The Fala Factor

9

“By tomorrow evening, as I told you, I must be back in Washington for a state dinner in honor of the president of Peru,” Mrs. Roosevelt explained after offering to clean her own cup-an offer I declined. “It will be the first state dinner since Pearl Harbor, and it is essential that I be there. I must leave by tonight.”

I accompanied her down the stairs and to the front porch, where Mrs. Plaut was standing with her 1918 Kodak Brownie box camera.

“When these first came out,” she said pleasantly to Mrs. Roosevelt, “we used to send the whole box in and they’d make the picture and send the box back loaded.”

“I remember,” said Mrs. Roosevelt politely. “It was much easier then. I sometimes think that everything was easier then.”

Mrs. Plaut smiled and took our picture, and Mrs. Roosevelt walked down the path to the dark-windowed automobile that was waiting for her at the curb.

“I shall tell my niece Chloe,” Mrs. Plaut said, beaming. “Just think, Marie Dressier was in my home and I’ve got a picture of her. You do your best for her, Mr. Peelers. What is her problem, termites?”

“Roaches,” I said, returning to my room.

Mrs. Roosevelt’s message had been clear. The caller, a man, had said that she was to give me the fifty thousand dollars and I was to deliver it to the place where Henry the Eighth died precisely at eleven that night. I was to come alone or else. The problem was, simply, that Mrs. Roosevelt had no intention of paying fifty thousand dollars for the dog.

“This has gone much further than I ever anticipated,” she had said during her second cup of coffee. “The political implications of this intrigue are, while not endless, certainly myriad. To pay ransom for Fala, regardless of Franklin’s affection for the animal, might be ruinous. Imagine the consequences and the questions if the tale were made public. Are the interests of the United States in wartime not sufficient to occupy the time and attention of the president’s wife? Is a pet more important than the tragedies taking place in the world? No, Mr. Peters, though I do not like the idea of deceiving Franklin, even if he has on occasion felt no comparable sentiment, I am quite willing to continue the charade that the dog in the White House is, indeed, his Fala.”

So, my mission was clear. I was to try for another few hours to find the dog. Failing that, I was to do whatever I thought necessary to catch the dognappers. If Fala could be saved while doing it, she would be most grateful.

“The important thing,” she had said, “is that they be caught If, at this point, you wish me to call in the FBI, I shall, but I must, in all honesty, tell you that once that is done, even if there is no leak of information to the press, there will be memos, comments, notes, and at some date in the future this incident will all come out. Franklin and I might be long gone, but there will be others and the Democratic Party to consider.”

“There’s not much chance of my getting the dog back in the next few hours,” I had said. “Los Angeles is a big, dark closet with no clear walls. It’s like searching for a lost cuff link in the Hollywood Bowl at midnight with a candle.”

“A candle in the dark,” she had said with a smile. “An appropriate metaphor, but if that is all we can do then it is better than not lighting the candle.”

All right, Toby, I told myself. Think it through. I sat in my room adjusting my dad’s old watch and nibbling Quaker Puffed Wheat right from the box. Who knew where the parrot had been killed? The fake Mrs. Olson who had killed him, Martin Lyle and Bass, who I had told, and anyone they had told, or anyone who had been in Olson’s clinic since yesterday. But anyone who had been in the clinic wouldn’t know that I had been there when the King Henry parrot lost its head.

Logic was simple. Lyle had the dog, or Bass was trying to be independent with someone’s help. Lyle didn’t need the money. If he was in on this, it was for some other reason.

I took a quick look at the newspaper and discovered that:

German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels had begun a politeness campaign. Berliners were being asked to submit the names of the forty most polite people in Berlin. The first-prize winner would get a radio. Second prize would be theater tickets.

Another 2,370 Japanese in the Los Angeles area were being sent to the Los Angeles County Fair Grounds in Pomona for internment.

The R.A.F. had bombed Stuttgart and Le Havre.

But it was an item on the sports page that sent me running to the telephone in the hall. Carmen wasn’t at Levy’s Grill this early, I discovered, so I left a message with Sol, the waiter. Henry Armstrong was making a comeback, the only fighter in history to hold three crowns at the same time. Armstrong was going to do a four-round exhibition against two opponents at the Ocean Park Arena. It was a Red Cross benefit. Would Carmen be willing to go to that instead of the wrestling matches?

“You got that, Sol?”

“I got it,” he said. “Listen, she don’t wanna go, I will.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” I said and hung up.

Lyle’s name wasn’t listed in the phone book, but I knew the New Whig Party office on Broadway was. I called and the secretary answered.

“Mr. Lyle, please,” I said, deepening my voice. “This is Colonel Strayer, Arnold Strayer. I’m General Patton’s aide-de-camp. The general would like to speak to Mr. Lyle immediately.”

“Colonel,” she said, hyperventillating, “Mr. Lyle isn’t in right now, but-”

“The general will not be reachable for some time,” I said. “I’d explain why, but it does have military consequences. I’m afraid-”

“Wait,” she said. “I’ll give you his home phone number.”

“And his address,” I said quickly, “in case the general wants to contact him confidentially.”

The request made little sense, but the woman was carried away with historical momentum. She gave me an address on Walden Drive in Beverly Hills just south of Sunset Boulevard, and a phone number.

“You have the general’s thanks,” I said and hung up.

I was headed for the address in five minutes wearing my semi-wrinkled trousers, the dark blue pull-over shirt, and a brown wind-breaker with a small oil stain under the right armpit.

Beverly Hills was occupied more than a century ago by the giant Rancho Rodeo de las Aguas. In the mid-1800s the ranch was sold to two Americans named Wilson and Hancock, who already owned the adjacent Rancho La Brea. They tried to found a settlement in the late 1860s and again in the late 1880s, but it was no dice till 1906 when the Rodeo Land and Water Company laid out a subdivision between Wilshire and Santa Monica Boulevard and called it Beverly. The idea caught on and the next year Beverly Hills was laid out just northwest of it. The Beverly Hills Hotel went up in a bean field in 1912. By 1920 there were still only 674 people living in Beverly Hills, but Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., and Mary Pickford changed all that when they built Pickfair on top of one of the hills in the early 1920s. Celebrities began to pour in, trying and failing to outdo Pickfair.

John Barrymore built a mansion that he called the Chinese Tenement. When he tried to auction it off for half a million dollars, he had no takers and said, “Frankly, it was a kind of nightmare, but it might appeal to somebody, maybe some actor. Three pools. Incredible. In one of them I used to keep rainbow trout.”

Before he died in 1935, Will Rogers was Beverly Hills’s honorary mayor.

When the boom started in Beverly Hills in the 1920s, Rogers wrote in his column, “Lots are sold so quickly and often here that they are put through escrow made out to the twelfth owner. They couldn’t possibly make a separate deed for each purchaser; besides he wouldn’t have time to read it in the ten minutes’ time he owned the lot. Your having no money don’t worry the agents, if they can just get a couple of dollars down, or an old overcoat or shotgun, or anything to act as down payment. Second-hand Fords are considered A-l collateral.”

I knew the town, knew the houses where Freeman Gosdon, Grantland Rice, Elsie Janis, Sigmund Romberg, and the automobile wizards E.L. Cord and C.W. Nash lived, but I didn’t know Lyle’s house until I pulled up to the driveway. The place was typical of the area: elaborate metal gate, eight-foot-high stone walls. Down a driveway lined with whitewashed bricks stood a sprawling adobe hacienda.

I had some choices. I could press the button next to the gate and try to talk my way in. I could climb the fence and brass it out. Each option had a drawback. Lyle would probably recognize my voice, even if his secretary hadn’t. He had penetrated my Texas drawl with no problem. Climbing the fence might be possible, but my back told me it would be one hell of an effort and leave me in no shape for whatever I might find on the other side. Besides, that would be trespassing and Bass might well be in there. On the other hand, the dog might well be in there.

The hell with it. I took my.38 from the glove compartment along with the clip-on holster that went over my belt. I put them on and got out of the car to ring the bell and work my magic. If Lyle answered, I would improvise.

“Yes,” came a distorted woman’s voice from the speaker imbedded in the brick column to which the gate was anchored.

“Bullock’s. Delivery,” I croaked.

“Bullock’s?” returned the woman.

“Gift,” I said, straining my voice to its gravelly limits.

Something clicked in the gate and it popped open slightly.

I pushed it the rest of the way, got back in my Ford, and drove up the path, leaving the gate open in case I wanted to leave in a hurry. I drove up the driveway, turned the car around so it would be heading the right way, checked my gun, and got out. A curtain rustled in the room off the doorway, and I hurried to the door. It opened before I got there.

“Thanks,” I said to the woman in the doorway.

“Thanks?” she said.

“For returning my suit,” I told the woman I had known as Anne Olson. “It’s drying out now. Got caught in the rain yesterday.”

I wasn’t sure she looked better, but she certainly looked classier in the doorway. Part of it was what she was wearing, a blue skirt and matching jacket with the high Joan Crawford shoulders. Her blouse was white and fluffy and her dark hair was pulled back.

“Can I come in?” I said.

She stepped back, holding the door open, and I entered, smelling some flowery perfume as I passed her.

The house was decorated in early Zorro, serapes on the wall, paintings of Mexican peasants. Even the furniture was rustic and covered in handmade blankets.

“How did you find me?” she said, walking ahead of me and into the open room on our right, the living room.

“Deduction, logic,” I said. “Is Lyle a friend of yours, too?”

“He is my husband,” she said, turning to look at me, her chin up as if to say, go ahead and hit.

“Your …”

“My name is Anne Lyle,” she said. “The night you found me at Roy Olson’s I was visiting as … as …”

“As …” I finished. “You and Olson were very good friends?”

She nodded in agreement, her mouth closed tightly without speaking.

“You have a lot of good friends,” I said, sitting on the solid wooden arm of a sofa.

“Not too many, but a few,” she said. “Roy Olson was a decent, sensitive man, not an obsessed … Would you like a drink?”

“A Pepsi, no ice, if you’ve got it,” I said charmingly. “Is this story true? I mean, everytime I see you you have a new story and they’re all good and all sincere. Is your husband here? I mean I’d like a little verification this time. Don’t tell me. All I have to do is run up the stairs and find him. He wouldn’t be in the bathtub, would he? No, you wouldn’t hide him in the same place twice.”

“Pepsi,” she said. “I’ll see what we have. The maid is off and Martin isn’t home.”

“Don’t surprise me,” I said, following her out of the room and over the wooden floors covered with colorful throw rugs.

The kitchen was big, bright, and had a giant, heavy table of dark wood in the middle. She went to the refrigerator, found a Pepsi, and removed the cap with an opener attached to the nearby counter.

“No glass,” I said, taking the bottle from her and gulping. “Won’t you join me?”

“I didn’t kill Roy Olson,” she said. “I don’t know who did. Roy was upstairs when you came. He was a decent man. His wife was the one who pushed him into meeting with Martin. When you came to the door, and assumed I was Mrs. Olson, I thought Martin had sent you, and I was admittedly a little drunk. I didn’t know there was going to be a murder, that I …”

“And your husband killed Olson,” I said, shaking the Pepsi bottle with my thumb on top.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Someone must have been waiting for him upstairs. Must you do that?”

I sprayed the Pepsi into my mouth.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m overdoing the you-can’t-hurt-my-feelings crude act.”

“I didn’t trick you,” she said sincerely. “Not to hurt you.”

“But you tried to shoot me back in the clinic,” I said, finishing the Pepsi and putting the bottle down.

“No,” she sighed, her breasts rising softly “I came to the clinic to do just what I did, to shoot that damn bird of Martin’s. He loved that bird. I thought he killed Roy Olson because he was jealous, but I couldn’t bring myself to shoot Martin, as much as I would have liked. Shooting Henry helped.”

“The dog?” I said.

She shrugged. “That was for show. I didn’t want you to think I knew what I was doing. It was just his ear. My father is an army general. I can shoot as well as you can with that gun you’re hiding behind your back.”

“If you can only shoot as well as I can,” I said, “I was lucky to get out of that clinic with my ears. Who did you tell about shooting the bird?”

“No one, but Martin knew. He was almost in tears. Only that bird and the mention of Daniel Webster or Henry Clay can do that.”

“Or General Patton,” I added. “I told Martin about the bird.”

“Thanks,” she said with a small, pained smile. “I wasn’t pretending with you in Roy’s office.”

“You didn’t seem to be,” I agreed. “But I’ve been fooled before. Hell, I’ve been fooled almost every time before.”

“I’d like to prove it,” she said, taking a step toward me, her hand out.

I didn’t step back, and I didn’t pull away. She took my left hand and kissed the palm.

“Where is Lyle?” I said.

It was a difficult moment. Her face was moving close to mine. I could smell her and I knew a Pepsi burp was on the way to spoil the mood. I beat the bad joke by pulling away and walking across the room.

“Not now,” I said. “Maybe not ever, but not now. I’ve got to find your husband and I’ve got to find the dog. Is there a dog here?”

“Martin doesn’t like dogs,” she said, opening a cabinet and finding a bottle that looked like bourbon. “Dogs eat birds.”

“So do people,” I added.

She poured herself an unhealthy drink and shrugged.

“Martin isn’t overly fond of people either.”

“Where might he keep a dog?” I tried again.

She downed half the glass of amber liquid, rubbed the glass against her cheek, and said, “Who knows? If he’s in this with Bass, Bass probably has it.”

“Then,” I said, “I better have a talk with Bass.”

“He’s a scintillating conversationalist,” she said, refilling her glass. “Another Pepsi for the road?”

I said no thanks and headed for the front door. She followed, drink in hand, opened the door for me and, holding my arm, rubbed her cheek against mine.

“You could use a shave,” she said. “Martin has a collection of razors.”

“Another time,” I said, almost giving in.

“Another time,” she repeated in a way that made it clear that she didn’t expect there to be another time.

“I’ll be seeing you, Anne,” I said, going to my car. I seemed to spend a lot of time saying good-bye to people named Anne.

I didn’t look back. The sky was cloudy but I didn’t think it would rain. I stopped at the front gate, pulled out my notebook, and checked the address that Academy Dolmitz had given me for Bass. When I got there, however, Bass wasn’t around. In fact, unless Bass lived in Manuel Ortiz’s Shoes-Repaired-While-U-Wait shop, Bass wouldn’t be around.

Dolmitz was in when I got to the shop. There were a few book-buying customers out front.

“Peters,” he greeted me sourly. “No threats this a.m., okay? I talked to my lawyer. So, you turn around and march out.” He demonstrated “march out” with two fingers of his right hand on top of the counter.

One of the customers, a young guy with glasses, tried not to look at us over the old book in his hand.

“Bass wasn’t at the address you gave me,” I said. “No one but a shoe repair guy was there.’’

“It’s the address I got for him,” Dolmitz said. “What can I tell you? You think Bass is such a brain he can’t get his own address screwed up? Who knows where he is?”

“You couldn’t give me another address,” I said, smiling and walking over to the counter.

“I could give you a lot of them,” he said. “2225 West Washington. That is the Arlington Bowling Center. Or-”

I eased my.38 out from behind my back and placed it on the counter as gently and discreetly as possible. The young guy with glasses saw the gun, put his book down, and tried to walk to the door as if he were in no hurry.

“Threats?” said Dolmitz. “I get threats from you? You know what I can have done to you, to what remains of a face on you? Threats? I’ve got in the back room a zlob who’ll tear your heart out for a sawski.”

“This is big,” I whispered to Dolmitz, leaning over the counter.

“Touch me and you are carry-out chop suey,” he said, backing away against the wall behind the counter.

“I’m feeling crazy, Academy,” I said. “I’ll even take on a big political influence like you.”

“Try the Gaucho Arms on Delospre,” he said, “you crazy bastard you.”

I put the gun away and smiled.

“Thanks,” I said. “The best song, 1936?”

“The hell with you,” Dolmitz said, resuming his seat but still sulking. But I could see it was too much for him to resist. “You mean original song written for the movie?”

“What else is there?”

“Nothing,” he agreed. “In 1936 we’re talking “The Way You Look Tonight” from Swing Time. Kern and Fields. I got one for you. The last assistant director to win.”

“I don’t give a shit, Dolmitz,” I said, sweetly turning to the door. “And if you’ve given me more crap about Bass, I’ll come back and beat you to death with an Oscar.”

“Ha,” he shouted, “shows what you know. Robert Webb was best assistant director in ’37 before they ended the category. Shows what you know.”

Dolmitz hadn’t lied about Bass’s address. According to the man with the flannel shirt and suspenders who served as manager of the Gaucho Arms, Bass did have an apartment there.

“We ain’t what you’d call amigos,” said the manager, a tub-gutted type in his sixties with a pipe clenched in his teeth. “Less I see of him, the better.”

“You wouldn’t know if he has a dog in his apartment or had had one there recently?” I said, showing a five-dollar bill.

“You’re overpaying, son,” he said, taking the five and putting it in the shirt pocket next to his suspender strap. “I’d know. Walls are thin here and I keep an eye out. No dog in his place. Not much of anything. Truth to tell, I’d send him packing if I had an excuse and the nerve. ‘Fraid I’m just a dandelion.”

He chuckled, the pipe still clenched in his yellow teeth. “Got that from the cowardly lion in the Wizard of Oz,” he explained. “Bert Lahr fella is a laugh.”

“Bass have visitors?” I said.

“Okay, you paid for a lot of answers,” he said, still chuckling. We were standing on the narrow lawn in front of the Gaucho Arms and he was holding a hose in his hand. He had been about to turn it on when I had come up to him. “Not a social type,” the manager said.

“Mind if I look around his room?” I said, showing another five-dollar bill.

The manager rubbed his right palm against his faded pants, looked at the five, sucked in some air between his stained teeth, and said, “No, couldn’t do it. Cash would be nice. Got a granddaughter visiting and I’d like to take her down to Pebble Beach for the glass-bottom-boat trip. Heard lots about it, but much as I got bad feelings about Mr. Bass, I don’t violate his home.”

“Take the five anyway,” I said, holding it out. “I’m on an expense account.”

“That don’t give you the right to throw someone else’s money away or me the right to take it,” he said. “I’m not trying to offend you none, son, but that’s the way it is.”

I pocketed the added five and shook the manager’s hand.

“I’ll find another way,” I said. “Thanks for the information.”

He went back to watering the Gaucho Arms lawn and I found a place on Santa Monica Boulevard for a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches and an order of fries. It made my back feel better and I was starting to prepare myself for the showdown with Bass or whoever was going to show up at Olson’s clinic with Fala.

Carmen was just coming on at Levy’s when I called. She had the message from Sol.

“You said wrestling,” she said blandly.

“We can wrestle after the fight,” I answered. “Henry Armstrong, we can see Henry Armstrong, right there in the ring.”

“The Mad Russian of Minsk is wrestling,” she countered.

“The Mad Russian of Minsk is an ex-pug named Madigan,” I explained. “He takes off the beard and he’s Irish Joe Flannagan. He puts on a wig and he’s The Wild Kentucky Hillbilly.”

“All right,” she said, not fully convinced. “Sol says Armstrong’s fighting two guys.”

“Two guys. One at a time,” I said. “I’ll pick you up at seven,”

“Regular food this time,” she said before I could hang up.

“All food is regular,” I reasoned.

“Manny’s tacos is not date food,” she said.

“Regular food,” I agreed.

I hung up and drove back to the Farraday.

I was halfway up to the first floor when Jeremy appeared from two floors above and called to me. His voice echoed, and I looked up to see him.

“Toby,” he said evenly. “She is gone.”

“Gone? Who?” I answered, but I knew it wasn’t Alice.

“Jane,” he answered. “Alice left her to go out for groceries at the apartment and when she came back, Jane was gone.”

“Bass,” I said.

“We must find him,” Jeremy said softly, but the Farraday echo picked it up and sent his determined words echoing out of dark corners.

“Not so easy,” I called back. “I just tried, but I think I know where he’ll be tonight.”

“And where will that be?” a voice said behind me.

I almost slipped on the marble steps as I turned to face Cawelti.

“What?” I asked.

“Jane Poslik,” he spat. “You’ve had her someplace and now you’ve lost her. You think you’ve got troubles, dirty pants. Let’s tag on obstructing justice, suspicion of kidnapping.”

“John,” I said, almost putting a hand on his shoulder. “Save that for the next Laurel and Hardy short you’re in or for old ladies who heist shopping bags from Ralph’s.”

“Toby,” Jeremy called down, seeing the exchange, but not hearing it. “Do you need some help?”

Cawelti looked up at Jeremy and something like worry touched his mouth. He had survived one run-in with Jeremy a few months earlier, and didn’t want another, but I had to give him credit, he covered his fear and looked back at me.

“Let’s talk down at the station,” he said.

“I’ll meet you there,” I said, taking another step up.

“You’ll come down and get in your car and drive and I’ll be right up your ass all the way,” he said.

“Well,” I said, turning with a big fake smile, “if you put it like that, you old smoothie, how can a guy resist.”

On the eastern end of Hancock Park, which we drove past on the way to the Wilshire Station, are the La Brea tar pits, ugly black bogs where oil and tar bubble up from underground pools. When it rains, a thin layer of water covers the gunk, setting up a trap for the dolts who climb the stone wall out of curiosity. At least the dinosaurs who got oozed in were looking for something to drink, not a cheap thrill. Usually, the screaming tourist is saved by a nearby cop, but once in a while a hotshot meets the same fate as the saber-toothed tigers and ground sloths. When I was a kid I was told that the bones of flesh-eaters were sometimes found nearly touching those of the smaller victims they had leaped into the pits to eat, only to find themselves as trapped as their prey. Los Angeles hadn’t changed much in a few million years.

Cawelti gave me an impatient horn blast when I drove slowly past the station entrance. He wanted me to park on the curb, but I had picked up enough parking tickets in front of the station to know his game. If he wanted me that badly, he’d have to jump into the pit. I parked around the corner, and he pulled in behind me. I slowly locked my car, turned to look at him, stretched, and held out my right hand to indicate that he should lead the way. He decided to let me go a step ahead.

“Fireman,” I said, holding the front door open for him to step in and for an overweight cop in uniform to step out, “did you ever take an hour off and look at the tar pits?”

His pock-marked face reddened and his eyes went narrow. He wasn’t about to set himself up for an insult.

“Shut your mouth and get up the stairs,” he said.

I obeyed, giving a nod to the old cop at the desk, who recognized me and nodded back without taking his attention from the pretty young Mexican woman holding the hand of a boy of about two and going nonstop in Spanish.

“When you maracas dry out,” the desk sergeant shouted over her attack, “we’ll try it in something like English, comprende?”

On the second floor, I automatically turned right to the squadroom door, but Cawelti’s hand came down hard on my shoulder.

“Captain’s office,” he said, helping me in the right direction with more enthusiasm than was needed.

There was no name written on Phil’s door now, which was a step in the right direction. Cawelti knocked, his eyes fixed on my face.

“Come in,” Phil shouted, and in we came.

Phil was on the phone at his desk. He glanced up at us, gave a sour look to the desk, ran his free hand through his steely short hair, and went on with his conversation. Standing in the corner looking even more cadaverous than usual was Sergeant or Lieutenant Steve Seidman.

“How’s the mouth?” I asked Seidman.

“You think I’m a violent cop, Toby?” he mumbled, the right side of his mouth rigid. I could barely understand him.

“No Steve,” I said. It was the truth.

“Then,” said Seidman, saying the words carefully and not hiding a wince of pain, “you can believe me if I tell you that if I ever run into that mouth butcher again, I’m going to pull out two of his teeth with rusty pliers, the same ones he used on me if I can find them.”

Cawelti bounced slightly, a near grin on his face. Seidman looked at him evenly.

“Something funny, John?” he said.

“Nothing,” said Cawelti, still smiling. “I was just thinking about something a guy said on the radio.”

“Get out of here,” Seidman mumbled.

“Sorry, Lieutenant,” Cawelti taunted. “I didn’t understand you.”

“Get … out … of … here,” Seidman said slowly.

“I got you that time, Lieutenant,” Cawelti said. He turned and left, closing the door behind him.

“He’s got a great future,” I said.

“Cawelti doesn’t want a future,” Seidman said, touching his cheek gingerly and gritting his teeth to keep from whimpering. “He just wants to make other people’s presents miserable.”

Behind me, Phil’s voice droned on and Steve motioned to me to take the seat across from my brother. I took it and Seidman leaned back in the corner, his dark jacket open.

“Yes, Mr. Maltin,” Phil said, still looking down at the desk. “We will. I’ll see to it. You’re right. It shouldn’t have happened and it won’t again. You have my word. I’ll have a patrol there every night till we catch whoever’s doing it. Pevsner. My name’s Pevsner, not Posner. That’s quite all right. Good-bye, Mr. Maltin.”

He hung up the black phone and looked up in a black mood.

“Responsibilities of a promotion,” I said solemnly. “Keep the public happy.”

“We got a rape-murder,” he said, folding his hands on the desk, “a strong-arm pair breaking into homes, missing kids, assaults, and I’ve got to talk to a shoe-store owner on Figueroa who complains about kids running off with his sale signs. While I have a patrolman checking out the local seven year olds, someone could be at the storekeeper’s house eating his wife for lunch.”

“Well put,” I said. Hell, he could have suggested that we surrender to the Japanese and I would have told him it was a good idea. He had just been handed a glob of frustration and he needed someone to throw it on. Having been the garbage can for Phil in the past, I wanted to keep it from coming, but I had a lot to hold out against: Phil’s temper and my own tongue.

“Where is she?” Phil said, looking at me calmly.

“Phil,” I said, “no wisecrack intended, but who are we talking about?”

“Jane Poslik,” he said, quite calmly, unclasping his hands.

“How should I know?” I said, with an innocent smile, looking over my shoulder to Seidman for sympathy, which Steve was not ready to deliver.

Phil found a pencil, considered breaking it in half, decided not to, put it down, and then stood up slowly. I wished he had broken the pencil.

“You were in the house when Olson was sponged,” he said. “And you say some woman who called herself Mrs. Olson was there with you. Now she’s missing. You wouldn’t know where she is, would you?”

“No, Phil,” I said. “I swear to you …”

“And then you go to see this Jane Poslik who used to work for Olson,” he went on. “A few hours later she disappears. Cawelti tells me you have her hidden some place.”

“And Cawelti is an honorable man,” I said.

“I want to know where people are and who killed the Olsons,” Phil said, coming around the desk. His tie was open and he gave it an extra tug to get it all the way off. “And who shot the head off a goddamn parrot and did a goddamn Van Gogh on a German shepherd.”

I looked up at him and shook my head.

“If I knew, I’d tell you. I would. But I’m pledged to secrecy. You’ll just have to go to Eleanor Roosevelt.”

“And you,” he said, reaching down to put a hand on my jacket, “will be on a tour of hell by the time I’m through with you.”

Something possessed me. It had been in me for a lifetime. Maybe a lot of things brought it out. Phil’s promotion, his fiftieth birthday, my realization that I had finally lost the real Anne, the one I’d been married to and always expected to get back, my chronically sore back that would some day give up, the memory of Lucy on Sunday crawling into my lap. I pushed Phil’s hand away and stood up fast, kicking the chair back.

“Enough,” I said. “I’ve had a lifetime of you mashing my face and using me for a whoopie cushion. You hit me and so help me the second you turn your back I’ll bring the closest chair down on your head so hard you’ll wind up downstairs picking splinters out of your desk sergeant.”

“You don’t talk to me like that, you, you wasted, useless-” he started.

Seidman finally came out of the corner and mumbled, “Okay, Phil. Enough.”

We both pushed Seidman out of the way and stood eye to eye.

“You know why you do that, huh? You know why you’ve been beating on me for forty years?” I said.

“Because you’re a wise-ass, worthless bum,” he shouted. “A bum who wasted his damned life, lost his wife, never had any kids, doesn’t have a dime, and acts like a dumb kid even though he’s pushing fifty. You know what it looks like, for-”

“Face it, Phil,” I shouted back. “I’m going to say the dirty word. You love me, but you dumb lard-fist, the only way you can show it is by trying to kill me because you don’t like what you feel for me. But I know it’s there because I feel the same thing. You use your fists and feet and I use words. Which hurts worse, brother? So for a change why don’t you just put your fists down and talk to me like people? When did you ever get anything out of me by kicking my ass? Don’t you know by now I come back like a well-watered victory garden when I get corked? It runs in the damn family.”

I’m a very persuasive person when I put my mind to it. Someone once told me that, but I don’t remember who. Unfortunately, Phil had never heard it.

My brother’s right hand grabbed my jacket and tugged me forward, tearing my zipper. His left hand shot forward, a short jab, his specialty, that caught me in the ribs. My lungs answered with a taco air. I slumped back trying to tighten up for the next shot, but it didn’t come. Seidman was between us, whispering, “Phil. Phil, come on.”

It was, apparently, a persuasive argument. Phil let go of my jacket and the metal end of the zipper tinkled across the floor. I sat back in the chair and Phil went back to his own chair. Seidman stood guarding the space between us.

We sat like that for about a minute or two with me panting softly and wondering if my rib was broken. Phil’s chest rose and fell more than usual. His brows were down and he found the pencil to play with again. He turned it over and over again.

“Feel better?” I finally said.

“Yeah,” said Phil.

“Good,” I said, touching the tender flesh over the raw rib. “Shall we go on?”

Phil smiled. It was a genuine smile. He tried to hide it behind an open palm over his mouth, but he couldn’t. His hand came down and he shook his head, smiling.

“I knew I could cheer you up,” I said seriously. “What’s a brother for?”

Seidman kicked the desk, which apparently sent a shiver of pain into his jaw. He let out a little grunt and walked back to the corner saying, “You’re both nuts, crazy nuts. I’m not getting between you again. You both remember that. I wash my hands of you.”

“Olson,” Phil said, small smile still on his lips.

“I’ve got a real lead,” I said. “Sure thing, tonight. You said I had till tomorrow night. Let’s stay with that. I’ll give you Olson’s killer, tell you where Jane Poslik is, and maybe where to find the fake Mrs. Olson.”

“Get out,” Phil said, waving his hand. “I’ve got shoe stores to protect. Are you hurt?”

“Hell yes,” I said.

“Good,” he answered, still smiling. “I wouldn’t want you to think I’m getting old and soft.”

Cawelti was in the hall, arms folded, leaning against the dirty wall. He shook his head and said quietly with false sympathy, “Can you use some help getting down the stairs?”

“Only if we can go piggy-back and I can put the spurs to you if you go too slow,” I said, walking away from him as normally as I could. It took me about a week to get out of the station, a week during which my entire life crawled before my eyes like a too-long French novel. The Mexican woman and her kid were gone and the old desk cop was on the phone, looking over his glasses at an advancing couple in their sixties. The man was cradling a big brown paper bag in his arms. I didn’t want to know what was in that bag so I hurried out into the late afternoon, but before the door closed I heard the old woman’s voice say, “I insist that we see Captain Pevsner immediately.”

Getting into my Ford was lots of fun. It kept me from thinking. Driving to Doc Hodgdon’s house was even more fun. Even Harriet Hilliard singing “This Love of Mine” on the radio didn’t diminish the joy I was feeling. By the time I pulled in front of the frame house where Hodgdon lived, I was so tickled that I could barely move, but I managed to get out, groan my way up the walk and stairs and into the house, the first floor of which had been converted by Doc Hodgdon to offices for his orthopedic practice back in 1919 before anyone used the word orthopedic.

Hodgdon’s secretary-receptionist Myra, who had miraculously escaped the tar pits in the Pleistocene Period, gave me a sour look. No one was in the waiting room and she looked like she was packing her broomstick to go home.

“Doctor’s office hours are over at four on Monday,” she said.

“I’m dying,” I said. “He took an oath.”

“Doctor will be available in the morning,” she said. “I can give you an emergency appointment at noon.”

I put my hand on a nearby chair to steady myself.

“By noon tomorrow, I will have died of wounds,” I continued, not wanting to end our pleasant repartee. “Maybe he has time to give me a Vitalis sixty-second workout.”

“Mocking the war is not in good taste,” she said. “You will just have to-”

“What is all the noise about?” said Hodgdon, sticking his head out of his office door. His sleeves were rolled up and he held something that looked like a roll of tape in his hand. He was gray, almost sixty-six, and hard as a tree stump. He was also the man I had never beaten at handball. He spotted me and shook his head. Everyone seemed to be shaking their heads at me this week, a pitiful specimen who should have been pickled and put on exhibition with a little sign underneath saying, “Here but for the grace of God, go you.”

“Come in, come in,” he said, holding the door open to his office. Then to his secretary-receptionist, “And you go home, Myra.”

“Office hours are over,” she said, giving me a dirty look as I eased my way across the room and into his office.

“Mr. Peters is not a patient,” he said, making way for me. “He is a curio, a specimen, a phenomenon always worth another look.”

With that he closed the door and helped me to his examining table.

“The back,” he said.

“Ribs too,” I added.

He helped me get my shirt off, touched the back, and felt the ribs. None of it made me grin.

“Nothing’s broken this time,” he said. “Now I’m going to tape you up and give you something for the pain.”

“I’ve got something good,” I said.

“What I give you will be less likely to destroy your organs,” he said, selecting the proper tape. “Then, when I finish taping, I’m going to tell you to go home, get in bed, do nothing for three or four days, and come back to see me. Knowing you, you will neither go to bed nor come back to see me unless the pain becomes unbearable or you have some other task you feel has to be performed.”

“I’m trying to save the president’s dog,” I explained as he plastered a thick slab of tape around my chest.

“Noble,” he muttered, working away and clearly not believing me. “If you’d take better care of yourself, we’d be playing more handball. Someday my bones are not going to be able to support my musculature. I’ll start the process of rapid aging, brittleness. Might even have further eye trouble. Then you might stand a chance of winning a game if you’re still capble of normal speech and movement. It is, by the way, difficult though not impossible to apply this tape around a pistol.”

I apologized and took off the gun, and he went on working.

“There,” he said, standing back to examine me and rolling up his sleeves.

“Thanks,” I said, putting my shirt back on. The soreness was there, but it wasn’t bad and I knew I could move. Hodgdon went to his glass cabinet, opened it, found a bottle and took some pills from it and put them into a smaller bottle, which he handed to me.

“Take one now and then every four hours,” he said. “Since you are not going to go home, but will be out looking for stray dogs, how’d you like to share dinner with me? I’ve got a leftover meatloaf and a bottle of Burgundy.”

“Any beer?” I said.

“There is beer,” he said.

We ate a meatloaf dinner with a sliced tomato and a lot of Italian bread washed down by a couple of cans of Falstaff. I found out for the first time that Hodgdon had a son who was a doctor back in Indianapolis and a daughter who had married an insurance salesman in Chicago. I already knew that Hodgdon’s wife had died almost ten years earlier.

“Toby,” he said after dinner, “no joke this time. Your body can’t hold up under all the abuse you give it.”

“Doc,” I said, “I’ve tried to stop, but there’s a not too bright rabbit inside me who won’t stay still.”

“And he can wind up getting you crippled, or worse; let him out,” said Hodgdon, starting to pile the nonmatching china dishes in the sink. The kitchen, like the house and the man, was getting old.

“Time to go,” I said. “Thanks for dinner. Have Edna Mae Oliver send me the bill.”

The sun was down by the time I left Doc Hodgdon’s house. We had talked longer than I had planned, but the tape, food, pills, and beer had taken away the pain, at least enough for me to get back in the Ford and head for Olson’s clinic.

I got there three hours early, parked two blocks away, and went in through the same window I’d gone in before. Then I made a phone call and settled down, not in the animal room, but in Olson’s operating room, the one where Anne Lyle and I had operated two days earlier.

After checking my.38, I sat down on the single straight-back chair, listened to the animals sending out bleats, barks, shrieks, and murmurs of fear, and wondered who had been taking care of them.