The Howard Hughes Affair: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Four) (21 page)

I pulled into the parking lot around 11:30. The tires crunched against the pebbles and sent them pinging inside the fenders, triggering a shock wave through my sore cranium. I considered taking a few more pills but decided against it.

Rathbone had arranged for the side door to be open for me. Security at night, he had said, was nil. A confident grin and a wave could get one past the night guard, and there were plenty of other ways into the building which could be found by an enterprising detective or murderer.

I went in and found my way to Studio B, where I had watched Rathbone and Nigel Bruce rehearsing for the show they would be doing live on Sunday. I remembered that Sunday would be the next day, and I vowed to listen to the show if I was alive.

While pondering and waiting, I thought about buying Christmas presents for my brother’s kids. I wondered what one bought for a two-month-old baby girl.

It was then that the bottom of my foot began to itch. This was followed by the other events with which I began this tale, events which left me standing face-to-face with a killer who was holding a large handgun with a correspondingly large silencer.

CHAPTER TWELVE

I
stood among the broken discs of yesterday and today, looking into the barrel of that gun and feeling no satisfaction at having trapped the killer. My curiosity was satiated, but my life, justice and Howard Hughes’ peace of mind had very poor prospects at the moment. I was least worried about Howard Hughes’ peace of mind and justice.

“Well, what now Trudi?” I said.

She had closed the door, and far off somewhere I could hear the music of a big band, probably Woody Herman, bouncing gaily.

Trudi Gurstwald had changed from her dress to a khaki hiking suit.

“Now,” she said softly, “I must kill you.”

“A little talk first,” I asked, “for the sake of our recent love?”

“I really meant that in your office,” she said. “I wasn’t trying…”

“I thought you were trying pretty hard, and I’ll bet you say that to all the boys, and I mean
all
the boys.”

I would have been better off keeping my mouth shut, but a bleeding foot, a sore head and the prospect of death do strange things to a man, if you are willing to consider my membership in the human race.

“I must be quick,” she said. “The noise …”

“How did you get away from dear old Anton?” I said, trying to keep her talking while I found a weapon. My hand found a box of Kleenex on the table behind me.

“I didn’t tell him,” she said. “We have separate rooms, and I told him I was sick and wanted to go to sleep. Then I climbed out the window. I’ve done that several times.”

“I know how agile you can be,” I said. She didn’t smile.

“I used to do a lot of mountain climbing back in Germany,” she said.

“I know what a good climber you are too,” I continued. My double entendres were going far beyond her but I had the nervous desperation of a third-rate stand-up comic who can’t keep the lousy jokes from coming, even though the last customers are walking out on him. “Where did you learn to shoot, and where did you get that gun?”

“I learned to shoot in Germany too. My father was a Field Marshall, and Anton’s company manufactures silencers for these guns. Now, I really have to …”

The gun came up and leveled at my stomach.

“At least you owe me an explanation,” I said, leaning back as unthreateningly as I could. “No one’s here but a drunken engineer and an all-night music player.”

She thought about it, glanced at her watch, and agreed.

“I didn’t want to do any of this,” she said. “Schell didn’t know I was Anton’s wife. He saw me the night of the party. He was there to try to get Hughes’ plans. That’s why he took the butler job. When he saw me with Anton, he had a better idea. He and his brother Wolfgang knew me before I met Anton. I had run away from home and was working in a … a.…”

“House?” I tried.

“Yes, a bowdy house. Is that how you say it?”

“Well, I don’t but that’s close enough.”

“I was a young girl. I was stupid. I thought it was fun. Music. And the brownshirts spending money. It was during the Depression in Germany too. That must have been when Brecht saw me. I remember him from his poems and plays. I remember once they arrested him for a poem saying Christ wasn’t divine. Maybe that’s when he saw me. I don’t know. Then when Schell saw me at Hughes’ house, he told me I had to get into Hughes’ room and take photographs of any papers there. He had tried but couldn’t get to them. Hughes had never left them alone. If I didn’t, he said, he would tell Anton what I had been. I had nowhere to go, Toby Peters. I couldn’t go back to my father in Germany. He wouldn’t have me.”

I tried to nod sympathetically. As far as I was concerned, she could become Shaharazad and go on till an engineer showed up for work in the morning.

“Well, Schell gave me a small camera. I knew how to use it. I left the party to go up to the bathroom and went into Hughes’ room.”

“And Major Barton saw you coming out,” I tried. “You didn’t see him coming out. You pleaded with him not to tell, told him you would explain and promised sweet nothings. How was he in the dental chair?”

“Major Barton drank too much,” she said softly.

“His loss,” I consoled.

“You told Schell and gave him the camera with the plans?”

“No,” she said. “I kept the camera and told Schell that Barton had gotten it from me. It was the only thing I could think to say to keep it from Schell. I didn’t want him to have it. I didn’t want it turned over to the Nazis.”

“Very noble of you,” I said, moving my sore and bloody foot slowly off the sharp point of a black disc on the floor. “Then I came in investigating everybody at the party, and you knew I would get to Barton soon. So, you got to me first and told me it was you who had seen Barton, not the other way around.”

“Yes,” she said, “but you must believe.…”

“Lady,” I said. “You’ve got the gun. I’ll believe any damn thing you tell me. If you’re going to tell me about the wonders of our moment of love, you might prove it by putting that gun away.”

“I can’t,” she said. “You’d tell.”

“How about if I crossed my heart?”

“How can you keep joking? You are joking, aren’t you?”

“I think so,” I said. “I can’t really analyze what fear does to me. I might even start giggling soon. So, you got to Barton?”

“Yes,” she went on, dropping her gun slightly. “He told me that Schell had come to him and demanded the photographs. Schell offered him a price. Barton said he didn’t tell him I had the camera.”

“That’s why Schell had Barton’s phone number in his wallet,” I added. “Go on.”

“Barton was thinking of going to the Air Force,” she went on, “after you and Mr. Rathbone had been to see him. I arrived at his house when you had left. He was afraid and he had been drinking. I could not appeal to his.…”

“Emotions,” I supplied.

“Yes,” she said, “emotions. So I had to shoot him.”

“And Martin Schell?” I said.

“At first he thought you had gotten the camera from Barton. Then he decided I might have the camera and photographs after all, and he told me to come and see him immediately. I was afraid, but I went. I walked over on the beach. It’s not far.”

“And.…” I urged her.

“I told him I didn’t have them. He hit me and said I had been no good in Berlin and was no good now, and he was going to tell Anton if I did not give him the photographs. I was going to give them, but his face was so twisted. He hurt me. The knife was his. He had taken it out and put it on the pool playing table to threaten me. I grabbed it and stabbed him hard. I am strong.”

“I know,” I said.

“I didn’t mean any of it,” she shrugged. “It just happened. It was
Shiksal
.”

“What?”

“Fate,” she said. “That’s the English word.”

“And Fate is going to make you put a couple of bullets in me? What about Brecht? He’ll still talk about having seen you with the Schells, or are you planning to find him and put a few bullets or a knife in him? I have a better idea. Why don’t you go to the library and get a Berlin telephone directory from 1933 and start with the A’s and work through the
umlauts
killing everyone who might have known you?”

“I can only do what I can do,” she said helplessly. “If I stop now, Anton finds out. Maybe I go to jail. He would not help if he knew what I had been. No, I must keep going. I’m sorry, Toby Peters.”

“No sorrier than I am, lady,” I said, deciding on a pitiful leap and the hope of a stray bullet. Even if I was lucky, survived the leap and knocked the gun away, I wasn’t sure if I would be able to handle her. She was one tough lady and I was one weak private eye with a half a head and a swollen foot. But what choice did I have?

The question was answered for me by the door flying open and a body leaping into the room. It was a beautiful blur in which a foot licked out, hitting Trudi’s hand and sending the gun flying against the wall. I went down covering my head, expecting the gun to discharge and spit out a silent bullet ricocheting around the little room till it stopped in something solid, like my head, which seemed to hold an unaccountable attraction for projectiles.

Trudi turned, and the blur hit her on the side of the neck. She staggered back and would have been painfully pinned on a turntable if I hadn’t hurried upright to catch her. Her unconscious weight almost dropped us both to the floor, but I managed to put her down more or less gently and hobble to the now harmless Luger in the corner.

“You were just in time,” I said.

“No,” said Toshiro. “I was listening at the door. I could have come in much sooner. I’ve been watching you since you got here.”

I looked at Trudi, whose neck was at a clearly uncomfortable angle. I turned her head and her face went limp.

“To what do I owe this last minute rescue?” I said, sitting on the table in the corner and ministering to my sore leg.

“Curiosity and perhaps a touch of concern for your safety. This has been a difficult experience for me, Mr. Peters,” Toshiro said, stepping forward to look at the foot. “You’d better have a doctor take a look at that. Why are your shoes off?”

“Forget it,” I said. “You were going to tell me about your difficult experience.”

“Right,” said Toshiro. “I’m afraid I’m what you would call a spy. Actually, it didn’t work out quite that way. I mean I wasn’t trained somewhere. My family does live in San Diego. We moved there from Tokyo about five years ago. I’m still a Japanese citizen. Japan is my country. American propaganda to the contrary, Japan is not totally at fault in what is going on. We are not totally innocent either. Well, to make this tale short, certain people from Japan contacted me because I am an aeronautical engineering student and asked me to take this job with Hughes and try to examine his papers if the opportunity arose, or if I could make it arise.”

“And you failed,” I guessed.

“Hell no,” he smiled. “I got a full set of photographs the day before the party and left everything neat and clean. Then those Germans came in and botched up the whole thing. I was afraid the investigation would lead to me.”

A figure appeared in the door with a gun. It was Paddy Whannel, the Scottish studio guard, who looked completely befuddled by what he saw—an unconscious woman on the floor, broken records all over the place, a guy with a bleeding foot and a young Japanese talking calmly.

“What the hell is this?” he said. “Peters, what’s going on?”

“Paddy, my friend,” I said. “I’m just beginning to find out. I suggest you lug the rather sturdy young lady out and tie her up. She murdered a couple of people. Then you might call the police and tell them to come here and pick up the more-than-suspect. I’ll explain.”

Whannel pointed his gun at Toshiro.

“Sure you’ll be all right with him?” he said.

“No,” I said, “but I’ll take my chances.”

Whannel holstered his gun and dragged Trudi away. In the hall, her heels made a double track in the NBC rug and we could hear him grunting.

“Doesn’t leave me much time,” said Toshiro.

“No,” I said. “Your plan is to turn the photographs over to the Japanese government, the photographs of Hughes’ plans for the bomber and the D-2 flying boat?

“Yes,” said Toshiro, “but my government won’t be able to do anything with them. I examined the plans carefully. Neither project is the slightest bit practical. The H-l he designed back in ’34 was a masterpiece. I’ve admired it for years, but the two projects he’s planning now are the overweight products of an overworked mind.”

“Then all this killing has been for nothing?” I said, wiping the bottom of my bare foot with Kleenex.

“It usually is,” said Toshiro. “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I lifted Mrs. Gurstwald’s camera from her glove compartment before I came in. It probably still has the undeveloped photographs she took of Hughes’ plans. You can have it and give it back to Hughes. That way he’s happy and thinks his plans are safe, my government is happy and no one else gets hurt.”

“And you?”