He Done Her Wrong

CHAPTER 1

The best-looking Mae West in the room, outside of Mae West herself, was a Chinese guy named Richard Horn who wanted to be a comedian. I counted no less than forty Mae Wests in the room, at least one of whom was a thief.

I met Mae West the last day in April 1942, a cool day with no sun. I had called her number the day before, after talking to my brother Phil, and a man had answered and told me to come out the next morning. The man then told me how to get to her ranch in the San Fernando Valley, and I told my mechanic, No-Neck Arnie, that he had to turn all his magic on to keep my ’34 Buick going a few more days. He had taken half my last fee to repaint the car and fix the dents an angry elephant had made in it.

“Oliver ain’t gonna make it through the summer,” Arnie had said, shifting his cigar to the other side of his mouth and rubbing the new black paint job. “You shouldn’t sink any more gelt into it. I tell you for a fact.” It bothered me that Arnie had named the car Oliver, since I always thought of it as a female.

“I can’t afford a new car,” I explained. “Inflation is here, Arn. My income is low. Cars are hard to get. The war.”

He wiped his greasy hands on his greasy overalls, spit on the roof of Oliver where he saw or imagined he saw a taint in the paint, and rubbed his sleeve on it professionally.

“I know a guy can get you a ’38 Ford coupe for two hundred cash and no questions,” he said. “Runs good.”

“If I get two hundred, I’ll be back.”

“Suit yourself,” he shrugged in a not-too-bad imitation of Randolph Scott.

I suited myself and headed for the valley. The car sounded fine most of the way. Instead of listening to it or the radio, I went over what I had picked up from the L.A. Times’ files the night before. The few private detectives and all the cops I know claim to have friends at the newspapers in town, reporters or editors who do favors and get favors back. I’ve got no such contacts. There’s not much I can offer besides a little inside information on a few stars, and I make whatever living I’ve got by keeping my mouth shut.

When I was a kid back in 1925, a Jewish gangster named Dave Berman became a minor folk hero by refusing to testify against his friends in a kidnapping case. “Hell, all they can give me is life,” he said, and the kids back in Glendale and across the country picked it up as a catchphrase. For me it was more than that. Berman may have been a kidnapper, but he had something to sell, loyalty and nerve.

I was dressed right for the meeting, a new 100 percent all-wool tropical worsted gray suit I’d picked up from Hy’s Clothes for Him for $22.50 new. Four more bucks got me an extra pair of pants. The tie was a striped blue thing I’d been given for my birthday back in November by my friend and next-door neighbor at Mrs. Plaut’s Boardinghouse, Gunther Wherthman.

Driving down Laurel Canyon Road, I saw a sign reminding me to CONSERVE FOOD, so I stopped at a little neighborhood market, picked up a dozen eggs for thirty cents, three Lifebuoy soaps for seventeen cents, and a box of spoon-size Shreddies for which I didn’t ask the price. Some things are essential even in inflation. With the groceries safely in the trunk, I continued out beyond the cluster of valley towns and into the country roads at the foot of the mountains.

Mae West, according to the guy at the Times I had to bribe to let me see the files, was pushing fifty and pulling down maybe three hundred thousand dollars for each movie she wrote and acted in. She was in the middle of a divorce from a guy she hadn’t seen in twenty years. She’d been under a lot of pressure from groups claiming she was a bad moral influence, and she hadn’t made a movie in two years; but that one, My Little Chickadee, according to the Times morgue guy, who looked like the paper in his files-fragile, old, and a little yellow-had earned a pile of money for Paramount.

That was enough to know and think about until I got some facts. I flipped on the radio and picked up Connie Boswell singing “Stardust.” I hummed along with her till I found the road I’d been directed to just outside La Canada and urged Oliver to pull us by the retreads up to the big two-story house. Mae West didn’t live in the middle of nowhere-she lived on its fringes.

The whole thing had started a week earlier when my brother Phil had cornered me in my office, a cubbyhole with a door inside the dental suite of Sheldon Minck, D.D.S.

Phil is a few months from his first half century on earth. His hair is steel gray to match his disposition and his body solid, with more than a hint of cop gut. Both of which are appropriate, since he is a Los Angeles Homicide lieutenant hoping, in spite of the people he has antagonized over the years by failing to control his temper, to make captain in the near future. Phil is angry about criminals. No matter how many he has stomped, kicked, threatened, and maimed, no matter how many he has railroaded, goaded, and locked up with questionable evidence and the real thing, there are always others to take their place, always more than the week before. Phil strikes with outrage at crime, but there are moments when he focuses some of that hatred on me.

He has been doing that for a lifetime, too. It is his therapy. At home he is a gentle father and a tender husband. He has to be. His wife, Ruth, looks like a finely shaved toothpick ready for exhibition at the “Believe It or Not Show.” He has to have someone he loves to take it out on.

So, I was surprised to find him in my office that afternoon, asking me for a favor. It was the only thing he had asked me for in his life, and it came hard to him. He love-hated me and I did the same for him, but he trusted me, and this favor took trust.

“Mae West,” he had said with a grunt.

Something like silence had settled over my little office, if you discount the sound of Shelly Minck in the next room drilling away on a patient and singing “When the Red, Red Robin Goes Bob, Bob, Bobbin’ Along.” You also had to discount the various other unidentified sounds of the Farraday Building and Hoover Street outside, but I was pretty good at that. I looked at the cracked wall holding the 1907 photograph of Phil with his arm around me holding the collar of our dog Murphy while our father looked proudly at the both of us. Murph was later renamed Kaiser Wilhelm when Phil came back from the Big War, which had now been replaced by another Big War with some of the same people.

“I want you to do something for Mae West,” he said, removing the tie from his thick neck.

“O.K.,” I said.

“Don’t you want to know what it is before you agree?” he said, looking at me.

“I’ve agreed. Now tell me what it is.”

He laughed a this-is-not-funny laugh.

“I see,” he said between teeth that were reasonably straight and clean for someone who spent so much time grinding them together and probably biting suspects. “You think this will give you some edge, make me owe you, give you something you can cash in on later.”

“I hadn’t thought about it, but I’ll consider it a suggestion.” I resisted the urge to put my feet up on the desk, one of the four or five hundred habits I have that drive Phil to violence. I remembered the last time he had knocked my feet off his desk at the Wilshire station. It had resulted in my seeing an orthopedic surgeon.

“Toby,” he said. “No wise talk or I walk.”

“O.K., Phil. Do me a favor? Don’t walk. Let me help you. Please. I’ll be good.”

Phil looked at the ceiling and explained that he had known Mae West when she came to the coast back in 1931. He didn’t say how he knew her or how well, but it had been either just before or just after he married Ruth. He didn’t make it clear, and I didn’t push. They had been friends or friends, and she had now called him with a request for help, but it wasn’t quite a police matter. Phil had promised to help, and that promise had brought him to my office.

“She wrote a book,” he explained, “a life story sort of in fictional form. She had one copy, and it turned out to be missing about a week ago. Gone right out of her apartment in town over near Paramount. It took her a long time to put it together, and it’ll take her a couple of years to do it again. She’s also worried about someone publishing it as a novel under their name. She can’t prove it’s hers.”

“And,” I said, “she wants someone to get it back for her.”

“It’s more than that,” Phil went on. “Some guy called her, offered to sell it back, even told her when he’d make the exchange for five grand. She agreed, but she thinks something’s funny about the whole thing. The guy stays on the phone too long, rambles. She thinks he’s a nut and a not straight-through-the-window-and-out-the-door gonif.”

“And you can’t do anything?”

“She wants it kept quiet if possible,” he sighed. “I owe her be … just leave it that way. I owe her. I’m not sure she has enough of a case for me to take it on if she wanted me to do it officially. It sounds too much like a publicity stunt. Well?”

“I said I’d do it,” I reminded him.

He got up and reached into his back pocket. Even with sagging pants his rear was large and the pull difficult. He finally extracted a worn wallet and handed me a card from Ruffillo’s Bail Bond with a phone number.

“The other side,” he said. I flipped it and saw a phone number in pencil and the name Mae. I tucked it in my jacket pocket.

Phil started to pull out some five-dollar bills, and I sighed. “Phil.” He stopped, jammed the wallet back in his pocket, and moved to the door. He had just finished paying for an operation on one of his kids and was in trouble with his North Hollywood mortgage. He didn’t wear the same suit week after week because he looked so good in it.

“Call me if you need any help on this,” he said from the door without looking back.

“I’ll call.”

He almost said thanks. I think he wanted to, but I didn’t. You get used to something when you live with it for more than forty years. Our relationship was already in trouble with this visit.

When I pulled in front of Mae West’s house, the door opened and two massive guys in their late twenties or early thirties wearing white turtleneck shirts hurried out and set up positions protecting the entrance. I got out and eyed them.

“Hi,” I said with my most friendly grin. “My name’s Peters, Toby Peters. Miss West is expecting me.”

I took a few steps closer and concluded that neither of the two was giving off the spark that signaled intelligence or even animal cleverness. Neither acted as if I had spoken. One was blond. The other had curly black hair. I’d never seen such exaggerated muscles. They looked strangely top-heavy, like Bluto in a Popeye cartoon. They were probably slow, and I could probably take both of them by staying out of their grasp and running a lot. But I had been fooled in the past by those probabilities and wound up more than once (maybe a dozen times if you want a more accurate count) in need of medical help.

“Are you two in there?” I asked, stepping in front of them. “I can come back when you’re home.”

One of them, the dark one, did something with his full lower lip that could have been a sneer or a smile, or maybe he still had breakfast toast stuck in his perfect white teeth. Since my teeth are neither perfect nor very white, and since I am almost as old as Mae West, I had the urge to push the pair. My world sometimes seems an endless series of encounters with huge men guarding secrets and doors. Each time I meet them I know I have to find out what is beyond that door or go down trying. Hell, the most they can give me is life.

“It’s been very nice chatting with you, Dizzy and Daffy,” I said, stepping between them, “but I’ve got some business inside with the lady of the house.”

The dark one put an arm out to block me, and I stuck my hand out to push it away. It didn’t push. In fact, I almost fell.

“Now all I need is to find the switch to turn you two off.” I grinned my most evil grin, but it didn’t seem to affect them.

“Your sister eats worms,” I tried. No response. “What does it take to get a rise out of you guys?”

“Something you have not got,” came a dark voice from the doorway, and out stepped Mae West, but it took me a blink to recognize her. Her voice was the surest touchstone. The woman before me wearing a frilly purple dress had neck-length brown hair, not blond, and was barely on the good side of plump. She gave off a heavy perfume that smelled like a flower I couldn’t place and looked at me with amused violet eyes and her hands on her hips.

“Welcome to Paradise,” she said, stepping back. “It’s a little gaudy and overstocked, but we call it home.”

I followed her in with Diz and Daf behind me. A monkey ran across the hallway in front of us, and Mae West nodded. The blond giant hurried after the monkey who had disappeared, heading toward the rear of the house.

“You cut out the tongues of all your servants?” I asked with a smile as she led me into a living room.

“They’ve got tongues,” she said, sitting elegantly in a white chair. “But they use them for better things than idle conversation.”

We looked at each other for a few seconds, and I glanced around, waiting for the next verbal game, which I was now convinced I was bound to lose. The room was white and gold. The carpet, drapes, and even the piano were white. The Louis-the-something furniture was gold. She had seated herself beneath an oil painting of a nude reclining. The nude was a somewhat thinner and younger Mae West. The much plumper version was now semi-reclining in the same position with a smile. Dizzy and Daffy had disappeared.

“I don’t think I can go on at this level,” I said. “I’m used to quiet things like bullets flying, beatings, murders. I came to help, not to lose a verbal match. I know when I’m outclassed.”

Her laugh was deep as she sat up and shook her head.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’ve been playing Mae West for so long, I don’t know where the playing stops. You want a drink?”

“Sure, Pepsi if you have it.”

A few minutes later the blond giant brought in a tray with two drinks. I took the one that was surely Pepsi. She took the dark brown one without the bubbles.

“Steak juice,” she explained. “Energy, few calories. Bottoms up.”

She drank about half of the juice and then told me her tale. It was pretty much as Phil had set it up. The manuscript was missing. It had been taken not from the ranch but from her apartment at the Ravenswood Hotel near Paramount a few days before.

“He’s a real fruit cake,” she said, sipping her steak juice. “And I’ve known some fruits and cakes in my ample career, if you get my meaning.”

I got her meaning as she told me that the manuscript contained enough to cause a few scandals.

“It was just a draft,” she explained. “I was going to do some cutting, change some names to protect the guilty, though none of it is refragable, and try it out on a few publishers. Now I just want it back, but I think our friendly neighborhood thief is after more than money.”

“Like what?” I asked, finishing the Pepsi.

“Even under the circumstances I would like with impudicity to delude myself that I may be the object of his esteem,” she said. “But I’m afraid his intentions are strictly honorable. I can read men, and this guy had something destructive on what little is left of his mind.”

She had already set up the show for that night and told the thief to come and bring the manuscript. She, in turn, would have an envelope with five grand. The isolated nature of the place, she thought, would make it ideal for keeping him from getting away.

“He’s going to be here alone?”

“Not quite,” she laughed. “A few of my more intimate friends will be here. We’re having a Mae West party. You get in free if you’re dressed like me.” Her smile was broad, showing teeth that Shelly Minck would have marveled at.

“There’s one catch,” she added. “Only men are allowed.”

“So you’re going to have a houseful of men dressed like you, and I’m supposed to find the one who’s the thief and nail him?”

“You got it,” she said, plunking down her glass with just a brown residue of steak juice remaining.

“You have parties like this often?”

“Since I came out here,” she said. “I like men of all shapes, sizes, and persuasion. I even wrote a play back in ’29 called The Drag. Cast of forty transvestites. Did pretty well, though we couldn’t find a theater to take us in New York.”

“Too bad,” I sympathized. “Anything else I should know about tonight?”

“Just be prepared for any-thing.” I could swear her eyes roamed down my pants. “Now, if you will excuse me, I’ve got to do my exercises. Rollo will show you to a room where you can listen to the radio, take a nap or a bath, and look at yourself in the mirror till lunch. One final question.”

“Thirty bucks a day and expenses,” I said, “but this one is on the house.”

“Thirty bucks a day it’ll be,” she said. “I don’t take things on the house. The house always decides it wants payment in trade. Besides, that wasn’t the question.”

“Sorry,” I said, rising with her. She looked deeply into my eyes as she stepped in front of me.

“How is Phil doing?”

“He’s a cop with a family, a lot of bills, and a big stick.”

“I know all about the big stick” she said.

“He uses it to break heads,” I said. “Like Teddy Roosevelt.”

She shrugged and walked slowly out of the room. With her departure the temperature dropped suddenly and the monkey came scurrying in. He was a small thing who paused to show his teeth when I reached down to bar his way. I changed my mind, and massive Rollo came lumbering in pursuit.

The rest of the day I checked out the grounds, made one important phone call, and listened to Dizzy and Daffy galumpfing after the monkey. I leafed through a book on yoga, one on life after death, and another by Sigmund Freud.

Sometime early in the evening, the first guests began to arrive. I tightened my tie, put on my jacket, and came out to see what was happening. The first Mae Wests were fair to middling imitations. The real Mae West was pretty good in her blond wig, a tight dress, and a floppy yellow hat with a white feather.

My own invited guest arrived after the first batch, and I placed him where he might be most helpful and least conspicuous.

By nine the place was full of Mae Wests, and Dizzy and Daffy were busy serving drinks and sandwiches. Each guest who didn’t know was told the rules: no smoking and no groping.

Just before ten I made my way to the real West, who was holding court on the triumphs of Catherine the Great.

“I was born for that role boys,” she said to the assembled group, resembling nothing that could pass for “boys.” They nodded in agreement as she excused herself and joined me in a corner.

“Well,” I whispered.

“Nothing yet,” she sighed. “I’ve got the envelope up my sleeve and maybe something else too.” Her eyebrows went up suggestively.

“Don’t you think about anything else?”

“Not in public,” she said, reaching up to touch what was left of my nose. “Remind me to ask you sometime how you got that proboscis.” She sauntered away on the arm of a tall, thin Mae West who had trouble walking on his white high heels.

The contact came just before midnight, and I almost missed it. The Chinese comic who wanted to be discovered by Mae West, Richard Horn, was telling me about the fight the Chinese were putting up against the Japanese somewhere in Manchuria. It was hard to take him seriously in his costume, but he was serious. So was the signal across the room from Mae West. I pushed away from Hom and made my way through a sea of girdles.

“I’ve got the book,” she said, holding it up. “He’s got the money. Said he wasn’t through with me. Left by the back door.”

“What’s he look like?” I said, anxious to move.

“Like me,” she said. “A bit too much makeup, and he hasn’t got the voice down. Frilly dress, gold with-”

I was off toward the rear. I knew who she meant. I had spotted the guy earlier. He had looked a bit strange-darting blue eyes and a white beaded purse big enough to hold a manuscript or a packet containing five thousand bucks. But since everyone in the place looked strange, I had filed him away. Now I was after him.

I danced past a short Mae West who was saying, “Sure I’d do a Gene Autry, if the price was right,” and skipped down the hall.

There was no one in the back rooms. I went through the kitchen where Dizzy and Daffy were busily making little sandwiches. The monkey was in a cage on the kitchen table chattering at his captors.

“Someone just go through here?” I said.

The blond one nodded and the monkey showed his teeth. I went out. There was a slight rain falling, so the sky didn’t give me much help. The kitchen window light didn’t penetrate very far, but the sound of someone moving through nearby bushes gave me a good idea of the direction I wanted. I plunged in, feeling the new suit tear as I pushed through the shrubs. Whoever was ahead heard me coming and took off. I followed the sound and remembered the layout. He was heading for the pool out back. I leaped over the bushes, falling on my face, got up and ran to head him off.

By the time I hit poolside, the rain was coming down heavily and pinging off the tile edges. Two lights showed the clear bottom of the pool, and I huddled behind a bamboo table and chairs as the sound of someone coming through the bushes grew louder. I could hear someone panting and, I could swear, humming “Three Blind Mice.”

When the figure stepped into the clearing in front of the pool, I made my move.

“Hold it right there,” I said showing my.38 automatic.

Holding it right there was a rain-soaked figure in a wilting hat. Even in the lack of light I could see he was grinning, which gave me a chill the rain couldn’t accomplish. What the hell did he have to grin about? He’d just been caught.

“Just step forward a few feet very slowly.”

As he stepped forward, I moved around the pool, wiping rain from my eyes. His makeup was running and I had the feeling I was watching some horror movie or seeing an episode of “Lights Out” come to life. The monster’s face was melting, but the monster was smiling.

“Now,” I said gently, “just drop the bag and keep on coming with your hands up.” He came. We were about ten feet apart at the edge of the pool when he hissed and dropped the bag.

“I take it,” he said in a high-pitched Mae West imitation, “that this means we are not friends.”

“You’ve got a sense of humor,” I grinned back. “I like that in a nut with a foot on his throat. Now, we’re just going to walk very slowly back to the house.”

He didn’t move.

“Who are you?” he said, staring at me through soggy mascara. I was sure he had switched to a W. C. Fields imitation.

“Name is Peters,” I said. “Private detective. Who are you?”

It was pouring and our voices were muffled. He didn’t answer. The chill hit me and I yelled, “Let’s move.”

He didn’t move.

“You want to get shot in drag?” I shouted. “Move. This is a gun. It shoots real bullets and makes holes in people.”

He didn’t move. I shot twice well over his head into the rainstorm, but he still didn’t move. He had me. It was either shoot him or find some other way to bring him in. He turned his back on me and stooped to pick up the purse.

I shoved the gun back in my holster under my soaking jacket, leaped for him and slipped, just managing to grab his stockinged ankle before he reached the purse. He went off-balance, fell on his back, and kicked at me with a spiked heel. The heel caught me on top of the head and his voice, this time as Cary Grant, said, “That will be just about enough of that Mr. Peters, if you please.”

He kicked me again, but I held on as he tried to back away by sliding in the grass on his behind.

“I’m taking you in,” I said, receiving another kick that caught my neck.

“We are definitely not friends,” he said, continuing Cary Grant.

I punched at him as he backed away and hit his kneecap, causing as much damage to my knuckles as his knees. We both groaned.

I thought I had him. Getting to my feet, I stood over him and reached down to grab his wrist as he arched his back and threw another kick. The kick missed but I slipped, backing away, and tumbled into the pool. When I came to the surface, he, she, or it was there to take a swipe at me with the high-heeled shoe. The swipe caught me over the ear, and I went down, gathering what was left of my strength to get out. I made it in about a thousand strokes with the rain trying to push me under. A soaked wool suit didn’t make it easier.

As I touched the rim of the pool, something stung my hand. He had circled the pool and was pounding my hand with the shoe.

In addition to my face, health, and reputation, I was about to lose my life. I let go and pushed back into the pool. Through the water I could see the figure, dripping, holding the shoe and drumming it into his palm, waiting for me to make my next try. Half drowned, I let myself drift back to the other side, knowing what would be waiting for me but having no choice. I managed to kick my own shoes off and drop my gun, which gave me a little hope for the far shore.

I had always wanted to go out by way of a bullet, a beating, or, at worst, a free flight from the top of a medium-size building. This bad joke, however, seemed somewhat right for me. I waited for the next blow, but it never came.

Instead I felt myself being lifted out of the water. Either I had died going across the pool, or the only person I knew in the world who was strong enough to lift a fully clothed, 160-pound soaking wet, dead weight out of a pool had turned up.

“Toby, are you alive?” came the voice of Jeremy Butler in my ear. I had stationed the former pro wrestler and present poet at the front drive of the West house to keep the thief from getting away, but something had brought him to my rescue.

“Alive,” I gasped. I opened my eyes and looked into his craggy face, enjoying the popping of raindrops off his bald head. “Purse. Money.”

“I’ve got it,” he said.

I looked toward the other side of the pool. The thief who had tried to kill me was still there.

“I’m one of the engineer’s thumbs,” the thief shouted.

Right, I thought. You’re an engineer’s thumb with a few screws loose in the locomotive.

“Get him,” I said.

Jeremy set me down gently, handed me the purse, and ran for the far end of the pool. I slumped down and watched, trying for air. By the time he had reached the corner, the voice of Lionel Barrymore had warned me that “you are on the list now, Peters. On the list.”

He was gone into the rain and trees before Jeremy could get to him, but Jeremy followed him into the darkness. I lay there, letting the rain hit my face.

From in front of the house the sound of a starting car engine crashed through the storm. I clutched the purse to my chest and turned my head. A half-dozen dripping Mae Wests were walking toward me. The thief, I thought, had multiplied and returned to finish me off. Then I saw Jeremy break through the sextet.

“Got away,” he said.

“I’ve got an itch that tells me I’d better find him or he’ll find me,” I gasped. Then I passed out, still clutching the white purse to my chest.

The party was over when I woke up. Actually the night was over, too, and the sun was shining into the room at Mae West’s where I had been gently put to bed by Jeremy, who sat in a corner reading a book. I was wearing a pair of purple silk pajamas several dozen sizes too big, probably Dizzy or Daffy’s.

“Jeremy.”

He put his book away and moved to the bed. He was still dressed in the black sweater and pants of the night before.

“Doctor saw you last night,” he said. “He was one of the guests. Said you would probably be all right, but that you should go in for X rays today. I’ll drive you.”

“No X rays,” I said, sitting up with all the pain of a hangover. “I’m afraid of what they’ll find in the past. Besides, I’ve had more X rays than are good for a person in one lifetime.”

“The arrow that kills one often comes from one’s own arrow sheath,” he said.

“What does that mean?” I asked, reaching for his arm to help me up.

“An African proverb,” he said, helping me. “I’ve been studying African poetry. When the war ends, I think there will be a great deal of poetry from Africa.”

“My pants,” I said. He handed them to me, torn and only enough left of them to cover me till I got home. The jacket was a crumpled mess.

“Shoes are still a little soggy,” he said. “Gun is in your glove compartment. I got it from the pool, cleaned and oiled it.”

I took off the pajamas but hadn’t started to dress when Mae West came in wearing a purple silk robe with big white flowers on it. She didn’t hesitate or even turn her head at the sight of a naked private eye.

“The world has used you for one big punching bag,” she marveled. “I’ve never seen a body like that.”

“I’m leaving it to Walter Reed Hospital for research on human abuse.”

“I’ll bet each one of those scars tells quite a story,” she said, crossing her arms and leaning back against the door. “I can see you’re no gymnophile.”

Too tired for modesty, I gave up on the idea of locating my shorts and painfully pulled on my trousers.

“Half of them were presents from Phil,” I grunted, putting on my shirt and crumpled jacket. “The rest are souvenirs.”

“The ones on your stomach?” she said.

“In one side, out the other. One is the gift of a woman who will remain nameless, and the other from a crooked Chicago cop I don’t want to talk about.”

I slumped back against the bed, and Jeremy reached down to grab my arm in case I fell. Mae West stepped forward to help.

“I want to extend my thanks,” she said, “and whatever else you might want extended.”

“Now now,” I said, taking a few deep breaths. “How about thirty bucks expenses and the cost of a new suit, twenty-two-fifty.”

“Done,” she winked.

“Nope,” I said, trying to stand and finding that I could actually manage it. “Don’t think this is going to be done till we cage that nut. He said something about a list. Do you know what he was talking about?”

“Haven’t the slightest,” she said, letting her robe open slightly.

“Said he was an engineer’s thumb,” I went on.

Both Mae West and Jeremy looked blank.

“Never mind. I have a feeling he’ll find us.” I took a few steps and found that it was possible. “I think I’ll drive back to L.A. with Jeremy. Can you have someone bring my car and drop it at my place?”

“One of my boys will do it,” she said.,

“Thanks.”

“My pleasure. Come back and see me sometime.”

I looked at her from the doorway.

“You really use that line.”

“Thought it would give you something to tell the boys about,” she laughed.

“I’ll be in touch,” I said as we made it through the house to the distant chattering of the monkey.

My brain proved it was still connected when I remembered to tell Jeremy to pull the groceries out of my trunk. I dozed off during the ride back to Hollywood, where Jeremy got me to my room on Heliotrope without being spotted by my landlady Mrs. Plaut. He deposited me gently on the mattress on the floor. The mattress was there to give added support to my back, which first went out in 1938 when I was given a bear hug by a massive Negro who was annoyed because I tried to keep him from getting to Mickey Rooney at a premiere.

I thanked Jeremy, convinced him to leave me, and looked around the room to be sure it was there and I was still alive. The sofa with Mrs. Plaut’s white doilies was within reach, and I could see the table with three chairs, the hot plate, sink, small refrigerator, rug, the purple blanket I was lying on with God Bless Us Every One stitched in pink, and the Beech-Nut gum clock I got once as payment for returning a runaway grandma to a guy who owned a pawnshop on Main.

The other boarders were probably at work. I woke to hear the patter of small feet outside my door. The door had no lock. Mrs. Plaut didn’t like them.

“Toby?” came a slightly high voice with a distinct accent.

“Come in Gunther,” I said, not trying to sit up.

Gunther came in. He is a little more than three feet tall, Swiss, and speaks a dozen or so languages. Always nattily attired, Gunther sits in his room translating foreign books into English for clients ranging from the government to publishing houses.

“You are injured again,” he observed, standing over me.

“I am injured, Gunther,” I agreed. “Beaten in a swimming pool by a guy dressed like Mae West.”

“I see,” he said. Gunther had no sense of humor. Some of our best conversations concerned my attempts to explain the humor of something he was trying to translate.

“I’ll make some coffee.”

While he bustled and put away the few groceries I had picked up, I tested my body. He took out the box of Shred-dies, a bowl, and the last of a bottle of milk. I love cereal. Picked it up from my old man who’d get up in the middle of the night for a bowl. Last time we got together before he died back in 1932, the old man and I talked over a bowl of Little Colonels. We talked about the supermarkets that had driven his small Glendale grocery out of business. We talked about my brother and about how I hadn’t become a lawyer.

“Ready,” announced Gunther. I got up slowly and walked with some strength to the table. I was wearing a pair of boxer shorts and no shirt. Gunther did a reasonably good job of hiding his disapproval, but not good enough. I tested my legs again, made it to the closet, put on a white shirt with only slightly frayed cuffs, and struggled into a pair of cotton pants.

“Gunther,” I said, walking to the table where I dropped three large spoons of sugar on my cereal. “The madman I met last night was talking nonsense or giving me a clue. He said something.”

Gunther nodded and carefully sipped his coffee without leaning over.

“Something,” he repeated.

“Said he was an engineer’s thumb.”

“Yes,” said Gunther, putting down his cup.

“Yes, what?” I asked, pouring the milk and digging in with a spoon. The milk was threatening to turn sour.

“I have translated a story of this name,” he said. “Into Polish for a publisher. It is a Sherlock Holmes story.”

“O.K. So how can someone be an engineer’s thumb?”

He touched his small lower lip and thought seriously while I finished off my cereal and coffee and had another round of both.

“I shall make some inquiry and attempt to answer that question,” he said, dabbing his unstained mouth with a paper napkin. He excused himself with dignity, indicating that he would be back to clean up for me.

I did the cleaning up while he was gone, though I knew he preferred to do it himself.

By the time I had dragged myself to the community bathroom down the hall, allowed fifteen minutes for the water to trickle in, bathed, and made it back to my room, Gunther was waiting for me. He was rewashing the dishes.

“Ah, Toby,” he said, turning the water off and facing me. “I have discovered your mystery. The Engineer’s Thumb is a Sherlock Holmes group that meets monthly at the Natick Hotel. The current president is a man named Lachtman, an insurance claims adjuster for First Federal of California. All this I learned from an editor who used to be a member of this group.”

We sat around talking about the world for an hour or so before Gunther excused himself to get back to work. I headed for the hall phone with the change I could muster to try to track down Lachtman and maybe move a few steps closer to the madman who had tried to kill me and whose list I was on.