Tomorrow Is Another day

Chapter 3

"You scared the shit out of me," the old piano player said, his hand on his heart.

"Sorry," I said, stepping away from the wall.

Lou Canton was wearing a ratty bathrobe two sizes too big for him and he was carrying a clear drinking glass with a toothbrush and a can of Dr. Lyon's Tooth Powder in it.

"I'm not a young man," he said. "And with poor Al…"

"Sorry," I repeated:

"It's done," he said with a wave of his hand. "Done is done. You came through the window?"

"Yes," I said.

"Told Lester to fix it a month, two months ago," the old man said. "But did he listen? No, he did not listen. Find what you were lookin' for?"

"I wasn't… yes," I said.

"Good."

He turned his back on me and headed toward the curtain that led to the bandstand.

"Hold it a second," I said.

Canton, his back to me, slumped and shook his head.

"What? I'm tired. This has been a hell of a day. I'm an old fart and I don't sleep so good at night. What? You don't look like a crazy. I look more like a crazy than you do. So, I don't think you're gonna kill me. Al… well, maybe that's another story and you had reasons, but me, I figure it was the other guy. Listen to me, I'm talkin' too much. Happens when you get my age. Nobody listens to you, so you talk to yourself. I don't even listen to me half the time."

"What other guy?" I asked.

"I told Lester," the old man said. "He didn't listen. I told the cops tonight. Did they listen? They didn't listen. Last night. Guy about your height. Thirty, thirty-five. Who knows? Sat at the bar nursing his drink and looking at Al like he was more interesting than Bing Crosby. I'm sorry what happened to Al, but the man had no talent. Couldn't carry a tune. Couldn't remember a bridge. I had to cover for hun every time. Ever carry an overweight baritone over a musical bridge? You drop him and you both look bad."

"This guy…" I prodded, but Canton, who was rubbing a finger of his free hand across his thin mustache, kept going.

"Guy we're talking about looks like a crazy, maybe. You don't look like a crazy."

"Thanks."

"Not a compliment. The truth. What kind of compliment is it to say a guy doesn't look crazy? How old you figure me for?"

He shook the glass in his hand, tinkling brush and can of tooth powder against the sides.

"Sixty-five, maybe a little more," I guessed.

"Eighty," he said. "I played with Isham Jones. Can you believe that? Did piano and even bass for George Metaxa and Paul Whiteman. Did a Caribbean cruise filling in for Claude Thornhill. No one noticed the difference. And now-" He looked around the alcove and shook his head.

"Now, you get old and you sleep on a cot in a bar and talk to a crazy bird."

"The guy at the bar," I reminded him.

"Who knows? Mexican maybe. Or Rumanian. Young more than old. My eyes are good but they're the eyes of a man who has seen a lot. King Oliver said I could read music fifty feet away. With most of those bands, I was the only one could read music even if it was two feet away, if you know what I'm saying to you."

"I know," I said. "About…"

"… the guy at the bar. Dark hair, I think, what was left of it. Getting bald in the front. Jacket like yours, only light-colored. Something written on the pocket. Right here. Something on the pocket. Couldn't read it. Twenty years back, even ten, maybe, I could have, but… anyway, Mexican or Rumanian guy, whatever, Al finishes his set, the guy disappears. Came back the next night. Same thing."

"Maybe Lester remembers him," I said.

"Lester," he said with disgust. "My sister's son. Decent guy but no imagination. He thinks I see things where there ain't things. Can I get to sleep now? They're coming in early to clean the place up and fix the furniture."

"Sorry," I said.

"Nothing," he said with a wave, shuffling away, his slippers clapping against the wooden floor.

"You play a hot piano," I said.

"Thanks," he said, moving into darkness. "A little applause never hurts. Turn off the toilet light when you leave. Don't worry. They took Al away about an hour ago."

"Good night."

He disappeared through the curtain leading to the bandstand without another word.

I went out through the window, walked around the corner to my Crosley, and took Canada to South and made my way over to Los Felix on side streets. I hit Highland in about thirty minutes and was up on the porch and inside Mrs. Plaut's boardinghouse on Heliotrope off of Hollywood Boulevard by two in the morning.

The porch light was off, as they were all up and down the street to thwart the Japanese who might launch kamikaze assaults on rundown Los Angeles neighborhoods in the middle of the night. No one was sure how the Japanese would get close enough to the coast to carry out such an attack, but they had managed a couple of failed attempts from aircraft carriers in the last few years. If the papers were right, the Japanese didn't have anything left to launch a paper plane from, but Lowell Thomas had said on the evening news that they were gathering what was left of their fleet for an attack somewhere. I thought about thousands of Japanese landing in Santa Monica on the beach during a women's volleyball tournament.

I got inside, closed the door gently, slowly behind me and locked it, standing for a beat or two to be sure my landlady, in her rooms to my left, hadn't detected my predawn return. Quiet. Mrs. Plaut had a bird whose name changed as the whim took its owner. But the bird was always covered at night, and while he or she could let out a screech that Butterfly McQueen would envy, he didn't have even a one-word vocabulary.

I took off my shoes and made my way up the stairs, letting experience and instinct guide me past the creaking steps and loose sections of the rickety bannister.

Upper landing and into the bathroom, closing the door behind me before I hit the light switch. Mrs. Plaut had placed heavy red curtains on the small bathroom window. She had sewn a patriotic warning in yellow onto the curtain, one you could not miss whether you were standing, bathing, showering, or sitting. It read: "Flush only when you must. Save paper when e'er you can."

I used the toilet, took off my jacket, and checked on the fifties Clark Gable had given me. Then I washed and shaved with the razor and remnants of a bar of Palmolive stashed in the corner of the medicine cabinet.

I was tired. Back in my room across the hall, Dash looked up at me from the sofa. He blinked once and closed his eyes.

"Hungry?" I said.

He opened his eyes again and considered purring. He was orange, fat, independent, and well fed. He closed his eyes again. I took that for a no. Besides, Dash knew better than to count on me. The window was open and he could do his own shopping. I owed him for saving my life a year earlier, but I didn't owe him enough to take away his independence, turn him into a pet, and make him pretend he liked me.

I took off my clothes, forced myself to hang my jacket and pants in the closet, dropped my socks and underwear on the small pile growing in a corner, and, envelope from Gable in hand, plopped back on the mattress on the floor. I have a bad back. I can't sleep on a bed. I can't sleep on my stomach. In addition to the watch, I inherited a championship snore from my father. I can't sleep in civilized company, but alone and unobserved I can forget murdered baritones and May Company salesmen, Clark Gable and poems written by a killer who may or may not be a Mexican or Rumanian.

I took one last look at the notes from Ramone's killer. They made no more sense to me now than the photograph. I put everything back in the envelope and shoved it under the edge of the mattress. I had forgotten to turn off the lights. I looked around the small room at the ancient overstuffed sofa with the embroidered pillow that read, "God Bless Us Every One," at the Beech-Nut Gum wall clock that told me it was almost three, at the small table near the window with the refrigerator behind it and the tiny sink nearby. It wasn't much, but it was paid for till the end of April. The shelves over the sink were filled with cereal boxes, cans of Spam, tuna, and sardines. The refrigerator contained bread, milk, a rusting twelve-ounce-size V-8 (with the suggestion on the label that V-8 would be delicious if poured over my breakfast eggs), a brick of Durkee's Vegetable Oleomargarine, and an assortment of ground A amp; P coffee. What more could I want?

The lights out.

I forced myself up, careful not to throw my back out, and reached for the switch. The door opened an instant after I hit the switch, and a soft high voice with a German-Swiss accent whispered, "Toby, are you here?"

I turned the light back on and in my boxer shorts greeted Gunther Wherthman.

"Come in," I said.

"No," said Gunther, who wore a blue-velvet robe over pajamas whiter than good vanilla ice cream. "I only wanted to reassure myself that you had returned and were safely ensconced."

"I'm safely ensconced."

Gunther, about a decade younger than me and a foot and a half shorter, plunged his hands into his pockets. His face was as clean shaven and smooth at three in the morning as it was at 8:00 A.M., noon, or midnight. His clear blue-green eyes looked at me and then away. Dash opened his eyes again, looked at Gunther, yawned, and went back to sleep.

"I don't wish to…" he began, but I stepped in with, "What's up, Gunther?"

He closed the door and looked up at me.

"Gwen," he said. "She has returned to San Francisco. Sudden. Emergency. She had a call. An old… someone she knew before."

It wasn't easy for Gunther, who must have been waiting in his room for hours till I tiptoed in. He had met the young, enthusiastic graduate music-history student when I was on a case in San Francisco. It had been love at second thought, and it had been hard on her. I'd seen them looked at, stared at. Gwen was no giant, but she wasn't a little person either and she was still a kid.

"She coming back?"

"I do not know," he said. "She will call in a day, perhaps two."

"I'm sorry," I said. I seemed to be saying that a lot tonight, but it had been a long night.

"I appreciate that," he said. "I have been unable to work since she left this morning."

Gunther was a contract translator. He had been many things. A circus performer. An actor in The Wizard ofOz. One of my clients. We had become best friends and he had gotten me into Mrs. Plant's three years earlier. Business had been booming for Gunther since the war. Most of his work came on subcontracts from universities on government contracts to translate documents, newspapers, and magazines from Europe into English for analysis. The universities could handle German, Spanish, French, and Italian, but for Czech, Hungarian, Bulgarian, and Albanian, Gunther was their little man. He worked in his room, which was right next door to mine and about the same size. He woke up every morning, had breakfast in a three-piece suit, and then went back upstairs where he climbed up on the chair in front of his desk to translate.

"I've disturbed you. I can see you are tired."

"A little," I agreed, knowing I couldn't hide it any more than the stomach I was scratching. I would have to hit the Y.M.C.A. over on Hope with more regularity.

He turned and opened the door.

"Breakfast?" I asked. "I've got coffee and Little Colonel's. We can talk then."

"My concerns can wait, but I fear that Mrs. Plaut is expecting us downstairs for something she has prepared," he said solemnly. "I am concerned that she has an agenda."

"Wait," I said, getting the envelope from under my mattress. I took out the poem and handed it, the clipping, the crumpled photograph of Al Ramone as a dead Confederate soldier, and the bloodstained piece of paper about spelling cage-e to Gunther, who took them solemnly. The four fifties and the card I shoved in the pocket of my Wind-breaker in the closet.

"If you can't sleep, see what you can make of them," I said and then followed up with a thirty-second wrap-up of what had happened in the last seven hours.

When I finished, Gunther simply nodded.

"Good night, Toby," he said.

"Good night, Gunther," I answered.

He backed into the hall, closing the door, and I hit the light switch. Covered by darkness I crawled back onto my mattress on the floor, climbed under my blanket, put my head on the pillow, and went to sleep in no more than the time it took Joe Louis to put Schmeling away in the rematch.

I dreamt of my father holding his wrist up to his ear to listen to the ticking of his watch before he checked the time. My father, dressed in his grocer's apron, smiled, took off the watch, and handed it to me.

I dreamt of Gunther watching Gwen and Clark Gable through a window. Gunther was on my shoulders. Gable and Gwen were on a bed. Then I was on Gunther's shoulders, watching my ex-wife Anne in bed with Clark Gable. With neither Gwen nor Anne did Gable look happy. Then his eyes turned toward Gunther and me watching at the window and he looked disgusted, betrayed.

Dream Three. There are always three with me. Dream Three found Koko the Clown holding one of my hands and Bozo the Dog the other. We were flying through the air over water and Koko kept repeating, "Pretty cagey. Pretty cagey." I thought the dog and the clown were going to drop me. I felt the rush of air under my boxer shorts. I couldn't catch my breath and then I woke up and found daylight flushing the room and Mrs. Plaut standing at the foot of my mattress wearing a blue dress, a white apron, and a very serious look. She was carrying a big yellow bowl in her arms. There is not much of Mrs. Emma Plaut, but what there is is feisty and nearly deaf.

"It's nine," she said.

I tried to sit up. Dash, who had huddled next to my left leg during one of my nightmares, mewed in annoyance and stretched.

"Late breakfast will be at nine-twelve," said Mrs. Plaut.

I grunted something.

"Mr. Gunther is downstairs waiting. Mr. Hill also. And Miss Reynel."

"I know it's pointless," I said. "I know, but something I can't control inside me keeps making me say this. Mrs. Plaut, will you please knock before you enter my room. Please knock and wait till I say 'come in?' "

"Smell this," she said, thrusting the bowl down in front of my nose.

I smelled. It smelled sweet. It smelled comforting.

"Smells good," I said.

"Orange snail muffins," she said, pulling the bowl back.

"I will put them on the table in eleven minutes. I expect they will be consumed within a minute after."

"Orange snail muffins?" I asked.

"They contain no snails, if that is your concern," she said. "I believe my Aunt Cora Nathan Wing fed the batter to snails she raised back in Arizona."

"Why?…" I began but caught myself. I really did not care why Aunt Cora Nathan Wing raised snails.

"Ten minutes," Mrs. Plaut said, backing out and expertly balancing the heavy bowl in one hand as she closed the door behind her. "And I cannot be responsible for the bad table manners or vicious appetite of Miss Reynel and Mr. Hill."

Dash was out the window and I was out of bed, out of the bathroom, and on the way down the stairs, a pocketful of fifties in my wallet, at eight minutes after, according to the Beech-Nut clock, when the phone rang.

I turned, took the four steps back up, and picked up the hall phone.

"Peters?" came a man's voice, full of enthusiasm and energy.

"Peters," I agreed.

"Sorry about last night," he said.

"Last night? It was a long night with a lot to be sorry for. Give me a hint."

"I left you a note in the Mozambique toilet."

"I got it," I said.

"Figure it out?" he asked brightly.

"I don't like puzzles," I said.

"You can have help on this one," he said. "You must know people who like puzzles."

"I'll work on it."

"Good," he said. "You have almost eight hours."

"I don't do puzzles," I said, "but I've got another trick. I can describe people from their voices."

"Okay, my friend. Give it a try."

"I'm not your friend," I said. "I'm late for orange snail muffins and you killed a pathetic third-rate lounge singer. My friends don't do things like that."

"I'm waiting," said the man. "But I can't wait long. I've got groceries to buy, a letter to write home, and a murder to plan."

"You're about thirty, maybe a little older," I began. "Dark. Hair, what's left of it, combed and brushed back. About average height. Good build and you like to wear a gray windbreaker with something written over or on the pocket."

Silence on the other end of the line.

"How'm I doing?" I asked.

The sound of someone breathing on the other end.

"Can't read what it says on the pocket but I'll figure it out in a day or two," I went on. "I know a fortune teller named Juanita who can give me a hand. Look, I've got to run. Give me a call later or, better yet, give me your phone number and I'll get back to you."

"They killed my father," he said quietly but clearly.

"They?"

"A man of talent, a talented man, a man who could have left his mark on the screen instead of in a dirty ditch."

"Mr. Peelers," Mrs. Plaut screamed from downstairs.

"Hear that?" I said. "If I don't get downstairs, I'll miss the orange snail muffins. You wouldn't want to be responsible for that."

I could smell the muffins. They smelled good.

"Your name's on the list too. You and the movie star," he said bitterly. "But the others go first. After Varney I'll come for you and the king."

"I really would love to stand here all day listening to your threats, but I'm hungry and I haven't had my coffee. Just tell me fast what's going on."

"You know what I look like from my voice. Figure out what I'm doing and why."

He hung up. So did I.

I pulled out my pocket spiral notebook and made some notes with the stub of a pencil I had picked up at No-Neck Arnie the mechanic's. Then I checked the telephone directories on the table next to the phone. No Lionel Varney in greater Los Angeles. I threw a nickel in the phone and pleaded with the information operator to track Varney down. She had five Varneys. No Lionels. I hung up.

"Mr. Peelers," Mrs. Plaut called again, impatiently.

I shuffled to the bathroom, threw water on my face, Jeris hair tonic on my head, and hurried down the stairs. I walked through Mrs. Plant's living room, where mismatched mementos and oddities from the Plaut family past were neatly laid to rest. A Tiffany lamp with a shade depicting a naked lady on the moon stood next to the sewing chair, a monstrous dull-orange thing of cotton with big arms. A seaman's chest stood under the curtained window facing the front porch. The oriental rug was worn almost to a single tone and only the hint of a design. The rest of the room was restaurant chairs with knitted antimacassars and a bird cage in which the bird was nibbling on seed and gurgling to itself.

In the dining room sat Mrs. Plaut, Gunther, Mr. Hill the mailman, Miss Reynel, a plate in the center of the table on which rested two huge blood-red muffins, and cups filled with coffee.

"You are tardy," Mrs. Plaut said, looking at me with the eyes of my third-grade teacher, Mrs. Eileen Eck.

"Phone call," I said, sitting in the open chair, "sorry."

"Tardy to the party and you miss the ice cream," Mrs. Plaut said, reaching over for my plate and putting a muffin on it,

"I was talking to a murderer," I explained. "He's killed two men. Plans to kill two more before he comes after me and Clark Gable."

This information did not appear to get through to anyone but Miss Reynel, who put down her blue-on-white coffee cup and smiled at my dark but pointless humor. Miss Reynel was a ballroom-dancing instructor at Arthur Murray's. She was recently divorced, pretty of painted face, sultry of red hair, the far side of forty-five, and far too skinny for me to dream about. Mr. Hill, however, looked at the recent addition to our happy home as a vision in the mold of Katharine Hepburn. Mr. Hill spoke of this affliction only with his eyes. Mr. Hill was seldom heard to speak, though at Mrs. Plaut's annual eggnog and family New Year's party he was known to wind up his courage, drink himself into a state which he called happiness, and sing Irish ballads with remarkably little skill.

"Coffee's great," I said, looking down at the muffin.

"Great," echoed Miss Reynel, who was dressed for Monday morning in a don't-touch-me yellow suit with Joan Crawford shoulders.

"Try the muffin," Mrs. Plaut said.

I looked around the table. All but Gunther had, if the crimson crumbs told the truth, consumed at least one of the massive lumps. Gunther's was untouched.

"How are you this morning?" I asked Gunther, pulling the plate a little closer to me.

"Without appetite," he said, gazing at the muffin in front of him, which approximated the size of his head.

"You'll like it," said Mrs. Plaut.

"Why is it red?" I asked.

"You wouldn't want it its natural color," Mrs. Plaut explained as I tore off a piece and started to raise it to my mouth. I took a tentative bite and washed it down with some coffee.

"Not bad," I said.

Mr. Hill smiled. Miss Reynel carefully dabbed the corners of her mouth for crumbs.

"It's supposed to be better than bad," Mrs. Plaut said. "It is supposed to be good."

"It's good," I said.

"Ingredients are difficult to obtain," she said, placing her hands palm-down on the table, ready for business.

"I can appreciate that," I said, taking some more orange snail muffin.

All eyes were on me. I had the feeling I was supposed to say something, but I had no idea what it was.

"We have all agreed, Mr. Peelers," Mrs. Plaut said, "to pool our ration-book resources and comply with the point system which is effective today."

Mrs. Plaut looked around the table for confirmation. She got it from Mr. Hill and Miss Reynel. Gunther was looking at the muffin before him as if it were a ruby crystal ball that would tell him how Gwen and her old boyfriend were getting along in San Francisco.

"The goal of point rationing," Mrs. Plaut said, pouring me more coffee, "is to give us as wide a choice as possible within any group of rationed commodities and to encourage the use of more plentiful foods in preference to the scarcer items."

"Sounds good to me," I said.

"War Ration Book Two will allow each person, including infants, forty-eight points during the first period, for most canned goods and processed soups, vegetables and fruits, and dried beans and peas. More scarce canned foods will require more points."

"Fascinating," I said, working on my muffin.

"The government has urged us to use more fruits and vegetables, spaghetti, and other foods for which no ration stamps are required."

"I see," I said.

"If you did not get your Book Two last week at the school, you can pick it up between three and five Friday. You have to have Book One with you, however. If you lost Book One you have to apply in writing to the ration board. At the time of registering for Book Two you must declare all the coffee you have on hand in excess of one point per person over fourteen years of age when rationing went into effect November 28 of last year. For each excess pound of coffee, one stamp will be taken from Book One. However, Stamp Twenty-five in Book One is good for one pound of coffee through March 21, which means it must last six weeks instead of five, as before. Stamp Eleven in Book One is good for three pounds of sugar through March 15."

"Could you go over that one more time?" I asked, showing my slightly gap-toothed but reasonably Teel-white teeth.

"You are joshing me," Mrs. Plaut said seriously. "A man in your business has little room for levity."

I was not quite sure what business she was referring to. At various times, Mrs. Plaut believed I was an exterminator or a book editor. I was and had been editing Mrs. P.'s family memoirs for over a year, chapter by chapter as she completed them.

"You are right," I said.

"As I see it, you have an obligation to contribute."

"You can have half my food-ration stamps," I said. "I'm keeping my A, B, and C unit coupons for gas and tires."

"Period Four Coupons," Mrs. Plaut parried.

"Period Four?" I asked, backing up.

"Fuel oil," she said triumphantly.

"They're yours."

She sat back and looked at her boarders; the conquering hero.

"It's been a long war," I said.

"Particularly hard on a sweet tooth," Mrs. Plaut said with a sigh. "More coffee? Another muffin?"

Sweet tooth. I'd forgotten Shelly Minck. I looked at my watch, which told me it was eight. I refused its sprung lies and asked Gunther the time. Without taking his eyes from the muffin, he pulled out his pocket watch and turned it to me. Ten.

" 'Scuse me," I said, getting up and moving fast toward the door.

"Don't forget," Mrs. Plaut said. "The book."

"I won't," I said, not knowing whether she meant the chapter of her book I was supposed to be reading or the ration book she had wheedled out of me.

I went up the stairs fast in spite of the fact that going upstairs fast has thrown my back out six times. As I ran, I pulled a nickel from my pocket and was reaching for the coin slot on the upstairs pay phone while I was still moving. I dialed Shelly's and my office. The phone rang. I let it ring. A dozen times. No answer. Maybe good. If I couldn't reach him, maybe Chief G. Lane Price of the Glendale Police couldn't either. I hung the phone up and started down the stairs. Gunther stood at the bottom looking up.

"I've thought about this ca-gee," he said. "The one in the note you gave me."

I stopped when I got to the bottom and looked at him expectantly.

"It could be the Hungarian word for bad spring wine," he said.

"Doesn't fit," I said, walking toward the front door with Gunther at my side.

"Kah-Chee," he tried. "The Nepalese chant of extreme contrition."

"Not likely," I said, opening the door. The sun was shining.

"Then simply cagey," Gunther went on. "The American slang word for protectively cautious and clever."

"Don't think so, Gunther," I said, stepping out.

"Without knowing how it is spelled, it is difficult to pursue."

"I appreciate that," I said, pulling out my car key.

"The most likely solution, however," Gunther said, "is that KG. are initials, initials of the next victim."

"That one I like," I said. "Keep at it."

"I shall," he said as I hurried down the cement path to the curb where my Crosley was parked.

I got in, started the engine, and waved at Gunther, who was standing solemnly under the photograph of Eleanor Roosevelt nailed to the white wood behind him. Mrs. Plaut thought it was Marie Dressier.