Down for the Count: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Ten) (18 page)

“Yes,” she said, very businesslike. “I’ve just decided to do it, produce it myself, but as we agreed, only on condition that you direct and I star as both the mother and daughter.”

I wanted to stay around and find out more about the project, but I had my own closets to open. I found a phone inside Schell’s Grill on Wilshire in Santa Monica and called Phil to assure him that Brenda Stallings would be cooperative. He threatened me with vivid but not colorful images of what might happen to my body if I didn’t turn myself in fast. I hung up on him for the second time that morning. My next call was to Jeremy. He didn’t answer. I waited five minutes and called him again. This time he came on.

“I need a place to stay for a few days, Jeremy,” I said. I explained the situation quickly while a woman with a crying little boy hovered behind me, wanting to use the phone.

Jeremy took about five seconds to think and came up with: “I just purchased a court complex. Six one-room apartments in Burbank just off Olive I’m renovating now. No tenants. The units are furnished, though the furniture will have to be changed. It needs work.”

“I’m not fussy,” I said. “Just desperate.”

The woman waiting for the phone picked up her kid to show me how much of a burden he was and to get his weeping closer to my ear. Jeremy gave me the address and concluded by saying, “Apartment number six has a window that won’t lock. You can go through it. I’ll come by to see you before dark with some supplies and books.”

“Thanks, Jeremy,” I said and hung up.

The woman almost hit me with the wailing kid, but I sidestepped like a ranking bantamweight and went for the door.

Twenty minutes later I pulled into the parking space for the Ocean Breeze Apartments in Burbank. It was about a mile or two from Warners and just off Olive. It looked to me as if it were the shame of the neighborhood and needed a lot more than renovation if it was to hold its own with the nearby single-family homes big enough to have brick walls or iron fences.

I climbed over the broken wire mesh put up to keep kids out. Actually it wouldn’t keep any self-respecting nine-year-old out, though it would let them know they weren’t supposed to try. The Ocean Breeze was far enough away from traffic so that it wasn’t likely any bums might find the place and camp in it while Jeremy hammered, cleaned, and attempted to save the crumbling wreck.

The apartments were in a horseshoe around a pond. The pond wasn’t exactly empty. There were a few beer bottles and a mat of decaying grass in it, and a lemon tree gone wild stood on its bank. The lemons were ripe, and a bluebird was chirping on a branch.

Apartment number six was exactly in the middle of the curve of the horseshoe. There were only two windows facing the courtyard. I found the one with the broken lock, climbed in, and opened the front door to let a little light in and a little bad air out. Then I pulled up the shades. The room wasn’t as bad as I had feared. Then again, it wasn’t as good as I had hoped. I had enough cash to change my mind and go to a hotel, but with both the police and the Lipparini mob looking for me even a false name might not be enough.

The furniture in number six wasn’t too dusty but it was old. It looked like it had all been junked from my parents’ living room back in 1927. There was a tiny, dark alcove with a refrigerator. I checked it. It was warm and smelled like mildew. Then I checked the second room. There was a bed, just a spring and mattress, both too soft. There was also a small shower stall in the corner covered by an olive drab canvas curtain. I tried the light switch. No electricity. I tried the shower. The water sputtered and spat out in a brown stream. I let it run until it turned tan and then slightly clear. Having explored the place, I sat on the bed and tried to think about what the hell I was going to do next. The only thing I came up with was a plan to have lunch in a few hours.

I found a dirty glass pitcher in a cupboard next to the refrigerator, rinsed it out, picked five lemons from the tree, and tried to make lemonade. I dragged a wooden chair out into the courtyard and sat drinking warm sugarless lemonade at the dry pond while I pondered who was killing who and why. The only names I could come up with were Jerry Genette, who I still thought fondly of as Moe Howard; Al Parkman; and Anne. I couldn’t think of any reason, at least not a good one, why Genette or Parkman would kill Ralph, Mush, Silvio, and Lipparini, but that didn’t mean they didn’t have reasons. I just didn’t know them. Anne had the best reason, money, but I knew she hadn’t done it. And, of course, it could have been any one of several hundred thousand people. Hell, none of the murders were related, and maybe we were dealing with three different killers. Maybe it was infectious murder, a record-book coincidence.

I don’t know what time Jeremy showed up. I had taken off Ralph’s shirt and jacket and dozed off in the chair in the shade of the lemon tree. When I saw him climbing over the wire mesh, I automatically checked my old man’s watch, which told me it was nine, which it surely was not. Jeremy was wearing a brown windbreaker and carrying a large paper bag.

“You see the possibilities here, Toby,” he said, his well-polished bald pate gleaming in the late afternoon sun. “Some paint, new furnishings, fresh water in the pond and some fish, a few new trees and a new name. What do you think would be a good name? I’ve been considering Fidelia’s Garden:

“
As withered weed through cruel winterstine
,
That feels the warmth of sunny beam’s reflection
Lifts up his head, that did before decline
And gins to spread his leaf before the fair sunshine
.”

“Did you write that or Byron?” I asked, knowing Jeremy’s two favorite poets.

“Edmund Spenser,” he said. “Generally I find him too elusive and pastoral, but he inspires me when I’m faced with a clean-up job like this. Byron is not to be read when one has work to do, but Spenser is fine. I brought you a book.”

He reached into the paper bag and handed me a hardcover copy of
As William James Said: A Treasury of His Work
.

“Thanks, Jeremy,” I said. “I’d probably be up all night reading it if there were electricity.”

Jeremy’s hand went back into the bag and came out with a metal Army lamp. “I have extra batteries,” he said, patting the bag. “I’ve also brought you a towel, a bit of food, and a newspaper.”

I got out of my chair, thanked him, and led him into number six.

“How’s the book give-away coming?” I asked politely, putting the paper bag and lamp down on the counter in the alcove.

“
Doves of a Winter Night
is off to a good start,” Jeremy said. “Alice and I have a meeting with a member of the Whittier school board tomorrow. I’m hoping we can be persuasive.”

If the Whittier school board member was less than seven feet tall and weighed under three hundred, Alice and Jeremy would surely be persuasive.

“Sounds good,” I said.

We talked for about half an hour before Jeremy said he had to leave. He was meeting Alice for a strategy session on how to present their book to the board member.

“One final thing,” he said, walking to the door. “I would like your advice. Max Edelstein, the wrestling promoter, has asked me to come out of retirement for an exhibition to raise money for Armed Forces Relief. He wants me to read a few poems and then go two minutes each with volunteer servicemen. I’m well aware that it is a gimmick. The wrestling doesn’t bother me, but I don’t want my poetry demeaned.”

“Don’t read your own poetry,” I said. “Read some of your favorites.”

“I like that,” he said. “No one would have the temerity to laugh at Lord Byron.”

“Not with you around,” I agreed. “Thanks for the package, Jeremy.”

“Try not to do anything foolish, Toby,” he said. “Each year, each moment we become a little more frail of body and, if we’re fortunate, a little more strong of spirit.”

“I’ll be careful, Jeremy,” I said.

When he was gone, I tested the lamp. It worked. I didn’t plan to sit around reading William James. I had a feeling William was not Frank and Jesse’s brother, but the lamp would be nice to have. I also found soap, a towel, a loaf of bread, a pound of sliced salami, some mustard, and a knife, along with a quart of milk in a paper carton. I didn’t like cartons. The wax kept coming off in the milk. I made a sandwich, washed it down with milk, and switched on the lamp. The sun was going down. I’d wasted the whole damn day with no plan.

The best thing I could come up with was a trip to Parkman’s house. He wasn’t as high on my list of suspects as he was on Phil’s, but he was the one I could most easily go after. Jerry Genette wouldn’t need going after. He would be coming for me.

I went into the bedroom carrying the lantern, took off my clothes, and turned on the shower. There was no heater, but the water came out reasonably warm. I showered and sang “Ramona” in the darkening room. The water pelted my puffed cheek pleasantly.

While I was rubbing myself with soap, the beam of a car headlight slashed across the window near my head. I kept singing while somewhere down deep I figured out what was outside that window. It was the Ocean Breeze parking lot. Maybe Jeremy was coming back or someone was lost. With the water bouncing off my head, I opened the window a little to take a look and heard the bullet crack past my right eye and into the wall behind me. I crouched down, almost slipping. The next two bullets cracked through the window, spraying glass all over the shower and against the canvas shower curtain.

All the killer had to do now, if that’s who it was, was to walk over to the window and shoot at the cowering, soapy creature below him. I didn’t have a lot of choices. I rolled out of the showe. I didn’t stop to turn off the water. I wasn’t sure if I had stepped on any glass, but I didn’t have time to check. My .38 was in the glove compartment of my car outside. There was nothing I could see that would be a reasonable weapon against a gun, even one fired by the Elmer Fudd marksman outside.

While I considered whether to grab my pants and go for the door, I heard something above the sound of the shower, and I didn’t like what I heard. The front door of the two-room apartment was pushed open with a
screek
. Since there was only one window in the room, I went back into the shower and crawled through it, grabbing the wet towel as I scrambled. This time I knew I had cut my foot on a shard of glass. It didn’t feel too bad. A bullet in my wet skin would have been worse. I rolled naked on the dirt drive, looked around, and decided what I could and could not do. I couldn’t get into my car and drive away. My keys were in my pants pocket. I couldn’t even get my .38. The car was locked. I could break the window and try for the gun, but that would mean looking for a rock and making a lot of noise, by which time I could be dodging bullets.

There was a black sedan, the killer’s, parked next to my Ford, but I didn’t think there was much chance of the key being in it. So I ran for a clump of nearby bushes, my towel flying behind me. I heard the shower turn off behind me as I reached the nearest bush and kneeled behind it. The night was turning cool. I wrapped the wet towel around my waist and huddled like an ape or Bill Dickey waiting for the next pitch. I tried to look back through the bush without panting too hard.

A figure appeared in the window, but I couldn’t make it out clearly. It was too dark outside, and the lantern inside didn’t penetrate the canvas shower curtain. There was no place to run, and I didn’t think I could make it over the wooden fence behind me, so I shivered, watched, and waited.

Inside the room I could hear glass kicked around and the sound of something, cloth tearing. The killer said or cried something and then was quiet. My teeth began to chatter, but I didn’t move, and then a minute later I saw the figure come back around the building and head toward the sedan. The sky was cloudy, and since there were no lights close by, I still couldn’t see him or her. I thought the figure was wearing a wool cap and a pea coat, but I also knew I might simply be seeing what I wanted to see, what Gunther had said the guy who had come out of Reed’s with Parkman had been wearing.

The killer walked to the car, and the walk looked familiar. The killer looked around, gun in hand, and got in the car.

“Hurry, hurry you bastard,” I urged quietly. “I’m freezing.”

The car backed up slowly, reluctantly, and drove off. I wanted to run for the apartment, but I waited and counted. When I hit two hundred the car reappeared, its lights out, moving slowly into the Ocean Breeze Apartments parking lot. It lingered, and the killer turned on the car lights, got out, watched, listened, and made a mistake. The figure moved forward and stepped into the right headlight beam, the bright light slashing ghostly over a familiar face.

Still I didn’t move. About twenty seconds later the killer gave up, got in the car, and drove off. I didn’t think the car would come back. It was possible, but it didn’t make sense to keep this up all night. My killer would feel reasonably safe and wait for another chance. Of course, I could have been wrong. It was not beyond my experience to be wrong.

I moved cautiously in a Groucho crouch, holding the towel around my waist, and dashed behind my car. I waited for about twenty seconds more and began to make my way along the wall, stepping on things I didn’t want to think about. Around the building and inside the courtyard I still moved slowly, in shadows, stopping to listen for a returning car and trying to control my own chattering teeth and heavy breathing. Inside room six the lamp was still on.