To Catch a Spy (9 page)

“You’ll have my bill within two days,” he said. “As you know, I prefer cash. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“Give me a ride to my car,” I said.

“Where is it?”

I told him where Volkman’s apartment was, and he said it wasn’t out of his way. I asked if he planned to charge me for the ride. He said he would throw it in free.

“Play tennis, Peters?” he asked.

“No.”

I tried to imagine Marty in shorts waddling around a tennis court.

“Great game,” he said. “A game of the mind.”

“Is everything a game of the mind?”

“It is if you know how to manipulate the rules,” he said with a laugh that I felt down to the last dollar in my wallet.

CHAPTER

7

Marty left me in front of Volkman’s apartment building.

“I advise against it,” he’d said as I opened the car door.

“What?”

“Going back into Volkman’s apartment.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“You were considering it.”

“Maybe.”

“Don’t. There are limits even to my ability to play along the edges of the law.” I’d watched him drive away. Then I looked up at Volkman’s apartment. The temptation was there. I resisted it and reached into my pocket for my wallet.

I had taken three business cards from Volkman’s body the night before. I had glanced at them this morning hoping one of them would say something like, “Wolf Larsen, Kit-Kat Club” or “Adolph Obermenchen, Exporter-Importer.” Clues like that led radio and movie detectives to interesting or colorful places where they could make wise-guy conversation, push a few people around, and get past a tough beautiful girl to a tough-talking scene and a shoot-out with the murderer.

One of Volkman’s cards read: “Jacklyn Wright, School of Performance, Caroll College, Burbank, California” There was a phone number. The second card read: “Wesley Flynn, Typewriter Repair and Maintenance.” His address was almost downtown and his phone number in big letters. The third and final card read: “Jack Baron, Baron Radios and Phonographs. All major manufacturers. Best prices.” Jack Baron’s address was on La Cienega.

I drove to the Regal drugstore where Anita was working. She was talking to two ancient women who were taking their time with Cokes and toasted cheese sandwiches. Anita spotted me, excused herself, and moved toward me.

“The Tomlin sisters,” she said. “They think they’re related to Pinky Tomlin, but they’re not sure.”

The smile on Anita’s face disappeared when she took a longer look at me.

“What happened?”

“Got mugged in the park last night,” I said. “There were at least eight of them. I sent most of them to the hospital, and the others ran in fear. They’ll know better than to tangle with Toby Peters again.”

“Toby,” she said with resignation.

I shrugged.

“Guy I was meeting in the park on business got shot. I got clobbered from behind. Sore neck and shoulders, a few stitches. I didn’t get my business done, and I was found in the dead guy’s apartment this morning. The police had questions. I had a headache.”

“Is this all true?” she asked.

“True,” I said. “Dead guy was named Bruno Volkman. Gave me a name before he died, George Hall. I’ve got clues all over the place, names, cards, the memory of the face of a fake cop who either shot Volkman or hit me.”

“So what more do you need?” she asked.

“Coffee,” I said.

She nodded and moved to get me a mug. She was generous with both the cream and sugar. I don’t love coffee, but the cream and sugar made up for it, and the caffeine jolt was what I needed.

“It hurt?” she asked, touching my hand.

“Would I come here for pity if it didn’t hurt?”

“You can’t turn your head, can you?”

“Sure, if I love agony,” I said, taking a gulp of hot coffee.

“Toby, sometimes I think you do love a little agony.”

A new customer, a fat guy I had seen in the drugstore before, came in and sat three stools down. He nodded at me. I nodded back. Anita moved over to take his order. I thought about what Anita had said. A little agony wasn’t a bad thing. Some people only have to be pinched a little to know the world is real. I seem to require a good crack on the head or nose.

I finished my coffee. Anita came back to fill my cup.

“Mr. Karsinian is having his usual,” she whispered. “Chicken salad on white, extra mayo, a side of cole slaw, and a vanilla shake. Three days a week for the last year or more.”

“Some people need a routine,” I said.

“Some people,” she said, pointing a finger at me, “need their head examined.”

“Mine was. Eight stitches. Movie Thursday night still on?” I asked.

“Think you can raise your head enough to see the screen?”

“We’ll get there early and sit in the back. Pick you up at seven?”

“Seven,” she said, glancing over her shoulder as two slices of toast popped up in the toaster. I took my bill, picked up a 100-tablet bottle of Bayer aspirin for fifty-nine cents as back-up for the pain pills Doc Parry had given me, and paid on the way out.

I called Violet who spent one Sunday a month doing the billing, and asked her if there had been any calls.

“A Mr. Leach,” she said. “Wants you to call him. Says you have his number. And Gunther. Didn’t leave a message.”

“Thanks, Violet,” I said.

“Tuesday night, Eddie Booker’s fighting Paul Hart-nek in Oakland,” she said.

“I’m not betting with you anymore, Violet,” I said. “You’ve destroyed my confidence.”

Violet’s husband, Rocky, was the promising middleweight whose career was on hold while he served in the Pacific. I knew boxing. Violet knew it better. She had won every bet we had made on a fight for the past year.

“Hartnek weighed in at one hundred and seventy-nine to Booker’s one-seventy,” she said.

“Which one do you want?” I asked.

“Booker,” she said. “I’ll give you two to one he takes it and the fight doesn’t go the distance.”

“No.”

“Three to one,” she said. “Hartnek has a record of.…”

“I know,” I said. “No bet.”

“Four to one,” she said.

“Fight doesn’t go the distance? Booker wins?”

“Right.”

“Five dollars.”

“Five dollars.”

If I won, I’d only be behind by about eighty dollars in bets with Violet Gonsenelli.

“Shelly there?”

“Dr. Minck is with a patient.”

“I don’t hear screaming.”

“Mr. Polar is mercifully unconscious,” she said. “And Dr. Minck is singing ‘Somewhere I’ll Find You.’”

I left it at that and called Mrs. Plaut’s. Gunther answered the hall phone after eight rings.

“Anything on George Hall?” I asked.

“So far, a butcher on Boyle Avenue and a man on Franklin Avenue. I don’t know his profession or work,” he said. He gave me their addresses. “I shall broaden my search.”

“Thanks, Gunther,” I said. “I’ll get back to you.”

Cary Grant didn’t answer the phone. A woman did, and I asked if Grant was there.

“Who’s calling?”

“Toby Peters.”

“And you’re calling about …?”

“A U.S.O. appearance.”

She said she would get him and put down the phone. I watched people walking by, cars driving by, and time passing by. Eventually Grant picked up the phone.

“Mr. Peters. So glad you called. My wife says you want to talk about the U.S.O. show.”

“You can’t talk, can you?”

“I’m afraid not,” he said cheerfully.

“Volkman’s body was found in his apartment,” I said. “So was I.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“I’ve got a good lawyer and I’m back on the street. I’ve got some possible leads to George Hall. Don’t know how good they are, but.…”

“Yes, check on those by all means,” he said.

“Volkman,” I said. “Did you figure out where you might have seen him?”

“I’m afraid not,” Grant said.

“Can I call you later?”

“Of course I’ll call you later,” Grant said. “Though we really do have to talk in person. Shall we say your office, four?”

“Four,” I repeated.

“See you then,” he said and hung up the phone.

I made a list: the two George Halls and the three places on the cards from Volkman’s wallet.

The butcher was nearest. I listened to
The Romance of Helen Trent
on the radio and tried to think about what I was going to say. I briefly considered and rejected, “Pardon me but are you a Nazi spy?” or “All right Hall, or whatever your real name is, we know who you are. Make it easier on yourself and give up.”

I had little confidence in that approach. I decided to play it as it came to me, which would depend on how Hall the butcher looked, sounded, and talked.

Helen Trent sounded worried about someone named Tom. Helen Trent sounded tired. I knew how she felt.

I switched to the news. A U.S. destroyer had sunk in lower New York harbor early in the morning. There were one hundred and sixty-three known survivors, including one hundred and eight injured. The origin of the accident was not yet known. The Royal Air Force had hit Berlin for the tenth successive night of bombing. And six-foot-eight George Mikan of the DePaul Blue Demons was leading the nation, averaging seventy points a game.

There was a small parking lot next to Hall and Croft’s Quality Meats on Boyle Avenue. The lot had spaces for eight cars, with a sign posted, saying “These spaces are reserved for customers of Hall & Croft’s and Meridian Gift Shop.”

I parked next to a Ford coupe with a dented right fender and moved to the street entrance of Hall & Croft’s. When I opened the door, the place smelled of sawdust and blood. There are two kinds of blood smells. The kind that sighs death and violence, and the neutral, almost sweet, smell of fresh meat. This was the fresh meat smell. Two women were ahead of me at the glass display case, where a surprising number of cuts of red meat were lined up neatly.

The butcher behind the counter wore a white apron only slightly soiled with blood. He kept wiping his hands on the apron, his eyes fixed attentively on the woman across the counter who was saying, “Do I have enough coupons left for two small lamb chops?”

She was thin, tight-lipped, and clutching a small black purse in both hands.

“No,” said the butcher, a big man with wispy blonde hair, a pink face, and thick hands.

“Then what?”

“Half-pound of ground beef.”

“It’s not too fat?”

“It’s ground beef,” the butcher said.

The woman next to me, young, dark hair pulled back, and wearing a red-and-white bandana, whispered. “We’re at his mercy.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Butcher’s are like gods. It’s the war.”

“I know,” I said, nodding at the butcher. “Is that George Hall?”

“It’s George Hall,” the young woman said softly, with a sigh. “The war will be over soon and the reign of the butcher god will be over.”

“You’re a student?” I asked.

“Riveter,” she said. “I read a lot. You?”

“Private detective.”

“Let me guess,” she said. “George has been chopping up customers and selling them as ground beef.”

“I don’t think so,” I said as the woman at the counter accepted her package of meat wrapped in brown paper and tied with a string.

“Next,” said George Hall.

Did I hear an accent? Did I imagine one?

The young woman moved forward and gave George Hall her order, handing him the appropriate stamps. He pulled a piece of meat from the display case, put it on the block of wood behind the counter, and cleaved it cleanly in half with a single blow.

“What else?”

“Nothing,” the young dark-haired woman said, looking at me. She gave a slight shake of her head to indicate that she had no say in the matter of butcher Hall’s shopkeeping graces.

She paid and moved past me.

“Next,” Hall said. I moved forward to face him over the counter.

I had no plan, no tricks, just a plunge ahead to see what his reactions might give away.

“A friend of mine said I should see you,” I said. “Said you’d have a good deal for me.”

Hall glared at me, unblinking.

“His name is Bruno Volkman.”

Hall looked at me blankly.

“He said you were the man I was looking for, that a lot of people were looking for.”

“People?” asked Hall.

“The FBI has a lot of people.”

“If somebody is looking for me, I am always here,” he said. “Who are you?”

“A friend of Bruno Volkman.”

“I know no Bruno Volkman,” Hall said, wiping his hands on his apron. “I sell meat. I’m a butcher.”

“Bruno Volkman is dead,” I tried.

“Many people are dead,” Hall said. “Many people. I think you are a crazy person. I think you should leave now.”

“We’re not finished,” I said.

Hall picked up his cleaver. There were traces of blood on the shining steel.

“We are finished,” he said.

“Who’s on the list and where’s the money?”

“I’m calling the police on you,” he said, moving toward a phone on the wall. “You are a crazy person.”

“I’m not going to give up until you tell me what I want to know,” I said, beginning to think this was not the George Hall I was looking for. This George Hall picked up the phone while he looked at me, cleaver still in his hand.

“I know how to buy and cut meat,” he said. “I know how to sell meat. I know that there are people who call names behind my back at me and my wife and my children because I am born a German. You people care nothing that I am now American, that my son Gerhardt is a sergeant in American army. That is what I know, crazy man.”

He started to dial a number and I said, “I think I made a mistake.”

“You think? Go away. Do not return.”

I decided to follow his advice and hurried out the door into the morning light.

The next stop was the George Hall who lived on Franklin. I didn’t know what he did or if he was at work, but I found his address in an eight-flat apartment building and knocked at the door.

“Who is it?” an odd squeaky voice asked.

“Name is Rasmussen. Seymour Rasmussen. I have to see Mr. George Hall about a billing error.”

“Georgie owes you money?” the squeaky voice asked. “No surprise. He owes everybody. Can’t hold on to a dollar bill. Money comes alive in his pocket and crawls away.”