High Midnight

CHAPTER TWO

Finding Cooper wasn’t hard. Getting to him was the problem. I went to Goldwyn Studios, where I had no contacts. After I said I had an appointment with Cooper, I was told that he was on location. The guy at the gate made a phone call to the location, gave my name and after five minutes got the go-ahead from Cooper for me to come. The gate guard gave me an address in Los Angeles, and I headed for it.

Kate Smith had gotten through “Rose O’Day” on the radio when I turned the corner and parked next to an old ball park. I remembered going to a boxing match in the place when I was a kid. My old man, who never punched anyone in his life, dearly loved watching grown men go after each other in a fifteen-foot square.

I could hear voices inside the park; not the voices of crowds, but the tired voices of men at the end of a workday. A guard at the gate asked who I was and let me through. The sun was about to give up and call it a day after elbowing at the clouds without much success. The rain had stopped, but the air had a cold bite.

I walked into the stadium and saw two men out on the baseball field near first base. One was tall and lanky; the other looked chunky and older. Both of them wore baseball uniforms. I took a step toward them from behind the backstop, and a figure blocked my way.

“Where you headin’, son?” came a voice I recognized but couldn’t place.

“I’ve got an appointment with Mr. Cooper,” I explained, looking up at the man before me. For a second I had the feeling that I was dreaming. I had to be. Dressed in full Yankee uniform and barring my way was Babe Ruth. The face was a little weathered and sagging, the belly a little lower than in the newsreels, the legs a bit thinner, but Babe Ruth. My mouth must have flapped open.

It stayed open when three more Yankees appeared behind Ruth. I recognized Bill Dickey by his face and Bob Meusel and Mark Koenig by their numbers.

“Why do you want to see Coop?” Dickey asked.

“I’m working for him,” I explained.

Ruth nodded, and Koenig walked toward the lanky and squat guys on first base.

“Have a seat,” Ruth commanded, and I sat in the first row of wooden benches. Ruth eased himself next to me, and Dickey sat on the other side. Meusel stood back a few feet, looking at me.

The question must have been on my face.

“We’re making a movie,” Ruth explained. “The life of Lou Gehrig. Coop is Gehrig. Lot of people been trying to get in here. They find out, pester, you know.” I nodded, showing that I knew. “Some of them get unpleasant. You’re not going to get unpleasant?”

“I’m not planning to be unpleasant,” I said. Koenig was about fifty feet off, talking to Cooper and pointing in my direction.

“We’re not shooting anything today, just getting some publicity shots and helping Lefty teach Coop how to throw a baseball,” explained Dickey.

“How to throw a baseball?” I asked.

“He can’t throw,” said Ruth. “Arm’s been busted up from falls when he was a stunt man. Never played ball when he was a kid anyway.” Ruth looked around the park and down at me. His broad face and pushed-back nose were tired reminders of what he had been.

“A few years ago after a day in the ball park I’d go out and lay one on,” Ruth sighed. “Chicago, Boston, they have the best joints, even better than New York. Remember, Bill?”

“That was your game, Babe,” Dickey said with a smile. His round, strong face and short blond hair under his Yankee cap made him look ready to run out on the field.

“Stomach,” explained Ruth, pointing to his sagging paunch under the Yankee stripes. “Gone bad on me after all I did for it, all the good times I gave it, all the gals who admired it. Is that fair, I ask you?” Ruth winked at Dickey, who smiled politely. Koenig meanwhile was walking slowly back to us. He moved past Meusel and stood over me. I tried to rise, but he put a hand on my shoulder.

“Coop says this isn’t Peters,” he said.

I was about to be murdered by Murderer’s Row.

“It’s a mistake,” I said, trying to stand again. Dickey caught my arm and pulled me down.

“Yours,” said Ruth, who gripped my arm, but there was nothing much in the grip. “You think we can throw him over the fence? Can’t be more than fifteen feet high. Hell, five years back I could have done it on my own.”

“A mistake,” I croaked as the quartet lifted me up.

They carried me toward the entrance, and I shouted over my shoulder toward Cooper. “Mr. Cooper-the threats-I know what’s going on.”

I didn’t know what was going on, but I wanted to make some contact with Cooper, to explain and get some answers. I dragged my feet, but the former Yankees had no trouble with me. Then, just as we hit the turnstyle, a voice behind us said, “Hold on a second.”

We stopped, and I planted my feet and turned around to face Cooper and the squat man. Cooper was as big as I expected, but the touch of youthful enthusiasm he had on the screen was absent from the man. He definitely looked too old to be wearing the uniform.

“You say you were Peters or from Peters?” Cooper asked, pointing a long finger at me. His light eyes were unblinking.

“You’ve been conned, Mr. Cooper,” I said rapidly. “I’m the real Peters, and I can prove it. Someone has been pretending to be me, but I know about the case. Give me a minute to prove it.”

Cooper looked at me uncertainly and bit his lower lip. He looked at the Yankees for advice, but they had none to give. Ruth’s stomach grumbled next to me, and everyone waited for Cooper to decide.

“Let him go, fellas, I’ll give him a minute.”

They let me go, and Ruth said, “You sure? You want us to stick around?”

“No,” grinned Cooper, “Lefty and I can handle things here, can’t we?”

“Right,” said Lefty sourly.

“Keep what’s left of your nose clean,” Ruth told me.

“Hold it a second,” I told him.

Ruth stopped, surprised.

“Can I get autographs?” I pulled a pencil and my ratty notebook out of my pocket and thrust it at him.

Ruth took them and laughed.

“You got a nerve, kid,” he said and passed around the notebook for the other Yankees. I got the notebook back, and Ruth touched his cap in farewell to Cooper. I watched the four Yankees disappear under the stands, Ruth walking a little slower than the rest.

“Now talk, mister, and make it quick,” said Cooper.

What I wanted to do was ask Cooper why the letters and number on his Yankee uniform were backward, but what I did was talk fast.

“Some time, maybe three weeks, four weeks ago, you called my office, asked me to call you back. I got a message the next day telling me to forget it. I’d guess someone got in touch with you, said he was Peters and took the case.”

“What case?” grumbled Lefty.

“It’s okay,” said Cooper. “Give me a few minutes with this man, Lefty, and I’ll be right back with you.”

Lefty shrugged and walked back toward first base.

“From what I can piece together,” I said, “someone is trying to blackmail you or threaten you into working on a film for a producer you don’t want to deal with. Right so far?”

Cooper’s face twisted into a pained grin, but I wasn’t sure if it was because of my remarks or indigestion.

“This morning I was taken by two goons from Chicago for a ride to see a guy named Lombardi, who told me to help convince you to take the movie job.”

The name Lombardi struck something in Cooper’s sad eyes. He had been giving me part of his attention. Now I had all of it.

“Lombardi found the real Toby Peters-me. Threatened the real one.”

“I see,” said Cooper, removing his baseball cap and rubbing his sweating brow with his sleeve. With the cap off his face, he showed every one of his forty years. He looked like a man in agony.

“Then who is the man who posed as you?” Cooper asked reasonably.

“Describe him,” I said.

“Maybe fifty, roly-poly sweaty fella, bald head, smokes cheap cigars …”

“… and wears thick glasses that keep creeping down his nose,” I finished.

“You know him,” said Cooper.

“I know him and he’s no private detective. He’s a dentist.”

“A dentist?” gulped Cooper. “I’ve got to admit I wasn’t impressed with him, but you came recommended by a fella I know at Paramount and … okay. What now?”

“I’ll take care of the detective-dentist,” I said. “How much have you paid him?”

“Let’s see, about three hundred,” Cooper said, raising his forehead.

“You have a few minutes to answer some questions and tell me what’s happening, and I’ll take over the case.”

Cooper looked puzzled, which seemed perfectly reasonable to me. He looked into my brown eyes and saw no answers. He looked into the first-baseman’s glove in his left hand and saw no answers. He looked over at Lefty, who was kicking dirt behind first base, and saw no answers.

“Okay, give me a few minutes to change clothes,” he finally said and then shouted at Lefty, “Let’s call it a day.”

Lefty waved back and walked in our direction as Cooper disappeared under the stands, walking slowly. Lefty shook his head for the entire distance from first base to my side.

“What the hell is going on here?” he asked. “How am I going to teach him how to throw with all these interruptions? Throws the ball like an old woman tossing a hot biscuit. Has a hell of a time getting his right arm over his head. We’re working on it, though. He’s willing enough, I’ll give him that, but he doesn’t know from old radiators about baseball. How can you grow up in this country and not know baseball?”

“It happens,” I sympathized. “Why are the letters on his uniform reversed?”

“Gehrig was a southpaw, a first baseman,” explained Lefty. “No way in the world I’m ever going to get Cooper to throw with his left hand. So some guy at Goldwyn got the idea of reversing the film so it looks as if he’s throwing with the left when he’s throwing with the right. That’s why the letters have to be reversed. He’s got uniforms both ways. He works out in them to get the feel.”

“So in the movie he’ll be standing at third base instead of first?”

“How the hell do I know?” Lefty growled. “The whole thing’s a mistake. Cooper’s a mess. He has a bad back and broken bones all over the place. He couldn’t get through two innings of a real game even if he knew how to play. Gehrig played 2,130 straight games. Nobody’s ever going to do that again. Hell, Cooper doesn’t even look like Gehrig.”

“People who go to movies don’t care,” I said.

“I care,” said Lefty, pointing to himself. “Say, listen, Cooper is a good guy. He’s trying, but this is baseball we’re talking.”

Five minutes later Cooper was back, but it was a different Cooper. He was wearing a body-tailored pinstripe suit, a spotlessly clean camel’s hair coat and a white fedora.

“If you can give me a ride, Mr. Peters, we can talk on my way home,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Lefty.”

Lefty said good-bye and ambled away, and I agreed to drive Cooper home.

“I didn’t want to do this baseball picture,” Cooper explained, getting into the Buick. I managed to slide a few napkins from my pocket under him before his camel’s hair coat hit the grease spot where the cold-cut bag had been.

I pulled into the street, and he kept talking.

“Baseball’s my father’s game, not mine,” he said softly. “About a month ago the Judge, my father, was hit by a car. He’s 76.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“It was the Judge’s idea for me to play Gehrig. My games are fast cars and good hunting, and my weakness is young ladies.”

“I see,” I said.

“No, you don’t,” he said, still softly. “When you mentioned Mr. Lombardi’s name back there,” he said, pointing his thumb behind us, “it reminded me of a certain young lady. She was, she said, a fan. This was back about six, seven years ago, maybe longer-a pretty blonde thing, a little on the thin side. The ones who want to get into the movies usually are. We were friendly for a few months, and then I found out she had been a friend of Lombardi’s and that he was looking for her. She packed up and went, and that was the end of it.”

“And now?” I urged him on.

“Now I’m interested in keeping my wife and daughter safe and getting on with my work.”

“What’s stopping you?”

“About a month ago, just before I called you,” he said, looking out the window, “a man came up to me, tough-looking gent about your size, built like a giant brick. He gave me a list of reasons why I should make a movie for a third-rate producer-director named Max Gelhorn. That list included a reminder of Lola …”

“The thin blonde …”

“Right,” said Cooper, “and a few other things which seemed much more substantial and which I’d rather not go into with you if I don’t have to.”

“You might have to at some point,” I said.

“If it comes to that, I’ll decide. Now I’d like to say I punched out that man and laid him flat like one of the characters I play, but to tell it straight, Mr. Peters …”

“Toby …”

“Toby,” he went on, “I’m no fighter. I’m an actor. I’ve been mended and patched up, but I have more wounds than a war veteran. My pelvis was broken when I was a kid. It never mended. I can’t sit on a horse straight. I have about half my hearing. A bomb went off too close to my ear one day about ten years back when I was doing a war picture with Fay Wray. My stomach is bad, my arms are weak from too many movie falls and to put it straight, I don’t think I could give your sister a good tussle.”

“I don’t have a sister,” I said.

“Wishful thinking,” said Cooper with a big grin. “What else do you need from me?”

“Simple. What do you want me to do?”

“I guess the same thing I told the little bald fella. Find out who the guy who looks like a brick is, stop him from bothering me and maybe find out where he got all that information on me.”

The sky was now dark, but not from the clouds. Night had come. I glanced at my watch. It said six o’clock but it seldom told me the truth. No amount of fixing had ever done it any good. It had been left to me by my father along with a pile of debts back in ’32. I had never learned not to count on the old man, and now it was hard to stop counting on that watch.

“And there’s no chance that you’d do the picture for Gelhorn?” I asked, following his directions to his house.

“Nope,” he said. “I’m under contract to Goldwyn and I don’t want to do the picture. I’m sorry about Lombardi’s threat to you, but …”

“That’s all right,” I said, pulling into his driveway. “It’s part of the job.”

“I’m going to be taking a few days off for some hunting with a friend in Utah before we start shooting,” he said, shaking my hand. “If you have to reach me, call this number.” He pulled out a card and handed it to me. “Now about money …”

“I don’t have a card, at least not one with my real name on it,” I said. “How about thirty dollars a day and expenses?”

“The fat fella got forty dollars,” Cooper said, working his brittle body out of the Buick.

“Figures,” I said. “I’ll get the rest of the information I need from him.”

Cooper fished a wallet from his finely tailored suit and handed me three twenties.

“I’ll give you a detailed accounting when the job ends,” I said.

“Good enough,” he said and turned to walk to his door. My napkins had not quite done their job. A distinct ameba-shaped grease spot stood out on the rear of Cooper’s expensive coat. Lombardi had managed to stain the perfect image by proxy.

I looked at the sixty bucks, examined the autographs of the Yankees and headed into the night. I had to deal with the fake Toby Peters, but that could wait till the morning.

With sixty bucks in my pocket, I went home and called Carmen, the cashier at Levy’s Restaurant. Carmen and I had been sparring for nearly three years, and I was determined to move up the pace. After all, Marco from Chicago might be right. The Japanese might land any minute, and even if they didn’t, I might be a few dozen kosher-style hot dogs in the near future. The time was now. I invited her to go to the Hitching Post on Hollywood and Vine to see Johnny Mack Brown in West of Carson City. She said she wanted to go to the Olympic and see I Take This Woman with Spencer Tracy. For some reason Ginger Rogers and George Brent were going to be there in person. We compromised and agreed to go to the Biltmore Bowl to hear Phil Harris and his orchestra and play a little gin rummy.

I was supposed to pick her up at nine. It would have been a fine evening. My assault on the widow Carmen was well planned. I shaved carefully with my Gillette Blue Blade and bathed languidly with my Swan soap. I ignored the pounding of Mr. Hill, the retired accountant, by humming “This Love of Mine” to drown out his passionate plea for the toilet.

I put on my clean suit and headed into the night, managing to avoid Mrs. Plaut. I did not, however, manage to avoid the fist of the man who came up to me as I opened my car door. The first punch to my stomach doubled me over. My face hit the top of the car. The second punch, also delivered to my midsection, had me kissing my knees. I sank to the street. A car passed by. Its headlights spotted my face, but it didn’t slow down.

I turned to look at my mugger while gasping to pull in air. There wasn’t much I could see from the ground, but his shape was clear. Cooper had been right. He looked like a giant brick.

“You hear me,” he said in a high voice that seemed to come from someone else, definitely not from the cement truck that had me doubled over in the street. “Cooper does the picture or I’ll turn you into hamburger.”

In spite of the pain I managed a laugh, but it must have sounded like a mad gasp. The brick backed away. If Cooper didn’t do the picture, Lombardi would turn my hand into hot dogs and my mugger would turn the rest of me into hamburger. I wondered what my cost per pound was on the open market.

“You nuts bastard,” he spat, leaning over me, “you keep your nose out or you disappear, you got it?” He gave me a little kick in the kidney to be sure he had my attention. “You got it?”

“Got it,” I said, and he vanished.

I got to my feet and staggered back, almost falling into a passing car. My clothes were dirty and my shirt torn. I managed to find some smog-filled air and enough pride to stand reasonably straight. I made my way back to Mrs. Plaut’s porch and up the stairs, fighting back nausea.

Mrs. Plaut met me in the hall. “Exterminating again?” she said sweetly.

I nodded, unable to speak, as I grasped the railing and started upstairs. I wondered what Mrs. Plaut thought I was exterminating, giant rats in hand-to-hand combat? I was determined to make the date with Carmen, but my body said no, the idiocy you could pull off at twenty-five is off limits at forty-five. This time Mr. Hill wouldn’t let me in the toilet, so I sat in my room hyperventilating for five minutes before I called Carmen and told her I had to work. She said it was okay if I’d promise to take her to the fights Thursday at the Hollywood Legion Stadium. Red Green the “Waterfront Kid” and Mexican George Morelia were the main event. I said sure and hung up.

There are days like this in my business. They come maybe once a year, but they certainly make life interesting. I managed to pry open a 37-cent can of Spam and a dietetically nonfattening bottle of Acme Beer, the beer with the high I.Q. (It Quenches). And then I slept like a baby-a baby cutting new teeth.