The Delta Star (27 page)

“The scientific community frowns on exploiters!” Ignacio Mendoza cried, his dilated brown eyes sparking. “The Nobel laureate who would accept a chairmanship
ee
n the research division of a multinational company, when he could be doing split-brain research or
c
uring epilepsy, would be sp
ee
t on by his peers! Yes, there are a few who have done
e
et, but there are also those who gave away the prize for the resettlement of refugees! Perhaps the
Meec
key Mouse young men of today might exploit
ee
t, but the prize does not go to young men.
Ee
t
ee
s given ten or twenty years after your best work can be seen
ee
n perspective!”

“So, who else is a hot candidate for this year’s prize?”

“No one else here at Caltech, I don’t believe. There
ee
s a man at Stanford perhaps. No one can say for sure.
Ee
t
ee
s a closely guarded secret. There are no leaks
ee
n the Nobel operation. A very elaborate procedure goes on all year. They screen hundreds of applicants from all over the world.”

“Don’t you try to promote your own people?”

“Of course!” Ignacio Mendoza said. “There
ee
s politicking as to fields and subfields. But to badger our colleagues? To write letters to the Nobel Committee? Th
ee
s
ee
s considered, how you say, bush league.
Ee
t would be very important to know which field of chemistry was going to be chosen so that the proper candidate could be promoted by our people. But
ee
t
ee
s a complete secret.”

“How many members on the Nobel Committee?”

“For chemistry? Five. They have been members for ten to fifteen years. They have great power.”

“And you had one of the chemistry committee here giving a talk?”

“They say he
ee
s the most influential committee member.”

“Describe the Stanford competitor of your hot candidate, Feldman.”

“What do you mean?”

“Could he be middle-aged, fair-haired, with milky white skin?”

“H
ee
s name
ee
s Van Zandt,” Ignacio Mendoza said. “I have a photo of him.”

The Peruvian professor rummaged through the clutter on one of the tables and produced a Caltech newspaper which had a front-page photo of ten men in suits, including himself, toasting each other at a banquet. The man who stood next to the chairman of the division was, Mario Villalobos hoped, a man that Dagmar Duffy would recognize.

“He does fit the description of the guy in the badger game!” the detective said.

“He might be considered for the prize over Feldman
ee
f the prize were going to be given for organic photochemistry,” the scientist said.

Mario Villalobos was smiling slightly. “Professor Feldman hired a private investigator who was a science buff and knew people at this university. He planned the extortion setup.”

“Preposterous!” the chemist said.

“Okay, here’s how it goes.” The detective was cooking now. “Your Professor Feldman knows of some unusual sexual preferences of his Stanford rival, Van Zandt. You boys have attended conferences together for years and there’ve been a few rumors from time to time.”

“I never heard the rumor.”

“Feldman did. And he hired a local private eye to set up his rival Van Zandt in a little badger game with a little kinky sex and it was recorded by the private eye on film. The private eye is supposed to forward the picture to the Nobel Committee, who surely wouldn’t give the prize to a man with such pictures of him floating around.”

“Preposterous!” Ignacio Mendoza said.

“Don’t you see? The private eye Lester Beemer got to thinking like a bourgeois cop. He got maybe two thousand bucks for setting up and photographing the action in the badger game. He got to computing the value of a Nobel Prize just like we did. How Professor Feldman could turn it into real bucks and how those bucks could be shared with him and Missy Moonbeam, his little conspirator and girl friend. So they turned the tables on your Professor Feldman, who hired them. They threatened to expose his game to the university and the Nobel Committee if he didn’t get very generous when he won the prize.”

“
Ee
f he won the prize.”

“Yes.”

“And the Russians?”

“It was just some wacky private joke between Missy Moonbeam and the private eye. I don’t know.”

“So Doctor Feldman, knowing of the private detective’s pacemaker, entices him to the room with the spectrometer?”

“Yes.”

“And then he hunts down the prostitute and eliminates her?”

“Yes.”

“Well,
ee
n that you have such a near-perfect theory, I can supply the last piece to your puzzle. Feldman was born
ee
n Odessa. He
ee
s a Russian Jew who came to America as a small boy.”

“That’s it, then! It was a little joke between Missy and Lester Beemer. They called their employer their Russian agent”

“And now Richard Feldman wants to murder the fairy, the last person he feels can expose the badger game conspiracy?”

“Yes, that’s it!”

“I have only one thing to say: You are full of bull-
sh
ee
t!”

“Please, Dr. Mendoza, can I borrow your newspaper? To show the picture of the Stanford chemist to Dagmar Duffy? And I’d like to get Professor Feldman’s address and phone number from you. Is it in your Rolodex?”

“At your service, Sergeant,” Ignacio Mendoza said mockingly.

Mario Villalobos was exhausted but elated when he shook The Bad Czech awake in his chair.

“I’ll return the newspaper,” Mario Villalobos said, writing Professor Richard Feldman’s number. “If I get a positive identification of Dr. Van Zandt as the badger game victim, I’ll be a little closer to something concrete.”

Suddenly the Peruvian chemist looked as though he was coming down to earth in a hurry. His eyelids were drooping. “I shall see you later, Sergeant. This ees bull-
s
h
ee
t, but
ee
t’s more fun than a Pac-man game.”

When The Bad Czech and Mario Villalobos found Hans, the K-9 cop was sitting morosely on a bench, covered with wine stains. There were a dozen people still lingering at the reception table but the waiters and bartenders were cleaning up. The musicians had called it a night and lights were being turned off in the garden.

Professor Harry Gray, chairman of the chemistry division, almost got away, but Hans spotted him and scurried down the walk after him, grabbing a sleeve.

“I gotta go,” the chemist said to the skinny K-9 cop, who was holding on for dear life. “Let go!”

“Not until you help me, Doc,” Hans warned, and his eyes were as deranged as The Bad Czech’s. “I only want you to get something from the lab to keep it stiff! That ain’t asking too much!”

“Let me outa here!” the chemist cried.

“Not until you help me!”

“Okay, okay, let me go and I’ll tell you what to do.”

“Yeah?” Hans said hopefully, releasing the scientist’s sleeve.

“Shellac it!” the chemist cried, and ran like hell through the darkness.

***

The telephone rang a dozen times before a sleepy male voice answered. “Hello,” the voice said.

“Is your name Howard?” Mario Villalobos asked.

“Yeah, who’s this?”

“Lemme speak to Dagmar. It’s urgent.”

“Is this Arnold?” the voice said testily. “Dagmar don’t want nothing to do with you.”

“Tell him it’s Sergeant Villalobos, goddamn it!” the detective said.

A moment later Dagmar Duffy said, “Sergeant? Did you catch the guy that’s after me?”

“No, but I’m getting closer. I want you to meet me at your apartment in twenty minutes.”

“Meet ya? I’m not dressed!”

“Get dressed.”

“I’m scared to go there.”

“Have Howard go with you.”

“He’s zoned out. He can’t go.”

“Drive over there and you’ll see my detective car in front. I’ll be waiting for you. Now get on it.”

“You sure you’ll be there?”

“I’m standing by the Pasadena Freeway right now. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Move!”

Ten minutes before 1:00
a.m.
Dagmar Duffy was driving his boyfriend’s beat-up VW bug down Santa Monica Boulevard, looking very unhappy. He was relieved to see Mario Villalobos’ detective car parked in front of his apartment house.

Dagmar Duffy got out of the car and trotted. His hands, held in front like a rabbit, flapped at the wrist as he ran. “I hurried fast as I could!” he said. “Who’s that sleeping in your car?”

“The two cops you met here the other day.”

Dagmar Duffy peered through the darkness into the Plymouth. The Bad Czech was lying down, jammed into the back seat. Hans was snoring in front with his knees up on the dashboard.

“What’s so important I had to get outa bed?”

“You got me out
t
a bed yesterday. Come on.”

“Where we going?”

“Up to your room.”

“What for?”

“I want you to give me your key. I’m sending these two home in the car and I’m staying.”

“With me?”

“No, you already have a boyfriend,” Mario Villalobos said. “I’m sending you home too. I don’t wanna take a chance that I might miss my man if he comes back looking for you. I’m gonna set up a proper stakeout tomorrow, but for tonight, I’m staying.”

“Won’t he be too scared after seeing the cops yesterday?”

“As far as he knows those two cops were just writing parking tickets. He’ll be back because he wants to kill you. He thinks you were in on the scheme of Missy Moonbeam to extort him.”

“Is he a Russian?”

“No. He’s an American. So is the man with the phony accent that you and Missy tricked with. That’s who I want you to identify. I have a newspaper picture of him. Let’s go inside.”

While the detective and Dagmar Duffy walked into the apartment house, a man in a dark suit with a tweed cap and a moustache stood outside the door of Dagmar Duffy’s apartment on the third floor. He put his ear to the door and listened. Then he walked down the hall toward a window which overlooked the Normandie side of the building. He looked down, and then he walked back to the door and listened again. When he heard the elevator being activated in the lobby, he crept down the hall to the stairway, unscrewed the stairway light, and backed down the stairs crouching in the darkness. He quickly stretched upon his hands a pair of surgical gloves. Then he withdrew a small syringe from his pocket.

Mario Villalobos couldn’t help feeling satisfied when he pulled out the folded newspaper and showed the picture of ten grinning scientists to Dagmar Duffy.

Dagmar Duffy looked at the picture, held it closer to the light sconce in the elevator, and worried Mario Villalobos with his silence. Finally he said, “Yeah, it’s him. He was a real gentleman. I hope he don’t get in trouble.”

With his biggest grin of the week, Mario Villalobos said, “Gimme the key to your room.”

He was only two seconds late following Dagmar Duffy out of the elevator when the doors opened. The man in the shadows saw the little man with the blond perm and moved a bit soon. Mario Villalobos caught the movement with his peripheral vision and yelled, “Hey!”

The man in the pinstripe suit bolted for the staircase but stumbled on the first step. The detective leaped onto the man’s back, trying to draw his service revolver. The man was strong and agile and sober. He spun and threw a wild left-handed punch that hit the staircase wall, causing him to scream. But he hit the detective square in the face with his elbow and then with his good hand punched him on the side of the neck, knocking him down the stairs to the bottom of the landing.

While Mario Villalobos lay on his back looking loopily at Dagmar Duffy, who stood at the top of the landing screaming in terror, he got a subliminal flash.
Déjà vu
. He staggered to his feet and ran down the stairs after his attacker. He descended only five stairs. Then the back spasm hit. He was down on the floor yelling about as loud as Dagmar Duffy up above him.

By the time Dagmar Duffy got The Bad Czech and Hans awake, along with half the apartment house, the back spasm had subsided enough to allow Mario Villalobos to hobble up the stairs. It would of course have been the logical time to call the Pasadena police to intercept and arrest Professor Feldman before he got back to his home.

It would have been the logical thing to do except for something that occurred when The Bad Czech and Hans got Mario Villalobos into a chair inside Dagmar Duffy’s apartment. Dagmar Duffy took another look at the newspaper p
h
oto which Mario Villalobos had thrown on the bed, while the detective lit a cigarette with shaking hands and examined the syringe his suspect had dropped.

“You were right about the Dutch accent,” Mario Villalobos said to Dagmar Duffy. “His name’s Van Zandt, so he probably used an accent he was familiar with. No doubt he’s descended from Dutch parents.”

“We shoulda had Ludwig here,” Hans said.

“Why’re the names wrong under the picture?” Dagmar Duffy asked.

“What?”

“His name’s Jan Larsson, according to this picture.”

“Lemme see that!” Mario Villalobos said, crying out in pain from the wrenched back as he tried to jump up.

“Want me to call Pasadena P. D. and have them stake out Feldman’s house?” The Bad Czech asked, while Mario Villalobos gaped at the picture.

“This guy here!” the detective said, pointing at the Stanford chemist Van Zandt.

“No, that ain’t him,” Dagmar Duffy said. “It’s this guy. The guy right in the middle that they’re all toasting. It says his name’s Jan Larsson.”

“The Nobel Committee member?”

“You want me to call the Pasadena P. D.?” The Bad Czech asked.

“I gotta get Feldman’s house on the phone!” Mario Villalobos said. He furiously dialed the number he had gotten from Ignacio Mendoza. When a woman answered he said, “Mrs. Feldman?”

“Yes?” she answered.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, but this is the police department and we’ve found a wallet belonging to your husband. It may have been stolen by a burglar.”

“My God!” she said. “Richard, it’s the police! They’ve found a wallet of yours!”

A groggy male voice came on the phone saying, “Yes? What is it?”

“Talk to him!” Mario Villalobos whispered to The Bad Czech, holding his hand over the mouthpiece. “Is it the guy in the pinstripe suit?”

“Uh, Mister Feldman. I think we have your wallet,” The Bad Czech said.

“My wallet? But that’s impossible. My wallet’s right here on the nightstand. I haven’t lost a wallet!” the voice said.

“Is this Henry Feldman?” The Bad Czech asked.

“No, I’m Richard Feldman!” the voice said testily.

“Real sorry,” The Bad Czech said. “Wrong Feldman. You can go back to sleep.”

He clicked the receiver down and handed the phone to the detective. “That’s the guy in the pinstripe suit, Mario. He’s got an unusual voice. It’s him.”

“Then who the hell attacked me?” Mario Villalobos cried. Suddenly he scared the crap out of Dagmar Duffy by yelling, “Nacho Mendoza was right! I’m full of bull-
sh
ee
t
!”

When they were helping the emotionally depleted detective into the car, and Dagmar was waving bye-bye, it occurred to Mario Villalobos who Dagmar Duffy had reminded him of in that moment of
déjà vu
after he was knocked loopy. Standing on top of the landing, his blond perm bouncing, one hand pressed to his mouth and the other outstretched while he screamed, Dagmar Duffy looked exactly like Fay Wray in King Kong.