Mildred Pierced (14 page)

Both men were down and Phil stood over them, clenching and unclenching his fists.

“My sons and my brother and I are having dinner,” he said. “My wife was buried today. I see garbage like you every day. I don’t want to see it today. Get out of here. And stay away from me and my family.”

The guy he had bounced against the car started to get up. Phil couldn’t help himself. He leveled a left into the man’s chest. The guy with the broken nose let out a deep grunt and stepped in. Phil faked a shot at his nose. The man reached up to protect himself. Phil drilled a right to his stomach, and the guy doubled over.

“They can’t go away if you keep knocking them down,” I said. “Is it okay if I ask them a question?”

“Ask,” said Phil as the two rose slowly, both steadying themselves against the car.

“Why are you following me?” I asked.

“Minck,” the driver said with a cough. “Timerjack said you might lead us to him.”

“He’s in the county lockup,” I said as they backed away from Phil, whose face was bright red.

“No,” said the driver, opening the car door with a shaking hand. “He escaped a few hours ago.”

For some reason, this answer got Phil started again, and he reached for the door just as it slammed shut. He looked for the second banana, who was bleeding his way to the passenger side, made a move toward him and changed his mind. Instead, he punched the car door. He made a dent that looked something like a moon crater.

The car sped off, almost hitting a white Carlisle Flower Delivery truck.

Phil was already heading back to the diner. I stood for a second or two trying to turn the goon’s words into reality. Shelly escaped? Shelly escaped.

Back in the diner, people pretended they hadn’t seen what had happened. Phil went back to the booth, and I slid in next to him.

“That was great,” Nate said admiringly.

Dave just looked at his father in awe. Phil had never touched anyone in his family in anger, never, as far as I knew, even raised his voice.

“What do you want for dessert?” Phil asked, reaching for the menu. “I’m having apple pie and ice cream.”

“You all right, Dad?” Dave asked softly.

“I’m pretty good now,” said Phil. “Hungry.”

People were glancing at us.

We all had apple pie and ice cream. Phil insisted on paying the whole bill. I didn’t argue. Today was not a good day to argue with Philip Pevsner.

Phil left a good tip for the waitress, who had dropped the check on the table quickly and hurried away.

When we had finished, Phil went to the phone in the corner near the men’s room and made a call. We waited outside the diner and, when he joined us, Phil recounted the bizarre story of Sheldon Minck’s escape.

S
HELLY HAD BEEN
scheduled for a meeting with an assistant district attorney and Marty Leib. On the way down, a few doors from the office, Shelly said he had to go to the washroom. The windows in the washrooms were too small to fit through and he was twelve floors up, so the cop with him told Shelly to hurry up.

Shelly, cleaning sweat from his glasses, inside the men’s room, found himself staring at a huge, startled Negro woman in a thin black coat and a red beret.

According to the woman, whose husband had been arrested for armed robbery, she had gone through the wrong restroom door. Very wrong. Shelly had threatened her with death, taken her coat and purse after emptying the contents, put on her beret, taken off his glasses, and applied her lipstick. As he did these things, he kept warning the woman not to cause trouble. Then, head down, he walked out of the door and turned away from the cop.

“Gone,” Phil said. “The cop went in the men’s room when he heard the Negro woman start screaming. He called downstairs from the nearest office to seal off the front door, but it was too late. The cop’s been suspended.”

“I don’t think Shelly is safe on the street,” I said.

“Why?” asked Dave.

“I think someone wants him dead, someone named Timerjack,” I said to Phil. “Shelly dies and everything goes to the Survivors now that Mildred’s gone. The two guys in the Ford want to kill him.”

“They want to
kill
Dr. Minck?” Dave asked with great interest.

“Looks that way,” I said.

“I’ll never forget this day,” said Nate.

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s one of those. I’ll call you later, Phil.”

My brother said nothing, just nodded, his mind probably with his dead wife. He moved down the sidewalk toward his car with his sons at his side.

I went back to my car trying to imagine Shelly dressed like a woman. I have a pretty good imagination, but not that good. I kept seeing Porky Pig in drag.

Shelly had no money and very little common sense. It was possible he was hitchhiking out of town, which meant he had little chance of anyone giving him a ride and, even if they did, he probably had no idea of where to go or what to do when he got there. It was possible he was hiding somewhere in or near Los Angeles. Since he was born looking guilty, it wouldn’t be hard to find him. It was even more possible that, broke, confused and afraid, Shelly would come looking for help, probably from me. I needed a plan.

I got back to Mrs. Plaut’s boardinghouse a little before eight. She sensed me coming across the porch and through the door. There was no other explanation since I could see, as she stood there barring the way up the stairs, that she wasn’t wearing her hearing aid. The phone was at the top of the stairs. My pockets were filled with nickels I’d picked up at a drugstore on the way. She stood between me and the stairs.

“Have you read my pages?” she asked.

“I have,” said. “They are wonderful, a welcome addition to an already fascinating family saga.”

I was trying to quote from a recent ad for a new book by Louis Bromfield.

“All well and good,” she said. “But we must sit down at the table with tea and peanut-butter cookies and discuss who will be publishing my book and what we will call it now that the story is reaching its conclusion.”

I took a few steps toward the stairs. She moved to keep me from going up.

“Tomorrow,” I said. “Or the next day.”

“I have been thinking of calling it
One Family’s Journey Through American History
,” she said.

“I like it,” I said. “A little long, but I like it.”

I would have liked
A Long Journey to the Electric Chair
, or
Mrs. Plaut’s Meanderings
, or
Lost in the Woods. War and Peace
would have been nice too.

She nodded her approval and said, “Tomorrow evening after dinner. I shall placate Jamaica Red with cookies to keep him quiet and tranquil when we talk.”

“I’d appreciate that,” I said as she stepped aside to let me pass.

I started up the stairs. Behind me Mrs. Plaut called, “You had two telephone messages. Mr. Gunther has them.”

I reached the top of the stairs and decided to check with Gunther before I made my calls. I knocked at his door and he called, “Come in.”

He was sitting in his easy chair, legs dangling, dressed casually, at least casually for Gunther. Slacks, shirt and tie, vest, but no jacket. He was wearing well-polished black patent-leather shoes and was reading a book.

“Toby”—he removed his glasses—“Sheldon Minck has escaped.”

“I know,” I said.

“He called here.”

“Where is he?”

“That,” Gunther sighed, “I do not know, but I know where he will be at ten o’clock tonight, across the street from the Pantages Theatre by the newsstand. He would like you to be there. He was most furtive in his speech.”

“There are people who want him dead,” I said.

I told Gunther everything that had happened and all I knew and showed him the sheet I had taken from Mildred Minck’s bedroom. I also told him what I thought might have happened in Lincoln Park, at least part of it. He agreed.

“Oh,” Gunther said. “You had another call. A few hours ago. A Miss Cassin said you should call her as soon as you got in. I’m sorry.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

I went to the phone, piled my nickels in a small mound on the table and pulled out my notebook. I dialed Joan Crawford’s number. It rang four times before she picked it up.

“Yes?” she said.

“It’s Toby Peters.”

“Well, certainly. I do plan to be there.”

“Be … is someone there with you?”

“Of course,” she said brightly. “Phillip had to go to work late. The children are in bed.”

“Does whoever is there have a gun?”

“Not at all,” she said. “Yes, the one we talked about earlier. The one in the park.”

I heard someone say something in the background, but I couldn’t make it out.

“The man in the park? Shelly Minck?”

“That’s the one,” she said as if I had just won a box of Snickers on
Dr. I.Q.

“Put him on,” I said. “Tell him it’s me.”

I heard her say, “It’s for you,” and after a brief pause, “Mr. Peters.”

“Toby? You’re amazing. How did you find me?”

I could have said, “I just thought of the most stupid place you could go and called there” but I said, instead, “I’m a private detective. What are you doing there, Shelly?”

“I’m trying to convince Joan Crawford that she made a mistake, that she didn’t see me kill Mildred. I’m being persuasive.”

“You’re being stupid,” I said. “People are trying to kill you.”

“Why?”

“Money, Shel,” I said. “I’ll explain when I see you. Stay there.”

“Can’t. The police will come here. I know they will. Her husband will be home. I … Did Gunther tell you where to meet me and when?”

“Yes,” I said. “But—”

“Toby, just be there.”

The next voice I heard was Joan Crawford’s.

“I’ve been humoring him,” she said impatiently now. “But I will not perjure myself. I want this man out—”

I heard a door slam somewhere beyond her.

“I think he just left,” she said. “I’m going to call the police.”

“Probably a good idea, but do me and yourself a favor. Just mention that he came to your house, tell them what he said and did, and forget I called you or you called me.”

“All right … Mr. Peters, if you aren’t going to be able to keep my name out of the news, I’d like to know now, so I can work out something with Warner Brothers.”

Having worked for and been fired by Harry Warner himself, I doubted that she’d have an easy time explaining away being a witness to a bizarre murder.

“I’m working on it,” I said. “It’ll be harder if you call the police and tell them about Shelly coming to your house.”

“All right. But please keep that man away from me,” she said. “He is a fugitive not only from the law but from a Halloween party for the cosmetically disabled. He’s dressed like a woman, or something like a woman. He looks more like a circus clown about to get hit by a pie.”

“He’s in disguise,” I said.

“He is
insane
,” she corrected.

She hung up, and I started making calls. I still had more than an hour till I had to meet Shelly across the street from the Pantages, providing he didn’t get picked up as the world’s ugliest streetwalker before I got there.

On the chance that Shelly didn’t show up or did show up for our meeting and then got away from me, I first called Violet at home and asked her to go back to the office and, if Shelly showed up, keep him there and give me a call at Mrs. Plaut’s. Then I called Jeremy Butler and asked him to stake out the Minck house and hold onto Shelly if he came there.

“The service for your sister-in-law was good,” he said.

“Your poem was perfect.”

“Ida Tarbell died, too,” he said.

“I’m sorry to hear that. Anything else?”

“Jimmie Foxx may be drafted.”

We had wandered into baseball, one of Jeremy’s passions. He had once played minor-league ball and was slowly compiling a collection of poems about the game.

“No kidding? How old is he?”

“Thirty-six,” said Jeremy. “He’s been out of the game for four years. He says he wants to go.”

“Keep me posted,” I said.

Then I called Martin Leib at his home.

“I have a fool for a client,” he said. “But we knew that when we began. If you find him, drag him back to jail and make it look like he’s turning himself in.”

“How much did that advice just cost Shelly?”

“I’m not feeling generous,” Marty said with a sigh. “In my profession, generosity breeds contempt. Twenty dollars. He can afford it. He is probably the wealthiest fugitive in the United States. We are a land of opportunity, Toby.”

“We are,” I agreed.

I told him everything I had learned and the conclusion I had come to with Gunther.

“Sounds plausible, possible, and reasonable,” Marty had said. “It is also unlikely. But the simple possibility gives me something to work with, provided we can get the remarkably elusive Dr. Minck to get his—and I say this with great respect—his fat ass back in jail where he will be reasonably safe.”

“I’m working on it,” I said. “Time is money.”

“Indeed it is,” he said. “We’ve just had a forty-dollar phone call.”

“You said twenty.”

“I told you I’m not feeling generous.”

He hung up.

I went back to Gunther’s room and asked him to keep an eye out for Shelly in case he got away from me and headed for Mrs. Plaut’s.

“Keep him here if he shows up,” I said, having full confidence that the tiny, well-dressed man with the Swiss accent could handle the overweight dentist. Gunther had been a circus performer. He was small but strong. Seeing him subdue Sheldon the Bulbous would have been worth the price of a good dinner.

“I will do so,” he said. “But why would he come here? Would not this be one of the places the police might come to look for him?”

“It definitely would,” I agreed. “But what Shelly lacks in skill as a dentist equals his total lack of common sense. I’m staking out all the likely places he would go.”

One hour later, after massaging my feet, changing my socks, and having a brief conversation with Dash after feeding him half a can of tuna, I headed to the Pantages Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. The Pantages brought back memories of my ex-wife, Ann. We had gone to the Pantages the week after it opened in 1930, eight months after the market crashed, a crash that took a while to trickle down to us because we had no money invested and none to invest. I was a cop in Burbank. The movie we saw was something with Greta Garbo and Conrad Nagel, or maybe it was Lewis Stone. We had a good time.