To Catch a Spy (13 page)

I talked to Dash for a while and looked at Volkman’s business cards, trying to decide where to start.

“School of Performance,” I said to Dash. “Maybe Volkman had the acting bug.”

Dash looked at the wall as if he were thinking.

“A typewriter repair man,” I went on. “I didn’t see a typewriter in Volkman’s apartment.”

Dash walked slowly toward the window.

“A radio salesman,” I said, flipping to the last card. “I don’t remember a radio either.”

Dash leaped to the window ledge and jumped out to the branch of the nearby tree.

With no one now to talk to and my neck and head still aching, I decided to go to bed early.

As soon as I was asleep, Koko the Clown entered my dream world, his face just inches away as he said, “Cincinnati.” I must have groaned in my sleep.

Koko shrugged and pulled his head back. I was in Cincinnati. Don’t ask me how I know it’s Cincinnati. I’ve never been there, but I was sure it was. I started walking, looking at doors, stopping to knock at a few. No one answered. There were no cars in Cincinnati. No people. I was afraid because I knew where I was going. The bridge. I crossed it to the island, which had more houses. This time I was sure if I knocked at the right one, someone or something would answer and I wouldn’t be happy. I stopped at a white door, lifted my hand to knock, knowing this was the place. Before I could knock, someone else knocked and I woke up.

“Seven-thirty in the
A.M.,
” said Mrs. Plaut. “Breakfast is a surprise.”

“I hate surprises,” I said, sitting up, drenched in sweat, a knot of pain in my neck.

“This one is special. Did you read my chapter?”

“I did,” I said, blinking and rubbing my neck.

“And?”

“A lot of people get killed,” I said.

“Yes. That’s what happened.”

“Are there going to be any chapters in the book where none of your relatives get killed, kill someone else, or go crazy?”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “Except the chapter on Miss Polly True, my grandmother’s aunt.”

“Write that one next,” I said, but I had little hope.

She disappeared into the hall, leaving the door open.

I went through my morning ritual of shaving and showering, then searched my closet for something to wear. I really needed to get to the cleaners. I put on the same pants I’d worn the day before and a white shirt I knew was at least a size too large. I downed two Doc Parry pills and two aspirin and told myself I was ready for the day.

Mrs. Plaut would not reveal the contents of her breakfast surprise. It was square, about an inch thick, brown on the top, and not too firm. We all tried it and looked at each other. It was good, but one likes to know what one is eating.

“Very good,” said Ben Bidwell. “Tastes like an egg souffle.”

“It contains no eggs,” Mrs. Plaut said.

“Flour,” Emma Simcox tried.

“None,” said Mrs. Plaut.

“Meat,” I said.

“Not exactly.”

What is “not exactly” meat? I decided I didn’t want to know. I finished my surprise and excused myself.

“After termites?” Mrs. Plaut asked.

“Not exactly,” I said, moving to the living room and then into the hall with Gunther a few steps behind me. I stopped and looked down at him.

“Three more George Halls,” he said. “One in San Gabriel. One in Whittier. One in Long Beach. I have their addresses.”

“I’ll check on them tomorrow,” I said.

“There is a likelihood this George Hall is a Nazi or a collaborator with the Nazis?” Gunther said.

“A likelihood,” I agreed.

“Then I should like to join in the pursuit. I should like to go to these George Halls to attempt to discover if they are guilty.”

“Okay,” I said. “But be careful. Wait. How about taking Jeremy with you?”

“I should be delighted to have his company,” said Gunther.

So, up the stairs I went and called Jeremy. I hoped Alice wouldn’t answer the phone. I represented danger to her husband, but the few times I had excluded him from a case where I needed him, he made it clear in subtle ways that he felt I thought he was too old at sixty-plus or too domesticated. In fact, it would be good to have Jeremy around to protect Gunther if he found himself in trouble.

Jeremy readily agreed to help when I told him we were probably dealing with Nazi spies. I told him Gunther would pick him up in half an hour in front of the Farraday.

“Be careful,” I called to Gunther as I went down the stairs.

“And you too,” he said.

No green Buick followed me as I headed up Tujunga on my way to Burbank. This time it was a dark blue Plymouth. Whoever was on my tail had a choice of transportation. When I came to a light at Magnolia and Verdugo, I checked for my .38 in the glove compartment. It was there. I took it out and tucked it in my pocket. Before the light changed, I checked my rearview mirror for the blue Plymouth. It was there, two cars back. The two men inside were wearing hats, the brims pulled forward, so I couldn’t see much of their faces. The passenger looked big. The driver looked average.

On a good day I probably wouldn’t have been able to take them on without a weapon, and today wasn’t one of my better ones. My shoulder was sore. My neck was feeling a little better and my head no longer hurt, but it wouldn’t take much to send me back to the emergency room.

Caroll College was on the north end of Mariposa Street. I knew the place from my days as a Burbank patrolman. It was a small campus, ten buildings, all two-story brick except for the administration building, which was five stories. The buildings had gone up at different times and were plunked down in no particular order. They looked pretty much the same, as if some weary administrators had just pulled out the well-worn plans every time they came up with enough money to put up another building.

I parked in the lot in a space reserved for visitors. Most of the spaces were taken. I got out and headed toward the campus on a concrete path. People who appeared to be students and faculty were moving slowly ahead of and behind me.

I asked two girls with almost identical curly blonde hair and big smiles where the School of Performance was. They told me to follow them and, when we went past the administration building, one of the girls shaded her eyes and then pointed north.

“That one,” she said. “It’s over there.”

“Thanks,” I said and looked back toward the parking lot. I didn’t see the two men from the Plymouth, but I knew they were around.

The building I headed for was nothing special. Red brick that needed blasting. Vines covering the front of the building and around the windows. January green. It looked like a college building.

Inside, the hall was dark. Voices and footsteps echoed, not quick and deep silver like at the Farraday but baritone and serious. I sidestepped a pair of students, each with an armful of books, and went through the door on my right marked “Office.”

There were three desks in the room, one facing the door and me. Two of the desks were empty. A solid woman in her fifties at the desk facing the door looked up at me through her glasses.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

She had a pencil in her right hand and began tapping the point on her blotter. The pencil wanted to get back to work.

“I’m looking for Jacklyn Wright,” I said.

“You have an appointment with Professor Wright?”

“Do I need one?”

“It’s best.”

“Sometimes we can’t do what’s best,” I said.

“She has a class in the theater,” the woman said, pencil now tapping impatiently faster.

“When will it be over?” I asked.

“I’m afraid …”

“Don’t be,” I said. “My name is Herman Bubinsky, executive producer at Universal Studios.”

She stopped tapping. I had her attention now.

“I understand from a source I can’t divulge that there are two very promising young actors in the program whom I should take a look at.”

“Yes,” she said. “There are a number of very promising students. Your source must have seen our production of
The Importance of Being Ernest.
”

“Exactly,” I said with a smile.

She looked at me again. Producers came in all kinds of packages. I knew one at Republic named Smidruth, Andrew Smidruth. He looked like a starving ghost and mumbled, but he produced over one hundred Westerns with people like Bob Steele, Tim Holt, Tom Tyler, and even a couple with Tim McCoy and Buck Jones. No Andrew Smidruth movie had ever lost a dime. And then there was Oliver Cartt, whose real name was Car-tohomovich. He had an accent so thick you could drown in it. And he was an overweight slob who dressed like a bum. Oliver Cartt slave-drove a small crew at Monogram into almost fifty movies a year, none taking more than five days to shoot. He worked Bobby Breen into exhaustion and got Frankie Darrow and Mantan Moreland so confused they didn’t know what picture they were working on.

“The theater is down the hall to your left,” the woman said, putting down her pencil. “The class will be over in a few minutes. I’m sure Professor Wright won’t mind if you stop in and introduce yourself.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“Would you like to leave a card?” she asked.

“I would,” I said, “but I don’t think I’m ready to officially introduce myself until I’ve had a chance to talk to Professor Wright. You understand.”

“Perfectly,” the woman said.

Which was good, because I had no idea what I was talking about.

“I was an actress,” she said as I started to turn for the door.

“Really?”

“Character roles,” she said. “Silent pictures. Did two Garbos and a Harold Lloyd.”

“Treasure the memories,” I said.

“I nearly starved,” the woman said. She handed me a thin brochure on the School of Performance and went back to whatever she was working on.

I pocketed the brochure and went out the door. I had no trouble finding the theater. First, it was clearly marked Gardner Theater. Second, the voices of people acting came through the double doors next to a barred box-office window. The actors were projecting, speaking clearly, not sounding like real people.

I opened one of the doors carefully, stepped in, and closed it behind me. The theater was small, about two hundred seats, and the house was dark except for the lights on the stage. I stood in the rear next to the door in the darkness.

Two young men and two young women were on the stage. One of the young women—skinny, pretty, long hair, looking a bit confused—was the only one holding a script. There was a sofa and two plain wooden chairs on the stage. About fifteen students sat in the first two rows of the audience.

A woman with, dark blonde hair tied back with a red ribbon, and wearing dark slacks and a loose-fitting blouse stood in front of the stage, looking up with her arms folded.

“Ellen,” the woman said. “You’ve got the lines down. Your projection is fine. Your diction impeccable. Your emotion nonexistent.”

Someone in the audience giggled.

“Ellen,” the woman went on, “there are lots of ways to act. You can pretend you’re the person, pretend so well that for the duration of the performance you believe it, you live it. You can also become the person, forget that you are even performing, let the character do Ellen. Draw on who you are.”

“Yes,” said Ellen meekly.

“How many times have I told all of you this?”

“Thirty-six,” a young man in the first row said.

“Eighteen,” came a girl’s voice in the second row.

The woman in the billowy blouse turned to her class and smiled.

“The number of times doesn’t matter,” she said. “It’s like psychotherapy. You can hear it a dozen times, a hundred times and know it’s true, but until you feel it, nothing changes. Questions? No? Good. Lawrence, try your lines again. Ellen, remember when you get your cue, come right in the second Lawrence finishes. No, overlap his last word. You’re bursting to speak. Let’s try it.”

The young man named Lawrence brushed a lock of straight dark hair from his eyes, adjusted the blue and red sweater vest he wore over a white shirt, and folded his arms as he said, “Believe you? Why should I believe you? When have you ever, ever told me the truth? Believe you? I’d be more likely to believe the German War Ministry.”

The girl with the script jumped in, her voice a slight tremble that might have been acting but was probably fear.

“Michael,” she said, “I had no choice. My father. My God, Michael, I told you what happened to my father.”

She looked at her script.

“If I had told you …”

“If you had trusted me,” he said.

“Enough,” called the woman in the billowy blouse. “Ellen, you didn’t overlap. You paused, waiting for the cue line. And, at this point, you really should have your lines down. You don’t need the script. You’re using it as a crutch.”

The woman checked her watch.

“It’s almost time,” she said. “Back here at three. That means everybody.”

The four students on the stage said a few words to each other as those in the front row moved past me, talking as they went out the door. I didn’t move and no one seemed to see me.

When they were gone, the woman I assumed was Jacklyn Wright remained in front of the stage, pencil in hand, writing something.

I moved out of the shadows and started down the aisle, trying to be quiet.

“Yes?” she said without turning her head, without pausing in what she was writing.

“Professor Wright?” I asked.

She turned and faced me, her arms again folded across her chest.

“Yes.”

As I came closer, I could see that she was older than I had thought, certainly in her forties. Her skin was smooth and her face almost pretty, but on it there was that look of experience that comes with the bumps you never quite get used to and try to protect yourself from.

I moved in front of her.

“I was watching from in back,” I said.

“And you spotted the next Tyrone Power,” she said wearily. “You are?”

“Name is Toby Peters,” I said. “I’m looking for someone but not another Tyrone Power. A man named Bruno Volkman.”

She pursed her lips, thought for a few seconds and said, “Name doesn’t ring a bell. Why are you looking for him?”