Buried Caesars (18 page)

“Pine dro … I haven’t finished your manuscript yet,” I said. “Two men have been murdered. I was locked in the tower of a castle in the desert and escaped with the help of an assault by the United States Army.”

“Excuses,” she said, finally getting some small screw to turn. “Where would my family be if Grandfather Stoltz hadn’t joined the wagon train from St. Louis?”

“I don’t know.” I said.

“Probably Sandusky, Ohio,” she supplied pertly.

“I’ll have it read by tomorrow,” I promised. “I left it in my office before the murders. I’ve got a new photograph of Marie Dressier.”

I retrieved the Beery photo and handed it to her. She let the radio rest in her lap while she examined the photograph.

“You’re sure this one is Miss Marie Dressier?” she asked, with suspicion.

“On the set of
Grand Hotel
,” I lied.

She frowned at the photograph, seemed ready to ask another question and changed her mind.

“I will place it back on the porch,” she said, putting the photograph down next to her chair. “Please do not shoot it again.”

“I won’t,” I promised.

“People have been looking for you,” she said, as I tucked the cat under my arm, grabbed the groceries and started up the stairs.

“People?”

“A man with no manners who had a case of the pox when he was a child, and two jesters in overalls who looked like my friend Selma Rice’s dogs,” she explained. “I did not like their style. I suggest you seek more amiable friends.”

“That is my goal in life, Mrs. Plaut,” I said, getting up one more step.

“It will serve you well,” she agreed.

“Good night,” I said.

“Good night,” she said, and moved her nose inside the small black box of screws, tubes and wires.

Since there was no lock on my door, or any of the doors in Mrs. Plaut’s boarding house, and since my .38 was probably in the pocket of Conrad or Wylie, I went into Gunther’s room next to mine. Gunther was in San Francisco and I was sure he wouldn’t mind as long as I kept the place clean. If Pintacki and his men came looking for me, I’d hear them and have time to go out Gunther’s window and down the fire ladder against the wall.

I knew Gunther would have some delicacies in his small refrigerator, like gnu liver pâté and pickled quail eggs, but I stuck with what was in the brown bag I placed on a polished table. I vowed to keep away from Gunther’s desk and books, and protect whatever I touched. I gave the cat a bowl of milk, which was probably not good for him, and a can of tuna, which looked good to me.

I ate my Wheaties and a Spam sandwich with Miracle Whip, and tried to figure out what my next move might be. It was simple. Pintacki had the MacArthur papers. Pintacki wanted me. I’d make it easy for him to find me and then I’d get him to give me MacArthur’s campaign papers. I’d leave the details for later. When I finished dinner, the cat made noises like he wanted to go out. I could have opened the window. I knew he could jump from Mrs. Plaut’s second floor, but I didn’t know how he could get back in. The hell with it. I opened the window. He went for it, bounded up to the sill, wagged his abbreviated tail, looked out into the night and leaped.

I left the window open, propped one of Gunther’s chairs under the doorknob, took off my shoes and lay down on Gunther’s sofa—a cousin of the one in my furnished room, except the little doilies on the arms of his were clean and white. I needed a shave, a bath, clean teeth and a new outlook on life. None of them were on the way that night. I closed my eyes and let the automatic part of my brain worry about the return of the cat or Pintacki and his boys.

I slept great. No dreams I can remember, though I had the feeling I had been dreaming when the sound of a door opening woke me. Gunther’s chair was firmly in place under the doorknob. The sound was coming from my room. I almost checked my watch but I stopped myself and looked around. Gunther had a desk clock. I rolled off the couch and squinted at it. It was a little after five. Mrs. Plaut wouldn’t be in my room for at least another two hours.

I could hear movement in my room, and the sound but not the words of two male voices. I grabbed my shoes and my Windbreaker and went for the open window. As I put one bare foot over the sill and searched for the top rung of the fire ladder, I could hear someone trying Gunther’s door. When I’d gone down five or six rungs I could hear someone pushing at the door. When I hit the damp morning ground, I could hear, above me, Gunther’s door being forced open and the chair clattering into the room. I ran for the corner of the house and almost made it.

“There he is,” I could hear Pintacki say from Gunther’s window. This was followed by a bullet cracking through the crisp morning. The bullet hit Mrs. Plaut’s cement path behind me.

I got around the corner of the house and heard Pintacki’s voice: “Wylie, you have no goddam skill with that weapon whatsoever. Get out in front.”

I ran. My back, stiff from sleeping on Gunther’s soft sofa, told me to slow down, but my back didn’t know what I knew. I kept running, my feet slapping against the asphalt. Birds were chirping and the air felt California moist, green and new. Nothing was on the street but a milk truck that rolled lazily to a stop in front of a house in the middle of the block.

My Crosley was where I’d left it, but the two front tires were flat. Pintacki had covered my retreat. I glanced over at the door of Mrs. Plaut’s boarding house in time to see Conrad and Wylie step out on the porch, each of them carrying a pistol.

Pintacki’s DeSoto was double-parked in front of Mrs. Plaut’s, which gave me an idea. I couldn’t outrun them even if my back were perfect. I had no gun. I had no car. I was barefoot. Hiding on Heliotrope wasn’t likely. Conrad and Wylie started down the white wooden steps toward me and paused because, instead of running away from them, I was headed down the middle of the street toward Mrs. Plaut’s, knowing surprise was my only chance. Once they figured out what I was doing, and I knew from my limited experience with them that it would take some major mental effort on their part, they would cut me off and cut me down before I got the their car.

But before they figured out what was happening, Mrs. Plaut, wearing a blue bathrobe, came running out of the house—clutching over her head in both hands the dying shell of the radio she had been working on the night before.

“Mountebanks,” she shouted, bringing the radio down on Conrad’s head before he could fully turn and face her. Conrad’s knees buckled and he slipped down the steps to the sidewalk. Wylie turned to his partner’s aid and aimed his pistol at Mrs. Plaut’s head. I was only a few feet from the DeSoto but I stopped, barefoot and panting, wondering if I could get to Mrs. Plaut in time to help her without getting myself killed.

Mrs. Plaut answered my question by bringing her trusty radio shell down on Wylie’s arm. A wild shot from Wylie’s pistol tore through the screen door into the house. A beat later, Pintacki staggered out, clutching his left shoulder and making a pained face like Our Gang’s Alfalfa.

Doors were starting to open up and down Heliotrope. I clutched at the door of the DeSoto. It was open. Not only was it open, they had left the key in the ignition and the motor running for a quick getaway after my murder.

I opened the car door, threw my shoes and Windbreaker onto the front seat, followed them, slammed the door, hit the lock and threw the car into first. The wounded trio headed toward me, Wylie holding his arm, Pintacki holding his shoulder and Conrad staggering in a daze. I gave them a wave and took off down the street. In the side-view mirror I saw Pintacki step into the street. I was hoping he’d be yelling, cursing, raging, but he just stood there bleeding and looking cold and calm as I hit the corner and turned. Mrs. Plaut was on her way down the front steps after the defeated trio.

If there was another battle, I missed it.

T
he DeSoto had a damned good radio. I wondered how much Zanzibar Al would get for it as I turned the corner at Ninth and pulled into the alleyway behind the Farraday. I didn’t worry about where I was parking, just pulled over to the side and got out of the car, leaving the door open.

Zanzibar Al emerged from the dark side of nowhere—behind a cardboard box that had once housed a refrigerator—and coughed his way over to me. He had his blue shirt on today and seemed to have found a new rope to hold up his pants.

“Nice vehicle,” he said shakily.

“It’s yours,” I said, throwing him the keys. He put out his bony hands to catch them but they had jangled onto the cracked concrete before he fully grasped that they were coming.

“I’m not a driver,” he said, bending down to pick up the keys. “No license of any kind for anything. And nowhere to go.”

“Why should you be different?” I said. “It’s yours anyway. Push it over in the shade and live in it.”

Zanzibar Al looked at the keys, the car, and me. He said softly, “Too much responsibility. I don’t want responsibility. I gave it up twenty years back.”

“Then sell the tires, the radio, the seats, whatever you find in the trunk,” I said, heading for the rear door of the Farraday. I went in without looking back.

Jeremy hadn’t turned the night lights off. The place glowed like West Hollywood at night before the war. Since it was a good hour before Jeremy would begin his daily dousing of Lysol, the smell of stale yesterday jittered in the air.

I took the stairs as fast as I could. I hadn’t been to the YMCA on High Street for a couple of weeks and it showed. By the time I hit the sixth floor I was winded and looking back over my shoulder. Even someone as dense as Pintacki and the boys would find me before lunchtime. All they would have to do is open the L.A. directory under Investigators, Private, and there I’d be between Parkinson and Pinkerton.

I knew there was someone in the office as soon as I put my key in the outer door; the lock was open. There was no way the Pintacki crew could have gotten here that fast. They had wheels to find and wounds to bind. I should have at least an hour on them, maybe more.

When I opened the inner door past the waiting alcove, I found Shelly stacking his dental magazines in a somewhat neat pile on his instrument case in the corner. He was singing “Sand in My Shoes,” and dum-dumming most of the words as he scuttled around, glasses at the tip of his nose, cigar in the corner of his mouth. He heard the door and turned around.

“Good morning, Toby,” he said genially. “You look like hell.”

“Shelly, it must be seven in the morning,” I said.

“More like six-thirty,” he said happily. “How you like the clean-up campaign?”

“Long way to go, but impressive. What’s going on?”

“Sam, the patient who was in the chair the other day. You remember him?”

“I remember him, Shel,” I said, angling toward my office door.

“Listen,” Shelly said, taking the cigar out of his mouth and leaning toward me to whisper. “I forgive you for getting him drunk or whatever the hell you did. He’ll be back this morning and that’s all that really counts.”

“Very generous of you, Shel,” I said.

“I think he’s got money. I quoted him a price to perform magic in his mouth and he didn’t flinch,” said Shelly, examining a stained bag of cotton swabs and reluctantly dropping them in the garbage. “He’s coming back this morning.”

“He called?” I asked Shelly, the foe of filth, whose eyes found the sink filled with rusting instruments, sludge-bottomed coffee cups, nightmares of strawberry Danish rolls.

“No, but he has his second appointment this morning,” Shelly said. “I got a feeling things are going my way. And, you know what?”

“No,” I said.

“Mildred called,” he said with a grin, returning the cigar to his mouth and reaching for the back of his dental chair, where his stained, once-white smock lay. “I’ll call her back later. Give her time to think.”

“Good strategy,” I said.

“Probably wants me back,” he said, putting his head and pudgy arms through the smock. “I plan to think about it. Make her sweat in her own juice. Did I tell you about Louise-Marie?”

“You mentioned something about hiring a dental assistant,” I said.

“Louise-Marie Fursthomer,” he said, pausing to tap a drill bit against his palm and imagine Louise-Marie. “A very professional woman. She’ll be coming in later today for an interview. That ought to get Mildred thinking.”

“Good plan, Shel. So you’re cleaning up for your new patient and a dental assistant. You have my blessing. Now, I’ve got work to do,” I said. “Three guys are looking for me, want to kill me. I stole their car and got one of them shot.”

“That can wait,” Shelly said, his head popping out of the smock he was putting on. “I’m talking about something important here, Toby. I’m talking about saving a marriage, Mildred’s and mine. The world is in a terrible state of chaos. Here, look.”

He grabbed a crumpled morning
Los Angeles Times
from his dental chair and held it up.

“There’s going to be a national thirty-five-mile speed limit,” he said: “The Nazis look like they’re going to take Stalingrad. But am I crying? Am I down?”