Now You See It

Chapter 13

“Susteance,”came Mrs. Plaut’s voice from the darkness.

I sat up on my mattress on the floor and blinked at the broom-thin shadow in the doorway. The overhead light came on and I looked into the face of Irene Plaut.

“You cannot go through a day such as you had yesterday without enough stick-to-the-ribs sustenance,” she said. “Breakfast in fifteen minutes. You have left your bib and tucker in a heap.”

She pointed at my tux on the floor near the door and started to turn.

“Was your husband really a magician?”

She either had her hearing aid turned off or chose not to answer. She turned right and walked away, leaving the door open. Leaving the door open guaranteed that I would have to get up to at least close it.

My shoulder where the pellet had hit felt fine. Well, “fine” was a little optimistic. In addition, my tongue told me that I hadn’t lost any more of the tooth. The tooth told me that it would behave. I did not trust the tooth. I used the oil of cloves, got up, put on a reasonably clean pair of underpants and trousers and hurried to the bathroom to shower and shave before one of the other tenants beat me to it. I was sure Gunther had long since cleansed himself from toenails to the ends of the hairs on his head. It was Bidwell I tried to beat. He took about fifteen minutes in the bathroom, probably because he had only one hand to work with, though he seemed to be doing reasonably well with that one hand where Emma Simcox was concerned.

I was the first one at Mrs. Plaut’s table, having passed the screeching bird whose name I no longer knew nor cared about. I had dropped my tux in a neat bundle near the front door.

“I have to hurry,” I said as Mrs. Plaut came in with the coffee.

“We all have to hurry,” she said. “It is the lot of man, the human condition. Breakfast today is Spam and egg casserole with loganberries.”

“Sounds great,” I said, picking up the coffee.

“I’ll bring it out when all are assembled,” she said.

“I’m really in a hurry.”

“You’ll not live a moment longer nor accomplish anything of true pith and moment by hurrying,” she said, daintily picking up her coffee cup.

“Alright,” I returned. “Was your husband really a magician and were you the famous Irene?”

She put down her cup, turned it so the handle pointed away, pursed her lips and said,

“Mr. Blackstone is illusional.”

“Delusional,” I corrected.

“That, too,” she said. “I’ll get the casserole.”

Up she rose and ambled into the kitchen. Gunther arrived, and I told him where I was going before our morning meeting with Marty Leib. Gunther asked if I would like his company and I said I would.

Mrs. Plaut arrived with a steaming Pyrex container, which she held with two potholders. Gunther moved to place the bamboo mat on the table closer to her.

“There,” she said, putting down the dish and standing back to admire her work as Bidwell and Emma came in and sat next to each other.

“Smells good,” said Bidwell with his car salesman smile. If he had two hands, this is the moment he would have rubbed them together.

“The zesty, crusty topping has been recommended personally by Betty Crocker,” said Mrs. Plaut.

I considered telling Mrs. Plaut that there was no Betty Crocker. I considered asking Mrs. Plaut again about her rumored career as a magician’s wife. I considered finishing my coffee, motioning to Gunther and leaving without the pleasure of the savory casserole. The latter was not a serious consideration, not if I intended to remain a boarder in Mrs. Plaut’s house of a thousand pleasures.

The casserole was good, strange but good. That was Mrs. Plaut’s specialty: strange but good cooking, with an emphasis on the former. Bidwell always shook his head and ate with gusto, frequently adding comments on the brilliance of Mrs. Plaut’s culinary skills. I think he meant it. The man survived on enthusiasm. I could take just so much of it. I ate, chewing only on the left side of my mouth.

I had seconds and then waited while Gunther finished. He did not eat quickly. When he finally placed his knife and fork neatly on his plate, I stood and said, “Sorry, we’ve got to run.”

“With caution,” said Mrs. Plaut. “Always with caution. The mister always said, ‘If you don’t look where you are stepping, someday, somewhere you will step into something that will be hard to clean off.”

“Sage advice,” I said, and we were off.

Gunther had brought his tux downstairs before he came to breakfast. His was on a hanger and didn’t look as if it had been worn. We gathered our uniforms and headed for my Crosley. On the way to Columbia, we dropped the clothes off at Pearson’s Cleaners on Pico, which opened at dawn. They would have to be cleaned before I returned them to Hy’s.

Ten minutes later, we were pulling into the parking lot at Columbia Pictures, where a uniformed attendant recognized me.

“Toby? Son-of-a-bitch,” said Dave Crouch as I rolled down my window. “Last time I saw you was …”

“Burke Reilly’s retirement party,” I said.

“Five years?”

“Six or seven,” I said.

Dave was a heavy man in his midfifties with clickety-clack false teeth and a constant smile. We had both been guards at Warner Brothers. Harry Warner personally had fired me when I’d taken a short right jab at a second-rate cowboy star after he’d tried to saddle a would-be kid starlet who wasn’t interested. It wasn’t so much that I had punched the cowboy, but that I had broken his nose, which set the picture he was working on off its shooting schedule for more than a week. Dave Crouch had simply traded the Warner brothers for Harry Conn and a few dollars more per week.

“You here looking for a job?” asked Dave, glancing at Gunther.

“Looking for a movie star,” I said.

“Who?”

“Cornel Wilde. I hear he’s shooting A Thousand and One Nights.”

“That he is,” said Dave. “Stage Two. He expecting you?”

“Would I be here at eight in the morning if he weren’t?”

“Yes,” said Dave. “You would, but who gives a damn, you know? I’ve had it up to here with Cohn and company. I’m thinking of moving down to San Diego, buying into my brother-in-law Sam’s bar. Right near a shipyard. Goddamn gold mine. Sam’s got a liver thing, and my sister likes cooking for me. Seen Ann?”

“No, not for a while,” I said. “Rose?”

“No,” he said. “Go on in. If someone asks me, I’ll say you showed me a pass. You got a pass right?”

“Right here in my pocket,” I said.

“Good enough for me,” said Dave.

I drove past the gate and headed for Stage Two.

“Rose is his former wife, I take it?” asked Gunther.

“She took it,” I said. “Dave once had a house in Santa Monica.”

Stage Two didn’t look any different from the other sound stages on all the lots of all the studios. Maybe it was a little smaller. Maybe the outside brick walls weren’t as clean, but a sound stage is a sound stage from the outside. On the inside, it can be anything from a crater on Mars to a battlefield in Germany to a Sultan’s palace in fairy tale, which was what Stage Two was when Gunther and I went through the door. The green light was on, indicating that they were not shooting at the moment.

It was the Hollywood I had learned to love and distrust. Around the walls were ladders, lights, piles of electrical equipment, chunks of scenery leaning against other chunks of scenery. In the middle of the sound stage was what looked like the garden of a palace with a little fountain in a pool. Girls in colorful billowing costumes with veils pulled back were chatting in little groups, some of them smoking, some of them sipping coffee.

The garden was painted in bright colors, reds, blues, greens, golds, yellows, in contrast to the black and gray beyond what the camera would see.

In the middle of the garden stood two men. One man wore dark trousers and a white shirt with the sleeves pulled up. He was holding a script. His companion, in billowing purple pants and a white shirt with puffy sleeves, was looking at the script, nodding his head and saying something. The man in the costume, Cornel Wilde, was tall, handsome with dark curly hair and serious dark eyes.

Gunther and I started toward Wilde when a bald young man, wearing glasses that didn’t quite go with his Scheherazade costume, said, “You guys lookin’ for me?”

He had a cup of coffee in his hand.

“No,” I said.

“No?” he asked. “You sure. Phil Silvers? You from Manny? I’m supposed to place a bet on the Fifth at Aqueduct. Dangerous Antics on the nose? Sure you’re not from Manny? You look like you’d be from Manny.”

“No,” said Gunther.

Silvers pulled up his sleeve and looked at his watch.

“You’re not bookies?” he asked.

“No,” said Gunther.

“You wouldn’t want to make a bet? A small wager on the race? Dangerous Antics is seven to one. I’ll take six to one.”

“We are not …”

“Five to one,” said Silvers, shaking his head as if he were making a terrible mistake. “I’m a crazy man, but what can I do? I’m addicted. Four to one. Last offer. I’m breaking my heart here.”

“You don’t…” Gunther tried.

“He’s joking Gunther,” I said.

“Peters,” Silvers said, taking my hand. “You could have given me a few more seconds of shtick. I had the little guy goin’.”

“Very amusing,” Gunther said soberly.

“Take a joke,” Silvers said to Gunther, extending his hand. “It’s free. Toby and I go way back. The Green Pussycat in, what was it, thirty-eight, thirty-nine?”

“Green Door, downtown,” I said. “Thirty-seven.”

“Right, right,” said Silvers. “Guy gets a little snickered while I’m doing my act, see. Starts heckling. Big mistake. You heckle crooners. You heckle ventriloquists. You heckle magicians. You don’t heckle comics. I was on that night. Right?”

Silvers beamed.

“You were on,” I agreed.

“Made the guy look like the shmuck he was. Am I right?”

“You’re right,” I said.

“Big guy. Charges the stage.”

Silvers demonstrated, taking a few lumbering steps toward Gunther with his shoulders down.

“Toby here is working nights at the Green Pussycat, see?”

“Green Door,” I corrected.

“Yeah,” said Silvers. “Whatever. Well he gets between the drunken bull and me. Bull rams Toby with his head. Toby rams Bull with his right or left. Down goes Bull. Audience applauds. I grin like this and go on with the act. I took two curtain calls and I wasn’t even the headliner. That was Kenny Baker.”

“And I took seven stitches,” I said.

“Who’s counting?” said Silvers with a shrug. “I’m not counting. You?”

“No,” said Gunther, at whom the question was directed.

“I like this guy,” said Silvers, looking at Gunther and grinning.

Gunther is not easy to confuse, but Phil Silvers was doing a good job.

“Phil …,” I began.

“You can call me Abdullah,” he said. “That’s my name in the picture. Classy, huh?” He winked at Gunther.

“Has anyone been around here this morning looking for Wilde?” I asked.

I didn’t expect a “yes.” I was sure the person who was supposed to meet Wilde was Robert Cunningham, who was stone cold dead.

“Yeah,” said Silvers. “Blond guy. A few minutes ago. Couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he was in Cornel’s face. Not a good idea. Mr. Cornel Wilde is built better than Billy Conn on whom I lost … it doesn’t matter.”

Silvers looked around for the blond guy and didn’t see him.

The man with the script backed away from Wilde, who waved to a man in black tights and a black shirt. The man had a sword in his right hand.

“Watch this,” said Silvers, holding out his right arm to keep us back.

The crew stopped moving. The girls in costume stopped talking as the man in tights stepped onto the set. A young man stepped into the light and handed Wilde a sword.

Wilde and the man in black began to slowly duel with Wilde circling right and then left, up three stairs, and then a leap over the sword of the other man.

“Like that?” Wilde asked, looking at the man with the script.

“Perfect. Just speed it up a little.”

Wilde nodded.

“Swords,” said Silvers in a confidential whisper. “Wilde was a college champ. Olympic team. Good huh?”

“Very much so,” said Gunther.

“You got class,” said Silvers.

“Thank you,” said Gunther.

“Gotta run,” said Silvers again, using his confidential whisper. “A harem girl wants to share a ham sandwich with me behind the sultan’s tent. See ya.”

Silvers hurried away and Gunther said soberly,

“He is strangely amusing.”

“That’s a good way of putting it,” I said, moving toward Wilde who was holding his sword out at arm’s length.

“Mr. Wilde,” I said.

He turned his head and looked first at me and then at Gunther.

“You won’t remember me,” I said. “I used to be a guard at Warner’s. I met you one day on the set of High Sierra.”

“I remember,” he said with a smile. “You were talking to Humphrey Bogart.”

“Right, I was a private investigator by then. You’ve got quite a memory.”

“A gift and a curse,” he said, tucking the sword under his arm.

“A little while ago,” I said. “A man was here. You had words.”

“Yes,” said Wilde very seriously.

“Mind telling me what he wanted?”

“Five minutes,” someone called from behind me.

Wilde nodded. Bright lights came on.

“He had made an appointment to see me this morning,” Wilde said. “Said it would take no more than a minute or two and involved an old friend from college who was in trouble. He gave me the name of the friend. I agreed to see him.”

“What did he want?”

“To blackmail me,” he said. “He showed me photographs, all fakes, of me doing things I’ve never done with people I’ve never met.”

“And?”

“I asked him if he could imagine what it felt like to have a very sharp blade pierce his stomach and come out through his back. He repeated his threat, said he could handle a saber. I told him that they were frauds, that he was a blackmailer and that I was going to call the police.”

“He backed off?”

Wilde furrowed his forehead and said,

“Yes, but he gave up much too easily.”

“Did he say anything else?”

“That he could always get back to me. His exact words were, ‘I’ve got a much better fish to catch and a bigger hook.’”

“And he was gone?”

“They were gone,” said Wilde.

“There was someone with him?”

“Yes.”

“Did you get a good look at him?”

“No,” he said. “The lights were on on the set, much as they are now, and he stayed back there in the shadows. But I did see his hands. I got a very good look at his hands. A fencer learns to look at his opponents’ hands.”

“Hands?”

“For scars, bruises, length of fingers, dexterity,” he said. “The man who tried to blackmail me did have a fencer’s hand, his right.”

“You mean you’d recognize the other man if you saw his hands again?” Gunther asked.

Wilde looked down at him and said, “I’d recognize both of them.”

“Let’s get this shot,” came a man’s voice.

“Thanks,” I said.

Gunther and I left the stage and went out the door into the morning. We had an hour to get to Marty Leib’s office. Plenty of time. At least, there would have been plenty of time if a lean blonde guy in dark slacks and a white long-sleeved pullover shirt hadn’t been standing outside the stage door, waiting for us with a gun in his hand.

“Missed you the other night,” he said. “Won’t make that mistake again.”

He had nice teeth and a nice smile to go along with his big gun. It had to be the guy who shot Gwen and me with the pellet gun. I looked around for someone, anyone.

“It’s bad luck to kill little people,” he said, looking at Gunther, “but I’ll just have to chance it.”

The stage door opened behind us. The gunman looked over my shoulder at whoever was coming out the door. He lost his smile and then it came back again.

I turned my head and saw Wilde and the guy he had been sword fighting with. They were both carrying swords and talking. Wilde seemed to be demonstrating something he wanted the other man to do. It took them a beat to look up and see the man with the gun pointed at Gunther and me.

The blonde lost his smile. Gone were his flashing teeth. Two shootings, maybe. But four, including a movie star on a studio lot? Probably not.

Wilde looked decidedly angry as he stepped toward the blonde, who started to back away. The man Wilde had been dueling with on the sound stage matched Wilde stride for stride.

“Hold it there,” said the blonde.

Wilde did not hold it. Sword in his right hand, he moved toward the gunman who looked over his shoulder and then back at Wilde. The blonde fired one shot into the air. No one came running. This was Columbia. People were shooting guns a good part of the day. The difference was that this gun had real bullets, one of which cracked into the brick wall of the sound stage.

Wilde grabbed the sword from the hand of the other actor and threw it to the blonde, who managed to catch it and move between Gunther and me.

“I think you said you knew how to use a saber,” said Wilde with an undercurrent of anger I was glad was aimed at the blonde and not at me.

Wilde ignored the gun as he continued to move forward.

“Don’t be crazy,” said the blonde.

Wilde ignored him, now within ten feet of the man.

“Blackmail, guns, threats,” said Wilde. “You’re not very good with any of them. How are you with a sword?”

“You’re crazy,” the blonde said.

Wilde turned sideways and swished his sword, cutting the air and then hitting the blonde’s arm with the flat of the blade. The gun flew and skittered on the concrete.

Wilde leaped forward with another swish of the sword and a thrust. The blonde decided it was a good time to defend himself. I don’t know anything about fencing or sword fighting, but I’d seen plenty of it when I worked at Warner Brothers. My favorite at it was Basil Rathbone, who invariably died after a thrust by Errol Flynn, though Rathbone was the better fighter.

The blonde was pretty good.

The stage door opened again and Phil Silvers came out.

“What’s up?” he shouted, adjusting his glasses to watch the battle. “Hey, they’re not kiddin‘. I’ll give you six to one on Cornel.”

The blonde was backing up and trying to keep away from Wilde’s pointed jabs.

“The blades are not sharp?” asked Gunther.

“No,” said the actor at our side. “But the points aren’t blunt enough to keep them from doing a hell of a lot of damage.”

Sword blades clanged just like in the movies. I’ll give this to the blonde. He was almost holding his own.

“Ten to one,” said Silvers. “Last offer.”

Wilde lunged forward, swung his sword hard, and knocked the sword out of the blonde’s hand. The blonde was only a few feet away from his gun now. He bent quickly and picked it up.

“That’s it,” he said, panic in his voice. “Stop there or so help me, I’ll blow a hole in you.”

Wilde, sword pointed at the man, stopped.

We all recognized the sound of desperation in the blonde’s voice. He backed away, motioning for us to stay where we were. We stayed. He ducked around a building. Wilde started forward. The gunman, whom we couldn’t see, fired off a shot.

We didn’t follow.

“Is anyone hurt?” Wilde asked, turning to face us.

We were all fine. Wilde nodded, said “Good” and moved through us back toward the sound stage.

“Is he something, or is he something?” said Silvers, looking at Gunther.

“He is indeed something,” said Gunther.

We asked Dave on the way out if he had seen a blonde guy leave the lot. He had. The blonde was driving a prewar black Ford and there was someone else in the car with him.

“Other guy was wearing a hat, pulled over his face, you know? Didn’t get a good look at him. Sorry.”

As we pulled away, Gunther said, “What have we learned?”

“We know what our killer looks like without the beard and turban.”

“If he is the killer,” Gunther said. “Which, if I am correct, is a reasonable supposition but not yet a certainty, in spite of our experience here. Remember, there was a second man.”

“Point taken,” I said. “Wilde can identify him.”

“From his hands,” said Gunther doubtfully.

“I think I trust Wilde on this one,” I said.

“Our gunman displayed a definite lack of verve in his attempt to blackmail Mr. Wilde,” Gunther added.

“He had bigger fish to fry.”

“Blackstone?” asked Gunther.

“Maybe,” I said.

“It seems we are gathering more reasons for Blackstone to have disposed of both Cunningham and Ott.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Let’s find the blonde and that second man.”

“A second man?” said Marty Leib, forty minutes later at the head of his conference table, his hands folded in front of him.

“That’s right,” I said.

“Promising,” said Marty, looking around the table.

To his left sat me, Phil, and Gunther. To his right sat Jeremy, Shelly, and Pancho. At the other end of the table, with his back to the windows, sat Blackstone in dark slacks, a white long-sleeved turtle-necked sweater. His brother Peter wore a white shirt and tie. Peter was shorter. Their hair was combed differently, Harry’s straight back and flat and Pete’s parted on the left. They did look alike from a distance and made up for the parts, but next to each other the differences were clear.

“I’ve …” Marty began and then pointed at Pancho who was writing on a lined spiral pad. “Would you stop taking notes?”

Pancho looked up, startled.

“He needs it for the movie,” said Shelly, looking ill-matched in a plaid shirt and red sweater.

“Alright,” Marty said with a sigh. “I’ll rephrase. It was not a question. It was an order.”

“But …” Shelly tried.

Marty shook his head “no,” and Phil said, “Shelly” in his best cut-the-crap voice.

Shelly responded by reaching under his sweater and pulling a cigar out of his shirt pocket.

“No,” said Marty as Shelly searched for a match.

“Where are we, Germany?” asked Shelly.

“Minck,” said Phil. “I think my son Nate has whooping cough. I’ve been up most of the night so my sister-in-law could get some sleep. I am in a very bad mood. Do you understand?”

Shelly pushed his glasses back on his nose and looked as if he were going to speak, then changed his mind and sagged back in his chair.

“I’ve talked to the District Attorney’s office,” Marty said. “I told them that if Mr. Blackstone were arrested for murder without airtight evidence, his reputation would be severely damaged and Mr. Blackstone would bring suit for one million three hundred and sixty dollars.”

“How did you come up with that figure?” asked Pancho.

“Mr. Blackstone and I roughly calculated lost income,” said Marty. “Roughly. The result was that there will be no arrest yet but there will be an investigation. My best estimation is that the brothers Bouton might well be arrested within the next week if we do not come up with the person or persons who killed Cunningham and Ott. And that is the job of the brothers Pevsner.”

Marty looked at my brother and me. So did everyone else at the table.

“Would you gentlemen like to ask some questions?” Marty asked.

“Is Blackstone on the clock?” I asked.

Marty shrugged.

“I think we’ll ask our questions in our office where we’re not going at thirty dollars an hour.”

“Forty-five dollars an hour,” said Blackstone.

“This case will consume all my time till you come up with the killer,” said Marty. “I’ll tell you what. To show my good faith, you are off the clock until I inform you otherwise.”

Phil and I looked at each other. Phil rubbed his thick right palm across his short gray hair. He looked tired.

“Who turned off the lights last night?” he asked looking at the Boutons.

“Jimmy,” said Pete. “Jimmy Clark.”

“The kid with the limp?” Phil asked.

Pete and Harry both nodded.

“The light switch is behind the curtains near the door. Jimmy was behind the curtain two hours before the doors were opened. He waited for the cue from me,” said Harry. “Turned off the lights. Counted to three. Turned on the lights. Pete clapped to draw everyone’s attention while Jimmy counted to five and turned off the lights again for a count of two before he turned the lights on again.”

“We rehearsed it in the ballroom yesterday morning for more than an hour,” said Blackstone. “Timing and misdirection are crucial ingredients in a successful illusion.”

“Right,” said Phil. “But who turned off the lights and did pretty much the same trick when Ott was stabbed?”

“I don’t know,” said Peter.

Harry shrugged.

“Maybe Jimmy saw someone by the lights,” I said.

“Let’s ask him,” said Phil.

Marty remained stone silent, looking at his manicured thumbnails.

“It was deeper,” said Gunther.

Everyone, including Marty, looked at Gunther.

“Deeper than what?” I asked.

“The knife,” said Gunther. “When the lights came on and Ott was on his face, the knife was in so deep.”

He demonstrated with his small fingers.

“When we returned after chasing that young man, the knife was in like so.”

Gunther demonstrated again.

“So,” said Phil. “You’re telling us that, after Ott was killed, someone snuck back in and pushed the knife in deeper just to make sure?”

“I don’t know,” said Gunther. “But it was deeper. Of that I am certain.”

“Why take the chance?” asked Phil.

“I do not know,” said Gunther. “I am only reporting to you what I observed.”

The Bouton brothers were whispering at the end of the table. Pete said something. Harry nodded and whispered back. It was Pete’s turn to nod.

“What?” asked Phil.

“We may have an idea,” said Harry.

“About what?” asked Phil.

“About how Calvin Ott was murdered,” said Peter.

“Well?” asked Phil.

“We’ll have to work it out before we say anything more,” said Harry, touching his mustache. “We’re not certain.”

“Are we finished?” asked Marty, looking at his many-jeweled watch. “Anyone have anything more to say.”

“Did you rescue the bird?” asked Gunther, looking at Jeremy.

“The bird is fine,” said Jeremy. “I’ve returned it to Mr. Leib.”

“And I’ve told my secretary to get it back to the magician I bought it from,” said Marty. “Now I suggest that you …” he looked at me and Phil, “find that second man who was with Cunningham and talk to this Jimmy Clark about what or who, if anything or anyone, he saw behind that curtain.”

“And you?” I asked.

“I,” said Marty, “shall be making the life of Detective John Cawelti miserable and the District Attorney of this great county of Los Angeles angry and miserable. In short, I’ll be stalling and earning my fee. Gentlemen.…”

Marty rose heavily, adjusted the white flower in his lapel, nodded, and waited while we all left his office.

As soon as we hit the landing, Shelly lit a cigar and said, “You get all that?” to Pancho, who nodded.

“Guys,” said Shelly, examining his cigar and pausing dramatically. “Pancho is a very gifted writer, a man of great talent, but his imagination can’t be stifled by the dull facts.”

We all looked at Pancho, who pulled his scarf around his neck as if a cold front had leaped over a bunch of states from Canada and landed on his skinny body.

“So?” I asked.

“I believe Dr. Minck is informing us that Mr. Vanderhoff plans to take liberties with the truth,” said Gunther.

“The truth,” said Shelly with a wave of his hand that shifted a cloud of smoke and disposed of the need for facts. “My role in ongoing events will be …”

“Enhanced,” said Pancho.

“We’re going,” said Harry Blackstone. “We have some things to do and then we’ll be at the theater for tonight’s performance.”

“Let’s go talk to Jimmy the Kid and ask some people about this blonde guy Cunningham was working with,” I said.

Phil nodded.

“And how can we be of service?” Gunther said.

“Jeremy,” I said. “If you can spare the time, you might keep an eye on Blackstone’s back. Whoever killed Cunningham and Ott might be looking for number three, our client.”

“I shall,” said Jeremy solemnly.

“Whertham,” said Phil. “Think you could do some leg work on Ott, see who he hung out with, or who hung onto his wallet? Might be a few people out there who didn’t like him.”

“He did not appear to be a likable individual,” said Gunther. “I shall begin immediately.

“Our office, tomorrow, nine?” I asked.

“Nine-thirty,” said Shelly. “I’ve got Mrs. Odell coming in for an impacted wisdom tooth.”

I could almost swear I saw a Mona Lisa smile on the face of one round rich little dentist as he imagined Mrs. Odell, whoever the hell she was, in his chair. My tooth began to ache.