The Man Who Shot Lewis Vance (3 page)

“Come right in,” Merit shouted.

A key turned in the lock and the door opened to reveal Theodore Longretti. He stepped in, eyes darting around, and closed the door behind him.

“What is this all about?” he said, his eyes finding John Wayne and fixing on him.

“Murder,” I said. “Over on the bed.”

Teddy Spaghetti turned his long, yellow face to the bed and registered fake surprise. “He’s dead?” he said.

“You ought to know,” I said. “You put the bullets in him with my gun.” I nodded toward the dresser and Teddy’s eyes followed me.

“Me?” he said, pointing to his thin chest and looking around at each of us for a touch of support, a sign of realization that it was too absurd to consider the possibility of his having killed anyone.

“You,” I said.

“I’m calling the police,” Teddy said, stepping toward the phone. I stepped in front of him.

“Let’s just work it through,” Straight-Ahead said, turning slowly to look at us. “Then we’ll decide what to do about it. Give it to him, Toby.”

I stepped away from Teddy, knowing I had his attention and that of everyone else in the room. I eased back to the metal railing of the Murphy bed.

“Number one, Vance has been seen hanging around the lobby,” I began. “Which means you knew him. But you told me you’d never seen him before.”

“I knew him, but …” Teddy began to say, looking around the group for support. All he got was distant curiosity.

“I get a call on a Sunday to come to a room in this hotel, your hotel, while you’re on the desk. You know me. You know Vance. Nothing tight here yet, but it’s adding up. You following me?”

“Toby—” Teddy started, but was stopped by Straight-Ahead, who put his finger to his ample lips and said, “Shhhh.”

“Then John Wayne gets a call,” I said.

Teddy looked at John Wayne, who nodded.

“Then Sal—Pardon me—Olivia shows up. Someone called her. Someone who knows she’s for rent. You know Olivia, don’t you, Teddy?”

He looked at her and she looked back at him.

“I’ve seen her,” he said. “I’ve seen lots of whores.”

“Seen is right,” she said disdainfully. “Just seen.”

“I’ve done plenty,” Teddy said, standing straight and thin.

“We’re not questioning your manhood,” Merit said. “We’re trying to clean a dirty room. Hush it now.”

“And finally, Merit gets a call to come up here,” I went on. “Seems to me whoever did the dealing knew a lot about who was coming and going not just to the Alhambra but to Room three-oh-three. You follow my reasoning?”

“No,” Teddy said stubbornly.

“We could be wrong,” Straight-Ahead said.

“We could be,” I agreed.

“But we’re not,” Straight-Ahead added.

“We’re not,” I agreed again.

“Hold it just a minute here,” John Wayne said, shaking his head. “You mean this fella here set this all up, killed that fella on the bed, fixed it so it would look like you did it, and fixed it so I’d be found here with the corpse, you and … the lady.”

“Looks that way to me,” I said.

“What in the name of God for?” Wayne asked reasonably.

“You want to answer that one, Teddy?” I asked, as if I knew the answer but was willing to give up the stage to let the supporting cast take over. I had tried to set it up this way with Merit’s help and the moment of truth or lies had come. All Teddy had to do was keep his mouth shut and we’d be stuck with having to make a decision. There was about enough evidence to nail him on a murder charge as there was to get Tojo to give up by midnight. A little digging might put him in the bag but a little digging would mean enough time for the newspapers to make John Wayne and the Alhambra big news. That gave me an idea.

“Publicity,” I prompted. “You want to talk about publicity, Teddy?”

Teddy didn’t want to talk about anything. He looked as if he were in a voodoo trance, his face almost orange as the thunder cracked outside.

“Teddy,” Merit prompted. “Merit Beason’s got work to do and no one is on the desk downstairs.”

Teddy shook himself, or rather a wave or chill went through him.

“It got all crazy,” he said. “I’ll tell you it got all crazy.”

Olivia sighed loudly to let us know she had no interest in hearing Teddy tell it, but she had no choice.

“I didn’t plan on my killing him, you see,” Teddy said, playing with his shirt front and looking down. “Idea of it was to get you here, Toby, put you out or something, get Wayne in, and then Sal, and have Merit walk in on it. Idea was to give the
Times
a tip about a love nest thing at the Alhambra, have a photographer and reporter maybe right behind. You’d confirm the whole thing and—”

“That was one hell of a stupid idea,” Olivia said angrily from the chair. “And my name is Olivia.”

Teddy shrugged. It hadn’t worked out the way he planned. “Idea was publicity,” he whispered to his shirt.

“That John Wayne was making it with a prostitute in your hotel?”

“You think the Alhambra is such a hot-shot address?” Teddy came back defensively, with a little animation thrown in. “Kind of people we got coming here, it could be a real attraction, you know what I mean? Idea was to set something up like this with a whole bunch of movie people, you know, real he-man types, Wild Bill Elliot, Alan Ladd, you know.”

“And then the girls would be kicking back a few extra bucks to you just to work the rooms,” Straight-Ahead said.

“Never thought of that,” said Teddy, who had evidently considered just that. “But it was the publicity. Rooms aren’t going as good as they should. Nights are good for soldiers, sailors when the troops are in, and we’ve got a small health-nut convention Wednesday night, but the Hatchmans, who own the Alhambra, say they need at least seventy-eight percent or they’ll sell and I’ll lose my job, and where does a Joe like me—”

“Hold it,” John Wayne pitched in. He walked over to Teddy, who shrank away from him, almost flopping like a dry noodle over the coffee table. “This is one hell of a harebrained scheme, Pilgrim, and I’ve got a mind to snap a few pieces off of you, but I want to know why you shot that man.”

Teddy was still backing away from Wayne toward the wall. He almost stumbled over Olivia’s stretched-out legs, but she pulled them in just in time.

“An accident,” Teddy said. “An accident. Vance called me, said Toby had passed out. I had already made the calls to Sal and you, got your phone number from a friend at the Republic. Vance called me up, said he wanted more than the ten bucks I promised him, wanted in on whatever I was doing. I told him I didn’t have more than ten bucks to give him, that there might be more money later, but he wouldn’t listen. It was not a good situation.”

“Not a good situation at all,” Straight-Ahead agreed, turning toward him. “So you took Toby’s gun and shot Lewis Vance between the eyes.”

“He threatened to beat me up, kill me,” Teddy whined. “It was self-defense.”

“That’s the story I’d tell,” I agreed.

“It’s the truth,” Teddy squealed, bumping into the wall as Wayne advanced. I realized what was coming, but I couldn’t stop it. It should have been plain to a room in which half the living people were detectives, but it wasn’t. Teddy reached over to the dresser at his elbow and came away with my .38 in his right hand. It stuck out from the end of his spindly arm and pointed at the stomach of John Wayne, who stopped abruptly and put up his hands.

“You are making me mad, mister,” Wayne said through his teeth, but he took a step backward.

“Teddy, Teddy, Teddy,” I said, shaking my head. “You are not going to shoot all four of us. Put the gun down and let’s talk.”

I could see no good reason why he wouldn’t shoot all four of us, but I hoped the prospect of mowing down innocent citizens would not appeal to the shaking desk clerk, whose experience in mayhem, as far as I knew, had been limited to one unfortunate scrape and a lucky shot a few hours earlier with an apparently unpleasant third-rate bully. “Think of the publicity.”

Teddy’s mouth went dry. He reached over and took a sip of the flat Pepsi to moisten it. I didn’t stop him. No one moved. We just watched him and hoped he’d down the whole thing.

“Five bodies in one room, one a famous actor,” Straight-Ahead chimed in. “The Alhambra might have a hell of a time surviving that.”

“I can shoot you all and get away,” Teddy reasoned. He took another sip.

“You’ll never get away with it,” I said. People always said that in situations like this. My experience was that they very often did get away with it, but you don’t tell things like that to killers holding guns. You just hoped they saw the same movies and listened to the same radio shows you did. The room suddenly went quiet. The rain had stopped.

Teddy blinked his eyes and looked at us. I couldn’t tell whether he was considering who to shoot first or was realizing that he couldn’t pull the trigger. I never got a chance to ask him.

“I’ve had just about enough,” Wayne said, and took a step, the final step, forward. Teddy, already a little drowsy from the drink, moved his gun-holding hand and fired. It missed Wayne, breezed past me, and shattered the window, letting in a rush of rain-scented air. Wayne’s punch slammed Teddy against the wall. The gun fell, hit the floor, bounced a few times, and rested.

Olivia screamed and Straight-Ahead walked slowly straight ahead toward the slumped figure. Wayne, fists still clenched, stepped back to let the house detective take over. It was a show and a half to see Merit get to his knee, lift the now silent desk clerk up, and deposit him on the chair near the desk.

“Let’s go,” I said, exchanging a look of understanding with Merit when he turned around.

“Go?” asked Wayne, his dark hair over his forehead. “What are you talking about? This man killed that man and we—”

“Can go,” I said.

Olivia didn’t need persuading. She grabbed her red bag and headed for the door.

“You’ve never been in this room,” Straight-Ahead said to her.

“I’ve never been in this hotel,” she answered. “Nice to meet you, John.” And out she went.

“Merit will work a deal with Teddy,” I explained to the bewildered Wayne. “Teddy says he shot Vance in self-defense and no one else was around. Merit backs him up. Story’s over. Teddy doesn’t want it that way, Merit calls him a liar trying to save his skin, but that won’t happen. Teddy will back it up and you’re out of it.”

“With some embellishments, that’s the way it really was,” Merit said, looking at Teddy.

“It’s—” John Wayne began.

“Not like the movies,” I finished. “Not this time anyway. The rain’s stopped. You want to stop for a beer?”

“I guess,” said Wayne, shaking his head. “It’s too late for DeMille’s party.” He took a last look at the corpse on the bed and the scrawny killer in the chair. The Ringo Kid wouldn’t have handled it like this, but what the hell. He looked at Straight-Ahead, who said, “Go on. It’s my job.”

Wayne nodded and moved into the hall after I said, “I’ll be right there.”

Teddy was showing no signs of waking up.

“My gun,” I said.

“Your gun,” Merit repeated, giving up on reviving Teddy Spaghetti in the near future. “We say you left it here for Teddy for a price. Protection. He was threatened by all kinds. That sort of thing. It’ll hold up.”

“It’ll shake a lot,” I said, “but it’ll probably hold. Take care.”

A breeze from the broken window swirled around the room as Straight-Ahead waved his arm at me and sat slowly in the understuffed chair to wait for Teddy to wake up. I closed the door quietly and joined John Wayne in the hall.

“Things like this happen to you a lot?” he said as we got onto the elevator.

“When things are going well,” I said. “Only when things are going well.”

My head began to ache again and I longed for a plate of tacos from Manny’s, a few blocks away. I wondered if I could talk Wayne into a visit.

      
2

T
alking Wayne into a taco at Manny’s wasn’t too hard. He had already missed his DeMille party and had no place to go. If Manny recognized the Duke when we walked in, he didn’t let on, and since there was only one other customer in the place, a fat guy in the corner who needed a shave and demonstrated that he could snore with his mouth open, no one bothered us.

We talked about the bad old days in Glendale. We had both listened to station KIEV on the radio out of the old Glendale Hotel. We had both gone to Glendale High, had both downed beers in Dave Burton’s bar, and watched Doug Fairbanks movies at the Alexander Theatre. Wayne didn’t seem to be in any big hurry to go home or anywhere else. In an hour he had lined up seven empty bottles of Drerys Beer with the mountie on the label and I had lined up three.

Manny smoothed his bandit mustache and turned on the radio to pick up the news and drown out the snorer in the corner. Two Jap carriers had been sunk at Midway, and the Tokyo Armada was running from Admiral Nimitz. The British were moving in Libya, and Rommel was in Tobruk to rally the Afrika Korps.

“Tried to enlist,” the Duke said, scratching at the label of his beer bottle with his thumbnail. “Too old, too many kids, bad shoulder. I’m gonna try again.”

I held up my fourth taco to him in a salute to his patriotism. I knew I was too old to enlist, not that I would have, but who knows. My brother, Phil, had lied about his age and made it into the end of the last war. It had almost got him killed.

“I’ve got to get going,” I said, reaching into my pocket for a couple of bucks. “Tacos and beer are on me. You can leave a tip for Manny.”

A guy on the radio was excited and told us that first thing in the morning we should run down to the L.A. Furniture Company on South Broadway to buy a rebuilt Royal Eureka vacuum cleaner. Manny didn’t look excited. The idea that a floor might need cleaning was alien to him. He turned off the radio, and the sudden silence almost woke the sleeper, who snorted in fear.

“Colorful place,” Wayne said.

“Few people know of it and those of us who do try to keep it to ourselves,” I said. “But you’re welcome to join the elite.”

“
Hasta luego
,” Wayne called to Manny as we left. Manny nodded back without answering as he started to clear away taco plates and empty beer bottles.