The Man Who Shot Lewis Vance (13 page)

I inched past the lesser of the two evils and got behind my desk to face them. My desk was tiny, the room small, my options limited, and my senses alert, partly from the awful coffee.

“We gave you four hundred dollars,” said the big one, sitting in the chair opposite me. The smaller one stood, his back to the door.

“You destroyed my car,” I said, sipping slowly and considering my options. “That was a family heirloom. The four hundred dollars bought me new transportation, not my loyalty. You almost killed me.”

The setting sun over my shoulder was hitting him in the face. His face, less than comely in the best of light, was beet red. Even Josef von Sternberg couldn’t have given the gentleman a look of normalcy.

“If we wanted to kill you, you’d be dead,” he said. “Am I right, Sutker?”

“You are right, Lyle,” the smaller pineapple said.

“We told you to stay out of this,” Lyle said. He seemed to have memorized his lines. I wondered who was writing his material.

“I’m working for Charlie Chaplin,” I said, trying to remember if there was anything in my desk I could use to claw my way out of here. “The Larchmonts owe him ten grand.”

“They don’t owe Chaplin anything,” the big pineapple said. “What did you do with the body?”

“Vance’s body was in the trunk of the Ford when you hit me,” I said. “Now I’ve got him on ice.”

“We never killed anyone, did we, Sutker?” Lyle said.

“We never,” Sutker agreed.

“See?” said Lyle to me, having offered the evidence of Sutker’s unshakable testimony.

“I didn’t think you killed Vance,” I said, wondering if I could fool them with the broken stapler in the bottom drawer. The light was behind me and it might look like a gun in the shadow. “But you did plant his body here. You or the Larchmonts did find the gun in the Alhambra and gave it to the police. The Larchmonts want me out of this, fine. I’ll get out when I find Teddy and Alex. I’ve got a client to protect. Now get out.”

I reached down for the drawer, opened it, fumbled for the stapler, and aimed it at the big yellow lump. He looked surprised.

“That’s a stapler,” he said. I put the stapler down. “We’ll get Teddy. We’ll get the money back. You stay out. You know what we do now, Sutker?”

“We demobilize Sam Spade,” said Sutker.

Lyle looked pleased with his protégé’s answer. The phone rang and I grabbed it before they could stop me.

“Hello,” I said.

Lyle stood up and gave me a red-faced warning. The pineapples and bananas were wrinkled.

“Hello, Mr. Peelers?” came Mrs. Plaut’s high voice.

“It’s me, Captain,” I said. “Come right up. I’ve got visitors.”

Lyle looked at me warily and then at Sutker for help. Sutker had no help to give. Lyle was the what little brains the outfit had.

“Mr. Peelers,” Mrs. Plaut went on, “I’ve been trying to reach hold of you for many hours with rationing and all.”

“I understand,” I said, looking smugly at Lyle.

“Good,” she went on. “We must discuss the photographs. Aunt Donna’s glass plate photographs seem to have gotten mixed with the Easton side of the family and it is difficult to tell whether the woman with the long hair and feather is Cousin Eunice Marie Ann or a Sioux who worked in my Great-Uncle Caution’s General Merchandise Store in Hanley, Missouri.”

“We’ll straighten that out as soon as you get up here,” I said seriously.

“I cannot come up there, Mr. Peelers,” Mrs Plaut said with a wary sigh. “I do not know where ‘there’ might be and since the photographs are here and heavy and you reside here, my ‘here’ is here.”

“Makes sense to me,” I said.

“There are details of identity to be worked out—” she said.

“Captain,” I cut in. “We can save that for later. I’ve got a life-and-death situation up here. If you don’t hurry, there could be bullets, falling bodies, and death.”

Mrs. Plaut did not answer for a few seconds and then she said, “Mr. Peelers, do you have a radio on there?”

“No, that was me. I said—”

But before I could repeat it, Lyle pulled the phone from my hand and held it to his ear. I could see from his face that Mrs. Plaut was speaking. Puzzlement bespangled his brow. He reached over and slammed down the phone.

“Captain Irene Plaut,” I said. “She’s downstairs with two men from homicide and —”

Lyle was shaking his bulky head no. “Sutker, we must alter Mr. Peters and rearrange his office and face,” said Lyle, moving around the right side of my desk. Sutker began to move slowly to my left. And then the door opened and the last of the sunlight struck Jeremy Butler, who held an envelope in his hand.

“Toby, this letter just arrived by special—” he began and then stopped as his eyes took in my two visitors.

“Go out and close the door behind you,” Lyle said.

“Go out and play D and D, Deaf and Dumb,” agreed Sutker.

“What is this, Toby?” Jeremy asked, ignoring Lyle and Sutker, who had paused to menace him.

“I think they plan to rearrange me, Jeremy,” I said.

“Back out and close the door, blimp, before we—” Lyle began, but we failed to discover the extent of his violent inventiveness. Jeremy stepped forward and threw both of his arms out. He hit both Lyle and Sutker solidly, Lyle in the throat, Sutker in the face. The fight was over.

Lyle sagged against the wall, clutching his throat with both hands, his face strawberry red, his tongue out, mouth open. Sutker’s hands covered his broken nose and his moaning mouth. See no evil and speak no evil were in pain.

“What shall we do with them?” Jeremy asked. “The police?”

“No,” I said. “I think they’re getting the Farraday dirty and should probably be escorted out with a warning.”

“As you think best,” Jeremy said, reaching over to grab Lyle by the neck. Lyle slouched back as Jeremy’s massive hand approached, but he was caught. He was breathing a bit now but no intelligible sounds were coming through the damaged throat. Sutker saw Jeremy’s hand coming through his bloody fingers but had nowhere to hide in my closet-sized office. Jeremy picked them up by the neck and went out the door calling, “I’ll be back when I’ve deposited them in the alley.”

“Thanks, Jeremy,” I called as he dragged his burden into the twilight of Shelly’s office.

I finished my coffee and reached for the envelope that Jeremy had brought and dropped on my desk. I had to lean back to catch the departing light to read the note that went with the two hundred dollars in cash. It read:

           
Peters. This should cover expenses for a while. If

           
you need more, get back to me. My business

           
manager says this is more than generous. One more

           
problem. My secretary says someone named Alex,

           
didn’t give his last name, called, mentioned you, and

           
said he’d be seeing me. Might be your Alex. Keep in

           
touch and take care of yourself.

It was signed John Wayne. I pocketed the cash and called County Hospital. Straight-Ahead had been released, according to the ward nurse. She tracked down Dr. Parry for me and he got on the phone.

“What do you want, Peters?” he said.

“Beason. I thought he was—”

“This isn’t a prison,” Parry said. “He signed himself out He said he was fine and had to get back to work.”

“And you didn’t try to stop him?”

“Peters,” he said slowly, carefully, “I’ve seen men who I knew were dying get off of operating tables and insist on going back to combat. I’ve seen men with scratches whimper to be sent home, pretend they were blind, deaf, insane. I didn’t stop any of them, I’m not God.”

He was shouting now. I wondered how many nurses and patients were listening.

“Doc …”

“I’m just a one-legged doctor,” he went on. “People are responsible for their own lives. I do … forget it. I’m sorry.”

“Listen, Doc, I just came into some money. How about dinner, on me?”

His voice went from shouting rage to a low whisper I could hardly hear.

“Not tonight,” he said. “Not tonight.”

“Saturday,” I said. “I’ll pick you up at the hospital at seven.”

“Saturday,” he said, and hung up.

During Parry’s absence, I had taken my pains and breaks to Doc Hodgdon. Doc Hodgdon was a wiry man, about seventy, whom I played handball with down at the Y on Hope Street. I had never beaten Doc Hodgdon, who played the angles of the court like a three-rail billiard pro. Doc Hodgdon had made me a few meals and shared a few Pabst Blue Ribbons in his kitchen behind his office. Doc’s wife was long dead and his two kids lived back East. My plan was to get Hodgdon and Parry and me together over one of Hodgdon’s lamb roasts. I might sucker them into a poker game and get them to swapping army stories of the two big wars they had met the world in.

I called Hodgdon, who was finishing with his last patient of the day, and he agreed to provide the lamb if I brought the beer.

Jeremy came back in after I had hung up. He flipped on the light and I blinked up at him.

“The war has done this,” Jeremy said, shaking his head.

“Done this?” I asked.

He looked back over his shoulder. “Them,” he said. “The formidable ones are in the services. Those two are retreads, cheap extras, second-rate actors playing at evil. Remember that one last year? That was monumental.”

I remembered Jeremy’s encounter with an ex-wrestler who had tried to kill us both. For me it had been a nightmare. For Jeremy it had been a pleasant reminder of the good old days.

“We need poetry now more than ever, Toby. The world is permeated with malice. Malice breeds malice. I have a book for you to read, a new book by Steinbeck,
The Moon Is Down.
I’ll leave it for you tomorrow.”

“Thanks again, Jeremy,” I said. He nodded and departed to further consider the fate of the world.

I sat there for another twenty minutes deciding on my next step. Then the next step was decided for me by the ringing phone.

“Mrs. Plaut,” I said patiently when I picked it up, “I’ll be home in a few hours and we’ll—”

“Toby,” came the quivering voice of Teddy Spaghetti.

“Teddy,” I said. “People are looking for you.”

Someone said something behind Teddy. I couldn’t tell what or who. Teddy put his hand over the mouthpiece and said, “Yeah, yeah” to whoever was behind him.

“Toby, I got to talk to you. Can you get here, the Alhambra? I’m holed up in a janitor’s room in the second basement. Back behind the furnace. Can you get here fast? mean like fast?”

“I can get there fast, Teddy. Tell Alex to stay there. I want to talk to him.”

“Alex—” Teddy began, and then the phone went dead.

I got up, turned off the light, and hurried out doing a reasonably good, I thought, job of imitating Ray Eberle singing “I Guess I’ll Have to Dream the Rest.” All I needed was the Modernaires. I patted my wallet with the two hundred dollars, wondering if I was being set up by Alex and Teddy or the Larchmonts and the pineapple goons. I considered asking Jeremy to come with me. I knew he would, but I also knew there was no way Jeremy Butler would ever fit into my new Crosley. No, I was on my own again.

Night had fallen on Hoover when I stepped out of the front door of the Farraday, night and the night people. And I was one of them.

      
9

I
picked up “Counterspy” on my Crosley radio as I headed for the Alhambra. It wasn’t far. I could have walked but I didn’t want Teddy to change his mind. I only caught the last few minutes of the show but I head David Harding consoling some rich guy who had fallen for a Nazi spy. Harding told the rich guy and me that we had to be careful, that Nazi spies were clever and ruthless and seductive. I believed him.

Night traffic had taken over. Nobody was car-pooling on Broadway or Main. All the soldiers and sailors who were now barred from the thirty-two downtown taverns were looking for new bars and hotel lounges. I had to park in a lot and pay a quarter of John Wayne’s advance to a skinny woman with stringy pigtails wearing a gray uniform.

“Busy night,” I said amiably.

“Park your own,” she said, pointing to an empty space near the far wire fence. I parked my own, wished her “Top of the Mornin’,” and left her shrugging her shoulders. I could but imagine the madness that paraded through her parking lot each night of the full moon.

The Alhambra lobby was jammed with uniforms and ladies of almost every imaginable ilk and persuasion. The air was thick with smoke, and the last few bulbs looked down with yellow, bleary light.

Larchmont of neither gender was on the desk. It was a near Teddy clone who tried to take care of the line of waiting registrants, almost none of whom had luggage.

“Going to be one devil of a night for Merit Beason,” Straight-Ahead’s voice came from behind me.

I turned to him. He looked a bit pale but steady enough.

“Doc Parry says you should be in bed,” I said.

“Not the first time I’ve been shot,” he said, surveying the crowd and speaking just loud enough to be heard over the frantic rapid talk of the desperate seekers of a few minutes of forgetting. A heavily made up woman with yellow hair piled high on her head eased between me and Straight-Ahead. Her cigarette came within a lash of my nose.

“Merit Beason can take care of these kids with one hand and a cold stare,” Straight-Ahead said. To prove it, he fixed a cold stare on a nearby sailor, who responded by taking off his hat.

“I see, Merit. How do I get to the basement?”

“I know, I know,” screeched a woman from across the room. She wasn’t answering my question.

“Why?” asked Straight-Ahead reasonably.

“Teddy called my office. Said he was hiding right downstairs in a janitor’s room behind the furnace. You know where it is?”

“Second basement,” said Beason. He reached over to touch his still tender and bandaged wound. “Teddy has things to explain.”

Straight-Ahead led the way, wending slowly through the crowd, his eyes forward. I followed in his wake and we took the stairway next to the elevator. Voices echoed from somewhere below. A blond Marine had a murmuring dark woman plastered against the wall near the basement door. The Marine couldn’t see us, but the woman did. Her dark eyes made it clear that she recognized Straight-Ahead. She pushed the Marine away. Her blouse was open.