He Done Her Wrong: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Eight) (Toby Peters Mysteries) (20 page)

I drew in my breath for one last try before I threw Dr. Winning’s tolerant body through the window.

“I’ve been set up,” I said. “Ressner pretended to be you, got me up here, took my wallet, paid someone to call saying she was my sister.”

“Why would Mr. Ressner do that?” Winning said reasonably, putting his pipe down in a neat wooden ashtray.

“To get me out of the way while he goes for Mae West and De Mille. Because he doesn’t like me and thinks he has a score to settle. Because he is a nut, something you are supposed to know something about.”

Winning wrote something and put the pad down.

“Nope,” he said sadly, “Where would Jeffrey Ressner get the kind of money that came here this morning? And your story. Put yourself in my position, Mr. Pevsner.”

“Peters,” I corrected, making a fist.

“Peters,” he said with a smile. “If there is some kind of plot by Ressner, we’ll find out about it. Why not just cooperate with us for a day or so? You can have a nice rest here, all paid for. We’ll check your story, your brother, your friends.”

Our eyes met, and I could tell that I was being humored. I tried to think of a way of breaking through that tolerance, and then I gave up.

“You know what I think I’ll do?” I said.

“No, what?”

“I think I’ll just walk out of here quietly if I can, but if I can’t I’ll bounce you off the wall.”

Winning wasn’t fazed.

“Like a dead echo?” he said and put his hand under the desk. I could hear a buzzing sound in the hall and realized he had hit a hidden button.

I turned to the door as M.C. strode in with Nurse Grace a pace behind him.

“Mr. Pevsner will be staying with us for at least a day or so,” said Winning, tapping his notepad.

“Step out of the way, M.C.,” I said, holding out my arm.

“No trouble,” he said, blocking the doorway.

“I think we’re a little late for that,” I said, easing to the right with the idea of a fast dash past M.C. and a wild end run over Nurse Grace.

“Maybe so,” he said. Everybody in the damn place was reasonable.

“I’m going now,” I said, taking a step forward.

M.C.’s head shook a soft no. I turned to Dr. Winning, who watched with sad paternal eyes. I was one of his now.

I made my move and threw my shoulder at M.C. He side-stepped and grabbed for my arm. He missed. I pushed Nurse Grace and headed down the hall. I got no more than ten feet before M.C. caught me around the waist and lifted me in the air. I felt like a football about to take part in a brutal punt return.

“Go easy, my man,” he said in my ear.

I threw an elbow at his head and felt it connect. My elbow hurt but he didn’t loosen up. Instead he sat me on the ground. I could hear footsteps coming up behind us and caught a glimpse of Nurse Grace’s white shoes.

“You need some help?” she said.

“Just put him out,” said M.C. still softly, as if he wanted this over with so he could get on to more important things. He grabbed my right wrist and clamped it tight. Nurse Grace was on her knees, and I could see something in her right hand, a hypodermic needle.

“I’ve been vaccinated,” I said, struggling to get free.

“Not for this trip,” said M.C., and the needle went into my forearm.

I think Koko tried to stop them. At least he was there almost instantly and happier than ever before. He was beautifully clear and, for the first time, in color. I wanted to open my eyes and tell M.C. and Nurse Grace that Koko had appeared in color, but I couldn’t. Koko took my hand and led me to the inkwell. I had things to do, people to save, but he was not to be denied. We balanced at the end of the inkwell, and just before we plunged in, I could see a pen descending on us. The pen looked suspiciously like a needle.

When I awoke, I had the feeling that just seconds had passed. I was lying on a bed. To my left was another bed. Beyond that bed was a wall with a small, barred window leading to the night. A circular fluorescent light fixture in the low ceiling revealed white walls. On the other bed, a powerful-looking man with brownish-yellow hair reclined comfortably in bright green and red pajamas and read a book. It was
Frenchman’s Creek
by Du Maurier.

We looked at each other for a few moments before I turned my back and closed my eyes. But I couldn’t sleep and knew it. If anything, I had a headache from too much drugged sleep. When I was feeling under the blanket to find out what I was wearing (it turned out to be a pair of hospital gray pajamas), I realized that since I was a potential psychotic, my roommate must also be a mental patient. I might be unwise to turn my back on him. In turning quickly to face the man in the bright green and red pajamas, I forgot about the stitches in my head.

“You got a headache?” the man said. “You want a drink?” He leaned forward, blinking.

“No. No thanks.”

“Mind if I exercise?” He put his book aside and stood next to me between the beds.

“No.”

The man suddenly disappeared, and it took me a few seconds to realize that he had dropped to the floor. Leaning dizzily over, I found him sitting crosslegged, teeth clenched, and red-faced. He grunted slightly and turned redder. As the red began to turn to white, he relaxed and turned on his stomach. It seemed as if he had gone to sleep, but instead he threw his arms back and lifted his legs from the floor so that he was carefully balanced on his stomach and looking in vacant agony at the wall ahead of him. Again he failed to make any impression on the wall except for fingerprints, which joined the pattern of other, older fingerprints at approximately the same point.

“You were wondering why I waited till you woke up to do my exercises, weren’t you?”

“No,” I said, trying to shake the drug dryness from my tongue and brain.

“Truth is I like an audience. I used to feel guilty about that.” He dabbed his perspiring face with the corner of his bright pajamas. “Used to find myself exercising whenever company came over, and my wife would say I was just showing off. I never thought I was showing off. Just did it when the mood took me and didn’t stop to analyze it. The hell with her. I said it then and I say it now.”

We looked at each other in silence for a minute or longer.

“My name is Sklodovich, Ivan Sklodovich,” he said, extending a hand, which I shifted to meet with my unsteady grasp. “Don’t worry, I won’t squeeze. I don’t believe in tests of strength on a first meeting. It creates a competitive tension that’s hard to overcome. You know what I mean?”

“Yes. My name is Peters, Toby Peters.”

“Nice to meet you. Listen, Toby. They call me Cortland around here. The staff, I mean. I don’t like it, but live and let live. It doesn’t cost me anything to be called Cortland, does it?”

“No.”

“You see my father was a welder in Russia and when he came to America he invented a new welding process, Slig. A big tycoon was what my old man wanted to be, so he changed his name to Cortland. But it didn’t help. Nobody wanted Slig welding, and nobody wanted a roly-poly bearded Russian with a name like Cortland. They thought he was a Bolshevik spy or something. For twenty years my family has hidden the solid, black-bread name of Sklodovich behind the chewing-gum name of Cortland. But no more. I am Ivan Sklodovich. Peters. Are you the Peters who paints murals in sewers?”

“No, I’m a detective.”

“A defective?”

“Detective. A private eye.”

“Oh. I couldn’t figure out what the hell a defective was. This is a mental hospital, you know?”

“Yes, I know,” I said and told him my story in condensed form, during which he blinked frequently and ate an orange pulled from under his pillow after first offering it to me.

When I mentioned Ressner, Cortland-who-would-be-Sklodovich paused in his citrus munching and nodded wisely.

“I know Ressner,” said Cortland, after I had finished telling him of how I became a prisoner in Winning. “I used to work in an office, sold carbon paper, Whitney Carbon Paper, the carbon paper that leaves a clean impression on the paper and no smudges on your hand. You’ve heard of them? From salesman, trudging from stationery shop to drugstore to school supply store, I was promoted to North San Diego regional director of sales with a nearsighted secretary and my own office in an old building with windows that looked like rejects from the Union Station bathroom. My secretary, Phyllis, took off her glasses one day, and I fell in love and married her. Carbon paper sales rose in North San Diego, and I moved up to assistant Midwest sectional division manager in charge of complaints. This brought me to L.A., where Phyllis learned to play bridge, and sales boomed.”

At this point I must have made a face, for Sklodovich said: “Be patient, I’ll get to Ressner.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“Now that I think about it, I don’t really know what I did those four years in the main office. Then sales fell. Who knows why? Carbon sales depend upon little competition and a triplicate society. In any case, bills mounted, my commission dropped, Phyllis had an abortion, skinny old John Whitney Lickter began to get on me, and I began to worry seriously about Hitler. But Lickter was the worst of all because I had to face his shriveled, frowning face every day with excuses. It got to the point where I couldn’t stand to hear his ‘Is that your total and complete report, Mr. Cortland? It leaves much to be desired.’ If any single thing drove me mad, it was that statement from him each morning while he sipped tea from a mug marked J.W.L. and played with the perpetual mole on his chin, the old fart. You don’t mind if I use a bit of profanity to color my speech, do you?”

“Not at all.”

“We do have to make some allowances for each other. After all we are mentally unwell. You don’t mind if I refer to our mental problem, do you?”

“I haven’t got any mental problem. They’ve made a mistake, I told you.” I tried to sit up and swallow, but the will was not enough. Ressner could be merrily hacking away at Mae West while I pretended to listen to this ranting maniac.

“Perhaps,” said Sklodovich, lying back on his bed. “It wouldn’t be the first time and it wouldn’t be the last. I hope you don’t mind the homilies. Do you? Actually I shouldn’t spend so much time apologizing. That was one of my problems. Always apologizing to my wife, to Lickter, to stationery store owners.”

“You were going to tell me about Ressner?”

“Oh yes. Well, one morning after I had lost my bus transfer and fought with the driver over changing a five-dollar bill, old Lickter called me into his office to grumble and complain about the lack of sales. You wouldn’t think to look at me, but I used to be a real worm; that’s a fact. I was home and office doormat. I handed old Lickter my report as usual and he read it grim-faced, glancing up at me through the smoke of his cigar or the steam of his tea; either of the two was constantly at his mouth. ‘Is that your total and complete report, Mr. Cortland? It leaves much to be desired.’ Instead of nodding in fear for my fragile reputation as I had previously, I grabbed the old man, took his damned cigar, tied him with the cord from his draw drapes, and dangled him out of the window fifteen stories above the sidewalk. He was too frightened to say much at first, but as soon as I tied one end of the cord to his desk I heard him screaming to the sunny sky. ‘The situation does leave a great deal to be desired, doesn’t it, Mr. Lickter?’ I called out the window and peered over to see a crowd gathering. ‘Cut the rope, man,’ someone shouted. ‘No, no,’ said another guy, ‘wait till I get my camera.’ Mr. Seymour, my immediate superior, chief Midwest sectional division manager in charge of erasers, came into the office about five minutes later with a smile on his false and lecherous face. ‘What’s going on here, Craig? Some kind of misunderstanding with Mr. Lickter? Can I help in any way?’ ‘I hung him out the window, you queer bastard,’ I said, tweaking his effeminate nose. I pulled him by the nose to the window and shouted down to the waiting crowd, ‘Mr. Seymour here is a queer.’ ‘Wha’ he say?’ I heard a woman shout. ‘He says Seymour is a fairy,’ said another voice. ‘Which one’s Seymour?’ ‘This one,’ I shouted. ‘Atta boy, Mac, toss him down here.’ Seymour, nostrils stopped, pleaded ‘led me go, please,’ ‘Mr. Lickter, you knew Mr. Seymour here was a queer, didn’t you?’ ‘Let me up, Mr. Cortland, I promise I’ll pay you anything,’ shouted Lickter, whose upside-down face was quite red. I shoved Seymour, the corrupter of office boys, into the large closet behind the huge desk. Next a cop came up and talked to me through the door, though the door wasn’t locked. ‘This is Sergeant Derk, Cortland. What have you done with Seymour?’ ‘He’s in the closet,’ I said, ‘but why you should care is beyond me.’ ‘Now,’ said Sergeant Derk slowly, ‘I want you to listen to me. Cutting that rope isn’t going to solve any problems,’ Do you think this whole thing sounds Freudian? I mean their fear that I might cut the imaginary umbilical cord that bound me to his authority.”

“It does sound a little Freudian,” I said, feeling a little reasonable fear of the orange-eating, talkative lunatic in the next bed.

“I didn’t even think about cutting the cord until he brought it up. But I didn’t answer Sergeant Derk, who went away after a few seconds. ‘Is there anything to be desired out there?’ I asked Lickter. He said nothing, and I noticed that the fire department had spread a net below the window and was busily at work on an additional net a few stories below. I helped Lickter up, and the now-massive crowd groaned. ‘Don’t worry,’ I shouted. ‘He’ll be right back.’ ‘Please Cortland,’ he sputtered, seated upright on the window ledge. ‘I’ll make you a partner.’ ‘Be realistic,’ I said, turning him upside down again when the normal paste color had returned. The crowd cheered. ‘How can you make me a partner? You know as well as I do that if I let you in, I’ll be thrown in jail and fired. You’d have to be crazy to make me a partner.’ Toby—do you mind if I call you Toby?”