Murder on a Yellow Brick Road

5

Winter is the mischief in me. I heard a scratching sound and sat upright in the back seat. Something was at the front window. I shot. The window shattered and I missed the collie by about a foot. I heard him trotting away and barking in fear. I knew how he felt.

I sat upright and discovered another problem. Sea dampness, dew, and a contorted position for six hours had done in my back. The injury went back to a black guy who didn’t like my kidneys and had told them so. When wet weather hit, I felt as if my vertebrae were welded together, surrounded by a sensitive band of exposed nerves.

The groaning helped a little as I rolled on my side and went through the door. The collie stood on a hill watching. In about two minutes he saw me make it into the front seat and brush away the glass. I had nothing to kill the pain, but I knew someone who did. I got into a position I could barely live with, tucked the. 38 into my holster, cursed the ocean which I could see a few hundred feet below me, and got back on the highway.

Part of the drive back wasn’t bad. I mean I wasn’t in total burning agony. I got hungry in an hour, but I didn’t want to get out of the car. I wasn’t sure I could. Just before noon, I found a place near Santa Barbara where you could honk your horn for service. I honked my horn at the El Camino Drive-In, and a skinny, red-headed girl in a tacky red uniform approached me. She stopped when she looked at my stubble-covered and anguish-filled face.

“You all right?” she said.

“Wife just had a baby,” I explained. “Been up all night.”

“Congratulations,” she said with an accent out of Missouri or Oklahoma. “Boy or girl?”

“Girl. Eleanor Roosevelt Peters.”

She took my groaned order: two egg sandwiches with mayonaise and a chocolate shake.

When I finished eating, I pulled a buck out of my pocket, but Missouri wouldn’t take it.

“Boss says it’s on the house. For the new daddy.”

Her smile was crooked and nice, and I felt like an Italian in Ethiopia. I smiled back and left.

Some time late in the afternoon I pulled in front of the Farraday Building into a no parking zone. The next trick was to get out of the car. While I was trying, Jeremy Butler stepped out for some Lysol-free air and saw me.

“You get shot again?” he asked, taking my arm.

“No, it’s my back. Can you help me up to the office?”

Butler picked me up as if I were helium-filled and walked me into the building.

“I’ve known lots of guys with bad backs,” he said, going up the stairs instead of taking the elevator. I weighed a solid 165 pounds and it was dead weight, but he didn’t seem to notice.

“Know any body builders?” I asked.

“Some,” he said, moving steadily upward. “Different muscles from wrestlers. They’re top-heavy. No center of gravity.”

The pain was still there, but I could tell Butler was doing his best to be gentle.

“I mean personalities,” I said.

“All kinds,” Butler said. “Some fairies, some skirt chasers. A few momma’s boys. All exhibitionists. They want people to look at them. Someone. A mother, father, someone didn’t pay attention, and they’re making up for it. Some of them are good guys.”

“You’re a poet, Jer,” I said as he elbowed his way into the alcove of Minck and Peters. The alcove was barely big enough for both of us. He hurried through. Shelly was eating a sweet roll and smoking a cigar while he read a Western in his dental chair. Butler told him to get up, and he deposited me carefully in the seat of honor. I groaned once for sympathy. Butler wasn’t even breathing hard.

“Get shot?” Shelly asked with more curiosity than sympathy.

“No, buddy,” I said through my teeth. “It’s my back. You got something to kill the pain?”

“Sure,” he said, and went for the needle. “I’ll give you a shot and some pills, but you’re better off going to bed for a few days and letting it take care of itself.”

“I may not have a few days,” I said. Shelly rolled up my shirt and gave me a shot in the lower back.

“I use it on gums,” he said to Butler, “but it’s supposed to work anywhere.”

He gave me an unmarked bottle with about ten pills in it. I took one out and swallowed it, gasping for water. Shelly turned on his dental chair water, and I drank out of the dirty glass cup. I curled over in agony waiting for the shot and the pill to do their stuff. While I waited, I told Shelly and the landlord about Judy Garland, the dead Munchkin, and the two attempts on my life. Shelly had heard part of it before, but he had been so busy saving the tooth of Walter Brennan’s double that he had forgotten.

“Let me try something,” Butler said, picking me up. I didn’t want to be picked up; the dental pain killers hadn’t done their stuff yet. But I was in no condition to argue. Butler put me on the floor and rolled me on my stomach. I didn’t go completely over because I was in an almost fetal position. He put his left hand on my spine and his fingers over my kidney. He grabbed my collar bone at the top of my back. The push down and pull up was sudden and without warning. There was a sound like an inner tube snapping, and a rush of pain.

“There,” said Butler. “How do you feel?”

I started to roll back into my protected fetal position and realized that the bad pain was gone. My lower back still felt sore, but it was tolerable.

I got up a little shaky, but I knew I could walk and feel something besides pain.

“Shot’s working,” explained Shelly, pointing his cigar at me with professional pride. “Take those pills and you’ll be fine for a day or so.”

Butler said nothing. He just looked tolerantly at Shelly with tiny blue eyes.

“Thanks,” I said to both of them, and hobbled into my office. There was almost no pain when I got to my desk and picked up the phone. I could hear the door open and Butler leave. Shelly began to hum “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” off-key, and I asked the operator for M.G.M. Hoff wasn’t there. I called his home number. He answered.

“Hoff, did Cassie tell you about the other midget, the one Wherthman says was chummy with Cash?”

“It’s Sunday,” he said in apology. “I can’t reach anyone, but I’m sure I’ll know by tomorrow.”

“Today would be nice,” I said. “Work on it. Who’s Wherthman’s lawyer?”

“A guy named Leib, Marty Leib. His office is on…”

“I need his home number,” I said. “I may not have until tomorrow. Is he listed?”

Hoff didn’t know, but he had the home number written down. He was a good leg man.

“One last thing, Hoff. Where were you late last night?”

“Why?” he asked.

“Someone about your size took a shot at me in a motor court up the coast.”

“Why the hell would I want to kill you?” he shouted. The anger sounded real, but I’d seen him change personalities almost in mid-sentence.

“Where were you?” I demanded.

“Here. Right here all night.”

“You’ve got a witness?” I pushed.

“My wife,” he said pulling himself together. I could see his hand touching his hair into place. I wondered if he was wearing a purple velvet robe and slippers and holding a copy of the New Yorker in his hand.

“Wives have lied for husbands,” I said.

He didn’t answer.

“You there, Warren?”

“I’m here. You need anything else?”

“You owe me another day’s pay and expenses. I’ll send you the bill,” I said, and waited for him to hang up. We played “you first” for about twenty seconds and I hung up.

I called lawyer Leib, whose bass voice almost knocked me off the chair.

“Ah, Mr. Peters!” he boomed. “I wanted to get in touch with you. Our client has a message for you. The name of the other midget, Cash’s friend. It’s John Franklin Peese.”

I asked him to spell it while I fished around for my gnawed pencil and an envelope to write on. I found the envelope addressed to me by Merle Levine, the lady whose cat I never found.

“I’ll work on it,” I said, and I told him about Clark Gable’s confidence that the arguing suspect was shorter than the victim.

Leib said that was great, but he was hoping Peese would lead to something better. He wanted to avoid a trial and publicity. Having Clark Gable as the key witness for the defense in what looked like an open-and-shut case wouldn’t do anyone any good. Leib said I should call him at any time, and we hung up good pals.

The next trick was to find John Franklin Peese, but first I called Andy Markopulis. He told me Woodman and Fearaven were at Judy Garland’s house and nothing had happened. Records of present and former employees were at the studio, and Peese would surely be listed. Andy said he could meet me at the studio if I wished. I said I’d think about it and call him back.

While I was thinking about it, Cassie James called. She said she wanted to know how the talk with Gable had gone and how I was. I told her about it and the attempt on my life. I had liked the way she moved toward me the last time I was almost done in. Her voice did it over the phone. Then she told me she knew the name of the midget Gunther Wherthman was trying to think of. She gave me Peese’s name, and said she could get into the personnel records and get an address. That sounded like more fun than meeting Andy Markopulis and I asked where she’d be. She said at home, and invited me over for dinner. I accepted, and she gave me a Santa Monica address and a couple of hours to get to it.

The pain in my back was almost gone. I decided to take a chance on going home for a shave and bath. An hour later I was shaved and clean, and my teeth weren’t furry anymore. I gulped one of Shelly’s pain pills just in case and went out the door into the evening sun looking for an unfriendly face attached to a big body. None appeared.

The drive was uneventful. No one tried to kill me, and it was a dead Sunday. Paper blew in the streets. Mexicans with nothing to do sat on the curbs arguing. Anglos with lawns cut the grass.

KMPC radio said they’d broadcast a “Hollywood on Parade” for Willkie the next day with Conrad Nagel, Edward Arnold, Porter Hall and Arthur Lake. Roosevelt had the clear edge in star power. I turned off the radio and headed for Cassie James.

Her house was on the beach in Santa Monica. It wasn’t a big money place, but it wasn’t welfare living, either. I didn’t know exactly what her job at M.G.M. was or how much she was paid. My estimate jumped when I got out of the car. She had some money.

The surf rolled in and grumbled, and the sun was cut off halfway on the horizon. She answered the door with a small smile, and I figured out her color code. Today she was wearing a yellow blouse and skirt. She was a woman of solid colors. No stripes, designs or little flowers. It made her seem solid. The house matched. None of the furniture in the living room had a stripe or flower. Even the paintings on the white walls weren’t flowery. She caught me looking at the room instead of at her.

“What do you think?”

“It’s restful,” I said, putting my hat on a table near the door and dropping into a sofa to rest. There was plenty of room on the sofa for company. She sat next to me and handed me a card. Neatly written on it in green ink was the name of James Franklin Peese and an address on Main Street. I tucked it in my pocket, and Cassie James moved closer to me.

“Hungry?” she said.

“Always,” I answered, which was nearly the truth.

I could feel her breath on me and looked into her eyes.

“Let’s skip the game,” she said softly. “I’ve played it a few times. It’s embarrasing, awkward, and it makes me feel foolish.”

She got up and led me into a bedroom. The room was painted yellow. The bed and furniture were black.

“We’ll eat later,” she said. “It’ll be easier for both of us.”

She held out her hand for my coat, and I gave it to her. Then she turned her hand down, palm up, toward my pants and left the room turning down the lights. I took my clothes off, put them on a chair, and got into the bed. I worked over a couple of wise cracks in my head in case she came back in an apron with a tray of chicken. She came back without chicken, and I made no cracks. She was dark and beautiful, and came to me softly smelling of mountains. I dropped back with her on top of me. We didn’t talk and moved slowly. It was better than I had imagined, and the sound of the sea outside helped.

I almost fell asleep, but not quite, and she kissed me awake.

“Hungry?”

I said yes, and she got up, slowly throwing her hair back, and went toward the living room. I closed my eyes for a few minutes or half an hour.

She came back dressed in a black knit sweater and skirt.

“You’ve got five minutes,” she whispered.

I grunted and got up when she left. In a few minutes I was dressed. Before I went into the living room, I took another one of Shelly’s just-in-case pain pills and gulped it down with tap water in Cassie’s pink bathroom. There was better behavior for a bad back than what I was doing.

We had dinner in a corner of the living room next to a window where we could see the moon and the coast. We ate steak and corn on the cob, and there was plenty of it. We both had a beer and talked about nothing.

“Ever married?” I said, when we had put the dishes away.

“Once, for a short time, a long time ago. You?”

“Once,” I said, “for a long time, until a short time ago.”

There didn’t seem much else to say on the subject. We talked about Judy Garland. I told my life story, making myself look as tough as possible. She gave me a little about her life, but not much more than she had before. We talked about Hoff and made jokes about his first-naming and changes in personality, and I told her about my meeting with Mayer. She had never talked to Mayer, nor been in his office in the years; she had worked in the studio. She’d begun with M.G.M. shortly after she had come from Texas. Her career as an actress had passed after a few years, and she had devoted herself to her actress sister. When the sister died, Cassie had plunged into costume design and had done well as an assistant. She didn’t talk about men, but I was sure she would have if I’d asked.

Somewhere after eleven she said she had to get to bed alone because she had to be at the studio at six. We kissed and I started to prolong it, but she pushed me away gently with the promise of more in the future.

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” I said.

“I’ll be waiting,” she said, and I strode out to my Buick as if it were an armed charger.

When I got back home I felt confident about killing any dragons that might want to break into my castle. Besides, the dragon who was trying to kill me was a lousy shot. I was confident, but not stupid. I put my sofa in front of the door, kept the bathroom light out, and put the gun under my pillow. My back felt great.

I dreamed Roosevelt was campaigning in Munchkinland, promising to keep wicked witches out. A couple of Munchkins with long knives crept up behind him as he talked. The other Munchkins and Glinda, the good witch, saw the tiny killers but said nothing. It was up to me to save the President. I tried to run forward, but my back was too sore. I tried to shout, but nothing came out. I watched in helpless horror. Glinda, looking very much like Cassie and dressed in solid red, took me in her arms and comforted me. It felt good, and I felt guilty as hell.