To Catch a Spy (5 page)

“Nothing,” I said.

“Nothing,” he agreed.

I took out my wallet and held out the money I owed him. He wiped his hand on his overalls and took the cash.

“Want a Pepsi?” he asked, knowing my drink of choice.

He pocketed the money without putting it in his wallet.

“No time,” I said. “Got to see a guy with a cat.”

“How’s she running?” he asked as I walked back to my car.

“Like a refrigerator,” I said.

An hour later, after picking up Granger and making a phone call from Stinovenov’s two-room apartment, I was in front of Louise Antolini’s front door in Westwood.

She opened the door before I knocked and took the cat from my arms, which was fine with me since Granger had scratched me as soon as he saw the house. I got the feeling he preferred the open road. I also got the feeling he would be back on it again as soon as he could escape the smothering kisses smacking against his furry face.

“Granger, Granger, Granger. No longer a stranger,” she said, looking at me triumphantly while holding the cat tightly against her more than ample breasts. “I’ve been waiting to say that for more than two years. Is he all right?”

Till he saw your house, I thought, but said, “Fine. I had to pay a thirty-dollar reward to the guy who found him.”

“People shouldn’t take money for returning other people’s missing pets,” she said, clutching the meowing cat. The noise didn’t seem to be a result of pleasure but of Granger’s desire to escape. Maybe I was seeing more than was there. I knew I was hearing what I didn’t want to hear.

“They shouldn’t,” I agreed. “But they do.”

“I’m not paying,” she said. “For all I know, whoever is demanding this ransom took Granger in the first place.”

“And kept him for two years?” I asked. “He saw my ad in the paper, spotted Granger hanging around the hospital.”

“Hospital?”

“County. The guy who found your cat is a nurse.”

“A man is a nurse?” she asked, bestowing further kisses on the cat, whose eyes were now closed.

“It happens. He’s Russian. I paid him thirty dollars.”

“You weren’t authorized to do that,” she said.

“I …,” I began. But before I could finish she had closed the door.

Another job completed by Toby Peters, Confidential Investigator.

“Happy New Year,” I told the closed door.

To cheer myself up I drove to Hancock Park, parked on the street with no problem, and went through the entrance at Wilshire and Curson. I headed right for the La Brea Tar Pits near the center of the park. The pits are bogs with subterranean oil and tar bubbling slowly to the surface. A pool of water camouflages the sticky sludge that had been a trap for unwary animals gathering there thousands of years earlier to drink from what they thought was a quiet pool. Skeletal remains of saber-toothed tigers, Imperial elephants, woolly mammoths, giant sloths, condors, Great American lions, and even a specimen of the only American peacock had been found and removed from the pits. Birds of prey and carrion-eaters had fed on these doomed, sinking animals and sometimes they, too, had been caught in the bog.

On days like today, the pits suggested that Los Angeles had not changed much since the days of the dinosaurs.

I stood there alone, watching a black bubble as it expanded into a surface balloon. A woman with two children came up and stood a few feet away. She had a book in her hand. We all looked at the pit, waiting.

And then the bubble burst.

I still had most of the day till I had to meet Grant at Wally’s. I didn’t feel like going back to the Farraday, and I definitely didn’t want to go back to Mrs. Plaut’s.

I left the car parked where it was, picked up a copy of the
L. A. Times
from a hotel lobby, and walked two blocks to J & W’s Downtown Restaurant. I arrived a little after the lunch crowd, had there been one on New Year’s Day. I got a table near the kitchen, ordered a tuna on white, fries and coffee, and looked at the paper.

Twenty minutes later and eighty cents lighter, I knew that Japanese girls were now wearing slacks or mompei instead of kimonos; was reminded that USC was going to play undefeated Washington in the Rose Bowl in a few hours; that Alley Oop, stone ax in hand, was lost in time; that Scorchy Smith was being transfered to combat duty; that the Red Army, under Ukrainian General Nikolai Vatotin, was within twenty-seven miles of the Polish border; and that the Royal Air Force had bombed Berlin for the ninth straight day.

I headed for Santa Monica in light traffic. I spent the rest of the afternoon sitting on the beach, looking at girls and watching the waves come in. I read the paper. For part of the time, I kept an eye on a fat couple in their fifties who were taking turns looking at the Pacific through a pair of binoculars. I figured they were looking for a Jap sub so they could be the first to call in the sighting to Civil Defense and get their picture in the paper.

I put my folded newspaper on the sand and lay back to look at the clouds and wait for the sunset. I fell asleep and woke up to the sound of laughter. A young couple was about thirty yards away. She laughed. He kissed her. I sat up, wondering what time it was. I had missed the sunset. It was dark. The beach was almost empty and the air had a chill.

Carefully, hoping my back would be all right, I sat up. No problem. Back in the Crosley, I turned on the radio. The news ended, so I knew it was a quarter to ten. I checked my .38 in the glove compartment and then drove the mile to Wally’s.

CHAPTER

4

Wally’s was at the base of the hills, a gas station on one side and a souvenir shop on the other. The gas station and the shop were closed. There were six cars in front of Wally’s. I tried to figure out which one was Grant’s, if he had even arrived yet. All the cars looked like money. I pulled my Crosley into a spot next to a big fat Chrysler.

Wally’s was surprisingly long, and darkly amber-lit. The bar ran along the left. There were small booths on the right and space down the middle heading toward the back, where two doors were clearly marked for ladies and gentlemen. Between the two doors was a pay phone mounted on the wall.

There were five people at the bar talking, a few couples in the booths. Nobody was young. All were dressed casually, but with class, except the guy behind the bar in an apron. He looked a little like Wallace Beery. He looked my way and said, “You Peters?”

“Yeah.”

He nodded toward the rear of the place and I headed back. There was a single high-backed wooden booth at the rear. There was no one on the side facing the bar. Grant sat with his back to the bar on the other side, wearing a black knit turtle-neck shirt under a gray sports jacket.

“Peters,” he said. “You’re right on time.”

I sat across from him. He had a drink in front of him.

“Hungry?” he asked. “Wally makes a good spiced chicken sandwich on a Kaiser roll.”

“Sure,” I said.

Grant raised his hand over the top of the booth. The bartender came over to the table.

“A chicken sandwich for my friend,” he said and turned to me. “What’re you drinking?”

“Pepsi.”

Wally nodded and disappeared.

“We’re alone and unobserved,” he said. “Now I can admit that I’m an aesthetic sham.”

I looked at him.

“Gilbert and Sullivan,” he said. “The only problem with this booth is that I have to look at the doors to the restrooms if there’s no one across from me.”

He reached down to the seat next to him and came up with a thick leather pouch about the size of a book. He pushed it toward me.

“I can’t tell you very much,” he said, “but I can tell you there’s five thousand dollars in that bag.”

I looked at the bag.

“You’re still thinking blackmail. No,” he said. “Blackmail’s been tried on me. A few years ago a man who had been fired from RKO publicity tried to get money out of me. He said he had photos and proof that Randolph Scott and I were lovers.”

He looked at me for a reaction. There was a small familiar smile on his face.

“He was wrong,” Grant said. “My wives and a small number of young ladies could have told him that. Scotty and I shared a place for a few years. We had lots of visitors, mostly ladies. The would-be blackmailer said it didn’t matter if it was true or not. He had pictures of me and Scotty in our bathing suits, arms around each other’s shoulders. He had a picture of me in a woman’s robe with fluffy sleeves. I told him I’d get back to him.”

Grant took a sip of his drink, his eyes on me.

“Want to know what I did?”

“Ordered copies of the pictures?” I asked.

“The picture of me in the woman’s robe was a still from
Bringing up Baby.
”

“The one where you have to put on Katharine Hepburn’s robe when you get wet and when someone sees you and asks what you’re doing, you say, ‘I’ve suddenly gone gay.’”

“A fan,” Grant said with a laugh and shook his head. “I told the police,” he said. “They asked me if I wanted to press charges. I told them I’d be happy if the man with the pictures just went away. That was the last I heard from him.”

“No blackmail,” I said.

“No blackmail,” he repeated. “No dark personal secrets. I’m now simply paying a man for some information I need.”

I could have asked why the guy with the information didn’t just come to Wally’s, pick up his pouch, and give Grant his information, but I had already parted with a good chunk of the actor’s money to return a cat to a purgatory of smothering love.

“You give him the bag,” he said. “He gives you an envelope.”

“That’s why you said I should bring a gun?”

Grant pursed his lips and tapped the tips of the fingers of both hands against each other for a few seconds.

“I don’t know the man. Never met him. That’s the way he wants to keep it. I think I did recognize his voice when he called. I’m not sure from where. He gave me enough information to convince me that what he was selling was genuine and worth the price.”

Drugs, I thought.

“Not drugs,” Grant said, reading my easily readable face. “But something that could get him in serious trouble if certain people knew he was selling it to me.”

“Now I understand,” I said.

“No, you don’t. And I don’t think you want to. There shouldn’t be any trouble. He wants the money. I want the envelope. Questions?”

“Where do I deliver?” I asked as Wally finally returned with my Pepsi.

He looked at Grant to see if he wanted a refill on his drink. Grant shook his head “no.” When Wally had gone, Grant said, “I don’t know. He’s going to phone here and tell me where he wants it delivered.”

“And he doesn’t want you to deliver it?”

“No. I think he’s afraid I’ll recognize him even if he’s wearing something to cover his face.”

“So we wait, have a few drinks.”

“And Wally’s famous chicken sandwich.”

“I can live with that,” I said.

The radio at the bar played dance band music I didn’t recognize and Grant kept looking at his watch. At one point he wrote a phone number on a napkin and handed it to me. I put it in my pocket. Then the pay phone rang. Grant looked at his watch, got up, and moved to the phone.

I took the small notebook from my pocket, along with one of two sharpened pencils. I got up and moved to Grant’s side. He covered his left ear with his hand to block out the noise of the dance band and the customers at the bar.

“Yes,” Grant said. “His name is … all right, you don’t need his name. Describe him? He’s about five-nine.…”

I nodded in agreement. It was close enough.

“Slightly stocky, dark hair with some gray,” Grant went on. “Face like a boxer. Flat nose. He’s wearing dark slacks, a white shirt, and a blue zipper jacket … I don’t know.”

Grant turned to me, covered the receiver with his hand and looked at me.

“He wants to know if you’re carrying a gun.”

I reached into the pocket of my jacket and pulled the handle of my .38 high enough for Grant to see.

“He is carrying a gun,” Grant said. “And he’s going to have it on him. He’s a former policeman, an expert shot.”

Grant listened and nodded and then said aloud looking at me, “Madman Dumar’s on San Vicente just south of Wilshire.”

I nodded. I knew Madman Dumar’s Autos. He ran ads on KFWB radio. Dumar talked fast and loud and promised that every car he sold was sure to please at a price you couldn’t afford to pass up. “I’m crazy,” Dumar said ten or fifteen times a day on 950 on my radio dial. “Come down and see how crazy I can be.” Dumar wasn’t crazy enough to be open after ten on New Year’s Day.

“Phone booth at the north end of the lot,” Grant repeated for my benefit. “Eleven-fifteen. He’ll be there.”

Grant hung up the phone.

“What time is it?” I asked.

Grant looked at the watch on my wrist.

“It doesn’t work,” I said. “It was my father’s. Tells its own time.” Grant lifted an eyebrow.

“It’s twenty minutes to eleven,” he said. “I’ll call you in the morning to be sure it went all right. If something goes wrong, call me at the number I gave you, but only if something goes wrong. Good luck. And be careful.”

“I will,” I said. “What did he say when you told him I had a gun?”

Grant hesitated, and then he said, “He hoped it was a big one and that you knew how to use it.”

We shook hands. Grant stood watching as I walked back through Wally’s and out the door. It took me nearly half an hour to get to Madman Dumar’s. When I got there, I parked right next to the phone booth and got out. There wasn’t much traffic, but there were some cars going in both directions.

Madman Dumar’s lot was filled with cars that had signs with prices on their windshields. The prices were in bright red on big white cards. There was a billboard above the lot with a caricature of the Madman himself, his hair wild, wearing big, round glasses, and with a car in the palm of each upheld hand.

There was a chance the guy I was meeting was already there, in the lot, watching me from between the cars. There was a chance he’d just drive up and make the exchange as fast as he could without even getting out of his car. There was a bigger chance that the phone would ring and he’d tell me where to go next. I figured the guy would probably drive by a few times just to be sure I was alone, and then he’d go to a phone he had picked out.