Murder on a Yellow Brick Road

3

Within two hours I had met a dead Munchkin, consoled Judy Garland, argued with Louis B. Mayer, and got a job with M.G.M. It was the kind of news you ran home with to your wife, your mother and father, or your dog. I didn’t have any of them, but I did have Shelly Minck.

Shelly and I shared space in the Farraday Building on Hoover near Ninth. The Farraday had the eternal smell of Lysol to cover up the essence of derelict in the cracked tile hall. Sometimes the neighborhood bums slept it off under the stairs until the landlord, a gentle gorilla of a man named Jeremy Butler, plucked them up and deposited them in back of the building. Butler had been a professional wrestler. Since he retired after investing in real estate, he had devoted himself to plucking bums from his lobbies and writing poetry. Some of Butler’s poems had actually been published in little magazines with names like Illiad Now and Big Bay Review.

Butler was in the lobby plucking a bum when I arrived. He nodded to me and headed to the rear of the building. His footsteps echoed away, and I felt at home as I went up the stairs. There was an elevator, but a crippled spinster on relief could beat it to the fourth floor without even trying.

I hiked up the stairway past three floors of offices belonging to disbarred lawyers, bookies, second-rate doctors, pornographic book publishers, and baby photographers. Far behind, I could hear Gorilla Butler dumping the bum and closing the fire door.

Chipped letters on the pebbled glass door to my office read:

SHELDON MINCK, D.D.S., S.D.

DENTIST

TOBY PETERS

PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR

I opened the door and carefully avoided the pile of outdated magazines on the table in the alcove we called a waiting room. The waiting room had two chairs that had come with the place before Shelly moved in. One of the chairs had once been covered with leather. Someone had knocked over the room’s lone ash tray. The alcove wall was decorated with an ancient drawing from a dental supply company showing what various gum diseases look like.

I pushed open the inner door and entered the office of Dr. Minck. Clients for me had to pass through his office where he was often working on a neighborhood bum or a raggedy kid. I had rented the office space from Shelly after I did a small job for him. We got along, and he let me pay what I could afford, almost nothing.

Shelly had a stubbly-faced bum in the chair. The bum looked like a startled old bird. No, he looked like Walter Brennan imitating a startled bird.

Shelly-short, fat, in his fifties, and desperately myopic-was humming and puffing on his ever present cigar while he tried to read the label of a small bottle over the rim of his thick glasses. When he heard me, Shelly turned and nodded a greeting with his cigar. He was, as always, wearing a once white smock which had stains of both blood and jelly on it. Shelly didn’t introduce me to his patient. Walter Brennan just popped his eyes open and darted them between me and his dentist. I couldn’t see a tooth in the guy’s head.

“Any calls?” I said.

“No calls, some mail,” replied Shelly, satisfied with the label on the bottle. He turned to his patient and patted his head reassuringly with the same hand in which he held his cigar.

“Mr. Strange here and I are engaged in a mission of mercy,” Shelly said, plunging a hypodermic into the bottle in his hand. Reddish liquid burbled into the syringe. Shelly pointed to the old man’s mouth with the needle. “Mr. Strange has a toothache. We know exactly which tooth it is because Mr. Strange has only one tooth. That right, Mr. Strange?”

Mr. Strange gave a birdlike nod of agreement. He was petrified with fear, but Shelly didn’t seem to notice.

“We are going to save that tooth, aren’t we, Mr. Strange? We are going to perform something called a root canal. We are going to do it because one tooth is better than no teeth, and because I have not performed a root canal in some time, and I need the practice. Now open up, Mr. Strange.”

Shelly shifted the cigar in his mouth and forced the old man’s mouth open with his strong, sweaty fingers. The hypo plunged in and the old man gurgled.

“That’ll kill the pain,” whispered Shelly. “Now we’ll just let that go to work for a little while.”

While we were waiting for the shot to work on Walter Brennan, I told Shelly about my morning at Metro. He listened while he groped around for an instrument he wanted. He found it underneath some coffee cups in a corner. Then he went to work on the old man. Above the sound of the drill he said, “I worked on a midget once. Little tiny teeth, but the roots on ’em. That little cocker had roots like steel. Two extractions on that midget were harder than a mouthful of root canals. Try to hold still, Mr. Strange. This will only take twenty or thirty minutes.”

Having failed to impress what passed for my only friend, I went into my office. I’d save the story of encounters with the great and near great for my date next week with Carmen.

My office had once been a dental room. It was just big enough for my battered desk and a couple of chairs. The walls were bare, except for a framed copy of my private investigator’s certificate, and a photograph of my father, my brother Phil, and our beagle dog Kaiser Wilhelm. The ten-year-old kid in the picture didn’t look like me. His nose was straight. He was smiling and holding onto the dog’s collar. The fourteen-year-old looked like Phil, with the dark scowl, the tension. The tall, heavy man in the picture had one hand on each kid’s shoulder.

There wasn’t much mail on the desk. Someone in Leavenworth, Kansas wanted to send me a catalogue of tricks and novelties for a dollar. A client named Merle Levine who had lost her cat wanted me to return the ten dollar advance she had given me. The case was two years old. I hadn’t found the cat. I hadn’t really looked. Two brothers named Santini on Sepulveda wanted to paint my home or office for a ridiculously low price.

I wrote a note to Mrs. Levine and put three bucks in it, telling her that it was an out-of-court settlement. Then I leaned back to listen to Shelly’s drill as he hummed “Ramona.” Through the window I could see Los Angeles-white, flat, and spread out. The skyline from my window wasn’t much. Since 1906, a municipal ordinance had limited buildings to 13 stories. Someone at City Hall hadn’t heard about the law and the City Hall Building was 32 stories high, but most of the buildings in the city were low. The skyline was a series of long, low lines like other American cities threatened by earthquakes and a lack of solid rock under them.

The phone rang. It was almost two o’clock. Shelly answered it and said it was for me. I picked it up, while I fished through my drawers for a stamp to mail the letter to Mrs. Levine. The caller was Warren Hoff. He had news.

The police had a suspect, a midget who had been in The Wizard of Oz. The midget’s name was Gunther Wherthman. He had been known to fight with the dead Munchkin, who was now identified as James Cash. In fact, the two little men had been arrested during the shooting of Oz in 1939 when they had a knife fight in their hotel. Wherthman had been cut by Cash, and the police had records showing that Wherthman had threatened to kill Cash. The police had also found three witnesses who had seen two midgets arguing violently before the murder outside the stage where Cash’s body was found. The witnesses all described one of the midgets as wearing a Munchkin soldier’s uniform. The other midget was described as wearing a Munchkin lollipop kid costume. Wherthman had, according to Hoff, played one of the lollipop kids in the movie. Hoff’s report was good.

“I used to be a reporter before I got into this,” he explained.

“Maybe you’ll go back to it,” I said.

“It’s too late,” he said. “Once you commit yourself to a bigger income and lifestyle you’re hooked.”

It wasn’t a problem I’d ever had to deal with.

“Then that’s it,” I sighed, thinking about the easy fifty in my pocket and slightly regretting the other fifties I might have had.

“Not quite,” said Hoff. “We want you to talk to Wherthman, find out if he’s guilty, keep trying to hold back on the publicity. If Wherthman did kill Cash on the lot and both of them were in costume, we’ll look terrible.”

“Is this your idea?” I asked.

“Hell, no,” gasped Hoff. “I think we should just drop the goddamn thing and let it ride out. M.G.M. isn’t going to fold over this. Oz has already had its run. It’s not even playing anywhere now, and I doubt if there ever will be a sequel. But Mr. Mayer says there are millions to be made from the picture, re-release and…”

“And what?”

“Television,” Hoff said sounding embarrassed. “He thinks we’ll be able to sell it to television someday.”

Not knowing what television was, I didn’t say anything, but I grunted in sympathy for Hoff. I agreed with him. I had nothing against putting in another few days’ work for the money, even if I didn’t expect anything to come of it.

“O.K. Warren,” I said, pulling out an unsharpened pencil. I bit wood away to get to the lead. “I’ll put some more time into it. I’ll try to get to Wherthman. Who are the witnesses, the ones who saw the two midgets fighting this morning?”

“One is Barney Grundly, a studio photographer,” said Hoff. He gave me Grundy’s office address on Melrose. “The other two are Victor Fleming and Clark Gable. They were coming from breakfast together. If you want to talk to Fleming, I’ll find out where he is. Your brother already talked to him and Gable. Gable’s going out of town for the weekend, but I’m sure we can track him down if you want him.”

I said thanks and told him he had done a good job, which he had. My praise didn’t mean much to him. We hung up.

I didn’t know where to look for the midget suspect Wherthman, so I called Steve Seidman at police headquarters. He told me Wherthman had been brought in for questioning, but it was a pretty sure bet they were going to hold him for the murder. As far as the L.A. police were concerned, the case was just about wrapped up and they could turn their attention back to a pair of ax murders in Griffith Park.

Shelly was still working on Walter Brennan when I put on my hat and stepped through my office door.

“I think we’ve saved it,” Shelly beamed, sweat dripping from his hair. The old man in the dental chair was having trouble focusing his eyes.

“Great,” I said. “You’re a saint.”

On the way down to try to get a word with Wherthman, I realized that Mayer had a few reasons to worry about publicity. The primary witnesses for the case against Wherthman seemed to be the studio’s top star and top director. Coming off of The Wizard of Oz and Gone With The Wind, Fleming was almost as great publicity material as Gable. A trial would be front page news for weeks. As far as M.G.M. was concerned, it would probably be better if Wherthman would just confess and plead guilty. Wherthman, however, might not care much about Metro’s publicity problems.

Wherthman hadn’t been charged or booked when I got to the station. Phil wasn’t there, which was fine with me; Seidman was, and he told me that the little suspect was just about wrapped up and ready to be put away.

“A couple of people saw Wherthman arguing with Cash, the dead midget, early this morning,” Seidman explained. “One of the witnesses got close enough to hear them talking. He heard a German accent. Wherthman’s got a German accent. The dead guy called the other guy ‘Gunther.’ We found blood on a suit in his apartment. We’re checking it now to see if it matches the dead guy.”

“He sounds all wrapped up,” I said. “Can I talk to him?”

“Why?” Seidman asked reasonably.

“I’ve been hired by his lawyer.”

“He hasn’t called a lawyer. Who’s his lawyer?”

“I’m not at liberty to say,” I said seriously.

Seidman smiled and shook his head.

“Phil would have your head in a Christmas stocking if you fed him that crap.”

We looked at each other for a few minutes. Behind us, cops were scurrying around the big, dirty, wooden room, which was about twenty degrees warmer than the outside. Two were drinking coffee and had their heads close to a thin black kid. The cops’ faces were gentle and they were whispering, but whatever the hell they were whispering was scaring the hell out of the thin kid. A couple of detectives were on phones, and two guys were handcuffed together and sitting on a bench waiting. One of the guys had no shirt on, but he was wearing a tie. He looked content if not happy. The other guy slouched and tried to act as if he had nothing to do with the shirtless smiler. The sloucher had a massive bruise over his right eye.

“You can see him,” Seidman finally said. He was feeling generous. He had helped crack a murder in less than three hours. It would look good on everyone’s record, including my brother’s. Seidman’s face oozed confidence.

He led me to my brother’s office, and I walked in. The office was a small cubicle in one corner of the big squad room. The noise from the cops and robbers was barely muffled by the thin wooden walls. There was enough room inside for the battered desk, a steel file cabinet, and two chairs. On one of the chairs sat a little man whose feet didn’t touch the floor.

Wherthman wore a light grey suit and dark tie. His hair was dark and slightly mussed. He had a little black mustache and a fresh red bruise on his right cheek. I could guess who put it there. His face didn’t look young, but it was hard to tell. I guessed he was about my age.

“Mr. Wherthman, I’m Toby Peters.”

I put out my hand. He didn’t move his, and I put mine down.

“I told the other policeman that I had nothing to do with this murder,” Wherthman said. His voice was high and his accent was clear and Germanic. Not only did the cops have an assful of evidence against him, he looked like and sounded like a miniature Hitler. With war fever running high and Roosevelt running on a fear campaign to keep us out of Europe, Wherthman would be about as popular in Los Angeles as another earthquake.

“I’m not a policeman,” I said, sitting next to him so that the difference between us wouldn’t be quite so ridiculous. “I’m working for your lawyer to help you.”

He looked puzzled.

“I have no lawyer.”

“You will as soon as I call a friend at M.G.M.,” I said softly. The room wasn’t bugged, but Seidman was probably standing outside the door to find out what the hell I was doing.

“Why should anyone at M.G.M. want to help me?” Wherthman said evenly. It was a damn good question.

“They don’t like the publicity,” I explained, and before he could question it I went on. “And besides, can you afford a lawyer and do you know one?”

He said he didn’t know a lawyer and had little money. The pay for Oz was long gone and he had been getting along by doing translations from German for a project at The University of Southern California. He added that he wasn’t German, but Swiss. I didn’t think most Americans would recognize the difference.

“Why did you kill Cash?” I asked.

“I did not kill him,” Wherthman said, looking up at me. “That is what I told the policeman, the fat…” he groped for a word to describe Phil, but his English failed him.

“Pig?” I tried. Wherthman liked it.

“Yes, pig. He threatened to step on me. He hit me. Can the police do that? Can they hit someone in this country?”

“They may not, but they can and do,” I explained.

Wherthman thought it over for a few seconds and indicated with a shake of his head that he understood the distinction. I was beginning to like him.

“The evidence is pretty strong,” I said. “You were seen talking to Cash this morning. You’ve fought with him in the past. You’ve threatened him. The police found blood, probably his, in your apartment.”

“I have no apartment,” he corrected. “I have a single room in a boarding house. I did not go to the studio this morning. I took a walk early as I always do. Perhaps witnesses could be found who saw me. Several people no doubt did.”

“Do you know any of their names?” I asked. “Anyone you see regularly?”

He didn’t know any names and couldn’t think of anyone he saw regularly. He couldn’t explain how a witness had heard Cash use his name. He couldn’t explain why someone would be using the costume he wore in the movie. He couldn’t explain how blood got on some of his clothes in his room.

“So you think you’ve been framed?” I concluded.

He looked puzzled.

“You think someone is trying to make it look as if you committed this murder,” I explained.

“Yes, of course,” he said. We sat for a few seconds listening to a deep voice outside the office thundering over the general noise. The voice told someone to sit still or lose an arm.

“Why would anyone want to do that, Mr. Wherthman?” I asked.

“I do not know,” he said, “but it is being done.”

“How well did you know Cash?” I tried.

Wherthman shifted slightly and slid forward so his toes would touch the floor. His shoes were worn but nicely polished.

“I knew him better than I would have wanted,” he said. “We were forced to live in proximity when the movie was being made. We were placed in adjacent rooms in the same hotel. He was ill-mannered and vulgar. He provoked me because I had an accent, was educated and taller than he. Even with my accent, my English was more precise than his. Precise is the proper word, is it not?”

“It is the proper word,” I said.

“Did he fight with any other little person?”

“I see,” said Wherthman, “Yes. Perhaps someone of my size is attempting to blame me.”

“I don’t know how many little people there are around Los Angeles,” I said, “but there can’t be a whole hell of a lot, and the list of those who knew Cash and the studio well enough to get a costume this morning must be even smaller. Finding a patsy would be a good idea.”

“Patsy,” he mulled. “I thought this was a female name?”

“It is, but it’s also a kind of slang for someone to take the blame for something you did.”

Wherthman took all this seriously. I could see him storing it for future use.

“That would be the Canadian,” said Wherthman. “The one with the nasty temper. He also did not like me and was a confidant of the one called Cash. I think ‘confidant’ is the right word for they were not friends, but they were much together, sometimes arguing, sometimes fighting. They spoke of going into some business together when the movie was finished.”

“What was the Canadian’s name?” I asked.

Wherthman couldn’t remember. He gave me a vague description, but I needed more. It wasn’t a great lead, but it was something. I asked him to try to remember the name, and he said he would.

“Don’t tell the police anything more,” I said, reaching out my hand. He took it this time. His hand was small but not soft, and his grip was firm even though his fingers barely reached past my palm.

“I will not,” he said, standing.

“They’re going to charge you with murder and book you. Tell them your lawyer will be in touch with them. And I have another bit of advice. Shave that mustache. It makes you look a little like Hitler.”

His finger went up to his face.

“I did not think of that,” he said. “I have no wish to look like Hitler. I will do as you suggest. Mr. Peters?”

He had only heard my name once and in a tough situation, but it had stuck.

“Mr. Peters? Do you believe I did not do this murder?”

“I believe it,” I said, “but I’ve been wrong before. I’ll be in touch.”

There was more confidence in my farewell than I felt. Not only had I been wrong before, I’ve been wrong most of the time about my life and other people. The only people who felt any confidence in me were a myopic, sloppy dentist and a Swiss midget.

Seidman was pretending to read a report on a clipboard right outside Phil’s door.

“He says he didn’t do it,” I told him as I walked through the squadroom. The handcuffed couple was still there, and the shirtless guy adjusted his tie as we passed.

“He sticks to that and we’ll wind up with a trial,” shrugged Seidman. “You know who some of our witnesses are?”

I told him I knew.

“Now that’ll really be publicity,” he said. “Might be a good idea if his lawyer or someone…”

“Like me?” I said.

“Someone,” continued Seidman, “suggested that he plead guilty. We have other things to work on, and this can be handled quietly.”

“It’s a thought,” I said. “Thanks for letting me talk to him, and give my best to Phil.”

“I’ll tell him you were sorry you missed him,” Seidman said, getting in the last crack. His white face looked pleased, and I had nothing more to say. As I walked out, the thin black guy between the two cops drinking coffee put his head in his hands and leaned forward. It looked like he was going to throw up.

I stopped at a Pig ’n Whistle on the corner and had a burger and Pepsi. I liked the “Pepsi and Pete” ads the company put out with the two comic cops. When Coke came up with something better, they’d regain my gourmet trade. While I waited for my sandwich, I called Warren Hoff and told him what had happened. He said he’d get a lawyer for Wherthman. I didn’t ask him what the lawyer would tell the little man, but I doubted if they could get the little guy to confess to the murder.

The next step was to talk to the witnesses and try to get a lead on the Canadian midget with the bad temper, so I asked Hoff where I could reach Fleming and Gable. I already knew Grundy’s address. Hoff had the information in front of him.

“Victor will be having dinner at the Brown Derby tonight. He’ll get there around six, and he’s been told that you might drop by to ask him a few questions. Clark is spending the weekend at Mr. Hearst’s ranch in San Simeon. If you want to talk to him by phone, he should be arriving there soon. He drove up.”

I noticed that Fleming and Gable were Victor and Clark but Hearst was Mr. Hearst. Even Hoff realized how silly it would have sounded for him to say that Gable was at William Randolph’s or Willie’s or Bill’s.

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll be in touch.”

He gave me his home phone number in case I wanted to reach him later in the evening, and I let him hang up first.

I spent another nickel and called M.G.M. again. This time I asked for Judy Garland and gave my name. I got her on the line in about thirty seconds. She said she was finished for the day.

“The person who called you this morning and told you to go to the Oz set. You said it was a man with a high voice.”

“That’s right,” she said.

“Could it have been a midget?”

She said it could and I asked the important question.

“Did he have an accent? You know, Spanish, French, German?”

“No, no accent.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll get back to you. Tell Cassie I said hello.”

“I’ll tell her, she’s right here.” She laughed and hung up. She had a hell of a nice laugh. Either Wherthman had a helper, or someone unconnected with the murder called Judy Garland, or Wherthman was right, and he was being framed. It wasn’t evidence to go to the cops with, but it gave me a little confidence in what I was doing.

I ate my burger and headed home.

Home until a month earlier had been a walkup near downtown and my office and a long trot to the Y on Hope Street. But my former landlady had taken exception to a difficult night in which the apartment was shot up and a guy who was trying to kill me went through the window. I couldn’t blame her too much, and it wasn’t hard to move. My clothes, food, and books fit nicely into two cardboard suitcases I got for almost nothing in a pawnshop on Vermont. The pawnbroker, a guy named Hill, owed me a favor for catching a thief who was robbing him blind during the day. Cameras, radios, binoculars, watches had been missing every day at closing time. I staked myself out under a counter with a couple of sandwiches and watched the store between two boxes. The thief turned out to be the seventy-one-year-old lady who brought Hill his lunch from the deli across the street. Hill always ate standing in the store so he wouldn’t lose business. She did all her grabbing on the way out, dropping things into the shopping bag she used to deliver Hill’s food. She hadn’t resold or used any of the stuff. She had just stolen it for the excitement. It was piled up in her room down the street. Hill had paid me, but four hours under that counter with my bad back had me laid up in bed for a week. He felt guilty, and I used that guilt to get things from him, like the suitcases and the. 38 automatic owned and never used. It was the second. 38 I got from Hill. The first one had been taken by the cops after a guy took it from me and killed a couple of people with it.

That was old business. New business was the place I was living in on Long Beach Boulevard near Slauson. It was small and cheap, partly because the place had the smell of fast decline. It was one of a series of two-room, one story wooden structures L.A. management people called bungalows. To people passing by, the place looked like a motor court that had lost its license and sign. Paint was peeling from all the houses in the court like the skin from a sunburned, aging actress. Like the actress, the bungalows were functional, but not particularly appealing. When it rained, the ground in front of my place became a swamp. The furnished furnishings were faded and the shower didn’t work, but it had a great advantage: It was cheap. Jeremy Butler, the poetic wrestler who owned my office building, also owned this place and suggested that I move in and keep an eye on the property for him. In return, I paid practically nothing in rent. A few days earlier I had paid with a sore stomach when I caught a kid trying to break into one of the bungalows at night. The kid had butted me with his head and taken off. His head had hit the point where I had recently taken a bullet, and the wound had just barely scarred when the kid hit it.

When I pulled the Buick in front of my place, it was about four in the afternoon. The Sante Fe moaned, rattling the walls, and I went inside, kicking off my shoes at the door. Through the thin walls I could hear a couple with hillbilly accents arguing, but I couldn’t make out the words.

I ran the water in the bath full blast. Full blast meant it would be about three-quarters full in half an hour. The half hour was spent getting coffee and pouring myself a big bowl of Quaker Puffed Wheat with a lot of sugar. I finished the Puffed Wheat while I took a bath and read the comics. It was the day before Sadie Hawkin’s Day, but I was sure Li’l Abner would be all right. I ran through Mary Worth’s Family and Tarzan, and got happy for Dick Tracy. He said he was going on vacation.

I put on a pair of shorts, plopped on my bed, and listened to the radio for about an hour with my eyes closed. By a few minutes after six, I was dressed in my second suit and ready to go. Such was the domestic life of Toby Peters, which suited me just fine most of the time.

The hillbilly couple were still arguing when I left, but they weren’t breaking anything so I ignored them and got into my Buick. When I was a kid, my father and brother and I always named our cars. Since my dad’s car was always a heap, we needed a new one every year or so. I remember one was called Valentino, a Model A Ford. I’d thought about naming the Buick, but nothing seemed right for it. I decided to ask Butler. As a poet, he might have some ideas. I took Long Beach to Washington and went up Normandie heading for Wilshire.

It was on a stretch of Normandie near some factories that the bullet missed my head. The street was pretty well deserted, but a car pulled up behind me and gave me the horn to get out of the way. I didn’t even look in the rear view mirror. As the car passed, my neck began to itch, and I started to turn. The bullet went through the driver’s side window near my nose and right out the opposite window. I hit the brakes, held the wheel and ducked down below the door. My tires hit something and the Buick spun around and stopped. I didn’t have my. 38 with me. I crouched over, listened for a few seconds to be sure the other car had gone. When I sat up, the street was clear and the sun was still shining. The holes in both windows were small, but they sent out rays like the sun in a kid’s drawing. I rolled the windows open so no one would ask about the holes.

Then, I headed back to my place and got my. 38. It was getting late for my meeting with Victor Fleming, but I needed some solid reassurance. It could simply have been a nut. There are plenty of nuts in Los Angeles, especially kids who are looking for dangerous thrills. There is something about the monotony of L.A. that sometimes drives people mad. Maybe it’s coming to the ocean and finding there is no place further to take your life. It was also possible that an enemy had been laying for me. I had a few old enemies and some recent ones. It was also possible that it had something to do with the dead Munchkin. That seemed just as wild, since I didn’t know anything the cops didn’t know. Or did I? I went over everything in my head as I drove, keeping my eyes open for another attack. I came up with one idea. Late or not, I had to check it out. I stopped at a gas station and called my office while a guy with a Brooklyn Dodgers cap and an old, grey sweater gave me half a buck’s worth.

Shelly was still in the office. He wanted to talk about his root canal, but I didn’t have the time and he sounded a little hurt.

“You had a call, Toby,” he said, accepting temporary defeat. “A guy with a high voice. Said he wanted to hire you and had to get to you fast. So I gave him your address. Did he find you?”

“He found me, Shelly, thanks.” I found out the caller had no accent and told Shelly I’d see him when I could.

It didn’t make sense, at least not to me. I dropped it, after deciding to bill the cost of new car windows to M.G.M., and headed for the Brown Derby. It was almost seven when I got there. I found a space a few blocks away and jogged. The Derby was a greyish dome with a canopy in front and a single line of rectangular windows running around it. Perched on top of the dome and held up by a tangle of steel bars was the replica of a brown derby. The place looked something like an erupted boil wearing a little hat.

I told the waiter that Fleming was expecting me and was led to a table in a corner. The room was jammed but the noise level was low.

Fleming got up and shook hands when I introduced myself. He was a tall guy, about sixty, with well-groomed grey hair. His nose looked as if it had taken one in the past. He was wearing a tweed suit, a checkered tie and a brown sweater. He looked very English, but his voice was American.

“Have a seat, Peters,” he said. There was another guy at the table and Fleming introduced him as Dr. Roloff, a psychiatrist.

Roloff was equally tweedy and even more grey than Fleming, though about ten years younger.

“Dr. Roloff has been kind enough to give me some ideas for my next picture,” Fleming explained. “A version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

I must have looked surprised because Fleming added, “I know it’s been done with Freddie March. A good film, but I have some ideas and Spencer Tracy is interested. But that’s another game. What can I do for you, Peters? Can we get you something to eat?”

“Nothing to eat, just some information and I’ll get out of your conference. The police talked to you today about an argument you saw between two people dressed in Munchkin suits.”

Fleming nodded and I went on.

“What exactly did you see and hear?”

“Very little,” said Fleming, taking a belt of coffee. “I was coming back from breakfast with Clark Gable, and we saw the two little people arguing. Clark looked. I wanted nothing to do with it. I had a year of working with them. Most of them were fine, but a lot of them were a pain in the ass. They argued, disappeared, showed up late. Once they screwed up a take on purpose by singing ‘Ding Dong the Bitch is Dead.’ I didn’t notice it. The sound man didn’t notice it. We had to reshoot it.”

“It’s not surprising,” Roloff put in. “Short people, midgets especially, are sometimes inclined to be highly aggressive toward normal size people. They’re also inclined to use obscenity more than the average to assert their adultness, to overcompensate. I had one midget as a patient who knew he was overcompensating with big cigars and sexual overtures to full-sized women. He knew he looked ridiculous and obscene to others, but he couldn’t stop. It was a kind of self hate, a punishment for himself. It’s hard to live your life knowing that whenever you go out on the street people will stare at you. Exhibitionism may result, or the person may become a shy and bitter recluse.”

“Just like movie stars,” I added.

“Sure,” said Roloff.

“Sorry I can’t help you, Peters,” Fleming joined in. “I can give you a lot of stories about Munchkins, but I don’t think it will help. It just supports what Dr. Roloff has been saying. I’ll give you an example. One of them got drunk one day and almost drowned in a toilet. Another time one of them pulled down his drawers in a crowd scene. We didn’t even notice that the first time through the rushes. As for the fight this morning, when I saw it was two little people in Munchkin suits, I paid no attention. I stepped in between them a few times when we were shooting the picture, and I had no desire to take the abuse again. When I saw those two this morning, I didn’t know why they were wearing costumes from the movie and I didn’t give a Hungarian crap.”

He paused to look around the room and regain his composure. The thought of the Munchkins had sent his temper flying.

“I like what we did on that picture,” he continued, patting down his hair. “I came in on it late after a couple of other directors, and I was pulled off it early to take over Gone With The Wind. Still, I spent more than a year on Oz and it was the toughest damn thing I’ve ever done. Those two pictures have been damn good for me, but I wouldn’t want to make either one of them again. Even if no one remembers Oz, I will, and with mixed memories.”

“I like it,” I said.

“It’s a strange movie,” said Roloff, pushing his cup away and fiddling with his pipe. “Depending on who views it and what’s going on in his or her life, it can be a lot of things.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“It’s a child’s dream of accepting the adult world. A girl at puberty dreams of seeking the aid of a magical wizard, aided by three male figures, each not quite a man. Her jealous rival is an old witch who wants the slippers the girl wears. The ruby red slippers can be seen as a menstrual sign. In the book they were silver. The girl in the movie learns to accept power of the ruby slippers-her womanhood-with the help of three flawed male admirers and a mysterious, frightening father figure. The slippers are given to her by a mother figure, a beautiful witch. Did you ever think of having her wake up and find she’s had her first period, Victor?”

Fleming laughed.

“I had no such interpretation in mind when I made the movie, and neither did anyone else who worked on it,” Fleming said.

Roloff lit his pipe and puffed a few times. Then he raised his hand.

“That’s just the point I was making about the Jekyll film,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if it is consciously in your mind. A dream doesn’t necessarily have a conscious meaning. You simply tell the story because you find it interesting and others do, too. My job is to find out why you find it interesting and what it means.”

“You said there were other interpretations,” I said.

“Well,” Roloff said, “how about this one? A lot of people may be reacting to the film as a kind of parallel to the current world situation. If we see the Munchkins as the Europeans-foreign, different, in need of help-and the witch as Hitler, we have a situation in which an All-American girl is forced to take up arms against evil, to help the innocent foreigners, to destroy the well guarded militant Hitler-Witch and to be rewarded in her effort by the human-father-God, the Wizard of Oz.”

“But it turns out to be only a dream,” Fleming said shaking his head and motioning to the waiter for more coffee. This time I took some.

“Right,” said Roloff. “It’s just a dream, to a great extent a nightmare with a happy ending. The film says if we have to enter the war, we will, and we will triumph to return from it as if from a dream. Perhaps we will have to face the fear of death in a colorful and far off place before we can return to the dull security of Kansas. In any case, the message might simply be, if we have to handle it, we can. Would you like another possible meaning?”

I smiled and said two were quite enough, and Fleming said if we weren’t careful, colleges would start teaching courses about the “meaning” of movies. What Roloff said was interesting, but I didn’t see any way I could use it. I was wrong, but I wouldn’t find out till it, was almost too late. As far as I was concerned, the meeting with Fleming provided nothing.

“Sorry again I couldn’t be of more help, Peters,” Fleming said. “Clark paid some attention to the incident, and he has a hell of a memory. He might be able to give you more.”

I said good-bye to Roloff and Fleming and left the Derby. It was after nine. I stopped at a stand for two tacos and a chocolate shake.

A year, several thousand memories, and a dozen broken bones ago I had seen The Wizard of Oz. It had been on one of those nights when I was feeling sorry for myself. There had been nothing on the radio and nothing to read. I decided to see the movie again. I wanted to try to pick out Cash and Grundy, wanted to look at Judy Garland and see if she had changed as much as I thought.

I stopped at a newsstand and got a Times. The picture wasn’t playing anywhere. I was going to give up, and head home, but I didn’t want to think about what or who might be looking for me at home. I had to see The Wizard of Oz.

I called Warren Hoff at home. He answered and told me I didn’t need to see the picture. I suggested that he handle the publicity business and I’d handle the detective business, and both of us would probably meet at the funny farm. He said he’d set up a screening in the morning. I pushed, for the moon was high, my blood was up, and I had no lead to follow.

“Wait,” said Hoff. “I’ve got an idea.” He put the phone down, and I looked out of the booth at a thin blonde woman in a grey suit. She caught me looking and stared me down. I pretended to start talking even before Hoff came back.

“Right,” I said.

“What’s right?” said Hoff.

“I don’t know,” I said. “What did you find?”

“There’s a charity screening of the picture tonight.” I could hear him crunching through some papers. “I’ve got a list of extra screenings on… here it is. Holy Name Church of God’s Friends in Van Nuys, on Van Nuys just South of Victory.”

“I know the place,” I said. “What time?”

“Nine-thirty. Enjoy yourself.” He hung up.

I drove in the dark, listening to the end of the San Jose-Loyola game. San Jose won 27 to 12, and a back named Gene Grady ran ninety-seven yards for a touchdown.

The church was where I remembered it. A few years before, I had waited for a bus outside of that church for an hour, listening to a skinny woman with a red wig tell me her life story. It was a hell of a sad life. I remember her face when the rain came down in the middle of her tale about a draining liver.

“See?” she had said, shaking her head knowingly. The rain had been another proof of the hell of her life. She didn’t seem to notice that the rain was falling on me, too.

The Holy Name Church of God’s Friends was a four-story red brick building with a big sign. When I stepped through the thick wooden doors I could tell what kind of church it was. The ceiling went up about ten feet and I didn’t see any second floor. The front of the church was a facade, a store front, a prop to make it look as if the church went up four stories, three closer to God than the truth. I wondered who the people of the church were trying to fool, God or the street trade. I didn’t much care.

A guy with a thick, white, turned-around collar greeted me at the door. He had red cheeks and messy white hair. He looked like a priest.

“You’re a little late,” he whispered. “The short is already on.”

I gave him a nod and headed for the door in front of me and behind him. He touched my hand gently.

“We would appreciate a donation to the church,” he said humbly.

“And if I don’t want to give a donation?”

“Well,” he whispered, “I’ll just call a few people and throw your ass out of here.” The benevolent look never left his face.

I smiled and coughed up a buck. He took it and stuffed it in his pocket.

“Enjoy the movie, son,” he said.

“Thank you, Father,” I said.

“No,” he corrected. “In this church I am called Friend. Friend Yoder.”

I left him standing in the hall and stepped into the dark room. I couldn’t see much except the beam of light from the projector and restless shadows. The projector grinded, feet shuffled, old women coughed, and a baby revved up for a hell of a cry.

The short was an English thing about a train carrying mail to Scotland. I watched for a minute or two while my eyes got used to the dark. An English narrator was reading a poem about postal orders. It sounded kind of sing-songy. It had something to do with carrying mail and how great it was. I found a wooden seat next to a woman holding a kid who couldn’t have been more than three. The kid decided to look at me instead of the picture. I couldn’t tell if the kid was a boy or a girl, but I could tell that someone should have wiped his nose when he was two.

I played goo with the kid till the picture ended. The lights went on and I could see the place was crowded, mostly with old people and a couple of women with kids falling asleep or trying to get away from the arms that held them. I moved to another seat near the front and the kid at my side whined. The old man next to me smiled. I smiled back, and the picture started.

The old man chuckled when the Bert Lahr character Zeke told a pig to get in the pen before he made a dime bank out of him. No one else chuckled. Things picked up when Dorothy got to Munchkinland. I recognized the set and the soldier costume on a bunch of midgets marching. They all looked the same to me.

When the Wicked Witch said, “Just try to stay out of my way,” the blond kid with the nose let out a scream of terror. His mother told him to shut up.

In a few minutes, Dorothy observed that, “People come and go so quickly here.” It was the problem I was facing.

The blond kid got uncomfortable again when the trees talked, and I got uncomfortable when the Scarecrow observed that, “Some people without brains do an awful lot of talking.”

I got sleepy when the group hit the poppy field and felt like going home when the movie ended with Dorothy saying, “There’s no place like home.” Then the lights went on and I remembered where I lived.

I dodged past old people and women with kids and nodded to Reverend Yoder as I pushed open the front door and went out onto Van Nuys.

When I reached home thirty minutes later, I locked my door, pulled down the shades, propped a chair under the doorknob, and put my. 38 under the pillow. It wasn’t likely that a reasonable killer would break in here and take a few shots at me, but it was possible that a murderous midget who knew my address might just be wild enough to try it. For some reason, the prospect of being shot by a midget scared me more than the idea of the same thing being done by a normal-size man. What if the little killer crept in through a crack under the door and plunked a knife into my chest? I could see the dead soldier Munchkin and me lying side by side on the yellow brick road.

I had a hard time getting to sleep, so I left the light on in the bathroom. It had worked when I was a kid, and it helped now. No one would ever know. The radio was glowing next to me and singing softly. My hand felt the comforting steel of the. 38 under my pillow, and I fell asleep expecting nightmares.

There were no nightmares. I dreamed I was sleeping peacefully in a field of poppies, and snow was falling coldly and gently on my face.