The Howard Hughes Affair: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Four) (16 page)

Hughes put up his hand calmingly.

“O.K.,” he said. “You’re right. You’re back on the job. I’m sorry.”

I believed him and put the gun on the desk.

The two guardians of the gate moved forward toward me, but Hughes stopped them.

“I said I was sorry,” he said. “I mean it. My word means something.”

The two backed off, and I told them to take better care of their weapons in the future. I had not made two friends.

Hughes motioned to me, and we walked into the studio and through a crowd of people, one of them a young man in a cowboy suit. They parted, and Hughes went toward a set with me at his side.

“I’ll get the details from you in a few minutes. We’re shooting some scenes for a Billy the Kid movie,” he explained. “But that damn Mayer is trying to beat us with a Billy the Kid of his own with Robert Taylor. I’ll need a new title for mine.”

“How about ‘The Outlaw?’” I suggested.

“Sounds too much like a gangster picture, “Hughes said.” I already did a gangster picture,
Scarface
. I don’t want people to get confused. I’ll think of something. We’ll talk after this scene.”

Hughes moved away from me into the lights, where he looked as uncomfortable as a man could look. The kid with the cowboy suit came over to Hughes, who talked to him softly. Then a girl joined them. She was dark and pretty and had an enormous rising chest.

I turned to ask someone who she was and what was going on, but I was being shunned like an M.G.M. spy, probably because of the shooting incident and the weary madness in my face.

After a few minutes of talk, Hughes moved out of the lights and left the girl and the kid on the set, which looked like an old stable. He called softly for the camera to roll, and someone shouted “Quiet.” Hughes motioned for action, and the guy with the sticks appeared and clapped them, announcing it was “Take ten on scene five.”

The kid took a step toward the camera with the heaving bosom of the dark girl behind him. His guns were drawn and he said to the camera, “Waal Doc, you borrowed from me; now I borrowed your gal.”

And Hughes called “Cut.”

“Good job Jane, Jack,” Hughes said. “That’s enough for tonight.” Then he had a brief conference with a young man with a clipboard and moved to me.

“It’s quieter to shoot at night,” he explained, leading me off into the studio away from the crew and cast as they broke up for the night or morning.

I didn’t care one way or the other, but I didn’t say anything. The studio looked big enough to house the late, great Dirigible Hindenburg. We sat down on a couple of coils of rope and I told him my tale in detail. He listened carefully, asking me to repeat once in a while, and I remembered to keep my voice up so he could hear.

“Looks like I was right, doesn’t it?” he said.

“Looks like something’s wrong,” I said.

“What do you want to do next?” Hughes asked.

“How about setting up another dinner party for Saturday night? Same guests plus me, minus, of course, Major Barton. I’ll try to pull something together by then, and it’ll be interesting to see if anyone turns you down.”

“And if they turn me down?” he said.

“I think I know someone who can persuade them to change their minds,” I said. “Oh, another thing. I need photographs of everyone in your house that night, guests, servants, everyone.”

“I’ll get them,” said Hughes. “Keep me informed and take care of yourself.”

“I’ll try,” I said. “Sorry about the scene in the office.”

“You were right,” he said and turned away to talk to a man with a clipboard, who was waiting patiently about twenty-five yards away.

I lifted my weary body from the coil of rope, walked across the studio and through the office without looking at the two guards, and stepped into the predawn darkness.

The radio kept me company on the way home and told me that the Pacific Parleys were expected to collapse and that frenzied troops were still fleeing the Reds near Rostov. It sounded like a tongue twister and I tried repeating “Fleeing the Reds near Rostov” ten times fast. Just as I pulled up a few blocks from my house, the radio told me that a 23-year-old girl named Velma Atwood, a carhop, had shot herself because her boyfriend had been drafted.

It was the end to a perfect day. I counted on the cops having checked out my complaint and the Skeleton calling it a night. To be safe, I took the .38 from my glove compartment and dropped it in my pocket. Then I opened the trunk. My groceries were all over the place, but nothing, including the bottle of milk, was broken. I stuffed them back in the brown bag and went home. Nobody was waiting for me this time when I let myself into Mrs. Plaut’s and made it up the stairs to my room. There was no one in my room. To play it somewhat safe, I didn’t turn on the light, and put the groceries away and undressed in the dark. For over a month, I had been sleeping on a thin mattress on the floor to cut down on my back pain. The problem was that when I fell asleep I automatically turned on my side or stomach, which was no good for my back at all. That night I pulled the mattress into a corner, placed my .38 within reach and lay with my head propped on a pillow so I could see the door.

Sleep had almost taken me when I thought I heard something at the door. I tried to shake myself awake, but it felt like I was making my way through five layers of cotton candy.

The door popped open and a long thin shadow speared its way into the room followed by a definitely Germanic, “Mr. Peters?”

I almost shot my first man. The gun came up, and I tried to level it, expecting him to shoot me first and grateful that he had been dumb enough to frame himself in a lighted doorway while I was in the dark.

The cotton candy feeling gave me just enough hesitation, so as it turned out, I didn’t shoot Gunther Wherthman. Even if I had taken a shot at him I would have aimed a foot over his less than four feet in height. But considering the fact that I am not a particularly good shot and hadn’t fired a gun in years, I might have missed what I was aiming at and hit Gunther in a vital part. It was a sobering thought.

So, “What’s up Gunther?” I said soberly, “besides you and me.”

“I am sorry to have startled you, Toby,” he said as precisely as usual, “but I thought I heard you in here and was sure you would like to know about the events that took place a short time ago.”

“Cops came,” I said, sitting up. My back felt all right, but my stomach hurt like the Huns at Rostov. “Chased a guy away and came in here asking questions?”

“Precisely,” said Gunther. “There was a shot fired. The police asked if we knew an Italian neighbor named Armetta. I’m afraid Mrs. Plaut provided them with no solace or information.”

“Come in, Gunther,” I said. “And leave the door open. I don’t want to turn on the lights.”

Gunther came in. I could see now that he was properly dressed in a robe with a sash and slippers. In contrast, I was wearing a pair of undershorts and a torn YMCA shirt with a hole in the navel.

“Does the man in the yard relate to your spy inquiry?” asked Gunther.

“Right,” I said. “Have a seat, Gunther.”

He climbed up on a wooden chair near the table, and I got up to heat some water for tea. Gunther preferred tea to coffee and I didn’t want coffee to keep me awake.

I told Gunther about my most recent exploits and the fact that I seemed to be running into a hell of a lot of Germans in Los Angeles. He explained that there was a colony of German refugees from Hitler in Los Angeles and that it was growing all the time.

“Most of them arrive in New York,” he explained, “and move as far away from Europe as they can. Hence, Los Angeles.”

“Well, I have some hard evidence that what they ran from might have followed them clear across the forty-eight states.”

We drank our tea and I got hungry, so I fumbled in the dark and opened the can of pork and beans I had bought that day. Gunther politely accepted a cup of pork and beans and I ate the rest out of the pot, trying to avoid my torn cheek.

“If it will be of any help,” he said, wiping his mouth with my last paper napkin, “I will make some inquiries among my clients for whom I am translating, on the chance that they will recognize the cadaverous man and the man with the wheeze whom you encountered.”

“I’d appreciate that,” I said.

Gunther thanked me for the snack and said goodnight. I cleaned the dishes and settled back in bed.

In a few minutes, I was asleep. If I dreamed, I don’t remember it.

CHAPTER NINE

B
reakfast consisted of a very slowly eaten bowl of Kellogg’s corn flakes and a glass of milk with Bosco syrup. The pain in my cheek where I had bitten off more than I wanted to chew had not subsided during the night and made eating unpleasant. My stomach and head were still sore, and the hint of humidity in the air threatened my back. In short, it was a typical morning for Toby Peters.

While I was brushing my teeth with my finger and Doctor Lyon’s tooth powder, Mrs. Plaut knocked and came in without waiting for an invitation. She began padding around the room.

“Mr. Peelers, you should have seen. Police and shooting. We could have used your comfort. Little Mister Wherthman says you are a private police officer. It’s a comfort to have you here when there’s trouble, a comfort, but you weren’t here.”

She stared at me peevishly.

“I’m sorry,” I said innocently, rinsing my mouth and wincing at the pain. “What happened?”

You should have been here,” she repeated and left the room. The phone rang and I raced Mrs. Plaut for it. I was handicapped by a sore stomach, but I beat her by half a length, despite her one-length lead. Breathing hard I said, “Hello.”

“Toby,” came the familiar voice of my only sibling, “get to my office fast. Now. Don’t go for a walk. Don’t see a client. Don’t have breakfast.”

“I already ate.”

He hung up.

No one tried to kill me when I walked outside, which gave me renewed hope. So, full of confidence and with almost a half bottle of Jeris Hair Tonic on my head, I dodged the marathon rope-skipping girls, who had moved to the sidewalk, and headed down the street toward my car. Behind me I could hear their melodious young voices joyfully chant:

Rooms for rent; inquire within;

A lady got put out for drinking gin.

If she promises to drink no more,

Here’s the key to Barry’s door.

I could still hear their giggling half a block away.

I put my .38 back into the glove compartment and in fifteen minutes I was semi-legally parked near Phil’s station. I pulled down my visor with the “Glendale Police” card on it. It was old and frayed and I don’t think it had ever saved me from a ticket, but it was worth a try.

The squad room was almost empty, a morning emptiness of smokers coughing and bleary eyes of a new shift with too little sleep and an old shift that had been up all night. A cop with his jacket off played with his suspenders while he listened to a fat woman who leaned toward him and croaked, “You woulda done the same. Anybody woulda, wouldn’t they?” The cop with the suspenders nodded in boredom and looked toward the squad room door for his relief or the Second Coming.

I knocked at Phil’s door and walked in without waiting for an answer. If it was good enough for Mrs. Plaut, by God, it was good enough for me.

Phil was behind his desk with three dark folders lined up neatly in front of him. He was drinking a steaming cup of coffee from a white mug.

“Sit down, Toby,” he said evenly. “And listen. Listen quietly before you say a word. You understand?”

I told him I understood and sat down. Phil drank a little more coffee, looked at me, drank more coffee and opened the first folder.

“The gentleman we found in your office yesterday,” he began, “was covered with type A blood. His was type B. The gentleman was carrying false identification. His name wasn’t Frye. It was Schell, Wolfgang Schell. I know that because the FBI told me. The FBI came to look at his body and papers before we even had him at the morgue. It seems Mr. Schell is an illegal alien, a German with a bad reputation—I don’t have enough corpses of my own, the goddamn Nazis have to send me more.” Phil had no love for the Germans since they got him almost fatally wounded in his first battle in the big war in 1917.

The look Phil gave me made it clear I was somehow responsible for his present problem with the Germans, and in a way he was right. So, I said nothing. Besides I was learning a lot. Schell was the name of Hughes’ butler, the butler Toshiro had described as less than pleasant. But the butler’s name was Martin, not Wolfgang.

Phil pulled out a pile of photographs from one of the files on his desk and shuffled through them. He went through them quickly and finally stopped at one that made him bite his lip. He held it up for me to see. It was a black-and-white picture of the message written in blood. It still looked like he had written “unkind” to me.

“What the hell does this mean?” Phil asked, almost crushing his still hot coffee cup in his big fist. “Was the Nazi nuts, or was he leaving some information?”

“I don’t know,” I said as Phil replaced the photo.