The Devil Met a Lady (5 page)

The sun was high and my room bright. I looked around. The Beech-Nut Gum clock was keeping reasonable time on the wall over my dresser. The pillow which said, “God Bless Our Happy Home,” sat in the corner of the sofa, and my table and two chairs sat near the window overlooking the backyard and the garage where Mrs. Plaut, from time to time, tinkered with the Model A Mr. Plaut had left to her when he died.

The day was still going fine. I took off my denim jacket, loosened my tie, and thought seriously about calling Doc Hodgdon for a game or two of handball at the YMCA. I put the groceries away in my small refrigerator and the little cupboard above it, poured myself a glass of milk, and sat down to dunk away the Hydrox cookies. If I couldn’t have Carmen for a few days, and my ex-wife Anne wouldn’t talk to me on the phone, I could at least eat myself fat.

Mrs. Plaut’s chapter lay before me on the table. I hadn’t looked at it since she had given it to me a week before. I read the opening paragraphs:

Granny Teller first met the peddler on August the 16th in the year 1836 two days after the fact of Grandfather Teller’s demise from an overindulgence in foods of a spiced nature which we now know will eat away your guts. She was need I say despondent but she had the farm to run and Ohio was remote and my mother and her brothers young. Actually Uncle Bike was not really young at that juncture, but he acted as if part of the mind was bent like a young elm branch with too many possums calling it home. Uncle Bike was oft called an Idiot, but that was unkind and possibly not even true.

To the peddler for I am sure, gentle reader, you are curious about this curious encounter. My mother told me he came on August 16 of the year given above as I have related and that his name was Lute McLain and that he wore a gray stovepipe hat which was most inappropriate for the weather in August and Ohio at any time. Granny Teller was in no mood or economic state to purchase the time of day, but Lute McLain was determined and a Baptist to boot or so he confessed. He tried pins, dry goods, crackers, even a Jews harp which much appealed to Uncle Bike but not Granny Teller.

“Well,” Lute McLain said according to my mother. “I have nothing else but my son out in the wagon. He works hard, has little intellect, and is decent enough to look at.” My mother looked at the wagon in front of the house and there sat a boy who looked no brighter than Bike but his nose was certainly not mashed and he had his teeth.

“No thank you,” Granny Teller said according to my mother. “I’ve already got one of those.” She meant my Uncle Bike.

“I meant, Dear Lady, that my son Buff might make a suitable husband,” said Mr. Lute McLain.

“My daughter is too young,” Granny Teller said.

“But, Dear Lady, you are in your prime and have just lost your husband.”

“I am fifty and one,” said Granny Teller.

“Buff is eighteen,” said Lute McLain. “And you can have him for twenty dollars gold.”

“You have sold your son,” said Granny Teller.

They were wed three weeks later when Preacher Willins from Dayton came through on his rounds. True to Lute McLain’s word Buff was stupid and worked hard. Granny Teller always said he was a bargain. It was only three years later that Buff admitted that he was not the son of Lute McLain but an itinerant, a runaway who McLain had picked up in Virginia and promised to find a wife and good home.

Ten years later when Granny Teller died happy, Buff, whose name was Plaut, married my mother and later became my father. I do not remember him well since he expired in an argument with a Sioux Indian name of Sidney Worth in Kansas City when I was eleven, but my mother assured me and my sister and my brother often that our father was not nearly as dense as he had been sold to be.

There was more. I finished my cookies and milk, being careful not to get Mrs. Plaut’s manuscript wet, and pulled the mattress to the floor.

I already had an idea of who might be threatening to kidnap Bette Davis and I knew where to start to check on the possibility. The potential kidnapper was Davis’s first husband, and the person who could help me find out was the world’s sleaziest private detective, Andrea G. Pinketts.

But first I needed a nap.

The nap was short, interrupted by Mrs. Plaut stalking into my room to announce, “The gumbatz is ready.”

I don’t wake up well from naps. I shouldn’t nap. Unless I overdose on Pepsi and coffee, I don’t come out of the fog till I’ve had a full night’s sleep. “What?” I said, sitting up in my boxer shorts and scratching my hairy chest.

“Gumbatz,” she repeated.

“I’ll be right down,” I said.

“Five minutes,” she said, and disappeared.

I looked at my old-man’s watch. Habit. It told me it was nine. The sun and the Beech-Nut clock on the wall confirmed my suspicion that my father’s watch was reliably incorrect. It was four-fourteen. I got up, almost fell on my face, groped my way to my pants, and managed to dress. I staggered to the communal powder room across from my room, washed, and made it downstairs to Mrs. Plaut’s door. I knocked hard and loud.

“Enter,” she chirped.

Dexter wasn’t where I had last seen him. Neither was his cage. I found them both in the kitchen on the table.

“Sit,” ordered Mrs. Plaut.

I sat, trying to keep my eyes open. In front of me was a bowl of something brown with darker brown splotches of something in it. A spoon lay next to the bowl. I looked at Mrs. Plaut. She looked back at me and smiled, nodding her head and pointing to the bowl. I got the idea.

I took a spoonful of gumbatz, brought it to my mouth, and downed it. It tasted like nothing I had ever had before or since. Not that it was bad. It was just unfamiliar. Mrs. Plaut had no bowl in front of her.

“Very good,” I said. “Aren’t you having any?”

“Hate it,” she said, making a face. “Men like it.”

“Would you like to share a knowledge of the ingredients with me?” I asked, taking another very small spoonful of gumbatz.

“Family secret,” she said.

“Do you plan to include it in your memoirs?”

“Yes, but they are to be published posthumously. That means when I’m dead.”

“I know. But I’m editing your memoirs.”

“You’ve read about Granny Teller …”

“… and Lute McLain,” I finished. “Fascinating. The recipe?”

“Major ingredients only,” she whispered, looking at Dexter, who was chirping away and eating the same canary food Virginia Bruce gave her bird.

I prayed that Mrs. Plaut wouldn’t spell the ingredients. She didn’t, but she did decide to continue whispering. “Molasses, brown sugar, flour, cumin, and possum.”

“I’ve never eaten possum before,” I said.

“I find the taste vile, but men …” She shrugged at the bad taste of the males who inhabit the earth.

“Where did you get a poss—?” I tried, but,

“My father invented gumbatz,” she interrupted proudly.

“Buff Plaut, the one who was uncharitably labeled an idiot by Lute McLain,” I said, wondering how to get rid of the remaining three-fifths of a bowl of gumbatz.

“I plan to take a jar to Mr. Arthur Godfrey,” she said. “I’ll ask Mr. Wherthman to drive me.”

“May I finish this in my room?” I asked.

“Why?”

“Inspiration while I finish the chapter about your father.”

I rose and took the bowl in hand while Mrs. Plaut considered my request.

“Yes,” she said. “You may. But don’t take too long to eat it, or get it into the refrigerator. It tends to get gamey somewhat fast.”’

“It will be gone in minutes,” I assured her.

“Wait,” she called, as I headed groggily back to the hallway.

“Yes, Mrs. Plaut,” I said.

“Here.”

She handed me something that looked like a fishing box with a thin metal handle. My left hand was full of gumbatz. I took the fishing box in my right. It was heavy.

“What is this, Mrs. Plaut?”

“Mah-Jongg,” she said. “Some pieces are coming loose again, you know, tops sliding off the tiles. You are to take them to your friend with the special glue. I need them in two days when Jesse, Claire, and Eleanor come over.”

I nodded. Shelly had fixed her Mah-Jongg tiles before. He said they were no different from teeth.

I went up the stairs. My first stop was the communal washroom, where the gumbatz disappeared and I washed the bowl.

My second stop was the pay telephone at the head of the stairs. I found Andrea G. Pinketts in the Los Angeles directory under
private investigators
. I fished out a nickel and called. There was an answer on the sixth ring.

“Pinketts Agency,” he said. “This is Andrea Pinketts. My secretary isn’t here.”

“Pinketts, you don’t have a secretary.”

“Who is this?”

“Toby Peters.”

“Toby Peters?”

“Six years ago,” I reminded him. “I was just starting out as a private investigator and you hired me for a job in Coldwater Canyon.”

“I remember,” he said.

“Maybe I can return the favor.”

“Way I remember it,” said Pinketts, “you got a little upset when you found out what the job was.”

“Yeah, but I did it and took the paycheck. Depression. Times were hard. I may have some work for you if you’re interested.”

“I’m interested,” said Pinketts, who had been working into his Gilbert Roland accent as we continued to talk.

“You want me to come to your office?”

“I don’t work out of an office,” said Pinketts proudly. “I’m on the move too much for an office. I’ll meet you somewhere.”

I knew this story. I’d used it as recently as that morning.

“Fine. It’s a nice day. How about—”

“There’s a coffee shop, Andy’s, on Melrose and Vine.”

“I know it. Few blocks from Paramount.”

“Right. I know the people who own it. Good people. Honest people. Coffee’s on you, right?”

“Right,” I said.

“I can be there in five minutes,” he said. “But, my friend, the meeting is yours. You name the time.”

“Twenty minutes,” I said.

“Twenty minutes,” he confirmed, and we both hung up.

I returned the empty bowl to Mrs. Plaut, praised her gumbatz and the memory of her father, and escaped, Mah- Jongg box in hand, in need of coffee.

It took me fifteen minutes to get to Andy’s on Melrose and Vine and another three minutes to park. It’s usually easy to park my battered Crosley. It fits comfortably into any space larger than a phone booth.

My one and only business deal with Andrea G. Pinketts had been a subcontract from a big agency, the kind of deal Pinketts specialized in. We put microphones in the bedroom of a house in Coldwater Canyon, a nice house. I didn’t know who lived there. The big agency had been hired by the husband, a bandleader named Ham Nelson who was supposed to be working all night in a hotel in Santa Monica. The wife was out. We had plenty of time to set up. I didn’t know what we were setting up for, but knowing Pinketts’s reputation, I had some idea it wasn’t something a top-flight agency would take on. Nelson, the husband, a nervous guy around forty with curly hair, set us up in a toolshed behind the house. Pinketts and I got the earphones and the discs ready and waited with the bandleader at our side.

Around nine a car pulled up and someone went in the house. About ten minutes later they went into the bedroom. About two minutes after that, I knew from the voice that the woman was Bette Davis. I didn’t know who the man was, but it was clear and being recorded that he had a performance problem and she was helping him.

The husband, who hung over our shoulders listening with his own earphones, waited longer than seemed reasonable for an outraged husband.

When it was clear that things were moving along with some success in the house and that the man with Bette Davis had, with her guidance, begun to perform, Nelson suddenly said, “Turn it off. Stop recording. Leave the record here and go. Now. You’ll have my check in the morning.”

“Right,” Pinketts had said, hitting a switch and taking off his earphones.

Nelson dashed out of the shed and Pinketts put his earphones back on. He put in a fresh disc and started a new recording.

“Pinketts,” I had said, “the man told us to—”

“You want to get paid,” he said. “Shut up.”

I shut up and listened.

Ham Nelson stormed through the house and burst into the bedroom. About ten seconds later, Pinketts and I knew that the guy in the bedroom with the problem was Howard Hughes. Twenty seconds beyond that we learned that Ham Nelson wanted fifty thousand dollars cash to turn the record over to Hughes. Hughes immediately agreed, and Nelson promised to hand him the record in the morning when Hughes gave him the cash.

That’s when Pinketts had said, “Let’s go.”

He stopped the machine, took out the disc he had just recorded, the one with Ham Nelson blackmailing Davis and Hughes, and shoved it in his briefcase. He left the first record, the one Nelson had told us to leave, on the table. Then we left.

In a bar three blocks away Pinketts paid me in cash, lit one of his trademark thin cigars, and sauntered into the night.

I hadn’t heard from Pinketts again.

I did read in
Variety
that Davis and Nelson had been divorced a little later.

When I’d worked at Warners a few years earlier, I had run into Bette Davis more than a few times. We had exchanged nods, words, maybe a “good morning” or “good night,” no more than she did with any other uniformed studio guard, but she had been friendly enough.

The word on the lot had been that she was a decent sort, feet on the ground, who got a bad deal from the Brothers Warner. She’d tried to break her contract, get more money, do less than three or four pictures a year, and get some say-so in picking them. She’d gone to court in England and lost. Though the trades wondered what she was complaining about, the people who worked on the lot knew that she was getting paid far less than any of the male leads, including Cagney, Flynn, Raft, Bogart, or even Edward G. Robinson, all of whom had the right to turn down projects. And this was after she had won an Oscar and was reported to be one of the top three box-office draws in the world.