoodlums in Los Angeles. I didn’t think they were doing it as a civic duty, but they were managing quite a bit, including getting me in boiling oil over my not-too-tall head. They or he or she had also taken away my best suspect and reduced my culinary wares.

Now the police were after me. A killer might still be after me. It was like Robert Donat in
The 39 Steps.
All I needed was Alfred Hitchcock behind me to tell me what to do. Without Hitchcock, all I could think of was to drive fast, drive far and think about it later. A nagging voice that may have been my old man’s was whispering somewhere, saying, “Call your brother.” I didn’t want to hear that voice. I preferred the other voice that said, “You have to find the killer now and prove your innocence.”

Yep, that was the voice I would listen to, the Hitchcock voice; but the question was how was I going to do it. What I needed was a friend. I also needed a couple of tacos to settle my stomach. I stopped for the tacos, found a dime and made a phone call.

“It’s me,” I said.

“No,” said Ann.

“I’m in trouble,” I said.

“No,” she said. “You’re always in trouble. You like to be in trouble.” She hung up. I knew she would. I drove to Burbank and parked a block away from the Big Bear Bar with my lights out. I slumped down. The street was clear. I got out and walked past with my collar up. I could hear Lola’s off-key sad voice inside, so I kept walking, went all the way around the block and got back in the car after I put a little mud on the plates. I could have used a cup of coffee or a good pillow or a new brain.

Darkness had come. I curled out of sight, determined to keep an alert watch for Lola. Vigilance was my watchword. I fell asleep almost instantly.

CHAPTER SEVEN

T
he cop was rapping at my car window with white knuckles, and the sunlight of morning crept around him. I had slept through the night and missed Lola’s exit. I rolled down my window.

“What are you doing here, fella?” he said softly.

I sat up, tried to force my eyes open wide and touched my chin, which bristled for a shave I couldn’t give it.

“My wife,” I said, trying to find a sob. “I followed her and my best friend to that bar last night. I was waiting for them to come out. Must have fallen asleep.”

“What were you planning to do when your wife and friend came out?” the cop said, examining the interior of the car.

“Follow them,” I said. “Confront them. I don’tknow.” I looked up at the sun through my dingy windshield and squinted. A tear of pain formed in my right eye. I closed my eyes tightly so it would touch my lower lid. I looked at the cop without blinking.

“You live in Burbank?” the cop said with a touch of sympathy.

“No,” I said, “Pasadena.” It didn’t matter what I told him. If he looked at my identification carefully, I was in trouble. I beat him to it by pulling out my wallet and digging out one of the dozen business cards I had picked up in my travels. I handed him the card and he read it.

“Well, Mr. Dubliclay,” he said, handing the card back, “I suggest you go back to Pasadena and have a nice quiet talk with your wife. She probably went straight back home last night.”

Translated, this meant if you want to blow the head off your wife and best friend, get the hell out of Burbank to do it.

“Thanks, officer,” I said, wondering if he would ever know how close he came to capturing public enemy number one.

I drove to Lola’s apartment and made my way up the stairs without thinking about what I was going to tell her. No one answered my first knock. I tried again harder and Lola’s voice said, “Just a second.”

In just a second the door flew open and I found myself looking at Marco, who was pointing his hefty pistol at my chest.

“In,” he grunted, motioning me in with his free hand. I stepped in, and he moved behind me to kick the door shut.

The room was small, hard and not inviting. The sofa and two chairs looked uncomfortable but durable, the way furnished-apartment furniture always looked. Sitting in one of the armchairs, Lola looked uncomfortable, too, but I couldn’t vouch for her durability. She was curled up in a ball, one arm hugging her knees, the other one holding her hair back to look at me. She was wearing pink two-piece pajamas that made her look like what she wasn’t, an innocent little girl. There was a fear in her eyes, too, that little girls only had when they woke up from nightmares.

When Marco prodded me with his gun, and said, “Have a seat and …” I turned around with my elbow out to hit his gun hand. This time it didn’t work. He backed up a step and drove his gun into my back. I staggered and Lola whimpered. I went into the wall, trying to make it look as if the blow had taken everything out of me and the crack of the wall had reduced me to bubble gum. I suppose if I had had time to think about it, I would have realized that the charade wasn’t far from the actual feeling, but I told myself otherwise. Marco strode toward me, in command, hand cocked, ready to smash any disobedience that might be left in me. I kept my head down, watching with my eyes rolled up toward him. His blow wasn’t as cautious as it should have been. I stepped inside it and the gun and threw a left into his stomach. The gun dropped to the floor, and Marco fell back on his behind. I wasn’t sure how to attack a gorilla of a man who was sitting down on the floor. I couldn’t jump on him or sit next to him. I could punch him while he sat, which would have worked out just fine, but some stupid nagging morality from old Gary Cooper movies stopped me.

My hesitation gave Marco a chance to recover. He went to his knees and dived at my legs. I started to back away, but he caught my left leg and I went over the sofa, landing at Lola’s feet.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got him now,” I told her and got to my feet to beat Marco to the gun. It turned out to be a tie. In the next fifteen or twenty seconds we managed to prove once and for all that furniture in furnished apartments is not as durable as it should be. We went at it with more enthusiasm than the Underwriter’s Laboratory could ever hope to get from a mere paid employee. I discovered that the leg of a walnut end table will not stop a charging thug. Marco, in turn, learned that a sofa pillow will not always hold up under the pressure needed to smother a detective. I was sure, as we thudded into the bookcase, that we would rate all the furniture very low for combat use.