To Catch a Spy (18 page)

The younger plainclothesman smelled my breath, Gunther’s, Jeremy’s, and Mountain’s.

“Seem sober to me,” he said.

“They did disrupt my class,” she insisted.

“Why?” The question from the older cop was aimed at me.

“They’re all Nazis,” I said. “They’re using this class to cover their meetings. You check their backgrounds and …”

“They’re all Nazis?” the older cop repeated. “How do you know?”

I stopped myself before mentioning the murders of Volkman and Cookinham. I didn’t want that door opened.

“Check on them,” I repeated.

“And why did you let Cary Grant go?” Jacklyn demanded.

“Cary Grant?” asked the older cop, looking at the younger one. “Cary Grant was in here?”

“You know he was,” she shouted.

“Just saw a janitor,” the cop said. “I’d have recognized Cary Grant. You, Mel?”

“I’d have recognized him,” said the younger cop.

“Any of you?” the older cop asked the uniforms.

They all shook their heads “no.” They knew when they were being led to water.

“I think we’ll just take the whole class over to the station and give the FBI a call,” the older cop said. “Not that I think they’ll find anything, but these are dangerous times and I’ve got a son who lost an arm in France last year. You’ll have to humor me.”

“I … we want a lawyer,” she said, glaring at me.

“We’ll talk to our captain about that at the station,” the cop said. Then he looked at me and added, “The two big ones? They with you?”

“Yes,” I said.

“And the little one?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve got one strange army,” he said, turning to the uniformed cops and adding, “Anderson, call for a paddy wagon.”

One of the uniformed cops put his gun away and headed for the door.

This was all going too easily. I decided not to wait until the cop decided what to do with us.

“If you don’t need me and my friends anymore …” I began.

“You’re coming with us too,” he said. “We’ve got lots of room, lots of coffee for all of you and your lawyers, plus the FBI. We’ll have a party.”

One of the bodybuilders suddenly leaped from the first row to the stage and headed for the door to the passageway. Within four feet of the door, Gunther had clambered onto the stage and rammed his head between the man’s legs. The big man crumpled with a groan. Gunther smoothed his hair and adjusted his suit.

Less than twenty minutes later we were all seated in a large room in the Burbank police station. I was familiar with the room. I was also familiar with the way cops usually handled roundups like this one. I kept my mouth shut other than to say that we didn’t need a lawyer, not yet.

One by one, Jacklyn and her class were taken into a small interrogation room. No one stayed in there more than five minutes. When it was my turn, I went through the door and closed it behind me. The older cop and his partner sat behind a table. There was a chair across from them. The young one named Mel gestured toward it and I sat.

“My name’s Alvarez,” the older cop said. “Remember me?”

I looked at him again and then remembered. I hadn’t seen him in ten years. We had served at the same time when I was a Burbank cop. He looked thirty years older. My recollection was that he was about my age.

“Dennis,” I said.

He nodded.

“I’d like to know what’s going on,” he said.

I opened my mouth and held up a hand.

“I’d like to know, but I’ve been told not to ask,” he said. “I think you screwed up an FBI operation.”

It was a distinct possibility.

“Something wrong with your neck?” Alvarez asked.

“Accident,” I said.

“If I remember right, you have lots of accidents,” he said.

“You remember right.”

“You ever balance it out?” he said. “How much you think you average taking in cash for each accident?”

“I try not to think of it that way,” I said.

Alvarez shook his head and looked at Mel.

“Chief of police got a call,” said Alvarez. “He called my captain. My captain called me and told us what to do. We’re doing it. When we’re done doing it, we’re letting everyone go. We’ve got their fingerprints. I’ve been ordered to turn them over to the FBI, which I will do. I’ve also been ordered to apologize. That I will not do.”

“What about Cary Grant?” I asked.

“We were specifically told that we were not going to find Cary Grant at Caroll College,” said Alvarez. “If we saw someone who looked amazingly like him, we were to let him walk. We saw someone.”

“We don’t like this, Peters,” Mel said.

“The FBI wants to talk to you,” Dennis said. “They said they’d be coming to see you.”

It was my turn to nod.

“Are those people really Nazis?” Dennis asked.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” I said.

“Nail the bastards to the wall with railroad spikes,” he said.

CHAPTER

12

On the drive back to Los Angeles in the Crosley, Gunther asked, “Are you displeased with my behavior?”

“No,” I said. “You, Grant, and I would probably be wallpaper if you hadn’t called Jeremy.”

“I mean about my pretending to be a Nazi envoy,” he said with dignity, looking straight forward, barely able to see over the dashboard.

“It was creative,” I said. “And it bought us some time. I’m not mad. I asked you to help. You took a chance. I appreciate it.”

“I am relieved,” Gunther said.

Gunther asked me if he could listen to
Great Moments in Music
on the radio.

“They are doing selections from Puccini’s
La Boheme
with Jean Tennyson and Jan Pierce.”

“Sounds like fun,” I said.

I would have preferred
Mayor of the Town
with Lionel Barrymore and Agnes Moorehead or the Jack Carson show, but overruling Gunther might have seemed like I was trying to punish him. So we listened, or rather, Gunther listened and I kept driving.

“Listen,” Gunther said at one point.

I looked at him. His eyes were closed.

“She is dying,” he said. “Mimi. He doesn’t know. Plaintive, haunting.”

“Yeah,” I said.

It was around eleven p.m. by the time we got back to Mrs. Plaut’s. I was tired. I wanted to get to a hot shower and let the water hit my shoulder and head for ten minutes while I stood with my eyes closed and tried not to think. That’s what I wanted but not what I got.

Mrs. Plaut was standing on the porch as we walked up, her arms folded across her chest.

“There are two men waiting for you in the parlor, Mr. Peelers,” she said sternly. “I asked them to return in the
A.M.
They said it was urgent. I asked them who they were and they told me they were with the Federal Bureau of Fumigation. I informed them that we had no bugs, but perhaps they wish your services in your capacity as an exterminator. Either which way, I cannot see why they couldn’t wait till the morning. And with that I say good night and ask you to lock the door behind you.”

She turned and went back into the house, leaving the front door open. Gunther and I went in and I closed the door.

“Shall I accompany you?” Gunther asked.

“No, thanks,” I said. “This won’t take long. I’ll talk to you in the morning. Thanks Gunther.”

We shook hands, and he gave me that almost nonexistent smile that showed he was reasonably content. As he moved up the stairs, I went into the parlor where Mrs. Plaut had thrown her New Year’s Party.

The two FBI men who had stopped me at Carroll College were sitting on chairs a few feet from each other with their hats on their laps. They were looking up at me.

“Want some coffee?” I asked.

“No, thanks,” said the shorter one, Louis D’Argentero.

“No,” said the other, taller agent.

I considered sitting, but decided I might get this over with faster if I stood.

“You messed up, Peters,” said D’Argentero.

“I didn’t get your name,” I said to the shorter one.

“Cantwell,” said the slightly shorter one.

I nodded.

“You messed up,” Cantwell said, repeating his partner’s words.

I didn’t answer.

“We’ve been watching that cell for months,” said Cantwell. “They had no idea. We were trying to get someone inside the organization. We wanted to find out who was heading it.”

“Then I messed up,” I said.

“You did,” said D’Argentero.

“Two men who were members of that cell have been murdered in the last two days, Volkman and Cookinham,” Cantwell went on without emotion. “You were found with Volkman’s body, and someone said a beat-up Crosley was parked a block from Cookinham’s house just before the police got a tip that he was dead.”

“Your Crosley,” D’Argentero said.

“Is that a question?” I asked.

“No,” said Cantwell. “You asked for two days. You have anything?”

“Like …?”

“Any lead on whoever runs that Nazi cell,” said D’Argentero.

“Or why Volkman and Cookinham were murdered,” said Cantwell.

They clearly expected me to say “no.” I decided to surprise them, wake them from their single-tone interrogation, which had me falling asleep on my feet.

“I think Volkman and Cookinham were blackmailing whoever heads the cell,” I said. “They had some kind of proof.”

“What kind of proof? Proof about what?” Cantwell asked, leaning forward.

“Not sure,” I said.

I decided not to mention the recordings for two reasons. First, I wasn’t sure. Second, I wanted to hold back something I could work on. I was being paid by Cary Grant. I wanted to give him his money’s worth if I could.

“Minding your own business from now on would be a very good idea,” Cantwell said, standing up. D’Argentero did the same.

“The police told me James Cagney wasn’t at Caroll College tonight,” I said.

The two agents looked at me without expression.

“And,” I went on, “neither was Joan Crawford, Alice Faye, Paul Muni, or Cary Grant.”

“Get some sleep, Peters,” Cantwell said, putting on his hat. “You look like a dead horse.”

“So none of them was there?” I asked, ignoring the compliment as the two walked past me.

“None of them,” said D’Argentero. “Neither was Jimmy Foxx.”

“Jimmy Foxx?”

“You a baseball fan?” D’Argentero asked.

“Average,” I said.

“Jimmy Foxx quit baseball in 1942,” D’Argentero said. “He’s thirty-six now, a salesman for a leather goods company. Draft board just called him up. He wasn’t in that roundup tonight.”

“He’s serving his country,” Cantwell said. “So are the other people you mentioned.”

I got the hint and shut up. The two of them left, and I locked the door behind them as Mrs. Plaut had asked. Her door opened and she stood there, now in a pink robe with a broad pink sash that tried not to slip down past her nonexistent hips.

“What was so much in need of fumigation that they had to come at this hour?” she asked. “They frightened Stillwell.”

“Stillwell?”

“That is the new name of my bird,” she said. “He likes variety. Pistolero did not suit him. It carried suggestions of Mexican bandits of doubtful character. What about those two fumigators?”

“They’re after a very dangerous nest of Nazi weevils.”

“Never heard of any such,” she said eyeing me suspiciously.

“Very dangerous, hard to root out,” I said. “Come from Germany.”

“Are they in California?” she asked.

“Some,” I said. “Like Japanese beetles.”

“My aunt Rose’s husband, Lucas, had a brother with an infestation of some small ugly bugs, thousands of them.”

“Fascinating,” I said.

“Lucas worked in the Armour Packinghouse in Chicago, the stockyards. He knocked cows and sheep senseless with a sledge hammer and someone else cut their throats.”

“Even more fascinating,” I said.

“It was his brother’s house not far from the stockyards that had the bugs,” she said.

“How did they get rid of them?” I asked.

“I told you,” she said with exasperation. “Lucas hit them with a sledge hammer.”

“I mean his brother’s bugs.”

“Oh, they had to burn the house down. There was no help for it. You may have to burn down the house where these Hun bugs are.”

“I may at that,” I said. “Now, I’ve got to get some sleep.”

“Breakfast at eight,” she said, turning back toward the open door of her room.

I had made it up three stairs when she called behind me, “I am thinking very seriously of getting a dog.”

“That’s nice,” I said.

“A fat, slow, ugly dog that looks like Winston Churchill. One I won’t have to chase. One with a placid disposition.”

“Sounds great,” I said.

“Oh, I nearly forgot,” she said. “The man from the circus called, Mr. Leash.”

“Leach,” I said.

“They are one and the same,” she explained. “He said you should call him in the
A.M.
”

“I’ll do that,” I said.

She went through her door and closed it behind her. I went up the stairs. In my room, I took off my clothes carefully while Dash, who resembled a curled orange pillow, watched. I wanted my clothes in reasonable condition so I could wear them in the morning.

When I was completely undressed, I took more Doc Parry pills and aspirin and wrapped a big towel around my waist. The towel, one of dozens Mrs. Plaut had stockpiled, was white with the words “Dirty Mike’s Rooms & Bar” in large red letters across it.

Before I headed for the shower, I pulled out my mattress and laid it on the floor. Then I poured some milk into a bowl for Dash and some Kellogg’s Pep into a bowl for me. Dash watched but didn’t move.

When I got back from my shower, Dash was on the mattress near my pillow, curled in the same ball he had turned himself into on the sofa.

My Beech-Nut Gum clock said it was almost midnight. I draped the “Dirty Mike” towel over one of the wooden chairs by the table near the window, put on a fresh pair of white boxer shorts, ate a handful of Kellogg’s Pep, turned out the light, and got in bed.

If I had dreams, I don’t remember them.

We had Trout Plaut for breakfast. It consisted of two filleted slices of brook trout fried in garlic and butter and more than a hint of vanilla. The fish was covered with a thin layer of peanut butter.