The Howard Hughes Affair

CHAPTER NINE

Breakfast consisted of a very slowly eaten bowl of Kellogg’s corn flakes and a glass of milk with Bosco syrup. The pain in my cheek where I had bitten off more than I wanted to chew had not subsided during the night and made eating unpleasant. My stomach and head were still sore, and the hint of humidity in the air threatened my back. In short, it was a typical morning for Toby Peters.

While I was brushing my teeth with my finger and Doctor Lyon’s tooth powder, Mrs. Plaut knocked and came in without waiting for an invitation. She began padding around the room.

“Mr. Peelers, you should have seen. Police and shooting. We could have used your comfort. Little Mister Wherthman says you are a private police officer. It’s a comfort to have you here when there’s trouble, a comfort, but you weren’t here.”

She stared at me peevishly.

“I’m sorry,” I said innocently, rinsing my mouth and wincing at the pain. “What happened?”

You should have been here,” she repeated and left the room. The phone rang and I raced Mrs. Plaut for it. I was handicapped by a sore stomach, but I beat her by half a length, despite her one-length lead. Breathing hard I said, “Hello.”

“Toby,” came the familiar voice of my only sibling, “get to my office fast. Now. Don’t go for a walk. Don’t see a client. Don’t have breakfast.”

“I already ate.”

He hung up.

No one tried to kill me when I walked outside, which gave me renewed hope. So, full of confidence and with almost a half bottle of Jeris Hair Tonic on my head, I dodged the marathon rope-skipping girls, who had moved to the sidewalk, and headed down the street toward my car. Behind me I could hear their melodious young voices joyfully chant:

Rooms for rent; inquire within;

A lady got put out for drinking gin.

If she promises to drink no more,

Here’s the key to Barry’s door.

I could still hear their giggling half a block away.

I put my.38 back into the glove compartment and in fifteen minutes I was semi-legally parked near Phil’s station. I pulled down my visor with the “Glendale Police” card on it. It was old and frayed and I don’t think it had ever saved me from a ticket, but it was worth a try.

The squad room was almost empty, a morning emptiness of smokers coughing and bleary eyes of a new shift with too little sleep and an old shift that had been up all night. A cop with his jacket off played with his suspenders while he listened to a fat woman who leaned toward him and croaked, “You woulda done the same. Anybody woulda, wouldn’t they?” The cop with the suspenders nodded in boredom and looked toward the squad room door for his relief or the Second Coming.

I knocked at Phil’s door and walked in without waiting for an answer. If it was good enough for Mrs. Plaut, by God, it was good enough for me.

Phil was behind his desk with three dark folders lined up neatly in front of him. He was drinking a steaming cup of coffee from a white mug.

“Sit down, Toby,” he said evenly. “And listen. Listen quietly before you say a word. You understand?”

I told him I understood and sat down. Phil drank a little more coffee, looked at me, drank more coffee and opened the first folder.

“The gentleman we found in your office yesterday,” he began, “was covered with type A blood. His was type B. The gentleman was carrying false identification. His name wasn’t Frye. It was Schell, Wolfgang Schell. I know that because the FBI told me. The FBI came to look at his body and papers before we even had him at the morgue. It seems Mr. Schell is an illegal alien, a German with a bad reputation-I don’t have enough corpses of my own, the goddamn Nazis have to send me more.” Phil had no love for the Germans since they got him almost fatally wounded in his first battle in the big war in 1917.

The look Phil gave me made it clear I was somehow responsible for his present problem with the Germans, and in a way he was right. So, I said nothing. Besides I was learning a lot. Schell was the name of Hughes’ butler, the butler Toshiro had described as less than pleasant. But the butler’s name was Martin, not Wolfgang.

Phil pulled out a pile of photographs from one of the files on his desk and shuffled through them. He went through them quickly and finally stopped at one that made him bite his lip. He held it up for me to see. It was a black-and-white picture of the message written in blood. It still looked like he had written “unkind” to me.

“What the hell does this mean?” Phil asked, almost crushing his still hot coffee cup in his big fist. “Was the Nazi nuts, or was he leaving some information?”

“I don’t know,” I said as Phil replaced the photo.

“You’re in good company for a change,” he said. “The FBI doesn’t either. Think you might tell me where you were yesterday between about noon and two?”

He was about as disarming as a charging rhino.

“Having lunch with Rathbone,” I said. “Why?”

“Guy named Barton, Air Force major got a few bullets in his pump out in Westwood,” Phil said, staring at me.

“So?” I said blankly.

“So, Schell, the dead Nazi in your dental chair had Barton’s phone number in his wallet. Schell knew Barton, and they both wind up dead on the same day, and you discover one of the bodies.”

“So,” I said.

“So,” said Phil standing up, “the call to report Barton’s death came from a guy with a phony Italian accent. Do we know anybody who likes phony Italian accents?”

I shrugged.

“More coincidences,” Phil said, turning to the third folder. “Early this morning we got another call from someone with a phony Italian accent, complaining about a prowler with a gun. The prowler happened to be in your back yard, and the Italian gave a phony name. More coincidence?”

“You are one hell of a good cop, Phil,” I said seriously.

“Maybe you’re just one hell of a poor private detective,” he came back. “Ever think of that?”

“What happened to the prowler?” I asked, trying to change the subject.

“Got away. Took a few shots at the cops who came to check. One of the cops said he got a glimpse of the guy. Looked like Dracula. You know anyone like that?”

I said I didn’t. Phil put his hand to his face and pinched the bridge of his nose as if he were getting a headache. He suffered from migraine headaches. The headaches made him angry, and instead of giving in, he always fought them. A steady stream of coffee always seemed to help when a headache was coming, and a steady stream of me always seemed to make it worse.

“You don’t intend to tell me anything, do you, Toby?”

“I don’t know anything, Phil. Honest to God, I don’t know anything.”

He looked at me evenly before he threw the file of photographs in my face and reached over the desk for me. I backed away just in time. Phil’s headache had slowed him down. The problem was that even though it slowed him down, it made him more determined. He came around the desk and I backed up to the wall.

“The FBI on my back,” he whispered through gritted teeth. “The Air Force on my back. Mysterious messages from Nazi corpses. And you.”

No sound of rushing feet came from outside. It seemed they were used to people being thrown around Phil’s office. Having been thrown around Phil’s office several times before, I decided not to let him hit me without some return fire this time. It might just provoke him even more, but sometimes a man has to put his back to the wall and stand up for what he believes. This wasn’t one of those times, though; I was just tired of getting clobbered.

Phil stopped a few inches in front of me. A blue vein throbbed in his forehead. I was fascinated. He stopped dead.

“Get out,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose.

I collected the file and its contents from the floor and put it on his desk, pocketing the photograph of the message in blood.

“Phil,” I said, looking at his back. “I’m sorry, if …”

“Just get the hell out of here. I’ll probably find your corpse somewhere in the next few days, and that’ll just add to my work load.”

A few more cops and robbers were in the squad room. It still smelled of sweat and coffee. The fat lady was telling her tale to a young uniformed cop, who listened attentively. Seidman was in a corner talking to a tall, skinny guy who kept nodding in agreement. I left, feeling pleased with myself that I had gotten something to work on.

I made phone calls from the Rexall Drug Store near the station and marked each one in my Hughes expense book. The first call was to Dean at Hughes’ Romaine office. I told him Hughes owed me for two more days work. He said he’d have it delivered to my office. Then I called Bugsy Siegel. After I convinced a guy with marbles in his mouth that Siegel knew me, he gave me the phone number of a gas station on Sunset where I could reach him. I called the station, and a guy named Moll answered. He got Siegel to the phone.

“It’s me, Peters,” I said. “You said you’d help if I had a problem. I’ve got a problem. I want everyone who was at Hughes’ party last week to be there again on Saturday at eight. Some of them might not want to come.”

“And you want to be sure they’re there, right?”

“Right,” I said.

“I already got my invitation from Hughes this morning,” Siegel said. “Give me the list, and I guarantee they’ll all be there.”

I pulled the list from my pocket and read the names and addresses to him, omitting the now deceased Major Barton. I also thought Hughes was one efficient son-of-a-bitch to get invitations out so fast.

“I’ll call Rathbone,” I said. “I’m sure he’ll come. I’m worried mostly about the Gurstwalds and your friend Norma Forney.”

I was also worried about Siegel, but I let that pass.

“The krauts will be there,” Siegel said amiably. “So will Norma. Anything else?”

“No,” I said.

He hung up. Then I called Rathbone and asked if he wanted to take a ride out to Mirador with me to talk to Schell, the butler. He said he would, so I headed to Bel Air to pick him up after taking a look at the photograph of the word in blood. It got me nowhere. My reasons for taking Rathbone were more than just to satisfy his curiosity. I figured that with him at my side, Sheriff Nelson and Alex the Deputy might be less inclined to lynch me, which is why I also agreed to let Rathbone take his car and drive.

He talked about his new Holmes movie script, and I brought him up to date on the case including my trip to Calabasas, the identification of the corpse in the dental chair, and the fact that Barton knew that corpse. I also told him about the FBI’s interest.

“Curious,” said Rathbone, who was wearing a dark suit and a white sweater. “If your skeletal friend is to be believed, he and his cohorts did not murder the man in the chair and probably did not murder Major Barton.”

“Maybe,” I said, playing my tongue against my raw cheek. “Then who did and why? I’m grinding up bodies, but I don’t know if I’m getting any closer to finding out who killed anybody or who, if anybody, took Hughes’ plans.”

“And so,” he said, “out of frustration, you set up a little gathering of suspects for Saturday night in the hope that something will happen.”

“Like Holmes,” I said, watching the telephone poles flit by.

“No,” said Rathbone, “you, like so many others, have not read the Holmes stories. Holmes did not gather the suspects. That, I think, was a creation of the American theater which Conan Doyle deplored. It is a bit of bravura and vanity which would not have been beyond Holmes, but would probably have struck him as ungentlemanly, though it is sometimes difficult to penetrate that persona so carelessly created.”

We were nearing Mirador and the turnoff. I told Rathbone about Sheriff Nelson, and he suggested I slouch down even more. I slouched, and Rathbone drove evenly down the wide main street of Mirador. Alex wasn’t at his post in the window. The yellow police Ford wasn’t in front of the station. The car door still lay in the middle of the road, but there was no cat or kid. I sat up and Rathbone drove down the road, past the Gurstwald’s and into the Hughes’ driveway.

The Mirador police car was there. I sighed and led Rathbone to the front door. Toshiro answered.

“Good to see you Peters, Mr. Rathbone. You came just in time for a problem,” he said seriously.

He turned and led us down a corridor to a big paneled door, which he slid open. It was a billiard room pretty much like any billiard room you see in the movies except for the sheriff and the deputy at the table and the corpse in the butler’s uniform lying on his back on the green cloth. I knew it was a corpse by the open eyes and the knife in his chest. That didn’t surprise me. I was used to corpses, even ones with open eyes and knives in their chest. I wasn’t even surprised by the fact that the corpse was wearing a butler’s uniform. What did surprise me was the fact that I recognized the corpse on the table. He was the skeleton who had taken me for a ride to Calabasas.

“Come right in, Mr. Peters,” Nelson said, glancing at Rathbone, whom he recognized. “Mr. Rathbone? Sir, a pleasure to meet you, even under such circumstances.”

Rathbone took his hand and looked at the corpse.

Nelson looked at the corpse as if he were trying to line up a double rail shot but didn’t know how to do it with this obstacle. Alex just stood looking at us.

“We seem to have Mirador’s first murder in a decade,” Nelson said with a false grin. He looked scared and confused. He was a man who didn’t know what to do with a corpse.

“Last murder we had was back in 1930,” he said, avoiding the immediate problem. “Wife hit her husband with a rock down at the beach after a party.”

I looked at the body.

“Victim’s name is Schell,” said Nelson. “Martin Schell, part-time butler here. Case looks pretty simple.”

“How is that, Sheriff?” said Rathbone with sincerity.

“Only two people in the house,” he said. “Cook is in a drunken heap in his room. Jap here,” he said nodding at Toshiro, “is still standing. He must have done in the butler. Fight or something.”

“If I killed him,” Toshiro said reasonably, “why would I call you?”

“Cover yourself,” he said. “Happens all the time.”

“I thought your last murder was in 1930,” I said. “That’s not all the time.”

“With apologies to Mr. Rathbone here,” Nelson said, removing his straw hat and mopping his brow, “I’m gonna have to tell you to keep your remarks to yourself, Peters. I might start asking you questions about this.”

“Sorry,” I said, “I’ve got an alibi. I just drove in from Los Angeles with Mr. Rathbone.”

“I wasn’t accusing you,” he said peevishly, “just checking all the possibilities.”

“Well you might start by calling the State police,” I suggested. “The longer that corpse lies there, the tougher it’s going to be to get any information from it. I assume you are going to call the State police to handle this, or were you going to take it on your own?”

“I was just about to have Alex call them when you came in,” Nelson said nervously. “Alex, find a phone and call the State police. Tell them there’s a murder here. Tell them.…”

“I know what to tell them,” Alex said with what might have been sarcasm. He started to leave the room.

“And take this Jap with you and keep an eye on him,” Nelson said, looking at Toshiro. “The troopers are going to want to talk to him.”

Toshiro shrugged and accompanied Alex out of the billiard room. Rathbone circled the table, examining the corpse and the floor. Nelson warned him, not knowing what else to do.

“This house is full of exits,” said Rathbone. “A side entrance, rear entrance, garden entrance.” He opened a door in a corner and looked in the room beyond. “There’s an open door leading down to the beach. I’d guess our Mr. Schell had an assignation here with someone. He assumed the house would be relatively deserted except for the cook and chauffeur. There is no sign of a struggle, so apparently he had no fear of his murderer and anticipated nothing.

“I’ll bet the Jap did it,” said Nelson.

“Well, if he did,” said Rathbone,” he changed his clothes before calling you. Look at the knife. Whoever plunged it in hit a main artery. Blood spurted out. See the lines of blood on the handle. Might not have been a great deal of it, but certainly a spray would have hit the assailant. The young man who was just in here is certainly dry and there are no stains on him. You might check his room, but I’m inclined to think he was telling the truth. His point was well taken. Why call you with evidence so clearly against him coupled with a quite reasonable assessment of the present prevailing anti-Japanese sentiment in this country?”

“He was being clever,” said Nelson, “trying to throw us off.”

“There is,” said Rathbone, “such a thing as being so clever that one is stupid. Whatever he may be, the calm young man who just left here is not stupid. However, there’s no reason to debate the issue, sheriff. We can leave that for the State police.”

“What was Toshiro’s story?” I threw in.

Nelson looked at me with distaste, but Rathbone’s show of attentiveness changed his mind, and he talked, keeping his back to the corpse.

“Said he heard someone going out the door in the other room,” Nelson said. “Didn’t see anyone. Then he came in here, saw the corpse and called us. Said it didn’t take him more than three minutes to get to the phone. We got here five minutes later, about two or three minutes before you came in.”

Over Nelson’s shoulder, I nodded to Rathbone, indicating that I wanted to get out of the room. He took the cue with a lift of his chin and said, “Toby, would you go out in the car and get my cigarette case? I seem to have forgotten it.” Before Nelson could raise a protest, Rathbone went on, “Sheriff, you might want to step over here and have a look at this.”

I hurried out of the room and found my way to the servants’ quarters. I didn’t run into Alex and Toshiro, but I went past the room where the cook, Nuss, was sleeping in the same position I had seen him in 24 hours earlier. I found the room Toshiro had told me was Schell’s and went in fast. I didn’t find much, but I did find a photograph of Schell and the man who had been found strangled in Shelly’s dental chair, the man who Phil said was Wolfgang Schell. I put the picture in my pocket and hurried back to the billiard room. If I had it figured right, two brothers named Schell and a Major named Barton had been killed by hands unknown in the last few days. Whoever the killer was, he believed in variety: one strangling, one shooting, one stabbing.

When the State police arrived a half hour later, they found a silent gathering in the billiard room. The cop in charge was a beefy pro named Bill Horrigan, who asked Nelson what he had touched and told us all to get out of the room while his men went over it. We went out. An hour later, Rathbone and I were headed back to Los Angeles in his car.

“We’ve had a busy murderer,” I said.

“I don’t think so,” said Rathbone, pulling into a roadside restaurant called Jason’s. “I mean it’s quite likely we have more than one murderer involved here.”

“Which will simply complicate my life further,” I said.

Over a steak sandwich, Rathbone explained:

“Murder Number One in your office was a strangling. The killer did not have a gun and was apparently quite strong. Strong enough to take a bullet and still strangle the unfortunate Mr. Schell. Victim Number Two, Major Barton, was shot cleanly through the heart, while Victim Number Three on the billiard table was stabbed in rage by someone who knew him.”

“Too much,” I said, sinking my teeth into fat and meat. “You work it out your way and I’ll go mine, with my feet and a big mouth, which reminds me.”

I excused myself and made a call to Dean at the Romaine Office and told him about the corpse at Hughes’ house. Knowing Hughes’ love of secrecy and his contacts, I thought he might want to set his machinery going to keep Hughes’ name out of it. Dean said thanks and hung up.

Rathbone drove me back to his house and my car, wished me luck and said he’d see me on Saturday at Hughes’ house. Then I drove back to my rooming house. I didn’t feel like facing Shelly yet, and I didn’t think I had anything to fear at home. The skeleton, Schell, who was looking for me was dead. What I had to do fast was put the puzzle together. Phil would probably see a report on the second dead Schell, make some inquiries, find out about my being at the Hughes house and call me back for a talk.

The rope-skippers were gone when I pulled up and Mrs. Plaut, seated on her porch swing, greeted me with a hearty “Hello Tony.”

I waved back and tried to step past her.

“A lady called you,” she said, reaching out to hold me with a bony hand. “Very bad English. Said her name was Judy, but you shouldn’t call her.”

“Thanks,” I said, figuring she meant Trudi Gurstwald.

“Did you hear about the shooting here last night?” she said, moving her arm to let me pass.

“Yes,” I said. “You told me this morning.”

“Oh yes,” she remembered, “I told you this morning.”

I made it up the stairs and into my room. In the next room, I could hear Gunther and someone with a high voice arguing in German. I tried to put it from my mind while I pulled the two photographs out of my pocket. I flattened the Schell Brothers and thumbtacked them to my wall. They were a somber pair. I didn’t like the fact that the picture reminded me of the photograph in my office of Phil and me. I thumbtacked the second photograph of the word in blood next to it and took off my shoes.

I got on the floor on my mattress to take the weight off my back, touched my sore cheek with my tongue and stared at the photographs, waiting for them to talk, but they said nothing. The only voices were in German from the next room. Life had been Germanized in the last week and would probably be more so when the war actually came.

There was a knock on the door. The knocker turned out to be one of Hughes’ bodyguards. “You asked for these,” he said, handing me an envelope.

“Thanks,” I said. He left without another word. I opened the envelope and found photographs of everyone who had been at the Hughes party. I spread them on my table.

A few minutes later, there was a slight, tentative knock at the door.

“Come in,” I called and looked back over my shoulder. Gunther came in politely.

“Do you have any tea, Toby?” he said. “I have a client and…”

“Sure,” I said. “You know where it is. Take what you need.”

Wherthman was as quiet as he could be, which was pretty damn quiet, but he had trouble finding the tea. He took enough time that his client came to the door.

“Gunther?” a tentative voice asked.

“I’m getting some tea,” Gunther said.

“Come on in,” I said, staring at the photographs. I just kept waiting for the photographs or my mind to tell me something.

I heard the footsteps of the client come into the room and stop not far from me.

“Here they are,” said Gunther.

“Schell!” said the client with a heavy German accent.

I rolled over to face the man. He was staring at the picture of the Schell brothers on my wall.

Gunther Wherthman’s client was about my age and height. He wore blue denim trousers and jacket and a white shirt without a tie. In his mouth was a nickel American cigar. He had a two-day growth of beard and wore a pair of rimless glasses on his slightly hooked nose.

“You know them?” I said, rolling over and getting up.

The client looked at me with amusement and nodded.

“Berlin, 1933,” he said. “They were brownshirts, Nazis. They arrested me. I have a lump on my back as a souvenir. I hope they are well.” The accent was heavy, but I could make out the words.

“They’re both dead,” I said, “murdered in the last two days.”

The client shrugged and pulled on his cigar.

“Don’t go away, please,” I told the client. “Gunther, why don’t you make the tea here?” I pointed to the photographs on the table of everyone who had been at the Hughes’ house for the party. Martin Schell’s picture was on the top.

“Yes,” said the client. “That’s him.”

“Sit down,” I said, offering him one of my three chairs. “How about some cereal?”

He looked with distaste at my Kellogg’s carton on the table and said, “We didn’t eat that kind of thing in Augsburg.”

“We have work, Toby,” Gunther said.

“A minute, Gunther,” I pleaded.

The client looked at the rest of the spread-out photographs and put his finger on one.

“Ah,” he said. “I knew this one too. The three of them were together when they came for me in Berlin. They’d been out enjoying themselves one evening and they continued their entertainment at my expense.”

“God sent you,” I said, smiling at him.

“I do not believe in God,” said the man with some irritation. “I am a Communist, which, by the way, is why I am not in Berlin at the moment. I might also mention that there are, perhaps, thirty or forty Berliners in Los Angeles at the moment who would remember that trio.”

“Mister.…”

“Brecht,” said the client, holding up the photograph. “Bertold Brecht.”

“Mr. Brecht,” I said. “You may have just solved a murder.”

“Humm,” he said. “I should like that.”

Wherthman poured us all some tea, and Brecht told me his tale about the Schells. His cigar was turning the room into a putrid cloud, but I wanted to hold onto him.

“It wouldn’t have taken much to recognize the Schells,” said Brecht. “If you lived in Berlin in 1933 and had trouble with the Nazis, you probably met the Schells. Gunther, I’ll have to go now. I’ve enjoyed the tea and the conversation. I’d like you to finish the poems. I’ve got a young man named Bentley working on the play. Now, Mr. Peters, should you need me further, Gunther has my phone number and my address in Santa Monica.”

We shook hands and he left with his hands deep in his pockets.

Gunther and I finished our tea, and Gunther explained that Brecht had been a famous young playwright in Germany. Apparently he had only been in the United States about six months. According to Gunther, he had taken a ship from Russia to San Pedro and settled down a few miles from where he landed.

“He had always been no more than a step or two ahead of the Nazis,” said Wherthman.

“He’s Jewish?” I asked.

“No, family was Protestant-Catholic. But as he told you, he is a Marxist.”

I finished my tea, scratched my stomach and turned to the pictures on the wall.

“Now,” I said, “if I can only figure out why Schell wrote ‘unkind’ on the table in his blood while he was being strangled, I may have most of this sorted out.”

Gunther finished his tea and got down from the chair to move to my side. Since his head came just above my belt, he had to look almost straight up to see the photograph.

“That doesn’t say ‘unkind’,” he said to me.

I looked down at him.

“It says ‘ein kind’-a child-in German. It isn’t English.”

Of course, Wolfgang Schell was German. He wouldn’t write in English when he was dying. But the new possibility that followed didn’t give me a lot of cheer. Had Schell been trying to leave a message that he had been strangled by a child?