Fala Factor (2 page)

“A beauty, Arn,” I said before going out through the open garage door. I was in no hurry. I had nothing waiting for me in the office besides a list of phone calls to make to see if I could pick up some fill-in for hotel detectives who might be going on vacation. I also had a lead on some guard work at Grumman's. A guy I had once worked with at Warner Brothers told me they were beefing up their night staff now that they had government contracts, and maybe I could get on part-time.

That was going to be the last call on my list. The Grumman lead was desperation, a confession that I was up against it. I had told myself five years earlier that I was not going to put on a uniform again, not no time, not never. I'd made my vow after wearing the Glendale cop uniform and the uniform of the security staff at Warners. There was no way I was going to put on a uniform again unless there was nothing else to do. Not never comes sooner than you think when you have to come up with the rent and enough cereal and eggs to stay alive.

I took in the late morning sun heading down Main Street toward the Farraday, which is on Hoover and Ninth. I went past the row of Mexican
tiendas
at the Plaza end of Main. Some guys were arguing in Spanish in a barber shop. One of the guys was the barber, who held a scissors in his hand. In any other part of town, you could be sure the barber would win the argument, but there's no one more stubborn than a Mexican who knows he's right, even if the other guy is holding a sharp scissors and has him pinned in a chair. Some tinny music blared out of a phonograph shop as I crossed over and passed the new city hall that looked like one of those Egyptian obelisks with windows.

Now I was in my neighborhood, crowds passing dark working men's clothing stores, storefront burlesque houses, and nickel movie theaters. Before the war the crowds moved slowly, people from other neighborhoods looking for bargains, and people from this neighborhood just looking at the ground and shuffling along. The war had, changed that. Now people were hurrying and the faces were those of kids in soldier and sailor uniforms with little bird chests, looking scared or trying with little success to look tough. The street smelled of the stuff they cleaned the uniforms with.

The crowd thinned out when I hit Hoover. The smell of the lobby of the Farraday was one of the things I could count on. Not many people love the smell of Lysol. I love it. The Farraday Building perspired Lysol, which Jeremy Butler used generously to try to fight off mildew and decay. Lysol was the dominant smell, but there were others beyond it in the dark echoing hall as I paused in front of the lobby directory to be sure my name was still there. Seeping through the Lysol was the smell of drunks who kept finding places to sleep in the nooks and crevices of the Farraday until they were routed gently but firmly by the giant landlord, Jeremy, who lived in a comfortable apartment there, the only apartment in the building, maintained only so he could be near the trenches for his constant battle with dirt, grime, and humanity. Jeremy never complained. He simply swept, polished, cleaned, and carried on with the knowledge that the process never ended. The other smells of the Farraday vied for my attention when I got past the lobby and headed for the wide stairs, listening to the echo of my own footsteps. I smelled sweat, bacon, oil, glue, paper from the four floors of cubbyhole offices that housed bookies, doctors who might not be doctors, companies that did not do business that anyone could identify, and photographers whose sample photos in the hall dated back to the days of silent movie stars.

I whistled as I went up, ignoring the tug inside my body that reminded me that a sore back was never more than a trauma away. By the fourth floor I wasn't feeling quite so loving about the Farraday, and when I paused in front of the door to Shelly Minck's office, my good mood had disappeared. I was getting close to that uniform, and the sound of Shelly's drill didn't help.

Shelly was constantly changing the sign on the glass outside our office. He had a deal with one of the tenants in the Farraday, Kevin Potnow the photographer, who also did a bit of signpainting. Shelly took care of Kevin's teeth and Kevin did photographs of Shelly and his wife Mildred and changed the lettering on our door when a new idea struck Shelly for drawing in clientele who happened to be passing by the darkened door on the fourth floor of the building on their way to oblivion.

The current lettering, in gold, read:

S. D
AVID
M
INCK, D.D.S
.,
L.L.D
.,
O.S
.,
B.B
.,
PH.B
.

D
ENTIST AND
O
RAL
S
URGEON

In small, black letters below this was written:

T
OBY
P
ETERS
, I
NVESTIGATIONS

The
t
in Peters was almost gone. I went in, ignored the filthy anteroom, and went through the next door into Shelly's suite. The dishes were still piled high in the sink in the corner, with various dental tools peeking up out of pots in which at some unremembered point in time chili had been burned. The coffee was bubbling black in the pot on the hot plate and Shelly, short, bald, and glaring myopically through his thick, slipping glasses, was chewing on his cigar butt and drilling away at the mouth of someone who looked familiar.

Shelly paused to wipe his sweaty hands on his dirty smock as his voice hummed “The Man I Love.”

“Seidman,” I said, looking at the cadaverous man in the dental chair, “what the hell are you doing here?”

Seidman refused the not-too-clean cup of water handed to him by Shelly for rinsing and spat into the white porcelain bowl.

“You're a detective. Figure it out,” Shelly said, searching for some instrument beneath the pile of metal on the table nearby. “We don't need William Powell for this one.” He chuckled. “A man is in a dental chair.” Shelly looked up grinning, the blunt instrument he had been seeking now in his hand. “A dentist,” he went on, pointing the instrument at his own chest, “is standing over him and a white cloth covers the man from the neck down.”

“A nearly white cloth,” I said.

“As you will,” Shelly said, grandly removing his cigar so that he could cough and adjust his glasses. “But one might conclude that the said Seidman is having his dental health looked after.”

“I'm not sure that would be a reasonable conclusion, Shelly,” I said.

“You can't insult me, Toby,” Shelly said, turning again to his patient and indicating that he wanted Seidman to open his mouth.

“Oh, I can insult you, Shel. It just doesn't have any effect,” I said, stepping closer and looking at Seidman.

“I dropped by to see you,” Seidman said, arresting Shelly's hand in midflight, blunt instrument poised. “Minck said he saw something wrong with my front tooth. So …”

“Right, Shelly's hypnotic,” I agreed. “He reeks of confidence.”

“Can't insult me,” Shelly sing-songed, moving his head from side to side to get a better look at Seidman's offending tooth.

“Phil wants to see you. This afternoon,” Seidman managed to say before Shelly inserted the drill and looked back at me through thick lenses to let me know who was in charge here. Sergeant Steve Seidman was my brother's partner. My brother was Lieutenant Phil Pevsner, Los Angeles Police Department, Wilshire District. Maybe he just wanted to give me the semiannual name lecture. Phil was never quite sure whether he was pleased that I used the name Peters instead of Pevsner. On the one hand, it kept people from associating us with each other. On the other hand, he didn't like the idea that I didn't use the name I'd been born with. Hell, I didn't even use the brains I had been born with. Some wild thing had been born with and in me, a banshee or a dybbuk. I was strange, wonderful, with new worlds to conquer every day, like the lobby of a fleabag hotel on Broadway or the dark night corridors of a defense plant while wearing a gray uniform two sizes too big.

“I'll drop by,” I told Seidman, but I didn't think he heard me over the drill. So I shouted to Shelly, “Any messages, Shel? Anything new?”

“Sugar rationing books are ready,” he shouted back around his cigar as Seidman's tooth gave way.

“That's not what I had in mind,” I shouted. “Have I had any calls?”

“No calls,” bleated Shelly.

“Thanks,” I said, reaching for the coffee and trying to catch sight of Seidman's face. I had never seen any expression on Seidman's pale face, but I was sure that if anything could bring some life to it, it would be Shelly at work. Seidman seemed to be as calm as usual. He was the perfect partner for my brother, whose emotions tingled on the surface of his face and in his fists like one of No-Neck Arnie's overheated batteries.

The coffee was hot and awful, just the way Shelly liked it. I had my own cup, a ceramic job that had W
ELCOME TO
J
UAREZ
hand painted on it along with a little picture of a sombrero. No one was supposed to touch the cup but me, though I suspected Shelly sometimes went for it when nothing clean was left.

Cup in hand, I reached for the knob to my office door.

“Almost forgot,” Shelly said, looking at me over his shoulder. “Lady came in about ten minutes ago, just before Sergeant Seidman. She's in your office waiting for you. Between you and me and the OPA, she could use some dental work on that overbite. You might suggest she stop and see me.”

Since my office is not soundproof or Shellyproof, there was no doubt the woman inside had heard him, especially since at that point I had the door partly open.

In the hope of finding a new client who could save me from the darkness of hotel corridors or worse, I regretted that I hadn't tightened my tie, set my face in a serious frown, and stepped into my office … where I found myself face to face with Eleanor Roosevelt.

“You're Eleanor Roosevelt,” I said.

“I know,” she answered, looking over her glasses with an amused smile. “I'm afraid you will have to do a bit better than that if you are to convince me of your skills.”

I closed the door to cut out some of Shelly's humming and drilling, and stood there looking at her. She had cocked her head back to examine me from the single chair in front of my desk. Her hair, cut short, was dark with gray creeping in. She looked her age, which was fifty-eight, but there was something there that I had never seen in photographs. Sure, she was homely, not much in the way of a chin, an overbite, though not nearly as much as people joked about, and a body without moments. She wore a black dress with little flowers on it and a thin dark coat. But it was her eyes that made the difference, that gave something a newspaper or newsreel picture couldn't catch. They were dark and deep and always looking right at you. From that moment on, every time I talked to her, she gave me all of her attention. She sat now with her hands neatly folded in her lap like an obedient schoolgirl.

“Would you like some coffee?” I said, holding out my Juarez cup to show her what coffee was.

She examined the cup seriously and then said, “No thank you,” as she removed her glasses and put them in a dark case that she pulled out of the May Company shopping bag at her side.

“Is it all right if I sit down?” I said.

“It is your office,” she answered, the smile back, her voice slightly high-pitched, with a back-East accent that reminded me of tea parties and bad jokes about the rich, the kind they have in
The New Yorker
.

I sat and looked at her to the somewhat muffled sound of the drill and of Shelly now singing “Ain't We Got Fun.”

“Did you get my letter?” she asked, leaning forward slightly.

“Letter,” I repeated, cleverly wondering if I should open my top drawer and sweep into it the garbage on my desk, which included the remnants of two day-old tacos from Manny's down the street, a handball, and an almost empty emergency box of Kellogg's All-Bran.

“Right,” I said, trying to wake up. “I got a letter a few weeks back from the White House, a note from some woman named Francis something, said somebody would be in touch with me about a personal matter and … that was you?”

She nodded and opened her eyes wider. “What did you think it was?”

“I don't know,” I said with a shrug. “I thought it was something millions of people were getting. Maybe I wasn't going to get a sugar or gas ration book. Maybe a new law was going into effect to draft fifty year olds.”

She reached into her shopping bag and came out with a small notebook, which she opened after putting on her glasses again. She glanced down at it and returned the notebook to the bag. I wondered what she had bought at the May Company and how they had reacted at the dinnerware counter when Eleanor Roosevelt asked for two hundred juice glasses on sale for the White House.

“You are,” she said, “forty-seven years old, not fifty, and even if the draft age were raised substantially, I doubt that with your back you would be considered an asset to our war effort.”

“I'm not sure what brought you here,” I said, sipping coffee and stopping myself from straightening my tie, “but you must have the wrong Toby Peters.”

Her mouth twitched slightly and her right cheek puffed out. A sound of air slipped between her lips as behind us Shelly launched into “Josephine Please Don't Lean on the Bell,” complete with his famous Eddie Cantor imitation.

“You want me to try to shut him up?” I said, nodding toward the door.

“He sounds irrepressible to me,” she said.

“He is,” I agreed, guessing she meant that nothing short of mayhem would stop Shelly.

“You had a dog when you were a boy,” she said, looking into my eyes for an answer that suddenly seemed very important. For a moment I speculated that Eleanor Roosevelt had wandered away from her keepers, who were frantically searching the streets for her. I had, perhaps, stumbled onto a great White House mystery: The First Lady was nuts.