Down for the Count: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Ten) (22 page)

Ralph looked up at the angry man and laughed, not a mean laugh but the laugh of a man giving in to hysteria.

“Sit down, Al,” I said. “I’ve got a plan to make us all happy. I’ll get Howard’s wife to pay you the money he owes you. She’ll want to make good on his IOUs.”

Ralph had stopped laughing suddenly and looked up. There were tears of laughter on his cheeks.

“And what do I do in exchange for this?” Parkman said. “I’m not letting him go. I let him go and the cops think I hit Silvio and Mush, the cops and Lipparini’s bunch. No, you go turn him in and I walk out of this losing a grand instead of my life.”

“All I’m asking for, Al,” I said, “is to give Ralph the opportunity to turn himself in.”

“Why?” Parkman asked, wandering around the room. “He killed people all over the place. He was going to kill you and me.”

“His wife’s a decent woman,” I said. “You keep your mouth shut and stay out of the way till tomorrow and you get two thousand dollars and my appreciation.”

“Cash,” Parkman said. “No check. Cash. Saturday at the latest.”

“No,” I said. “You might have to wait a while for her to put that kind of money together. No more insurance coming in, remember. She might get a few bucks for this cabin, but not four thousand.”

“I’ve got your marker on this, Peters?” Parkman said.

“You’ve got it,” I agreed. “Go down the hill. You’ll find my car at the bottom in some trees off to the left. I’ll be right there.”

Parkman tried to regain some dignity by retrieving his jacket from the closet and sneering at Ralph, but Ralph wasn’t paying any attention. I waited till we heard Parkman going down the hill before I turned to Ralph.

“I’ll meet you on the beach near your house at sundown,” I said. “I’ll keep things quiet, not a word to anyone. You meet me, and we go up to the house and you turn yourself in. I’ll prepare Anne for it before you get there.”

“And if I say no?” he asked.

I didn’t bother to answer. I left him sitting there and followed Parkman down the hill. Ralph could have a few hours to think about it, and I’d have time to make a few calls.

I gave Parkman fifty bucks and dropped him at a hotel in Long Beach, telling him to stay in the room till someone came for him. He complained, but I reminded him of the two thousand and he shut up.

Then I went up Pacific Coast to Sepulveda and found a diner in El Segundo. I made my phone calls and ordered a couple of cheeseburgers, fries, and a strawberry shake. When they came I was surprised that my appetite was gone. I got one burger and the shake down. I shoved the second burger and the fries at a kid who was eating a hot dog. He took them with a grown up “Thanks” followed by, “What happened to you, mister?”

“A raccoon bit me,” I said, and went for the door.

I made it to Santa Monica with about an hour to spare. Anne opened the door.

“Explain,” she said. She was wearing a black skirt and sweater and a determined look.

“I think we’ll have Ralph’s killer soon,” I said. “Maybe tonight.”

“I told you,” she said, stepping back so I could come in, “that won’t bring Ralph back.”

I considered saying, “You never can tell,” but kept my mouth shut.

“The funeral’s tomorrow,” she said. “Will you be going?”

“I’ll go to Ralph’s funeral,” I said.

She stood in the hallway, her hands folded across her breasts, the dwindling light from the sun shining on her and giving her a red tinge. She looked beautiful.

“Now,” she went on, “why all the questions about Ralph’s cabin and places we—”

“A mistake,” I said, stepping past her toward the kitchen. “One of my dumb mistakes. Can I have something to eat?”

“Anjelica’s gone for the day,” she said, shaking her head. “I’ll make you a sandwich.”

Through the window I could see the sun going down. She made a tuna sandwich, and I ate. Then I drank a beer and a coffee till the sun was just about gone. If someone knocked at the door, I’d have to do some fast explaining, some very fast explaining, but I wasn’t going to do that until I was sure.

“I can’t—” she started to say, and then was stopped by a quartet of sounds outside. They might have been a backfiring truck, but they weren’t.

“What?” she said.

“Probably nothing,” I said casually, trying to keep the sandwich and the beer down. “I’ll go take a look. You have some cake or something? I’m really hungry.”

“I’ll look around,” she said wearily, and I walked slowly toward the front door. It was hard to walk slowly, but I did. When I got to the porch I ran. I could see someone on the beach, but the sun was gone and I couldn’t see clearly who it was until I was about twenty feet away.

There was a man standing there with a gun in his hand. Another man was lying in the sand, no more than five or six feet from where I’d found the body three nights earlier. This time the body really was Ralph Howard’s.

“Son a bitch came up the beach and shot at me,” Jerry Genette said, turning his gun at me. “You set me up.”

“Hold it,” I said. “I didn’t set you up. He was supposed to meet me on the beach and turn himself in. I told you. He thought you were me.”

“And he tried to kill you?” he asked. “You set me up.”

The gun came up at my chest.

“Ralph Howard couldn’t hit a Jap sub if it came up the beach and stopped two feet in front of him. I told you Lipparini’s killer would be here and you could bring him in, make yourself a hero to the good guys and bad guys.”

“You knew he’d try to kill you,” Genette said between clenched teeth.

“I figured he might,” I admitted. “I hoped he wouldn’t.”

I said it, but I wasn’t sure I meant it. Ralph Howard lying there dead wasn’t much easier to explain than Ralph Howard knocking at the door and saying, “I’m home dear, what’s for dessert?”

“I’m not going to forget this, Peters,” Genette said.

“What are you so upset about?” I asked reasonably. “When the cops come, I’ll explain it was all self-defense. They’ll understand.”

“I’m not staying here to talk to cops,” Genette said. “I’ve got a better idea.”

“I’ve got some friends up at the house watching,” I said, looking back as the lights went on in the house. “Let’s make a deal. You take Howard’s body away and make it disappear, and we forget about the whole thing. You have Lipparini’s killer, and I have a case of amnesia.”

He looked up and down the beach for a few seconds, chewed on the inside of his lip, thought about it, and said, “Okay.”

I walked up to the house without looking back and went in. My knees were trembling and my foot was throbbing when I got to the kitchen and saw the slice of chocolate cake.

“What was it?” Anne said, pouring coffee.

“Nothing, truck,” I said, holding my hands under the table to keep them from shaking.

“Well,” she said with a smile, “you’re in luck. I found your favorite, chocolate cake.”

“My favorite,” I agreed, and wondered how I was going to get past the next few minutes.

I left an hour later and called Parkman at the hotel in Long Beach.

“Al, Howard is dead. Lipparini’s people got to him. You’re off the hook. They know he killed Mush, Silvio, and Lipparini and not you. A cop named Meara is going to come and get you later tonight. You tell him you got scared when Mush and Silvio got shot and you ran. You’ve been holed up since then.”

“Wait,” he said.

“Howard is really dead now,” I explained. “The widow will collect the insurance.”

“You got a deal,” he said. “Do me a favor. Don’t let me see you again.”

He hung up, and I drove to the Santa Monica police station, asked the desk man, who was reading a
Collier’s
, where Meara’s office was, and found my way. He was down a hallway on the main floor, a dark hallway. The door was dark wood. I knocked and Meara bellowed, “No one locks the damn doors in a police station, Peters.”

I walked in. Meara was sitting behind the desk with his feet up on it. His jacket was off and his shoulder holster rested on his stomach. He was drinking from a coffee cup, but from the look on his face I didn’t think there was coffee in the cup.

“I’ll tell you where Parkman is,” I said.

He laughed, took a drink, and shook his head. “Parkman,” he said. “Parkman. I just got a report on our friend on the beach. You remember our friend on the beach, the one you and your nigger found.”

He took another drink.

“I remember,” I said. “Howard …”

“No,” he said holding his belly. “Not Howard. Unless Howard had all his teeth pulled out and bought cheap dentures about five or six years back. If he did, Howard’s dentist is going to want to know whose teeth he was working on for the last decade or two.”

“So—” I started.

“Where is Howard and who is the guy with the dentures?” He took another big drink and finished what was in the cup. “You want a drink? Eighty proof Chase and Sanborn …”

“No thanks,” I said. “Howard’s dead. Lipparini’s people caught up with him. Howard killed Lipparini and those two guys at Reed’s.”

“No go, Peters,” he said, yanking a bottle out of his drawer and sitting up to pour it. “You could be pulling something with Howard and the grieving widow. There’s insurance money going down here.”

“And you want some of it.”

He threw the bottle at me and stood up. “You start that kind of shit and I’ll bite off the other ear. You prove Howard’s dead, and I don’t care if she collects. All I want to be sure of is nobody gets away with killing people.”

“A body will turn up tomorrow,” I said. “No face, like the guy on the beach, but this one will have a mouthful of teeth.”

“If it doesn’t happen,” he said, swaying behind the desk, “I come looking for you. You know, Peters, I like it better when it ends this way. No fast lawyers getting people short terms, no long trials. Cleaner this way, but the body better turn up.”

“It will,” I said.

“I’ll hold on to Parkman for a day or two just in case,” he said with a grin on his pink face. “If there’s no body, Parkman and I go to the library and he tells what he knows and no insurance and some bad nights for the widow. You wouldn’t want bad nights for the widow?”

I gave him my own nasty grin and told him where to find Parkman. I had just turned my back when Meara spoke behind me. “I tell you I got a kid in the Army, Peters?”

“Yeah, Meara, you told me.”

“He’s the only kid we got. Could get himself killed.”

I went through the door and got out of Santa Monica. The airport wasn’t far and I could just make it.

11

J
oe Louis was in a little room inside the airport not far from where Trans World Flight 29 would soon be taking off for Chicago with connections to New York. When I went in, he was in his uniform, shoes polished, looking out of a small window at the planes taking off. According to the woman who had led me to the room, the Champ was in there instead of in the regular waiting room to protect him from fans who might recognize him.

“It’s all over, Champ,” I said as he turned to face me.

He listened quietly while I told him the tale, leaving out some of the details. I had the feeling that he didn’t care much, that there were other things on his mind. All he was really interested in was that he was off the hook.

“You could use a good cut man,” he said, looking at my face and ragged ear. “You’re a mess, worse than I looked after the first Schmeling fight.”

“You bounced back,” I said. “I can do it. I just heal a little slower as I age. It goes with the body.”

“I guess,” he said. “How much I owe you?” He had his hand under his Army jacket and on his wallet when I stopped him.

“You don’t owe me anything,” I said. “I owe you a refund. You overpaid, Champ.”

He took his hand off his wallet and gave me a puzzled look. “First time anybody ever said no when I had my hand on my wallet,” he said. “You ain’t a rich man.”

“I ain’t a rich man,” I agreed. “But I like to think I’m not a thief either. Next time you’re in L.A. after the war and you’ve got a fight, leave two tickets for me at the box office, if you remember.”

“I’ll remember,” he said, and then he paused as if he had something more to come out with and didn’t know how to say it. “You got any kids?” he asked.

“No kids, no wife,” I said.

“I talked to Marva, that’s my wife, this morning after the police finished talking to me. We’re going to have a baby. I’m gonna be a father.”

“Great,” I said, holding out a hand.

He took it with a small smile. “I like kids,” he said. “I’m gonna try to put things together, be a good husband, father, you know?”

He was playing with the Army cap in his hands, rolling it into a cylinder and unrolling it in his big hands.

“It’s hard,” he said, shaking his head. “I can train, do the running, eat the food, get the sleep. Always do what Chappie told me, but he’s gone. Then when the women come or some friend needs a few hundred dollars, I can’t say no, haven’t got the will for that. I gotta work on it.”