He Done Her Wrong

CHAPTER 9

Mrs. Plaut stood over me when I opened my eyes. The Beech-Nut gum clock on the wall told me it was nine in the morning. Her teacher-folded hands and the no-nonsense tight lips above her lacy collar told me she had a problem.

“I am vexed,” she said.

I tried to roll back to get a good look at her vexation, but my head touched the pillow and reminded me of my stitches. I rolled gently to a sitting position, yawned, and fixed my bleary eyes on her.

“You are vexed,” I encouraged.

“First Mr. Gunther behaves with improper respect,” she said, wringing her hands. “Next you confound the pages of my chapter on Cousin Dora. Did you read the chapter?”

“Cousin Dora attacked the Indians,” I yawned. “The Indians fled and preserved their virtue.”

“But still I am vexed,” she went on. I wasn’t sure if she had heard my summary. “The newspaper informs me that you are involved again in bodies. A news reporter even called this morning to speak to you. I told him that I had seen Mr. Richard Talbott in Destiny’s Darling four or five times. That was when Mr. Richard Talbott was a young man and the movies, thank Jesus, didn’t talk. He had fine hair like my brother Bernard.”

“You are vexed,” I reminded her loudly, pushing up from the mattress on the floor.

“Please put something on,” she said. I looked down at my underwear, nodded, and reached for my pants. “I think it improper that you should have killed Mr. Talbott. That’s what I have to say.”

“I didn’t kill him,” I said, trying to force my belt one notch over.

“Good,” she said, still grinding her knuckles. “The newspaper said you had been questioned concerning the crime, but it didn’t say you had killed him.”

“What else did the paper say?” I yelled. I pulled a nearly empty bottle of milk from the refrigerator, started the coffee, and rummaged through my cereals, finally settling on All Bran. It might be one of those days. I knew I had some brown sugar someplace but was having trouble tracking it down.

“The paper also said that,” she went on obligingly, “the Japanese have stormed Corregidor, Laval has rejected President Roosevelt’s warning, Great Britain in fighting the Vichy French on Madagascar, and Joe DiMaggio’s triple in the tenth inning beat the Chicago White Sox.”

It wasn’t the subject I had in mind, but I appreciated the summary and looked out of the window. The damn sky was clear. Lord God, hallelujah.

I held up the box of All Bran for Mrs. Plaut to look at and offered to share it with her. She shook her head no.

“So, Mr. Peters, what are we going to do?”

About the Japanese, fight and pray. About DiMaggio, nothing. I wasn’t a Sox fan.

“I will be much more circumspect in the future,” I yelled.

This seemed to placate her. Outside I could hear footsteps.

“I am well into my chapter on the Beemer side of the family and their encounters in science,” she said. “Then we should be ready to seek a publisher.”

We? I nodded dumbly and poured my cereal just as the knock came at my door.

“Come in,” I shouted and Gunther came in, all suited in gray.

Mrs. Plaut failed to hear him enter and continued to glare at me while I sat and ate. Gunther moved past her and caught the corner of her eye.

“Mr. Gunther,” she said as he moved to the table. “You have, until yesterday, always been a perfect little gentleman. I do not know what possessed you.”

“I’m truly sorry, Mrs. Plaut,” Gunther said with a continental bow of his head.

“When you want to apologize,” she went on, “I’ll be downstairs. And Mr. Peelers, will you please remove that thing.” She pointed to the bumper. With that and the Dora chapter she raced from the room.

“How might your head be this morning, Toby?” Gunther said as he poured the coffee.

“Feels like someone removed a few inches of scalp and sewed the whole thing back on too tight. Not bad though.” The All Bran was just what I needed.

“You seem surprisingly good spirited,” he observed, pouring himself some coffee after he recleaned the cup he had selected.

“Can’t explain it,” I said, pouring some more All Bran into the remaining milk in my bowl and spooning out some brown sugar, which I had found in the refrigerator. I had to dig the spoon in like a shovel to get it out. “Lost Anne. Beaten. Suspect in two murders. Broke. Income tax people are after me. War going on. But”-I held up a finger-“I am on the job.”

“Toby, I am having a slight idiomatic problem again in a translation I am engaged in for radio.” Gunther was serious about his translations. “In this tale, a man says ‘That’s the way the ball bounces.’ My research indicates that this expression derives from the irregular trajectory of an American football when it strikes the ground. This is a result of the peculiar shape of the ball. Most balls bounce quite true and predictably. An English rugby ball is somewhat similar, but this translation is into French, and I am at a loss.”

“Just skip it, Gunther,” I advised.

“That is not professional. Do you just skip it when you are working for a client?”

“No, I guess not.”

“Ah, there, so see,” he said, dabbing the corner of his lips with a paper napkin. I resisted the urge to scratch my itching stomach.

“I’ll think about it. I’m taking a drive up near Fresno today. Probably stay over. Want to join me?”

“I’m afraid I cannot unless you are too incapacitated to drive. I have much work, much work.”

“I can make it,” I said, getting up and stacking the dishes in the sink. Gunther finished the last of his coffee, eased himself from the chair, and moved past me to wash the dishes. I didn’t protest.

I shaved in the communal bathroom down the hall, brushed my furry teeth, noted the increasing amount of gray in my hair, and tried to get a look at my bandage, which just peeked out from behind my neck. There were a few aspirin left in the medicine cabinet. I think they were Hill’s. I gulped them and went back to my room. Gunther was gone. I made my bed, a job that consisted of kicking at the blanket so that it covered a pillow.

A search of the room turned up enough change to make the phone calls I needed to make. The first was to Dr. Winning. He answered on the second ring.

“Mr. Peters,” he said evenly. “You have found Mr. Ressner?”

“Not quite,” I said. “I’m following his trail, though. He produced another corpse yesterday. Richard Talbott the actor.”

There was a silence on Winning’s end. Obviously, he didn’t read the L.A. papers, though I would have pegged Talbott’s death for national news. I waited.

“This is terrible,” he finally said, which was accurate but not very imaginative. “What are you going to do?”

“Find him,” I said. “I’m going to call the ex-Mrs. Ressner, the widow Grayson, and her daughter to see what I can dig up. Then I thought I’d come up and see you, maybe check Ressner’s room, talk to some of the staff or patients who knew him.”

More silence and then, “I’m not sure that would be wise. Many of the patients do not know Mr. Ressner is gone. The balance in a mental hospital such as ours is very delicate, very delicate.”

“I’ll be my most charming, doctor. I just don’t have enough to go on to find Ressner and I have less than two days before the cops come down on my already sore back. Not to mention that he might go for Mae West or De Mille next.”

“All right,” Winning gave in. “I’ll prepare the staff for your arrival. When might you be coming?”

“I’ll leave this afternoon. Should get there by tonight unless I get groggy and have to stop someplace on the way. Ressner did a tune on my head. One more thing, doc. I’ll need another cash payment.”

“I’ll have what you need when you arrive,” he said.

He gave me directions on how to get to the Winning Institute. His voice had gone drier and drier and seemed about to crack when we hung up. We both had trouble, and its name was Ressner.

I pulled out some more change and dialed the Grayson number in Plaza Del Lago. It rang and rang and rang and I waited till the baritone cowboy answered, “Grayson residence.”

“Dis be Thor landscape, you know,” I said as deeply as I could. “I must talk Mrs. Grayson. Joshua tree needs vork now, today or it die like dis, bang, bang, puff.”

“I’m afraid she can’t talk, Mr. Thor-”

“Mr. Gundersen,” I corrected.

“Mr. Gundersen,” he sighed with obvious exasperation reserved only for those who spoke with an accent, as if they couldn’t detect sarcasm. “Mr. Grayson died just a few days ago and-”

“And the Joshua vill die, too,” I said insistently.

In the background I could hear stirring and voices, and then a woman came on, voice high and nervous like Billie Burke.

“Yes, who is this?”

“Thor,” I said. “Your husband Grayson vant me take care from your Joshua. Is all right I do it?”

“Yes, yes, of course, do whatever you must do, whatever Harold wanted,” she bleated.

“Good, friend here vants to speak to you.” I moved the phone from my ear, cleared my throat, and went to my best Toby Peters. “Mrs. Grayson, I’m an investigator for the Winning Institute. We’re trying to find your former husband.”

“I am very confused,” she said with a very confused sob. “What are you doing with Mr. Thor, and I thought Harold was killed by some little detective.”

Some little detective. O.K.

“Have you seen Jeffrey Ressner in the last week?” I demanded.

“Why yes. I told the policeman, the state policeman.” Her voice quivered. “I told Jeffrey that he had to go back, but I was never very good at telling Jeffrey or Delores or anyone what they should do.”

“What did Ressner want from you?”

“Money, and a call to the institute to tell them not to look for him. He was most insistent.”

“Did he tell you where he was going, where he would be, where he was staying?”

“No, no.”

“Do you have any idea of where he might be?”

The pause was enough to make me plunge on.

“For his sake, Mrs. Grayson. For your daughter and many innocent people. You must tell me.” I was into my Dr. Christian act.

“There is a hotel in Hollywood, just off Vine. We stayed there when Delores was born and Jeffrey wanted to be an actor. He liked it there, the Los Olvidados. Something he said. I don’t remember quite what made me think …”

“I know the place,” I said. “Keep the cowboy nearby and tell Delores Toby will call her.”

“Toby?” she repeated. “What about Mr. Gunderson and the Joshua?”

“He’ll be out as soon as he can.”

I hung up, turned around, and almost bumped into Mrs. Plaut, who was standing with a broom in her hand staring at me.

“Childish,” she said.

I agreed but said nothing as I eased past her and headed down the stairs. I had a lead and might not have to head for Fresno after all.

It was a Tuesday morning. Kids were in school and the street was clear. I got in the Ford and it started with no trouble. The radio still didn’t work, and I fought down the knowledge that I was doomed to endless worry about whether the car would have gas in it. I put my.38 in the glove compartment and vowed to keep a little notebook on when I filled up with gas. I knew I wouldn’t do it.

There was no problem finding the Los Olvidados apartment hotel. It was a paint-peeling dump on Selma with a sagging palm out in front that looked as if it had a hangover.

The lobby was dark with a fluorescent light sputtering and crackling in the corner. The desk in the lobby was just big enough for one human to get behind, and one was there, a woman reading Collier’s magazine and puffing on a cigarette. She was thin as a rolled-up weekday paper, and her hair was brown wire tied up in a bun.

“Can I do you for?” she said, lifting her eyes but not her head.

“Guy named Ressner registered?”

She gave me a little more attention.

“You a friend?”

“I’m more than a friend,” I said and pulled out my wallet to flash the Dick Tracy badge I’d bought from my nephew Dave. She caught the glint but didn’t ask to see it.

“Got no Ressner registered,” she said. “What’s he look like?”

“Don’t know,” I said. “He would have come here within the last week or so. Can you go through the names? Maybe something will ring a bell.”

She lifted her bony elbow from the desk, rolled up the sleeve of her brown sweater, and put her cigarette in a tin tray. Then she pulled the gray register with a red ribbon in it and started on the names.

“Griffith, Warren, LaSconda, Benetiz, Skrinski, Grayson, Beel-”

“Grayson,” I stopped her. “First name?”

“Talbott,” she said. “Talbott Grayson. Hell of a name, but we get a lot of guys want to be actors and make up all kinds of crazy-ass names. Know what I mean?”

I knew this time. He had taken the names of the two men he planned to kill.

“Is he in now?” I said, putting on the friendly grin meant to calm people, but which usually had the opposite effect.

“Don’t know,” she said. “Don’t even remember what he looks like. So many come through. He’s in three D. You going up?”

“I’m going up,” I said. “You want to give me a passkey?”

“I don’t know,” she said, cautiously hiking up her sweater to reveal knobby elbows.

“Suit yourself,” I shrugged. “I can kick the door down. Or you can come with me. It might get a little pushy, so if you come, just stand back.”

“I’ll stay here. Got to watch the desk,” she decided, handing me the key. “Bring it right back, and if you got to take him out, take him real quiet.”

“Real quiet,” I said.

I found the stairway, a dark, narrow gangway, and hurried up. My head was beating and I reached up to touch my bandage, fearing that it was coming off. I owed Ressner something.

Three D was at the end of a hall that smelled stale and a little wet.

I knocked, prepared to imitate the woman at the desk, the mailman, or General Wainwright. It would come to me when Ressner answered. I gripped the.38 in my pocket and knocked again. No answer. The key fit perfectly and turned easily.

“Mr. Talbott?” I squeaked, trying to do Butterfly McQueen in Gone with the Wind. No answer. I pulled the gun out, ready to give Ressner an airing, but it was clear that he wasn’t there. There really wasn’t anyplace to hide. There was one small room and a clearly visible little bathroom. It was typical prewar furnished with a bed in the corner that could look a little like a couch if the thick flower spread was put on just right, which it wasn’t, a chair with a wild spring ready to goose the guest, a small table, a battered dresser, and a painting on the wall of an Oriental woman dancing with a fan in front of her nose.

The place looked empty. Drawers were open, tin wastebasket on its side. I moved to the little table, where I could see a piece of paper with some writing on it. My guess, as I took the few steps to the table, was that I’d wind up warning the woman at the desk and then come back up here to wait out the day and night in the hope that Ressner would show again, though it didn’t look likely. Then I read the note:

TOO LATE, PETERS. TRY AGAIN. I’M JUST A LITTLE AHEAD OF YOU.

I put my gun in my pocket, folded the note, put it in another pocket, and went through the wastebasket. Nothing there.

I left the room and went back down the stairs.

“Not there?” hoarse-whispered the wiry woman, pointing up with her cigarette.

“No,” I said, throwing her the key and hurrying across the lobby.

“What do I do if he comes back?” she continued to whisper.

“He’s not coming back,” I said.

I breathed deeply when I got outside, looked up at the spring sun, and felt great. I was on my way beyond Fresno.