The Howard Hughes Affair

CHAPTER SIX

I called my brother and told him I had another corpse for him. He didn’t rant. He didn’t rave. He just said he would be right over. I looked at the phone, wondering if I had reached the right Lieutenant Philip Pevsner, the one who turned purple, lived in rage and took crime and me as a personal affront.

The pain in my head and the knowledge of the character in the dental chair behind me kept me from dwelling on Phil. I flipped on the radio and found it was eight in the morning. Shelly had part of a one-pound can of Ben-Hur coffee he had picked up at Ralph’s for twenty-eight cents. I made some, trying to avoid the guy in the chair. Then, to keep my mind from the pain and funny white spots I kept seeing, I went through the corpse’s pockets, careful not to disturb the position of the body. He had a wallet. The wallet said he was Louis Frye, that he lived in Covina and that he was thirty-eight years old. He had thirty bucks and some change. He also had a telephone number written on a torn off corner of newspaper stuck among the dollar bills. It was a familiar number. I checked it against the list Hughes had given me. The number belonged to Major Barton. I left the number and dollar bills in Frye’s wallet and put it back in his pocket.

I was just starting my coffee when Phil and Steve Seidman came through the door, followed by a big bald uniformed young cop named Rashkow. Sergeant Seidman, a thin cadaverous-looking character with a notebook, didn’t say much at any time. This time he said nothing, just went to the body and began examining it. Rashkow took a quick look, gave me a grin but wiped it off when Phil caught it.

“Suppose you step out in the hall and keep people out of here,” Phil said evenly. Rashkow nodded, and Phil gave the messed up room a disgusted look and pointed toward my office. I went. In a few minutes, Shelly’s office would be full of people with cameras, bad professional jokes about death, and medical bags.

Phil closed the door to my office behind us and looked at me, pursing his lips. He was a little taller than I was, a little broader and a little older. His cop’s gut was developing gradually, and his close-cut steely hair grew greyer every time I saw him. Normally, he had the look of a lunatic who required superhuman effort to keep in his rage. Today he wasn’t the old Phil.

“How are Ruth and the boys?” I tried. For some reason, that had always driven him over the top into a rage. I normally saved it for telephone conversations. It was safer. I supposed the rage was caused by the fact that I never came to visit him, my sister-in-law and the kids in North Hollywood.

Phil didn’t get angry. He put his hands behind his back after loosening his tie and looked at the picture of him, me, our father and Kaiser Wilhelm.

“How long’s it been since you saw Ruth, Toby?”

Considering the corpse in the chair outside, it seemed an odd direction for the conversation.

“A few months,” I tried.

“Make it almost a year,” he said, his back still to me. “It’s two boys and a girl now. Ruth had a baby while you were in Chicago. Her name’s Lucy.”

“That’s great,” I said, wondering why a forty one-year-old woman and a forty seven-year-old cop with less salary than a cab driver would have three kids. Then I thought of Anne and decided to say nothing. Phil turned around and took in a greath breath. If he let it out in one burst he could have huffed and puffed down the Farraday Building.

“Who’s the guy in the chair?”

“Name is Frye,” I said, sipping my coffee. “Want some coffee?” He shook his head no so I went on. “He came up here last night and took a couple of shots at me. That’s what happened to the windows.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” Phil said sarcastically.“The place looks the same as when I was here last.”

I finished the coffee, winced a little from the pain in my head and went behind my desk to sit.

“He took a couple of shots at me, and I went out in the hall after him with a chair, but he put me away with a crack on the head, and I didn’t get up till I called you a little while ago.”

“How’d he get in the chair?” Phil asked reasonably.

“I don’t know.”

“Who killed him?” Phil tried.

“Don’t know.”

“Why did he try to kill you?”

“I don’t know.”

“You are a fountain of information,” Phil sighed his rage starting to return. “How did you know his name?”

“I went through his pockets just before you got here. Nothing there.” I didn’t mention that the phone number in the corpse’s wallet was Major Barton’s.

“This is a silly question,” he said, “but has anyone got a reason to want to kill you? I mean, I know a lot of people would like to stamp on your face a little, the line forms behind me, but anybody particular? You working a case?”

“I’m working a case,” I acknowledged.

“Think you might tell me a little bit about it?” Phil said, moving over to sit on the wooden chair across from my desk. The potential rage was in check and I was having trouble dealing with the new Phil.

“Can’t tell you much without an O.K. from my client,” I said.

He nodded knowingly. Outside we could hear the bustle of cops and a “Hi Doc” greeting for the guy from the Coroner’s Office. Phil just looked at me while I pretended to drink some more Ben-Hur coffee, though the cup was empty.

The phone rang. I let it ring. Phil pointed to it and then to his ear. I picked up the phone. It was Howard Hughes.

“You have something?” he said, coming directly to the point.

“I think so,” I said, looking at Phil, who waited patiently. “But I can’t talk now. A man named Frye came looking for me with a gun and got himself killed. The police are here now, and they’d like some information about what I’m working on.”

The pause on the other end of the line made me think I had lost him, but his voice came back steadily.

“I do not want to be involved in any publicity,” he said. “My name is not to be mentioned. If you mention me, I’ll have to deny it. If you keep me out of it, you get a bonus.”

“How much would that be?” I said, looking at Phil.

“Two thousand and fifty,” he said.

“Dollars?” I said.

“I don’t deal in any other currency.”

“I’ll do what you want, but no dollars. I’d do it for any client.”

“I prefer to pay,” he said.

“There are one or two things you can’t pay for,” I said, looking at Phil, who was starting to show signs of impatience such as adjusting his tie constantly.

“I’d like a report tonight at midnight sharp,” Hughes said, and then he gave me an address. I said right. Then I hung up and looked at Phil.

“The client?” Phil said evenly.

“Right.”

“And he doesn’t want to cooperate with us.”

“Right again,” I said, shaking my head sadly.

“I see,” said Phil.

Seidman knocked at the door and walked in without waiting to be welcomed.

“Lieutenant,” he said. “It’s a weird one. The guy out there is covered with blood, but it’s not his. Doc says there’s not a wound on his body, not a cut. He was strangled. And it looks like he wrote something in blood on the table next to him before he went.”

“Unkind,” I said.

“Something like that,” Seidman agreed.

“Terrific,” Phil sighed, looking at me. “And you can’t explain any of it?”

“No,” I said sadly.

Seidman tilted his hat back to reveal more pale dome and added, “Guy’s gun’s been fired four times.”

“Must have hit whoever strangled him,” I said.

“Brilliant,” Phil nodded.

As Seidman made a discreet exit, Shelly burst in, his face red and his mouth open.

“How was the show?” I said.

“Show?” he answered, pushing his glasses back in confusion.

“VooDooed,” I reminded him.

“Fine,” he said. “What happened out there, Toby?”

“Cleaning lady came early,” I said.

“Cops, blood, a dead guy in the chair, the doors are broken again. I’ve got patients coming in half an hour. How’s it going to look with a dead guy in the chair?”

“Terrible,” I said. “The police will clean him out as soon as they can.”

Shelly was not appeased and he mumbled, “I’ve got a pregnant woman coming in at nine-thirty. How’s this going to look? Who’s going to pay?”

I pulled out my wallet, counted fifty from the money Hughes’ man had given me, and handed it to Shelly. He took it and walked out, still mumbling.

“Maybe this’ll do some good after all,” I said to Phil. “We might get the place cleaned up.”

Phil was looking sad. He got up, walked to the photograph of the family, touched my framed license and turned to me.

“I don’t like mysteries, Toby,” he said. “Why do you call me every time you kick up a corpse? The city is full of cops.”

“You’re my brother. I like to give you the business.”

For a man who spent most his time behind a desk, Phil could move pretty fast. He proved it by crossing the small room in two steps, lifting me from behind the desk with his right hand and punching me firmly in the stomach with his left in less time than it takes to cross your eyes.

“I’ve had it, goddamit,” he shouted, standing over me, “I’ve goddam had it with you.”

I liked him better this way, but I had the feeling I had turned on something I couldn’t stop. Seduced, shot at, clubbed, corpsed and beaten by one’s brother in a few hours was enough for any man. So I just stood there against the wall, waiting for his next move.

“It’s simple,” he said, breathing hard. “You tell me about your client and everything else you know, or I stamp on you. You know I mean it.” His finger was inches from my face, and I knew he meant it.

Seidman came in, saw me on the floor and spoke softly to Phil, who kept his eyes on me.

“Problem, Lieutenant?”

“No, Sam Spade here is going to cooperate, aren’t you Sam?”

“No client’s name,” I said, covering my head with my hands and expecting a kick. When Phil lost control, he lost control; a kick was as good as a punch. I wondered how his kids and wife survived, though Ruth had once assured me my brother was a model father and husband and never hit his kids. Maybe he saved it all for the job.

“Lieutenant,” Seidman said.

“All right. All right.” Phil stood up and turned his back to me. “Book him. Suspicion of murder.”

I pulled myself straight and wondered how long my body could take all this attention.

“Phil,” I said with exaggerated calm. “You know I didn’t strangle that guy. He shot whoever strangled him and I’m in one piece, it’s a battered piece, but it isn’t bleeding. And how can strangling be murder when the victim has a gun in his hand?”

“Sergeant,” said Phil, “get him out of my sight and put him in the lockup for a few hours.”

Seidman motioned for me to come, and I considered prodding Phil a little more. I had him back in form and I didn’t want to lose him now, but something in Seidman’s look changed my mind and I followed him.

In the outer office, a police photographer was snapping pictures of broken glass on the floor. The body had been removed, and Shelly was trying to put his tools together.

“That corpse had good teeth,” Shelly said. “Real gold fillings. You don’t see many of them in this neighborhood.”

“I’ve just been arrested,” I said. “For murder.”

“You killed that guy?” asked Shelly, without looking up from his search for something on the floor.

“No, I didn’t. I’ll get back as soon as I can.”

“Right,” said Shelly, holding his glasses on with the finger of his right hand. Seidman led me out of the office.

“What do you get out of driving him up the wall?” Seidman asked as we walked down the stairs, absorbing Lysol and the looks of a few curious tenants and bums.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m just used to him that way. What does he get out of putting lumps on me?”

“Forget I asked,” said Seidman, leading me out of the Farraday Building to a parked black and white police car. “I’ll lock you up for a few hours. Then do us all a big favor and try to stay out of his way.”

“I’ll try,” I said, “but he’s irresistible.”

They threw me in a cell with another dangerous criminal, a little guy in his sixties who was stewed silly at ten in the morning. I sat on the almost clean bunk, holding my head and counting backwards from 100 to keep from noticing the pain in my head.

“You can call me Calvin,” the drunk said, sitting next to me. “Calvin means ‘the bald’ in some language. I looked it up when I was a kid, but I fooled them. I’ve got more hair than my father ever had. Take a look.”

He shook me and I opened my eyes. I had been at 85. Calvin was smiling and tugging at his ample white hair to prove he had it.

“That’s great, Calvin,” I said, “but I’ve got one hell of a headache and …”

“They picked me up on Wilshire this morning,” Calvin continued, ignoring me. “You know why I was drunk?”

“You consumed too much alcohol,” I tried.

“I mean the deeper cause,” he said. “It’s the news. I got up to go to work and turned on the radio and this guy started telling me about someone trying to kill Mussolini, and about Roosevelt asking Japan to explain why they were concentrating troops in Indochina. And Roosevelt says peace depends on an answer. And more kids were being drafted into the army.”

I didn’t see how an attempt to kill Mussolini necessarily came under the heading of bad news, but I didn’t want to carry on a conversation with a drunk. I had some numbers to get through and some thinking to do. I had a pile of clues to a murder, but I couldn’t figure them out, and besides I wasn’t being paid to find a murderer. I had suspicious characters all over the place and too damn much information. I wasn’t used to all this information. It probably would have given me a headache even without the lump.

“Was there any good news?” I said.

“Yeah, Mel Ott is going to manage the Giants. Ever see him play? One foot up in the air when he bashes the ball.” Calvin got up to demonstrate Mel Ott’s unique batting style. He hit a triple which further cheered him and he sat again to keep me company. “What you in for?” he said groggily.

“Murder,” I said, closing my eyes. “I gutted three drunks on the Strip last night with my bare hands.” I could feel Calvin rise slowly and move quietly to the far side of the small cell. I slept. This time no dreams, no Cincinnati, no Koko.

I got up because someone was shaking me, a cop. Calvin was snoring away in a second bunk.

“You’re out,” said the cop wearily. “Lieutenant Pevsner wants to see you in his office.”

I got up and told him I’d find my way there. He told me I was getting an escort. Ten minutes later I was going up the steps of Phil’s station in the Wilshire District, past the desk sergeant, up the stairs and through the big sour squad room. I had been accompanied by Officer Rashkow, who said nothing because I said nothing. He left me at my brother’s door and I went in.

Phil was behind his desk, and Basil Rathbone was seated across from him. Rathbone rose.

“Mr. Peters,” he said. “So sorry to hear what happened. I hope you’re all right.” He took my hand and held my shoulder.

“Mr. Rathbone has persuaded Captain Rein to let you go,” said Phil, playing with an Eversharp automatic pencil, which he turned over and over and over. “Mr. Rathbone has also refused to tell us what he knows about this and why he is interested in getting you out. Mr. Rathbone knows we are investigating a murder.”

“I also have no information, Lieutenant,” he said sincerely. “I met Mr. Peters a few days ago when he visited a taping of my radio show. I promised to look him up and discovered when I called his office that he had been arrested. Then I simply made a few calls and …”

Phil kept spinning the pencil and nodding his head to show he understood but he didn’t believe.

“Have it your way,” Phil said. “Toby draws bodies like flies to orange pop. I’d suggest you stay away from him.”

“I shall certainly consider your advice,” Rathbone said as if he fully intended to consider the advice. “Now, if we may …”

Seidman stuck his head in the door before we could get permission or move.

“He’s on,” Seidman said.

“All right, I’ll take it,” Phil sighed, staring at the phone. “You two can go. It’s a friend of mine, a crank who’s been calling every day for the last two weeks to threaten me. It makes my day.” Phil picked up the phone and spoke into it staring at me. “Hello. You are? You are? I am? That’s nice to know. Just keep talking. I know you won’t be on long enough for us to trace, but do you mind if we try, just to keep in practice? Thanks.”

Rathbone, who was dressed in a neatly pressed dark suit and matching tie, made a motion, and Phil put his hand over the receiver.

“Yeah,” said Phil.

“Give me a try with him,” said Rathbone, “maybe I can keep him going long enough for you to trace it.”

“That’s ten, maybe fifteen minutes, depending on where he’s calling from, but he won’t stay on long enough. O.K. Give it a try. What the hell.” He handed the phone to Rathbone, who said:

“This is Basil Rathbone. Yes, the actor. I’m sorry if you think this is a poor imitation. It’s actually me. I happened to be in the Lieutenant’s office when you called, and I’ve never spoken to a lunatic before. My, my, my you needn’t get insulting. I see. And how will you accomplish this? Grisly. But you don’t even know the Lieutenant. How will you be sure you’re not getting the wrong man? Oh, you do. Yes, Yes. That’s a fair enough description. Must you? So soon? Well, if you must. Goodbye.”

Rathbone hung up.

“Couldn’t keep him on,” said Phil.

“No,” said Rathbone,” but I did discover a few things about him that might help you to pick him up. He is a Canadian who has worked for a doctor or in a hospital or is a doctor; and he knew you, I would guess, about ten years ago. I’d suggest you check anyone you put to prison about ten years ago who recently got out and fits that description.”

Phil started to rise from his chair.

“Levine, Edward Levine,” said Phil. “Sent him up for assaulting a doctor in County Hospital where he was working in ’32.” Seidman came back into the office to indicate that they had not traced the call.

“Forget it,” said Phil. “Check on Ed Levine. May have gotten out of Folsom recently. Check his parole officer, find him and pull him in. I think he’s our man.” Seidman nodded and left.

“The voice could be his,” Phil said. “It’s been ten years, but …”

“He have some special fondness for you, Philip?” I said. Phil looked up at me, and I went on. “Some good kidney chops help him confess? Ah, but you were a wild youth.”

“Get out,” he said. Rathbone and I got out. On the way through the station Rathbone absorbed the sight of drunks, looneys, cops and assorted hangers-on lounging around.

“Fascinating place,” he said, as we stepped into the sunlight.

“Fascinating,” I agreed. “How did you know all that stuff about the guy on the phone, Sherlock?”

“If we are to cement this friendship, Toby,” he said with a smile, “please call me Basil. As much as I enjoy the profit of being Sherlock Holmes and am interested in the process, I fear I am, after thirty years as a Shakespearean actor, becoming identified with a character who may overwhelm my career. I’m getting a bit of a taste of how Dr. Conan Doyle must have felt when he tried to kill Sherlock off. I am, however, not at that point. As to the business on the phone back there, I owe it more to being an actor who spends a great deal of time studying voices than I do to a study of Holmes. I knew he was a Canadian because of the way he pronounced “ou” in words like “about,” “out.” Canadians pronounce these two letters as “oo” as in “too.” Of course a small group of Americans in Minnesota do the same, but the odds were numerically with the Canadian. As to the medical knowledge, the gentleman on the phone described what he would do to Lieutenant Pevsner with an anatomical knowledge that would have been the envy of Jack the Ripper. Finally, the man’s description of the lieutenant was easily ten years out of date. He described a man thirty pounds lighter and with hair just beginning to grey. He had not seen his intended victim for about ten years. Then I put it all together.”

“You could have been way off,” I said, letting him lead me to a blue Chrysler at the curb.

“My dear fellow, I could have been entirely wrong,” he admitted. “Holmes, unlike us poor mortals, always had the fortunate protection of Dr. Conan Doyle, who would affirm almost every bizarre deduction the consulting detective made.”

We got in the car and I gave Rathbone Major Barton’s address, after briefing him on what had happened and getting his assurance that he wanted to come along.

“I called you this morning for the express purpose of accompanying you on some of the investigation,” he said. “Tell me, do American police actually beat suspects, or were you simply prodding the Lieutenant out of some long-standing antagonism?”

“The antagonism goes back more than forty years,’ I said. “He’s my brother.”

“That explains a great deal,” said Rathbone.

“The answer to your question is, yes, some, maybe most cops do use a little muscle to push a suspect into a confession or get some information. Being a cop is a tough job. I used to be one in Glendale.”

“I see,” he said. “The English aren’t all that less barbaric. I’ll make an anti-Holmesian confession to you. About fifteen years ago in England, I had an excellent manservant named Poole, who was an armed robber by night to supplement his income. He kept it up for some time, and I never suspected the fellow, even when they arrested him and he confessed. When he got out after serving his time, Poole told me that he had received nine lashes of the ‘cat’ for having carried firearms during the robberies. The cat, in case you do not know it, is a wooden handpiece to which are attached nine leather thongs soaked in oil. A prison doctor must be present because a single stroke of the lash can lay a man’s back open to the bone. The lashes, according to Poole, could be given at any time, in any combination. They could pull a man out of his cell after a year at three in the morning, give him two strokes and send him back bleeding for minutes or months to await the rest. They’ve done away with the cat now, but I’ve met many who are sorry about its passing. So, perhaps the English are not so much more civilized than the Americans when it comes to treating criminals.”

Major Barton’s home was in Westwood, a small house set back on an untrimmed lawn. I didn’t know if he was there, but I had gotten nowhere trying to reach him by phone, and Trudi Gurstwald plus his phone number in Frye’s wallet had made him my A Number-One Suspect. It was worth a chance.

Barton was home. He answered the door himself and he was in-uniform, or at least partly in uniform. His jacket, tie and shoes were not on and I had the impression we had interrupted him while he was dressing. He was about fifty, a little taller than I and working hard to keep his stomach in by will power instead of exercise. His nose had the red touch of a drinker, and his breath confirmed Hughes’ information.

“Mr. Rathbone,” he said in surprise. “To what do I owe this visit?”

“Good afternoon, Major,” Rathbone said amiably, “this is Mr. Peters. He is working for Howard Hughes, and he’d like some help with something you may be able to assist him with. May we come in?”

Rathbone stepped forward the way he did as Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles movie, and I followed behind.

“I was just on my way out,” Barton said, trying to get ahead of us to cover the mess and bottles in his living room.

“We won’t take a moment,” smiled Rathbone. “I’m sure you want to cooperate with Mr. Hughes’ emissary.”

“Of course,” said Barton. “Just give me a minute to finish dressing, gentlemen. Make yourself at home. Have a drink.”

We went into Barton’s living room, and Rathbone immediately opened a window to let out the stale smell, then sat down comfortably. The room was small, darkly carpeted with a sofa and some chairs. The chairs looked expensive, far from new, and not recently dusted. They were striped black and brown and looked lived in. On the wall was a picture of Napoleon on a horse. The horse was up on his hind feet and Napoleon was looking at me with his sword raised before he joined the battle in the background.

Barton came back in a few minutes, smelling of Sen-Sen and after-shave lotion. But the alcohol still came through.

“Mrs. Barton is out of town for a few days,” he said, having a seat. “Please excuse the condition of the house.”

“This is confidential, Major,” I said, pulling a seat as close to him as I could. “You’re assigned to…”

“Special duty working with various aircraft manufacturers on proposals for new weaponry,” he supplied. “Hughes Aircraft is one of those manufacturers.”

“Good,” I said. “Mr. Hughes has reason to believe that something may have been copied at his house the night of the dinner party, something valuable relating to the very weapons you’re talking about. Did you happen to see anything suspicious?”

Barton thought for a few seconds and then came up empty.

“Sorry,” he said. “Nothing happened out of the ordinary as far as I was concerned, though Hughes did behave a bit strangely after dinner and put a rather abrupt end to what I thought was going to be an evening of discussion. I think Mr. Rathbone will confirm that.”

“I confirm your observation about Hughes,” said Rathbone, staring at the man and taking out his silver cigarette case.

“Major Barton,” I went on, “what would you say if I told you someone in the house that night has told us that they saw you coming out of Mr. Hughes’ study shortly after dinner and that you looked nervous? What would you say?”

“I’d say they were a goddamn liar,” Barton said indignantly, rising. “I’d say let them say that to my face.”

“Well,” I said, “maybe we can arrange that. It’s gotten pretty important. You see, a guy named Frye was murdered this morning, and I think it’s related to what happened at Hughes’ house. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, Major?”

Barton flushed and stood up, staring at the impassive Rathbone and at me.

“What made me think you might know, Major,” I pressed on, “was the fact that Frye had your phone number in his pocket. Why was that?”

“I don’t know,” Barton gasped.

“The police have his wallet with your number in it. They’ll be coming to see you soon themselves.”

“I’ll ask you to leave my house now, Mr. Peters,” he said. “My record and my reputation are enough.…”

“To make a sailor blush,” said Rathbone. “Tell me, Major, why are you still a major at your age? Shouldn’t a West Point man have made Colonel by the age of fifty?”

“How do you know all that?” Barton started.

“Your West Point diploma is on the wall and the year of your graduation, indicating your approximate age,” Rathbone explained. “Could your drinking have something to do with it? You do a very bad job of hiding it, you know. And where, pray tell, is your wife? From the look of this place, no one has taken care of it for some time except a gardener. No Major Barton, I rather fancy your job is not as important as you’ve indicated and that you’ve been given this assignment to keep you from embarrassing superiors or some influential friend who is protecting you. A military classmate, perhaps?”

Barton licked his lips, almost defeated, and Rathbone lit a cigarette, turning his eyes from Barton for the first time. Barton reached for a bottle and poured himself a drink. He didn’t offer us one.

“I can’t tell you anything,” he said. “I’m going to report what I know to my superiors as soon as you leave, and they can do with it what they will. You’ll get no more from me.”

“I think we’ve gotten quite a bit,” said Rathbone. “Perhaps you’ll be more inclined to talk to us after you’ve seen your superiors.”

“Perhaps,” said Barton, “but I doubt it.” He downed his drink and went silent.

Rathbone indicated that we should leave, and we did, but not before we saw Barton pour himself another drink. On the front steps, Rathbone said:

“Sorry about that, Peters, but I couldn’t resist playing Holmes. I quite enjoyed it.”

“That’s all right,” I said. “Except I started to feel like Watson, and that didn’t do anything for my self-image.”

“Well,” he said. “Comfort yourself. Nigel plays Watson as much more of a loveable bumbler than Conan Doyle intended. After all, Watson was very much Conan Doyle-doctor, admirer of ratiocination, solidly built. Our version is a bit more comic. Now I suggest we have something to eat and return in an hour to question Major Barton again, when he has made himself more vulnerable with drink and fear.”

“You don’t buy his tale about going to his superiors,” I said, getting in the car.

“No,” said Rathbone, getting in the driver’s seat and pulling into light traffic. “I can’t believe a West Point man, even one who tends to drink, would go to a meeting with his superiors with his shoes unpolished. He certainly wouldn’t after having a few drinks.”

We found a small steak place for lunch. Since it was after one in the afternoon, it wasn’t crowded, and no one but the waiter stared at Rathbone. We ate, with him urging me to talk about what it was like being a private detective. It was nothing like being Sherlock Holmes.

“Well,” I said, “for a month back in ’39 I was a night bouncer at a hot dog stand in Watts. Four bucks a night and almost all you could eat.

“Later that same year I filled in for the hotel dick at a place in Fresno. One month again, room and board, mostly old women cheating at bridge. But one night we had a woman come running out of a shower screaming rape and I followed a trail of wet footprints down the hall and into a room. I found a guy in a closet. He scared the hell out of me, jaybird naked and covered with blood. Never did find out where the blood came from. The woman hadn’t bled. Never found out how he got in the room or hotel either. He wasn’t registered, and the room belonged to a priest who was in town for a convention and had left his door and said he never knew the locked.”

“What did the man in the closet say?”

“Nothing,” I said. “He turned out to be the father of a famous radio comedian. Fresno cops wouldn’t tell me who, and they let him go. He hadn’t raped the old gal in the shower, just turned up in there naked and bloody and scared hell out of her. And that guy’s still wandering the streets of Fresno or L.A.”

“An entirely different genre,” Rathbone observed, sipping a wine of uncertain vintage while I downed my second beer and made a mental note to get to the Y as soon as possible before my brother and I had matching beer bellies. On the way out of the steak place, the waiter asked Rathbone for an autograph and got it on a menu.

“For my wife,” said the waiter, a thin guy with his hair combed straight back.

“It always is,” said Rathbone when the waiter left.

He allowed me to take the check after I assured him it was on Howard Hughes.

We went back to Major Barton’s little house with a good meal under our belts and almost an hour and a half behind us. It was late in the afternoon, and the sun was promising a hot Christmas.

I knocked but Barton didn’t answer. I knocked again, deciding Rathbone had probably been wrong and Barton had gone with a couple of drinks and unpolished shoes to his superior officer to lay down his secret of the Hughes night, if he had such a secret other than his own spying.

Rathbone tried the door and it wasn’t locked.

“Major,” I called. No answer. We stepped in and found the major just where we had left him, in full uniform, glass in hand but with the addition of a pair of messy red stains on his shirt. Someone had shot him at close range. I’d seen a lot of corpses in my day and that day included the morning and the guy in Shelly’s chair; but though I knew Rathbone had been in the war, I wasn’t sure what he had seen. I turned, and he was looking around the room.

“You needn’t worry about me, Toby,” he said. “I had proximity to more corpses during the war than a man would care to have in a lifetime. Once I had to step on a decomposed corpse while running from the Germans. I’ve seen corpses, especially corpses in uniform-though never that uniform.… Curious.”

“What?” I said.

“The neighbors,” he said.

“What neighbors?” I said.

“Precisely,” said Rathbone. “We left the window open when we departed and it’s still open. There are people on the street. A bullet makes quite a bit of noise. Why isn’t anyone here? Why aren’t the police here?”

I looked at Barton but didn’t touch him. There was nothing around that seemed to help.

“Might have used a silencer,” I said.

“To kill quietly,” Rathbone said, looking down at Barton. “A particularly chilling concept.”

“He’s been dead for more than a few minutes,” I said. “Blood is starting to dry. So no one’s called the police, and I don’t think I’ll stick around to do it. They don’t like it when you discover two corpses in one day. How about we just leave here quietly and I make an anonymous call?”

“If you think it best,” he said, and we left. Rathbone had to get home and prepare for a dinner, so he drove me to Al’s garage, and I promised to call and keep him informed.

The bumper was back on and I was short of suspects. My favorite had just been shot. Maybe he had passed on the Hughes plans to an accomplice who was afraid he would talk and killed him. Maybe he had seen someone else in Hughes’ room and that person had killed him. And maybe one of these maybes had seen me and Rathbone coming out of Barton’s. Or just maybe someone who had nothing to do with the case had killed him, but that would have been one hell of a coincidence. I believed in coincidences, but I didn’t count on them. I always counted on my fingers and hoped I never had to go over ten on any problem, but this one required an adding machine.

I pulled in at a grocery store, picked up three boxes of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes, 11 — ounce size for 17 cents, three bars of Lifebuoy for 19 cents, and one pound can of Campbell’s Pork and Beans for 7 cents. I also picked up a Weber’s bread and a can of Bab-o. That and a bottle of milk was my grocery shopping for the week. Then I called the cops with my best Italian accent and told them where they could find a corpse named Barton. Finally I called Norma Fomey at Warner Brothers. She didn’t want to see me and laughed when I said she might be a suspect. After she made a few smart cracks, I said she reminded me of a Warner Brothers version of Dorothy Parker. She liked that.

I drove to the studio where I had put in four years as a guard. I had time for both Superman and Don Winslow on the radio because of the traffic, and I pulled up to the Warner gate to the music of Bing Crosby singing “Shepherd’s Serenade.”

The guy on the gate was someone I didn’t know. I just told him my name and the fact that Norma Forney was expecting me. He told me she was in an office near Studio 5, and I didn’t wait for directions. I knew the way. The last time I had been there was to catch a murderer. I had left with the help of Errol Flynn and an ambulance. My memories of Warner Brothers were not the best, and I was anxious to be in and out of there. I found the building, parked in a space reserved for Hal Wallis, and hurried up to the office. There was no secretary. A woman was sitting behind a desk with a typewriter on it. Her hands were behind her head and a pencil was in her mouth.

“Norma Forney?” I said. She looked up.

“Peters?” she said through the pencil.

She was about thirty with a good-looking smart face and blue eyes. Her dress was dark, black, and made out of something shiny like satin. Her dark hair was cut short and she wore a small hat with a single long pheasant feather.

“You’ve got some inspiration?” she asked. “I could use it. I’m supposed to be adding gags to this script, The Male Animal, but I’m not feeling funny. I haven’t felt funny since my gall bladder operation. Tried to make gall bladder jokes. There aren’t any. What can I do for you-quickly?”

Since I wanted to be away from Warner’s as much as she wanted me away, I talked fast, telling her about my investigation of the Hughes’ theft, or possible theft, and left out the two murders.

“Can’t help you,” she said. “I wasn’t even a potential contributor to the festivities, though I probably talked too much. I usually do. I got the reputation that I was a witty kid when I wrote my first and only play. I’ve been trying to live up to it ever since. That is one hell of a burden to carry, Peters.”

“There are worse,” I said. “Then why were you there?”

“I went with Ben Siegel. It was him that Hughes wanted to meet.”

“Why?” I asked.

“If you’re working for Hughes, why don’t you ask him, or is he on his way around the world on a kite?” she said.

“Mr. Hughes doesn’t talk very much,” I said, and she nodded in agreement.

“O.K.,” she said. “Hughes said that when the war broke out, he wanted Ben to organize some friends in Europe to act as a kind of information network. We were going to talk about it that night, but Hughes broke up the party.”

“What kinds of friends does Siegel have in Europe?”

She looked at me as if I were from the hills of Dakota.

“Criminals,” she said, “drug dealers, killers. Bugsy Siegel knows a lot of people.”

“I didn’t know it was that Siegel,” I said.

She gave me a broad fake grin.

“You are one hell of a detective, Peters. Remind me to call you if I ever lose my mind. Now if you’ll let me get back to my nonwork…”

I left, promising that I might be back. She said she was looking forward to it, but her eyes said she wasn’t. You can’t charm them all. I left without seeing a single movie star or anyone I knew, which was fine with me.

My next stop was Bugsy Siegel’s. I had a pair of addresses and some phone numbers. I called the first and got no answer. Then I called the second and got someone with raw fish in his mouth. I said I wanted to talk to Siegel. I don’t know what he said, but he went away, and a few minutes later another voice came on.

“What do you want with Mr. Siegel, and how’d you get this number?”

“I’m working for Howard Hughes, and this has something to do with national security. I’d like to see Mr. Siegel for a few minutes, tonight if possible.”

Someone on the other end covered the mouthpiece, and I could hear muffled voices. Then the talker came back. He gave me the address of a small night club on the Strip and told me to be there at five. I said I would and hung up.

I went to Levy’s Grill on Spring, ordered the brisket special and said sweet nothings to Carmen the cashier while I waited for my order. Carmen was looking very ample and busy. Levy’s was crowded. I hovered near the register eyeing her, the customers and the candy on the counter. I even bought a box of chocolate babies and popped them in my mouth for an appetizer as we talked between customers.

“How about wrestling next Tuesday?” I said.

“I don’t think I’ll feel like wrestling next Tuesday,” she said without looking at me, as she checked the total on the tab before her. The little guy who handed her the check counted off bills without looking at her or me.

“I meant we’d go to the East side and watch them,” I explained.

“I know what you mean,” she said, glancing at me with her soft cow eyes. “Where have you been?”

“Busy,” I said. “Big cases, lots of money. Fame, fortune. I met Basil Rathbone today.”

“You didn’t!” she said, always impressed by movie stars.

“I did,” I said.

“Next Tuesday?” she said. I leaned forward with a pleased nod.

“Dinner and wrestling,” I said.

“All right,” she said. “Now leave me alone and stop trying to look down my dress. I’ve got a job.”

Feeling better, I ate the brisket special, left a big tip and gave Carmen a smile when I paid my bill. Then I headed for the Strip and Bugsy Siegel.

A black Caddy pulled into traffic behind me with two guys in it. Maybe I was being followed. Maybe I was just jumpy. I decided not to take a chance, so I circled the block twice, and they were gone. At least I thought they were gone, but as I later discovered, even a sharp-eyed investigator like Toby Peters makes mistakes.