Fala Factor (9 page)

“I'm very tired, Mrs. Plaut,” I said wearily.

“You look very tired,” Mrs. Plaut said, looking me over, her head cocked to one side critically.

“What can I do for you, Mrs. Plaut?” I said with a smile.

“I have a list of items to relate,” she said, fishing into a pocket in her apron and pulling out a small notebook, which she opened. “First, have you finished reading my chapter about Aunt Gumm and Mexico?”

She looked up at me patiently, waiting for an answer.

“I have finished,” I said, speaking slowly, clearly, and loud enough to awaken whoever might still be sleeping in the boarding house. They would be sloshing down soon for Mrs. Plaut's breakfast, those who were willing to pay the price in conversation. “But I don't understand why your Aunt Gumm thought she owned Guadalajara You never make it clear why—”

“You know Aunt Gumm owned Guadalajara,” she beamed, interrupting me.

“I'd heard something about it,” I said, leaning on the wall.

The chapter, which lay on my table upstairs, was even less coherent than most of the previous ones Mrs. Plaut had been giving me. I really didn't mind reading the manuscript. I just couldn't take discussing it with Mrs. Plaut.

“How did your Aunt Gumm meet the bandit,” I tried.

“You are in need of a shave,” she said critically. “Though your new suit is an improvement over what you have worn previously.”

“I got it from a dead man,” I said, grinning evilly.

“I see,” she answered with a grin. “That is no concern of mine. I am quite aware of your line of business, as you know. Let us return to Aunt Gumm.”

“Let us,” I said, and then desperately, “Your buns are burning.”

Mrs. Plaut gave me a tolerant look and clasped her hands together.

“Buns,” I repeated.

“Uncle Parsner was the one for puns and such like,” she said gently. “Aunt Gumm was devoid of a sense of humor. You must keep my relations in order if you are to help, Mr. Peelers.”

“I'll try,” I said in weary surrender. “Aunt Gumm is wonderful, a critical member of the family. The chapter should be longer, more about the bandit.”

“The bandit,” she said, glancing at the open door from which the smell of buns came, “was a distant friend of Joaquin Murietta, who kept his toenails in a jar. Aunt Gumm's bandit did no such of a silly thing though he was, I am told, given to telling dialect jokes, mostly at the expense of those less fortunate than himself, though who that might be remains a mystery not only to me but to Uncle Jerry and other branches of the family. My buns are done.”

“Good,” I said, turning to go up stairs. I had made it up four steps when she stopped me.

“There are other items to relate,” she said. I turned and watched her tiny figure as she glanced at her notebook. “Calls galore. The policeman brother of yours called.”

“He found me,” I said.

“And,” she concluded with a flourish by slamming closed the notebook, “you are now involved in the politics.”

“I am?”

“One of the many Roosevelts who run this country called you,” she said with disapproval. “I do not recall if it was Anna. I rather hope it was since I voted for her father. Teddy Roosevelt was the last good president we had. Before him all was abyss except for Jackson and Polk”

“Did you vote for them?” I said softly, my eyes closing as I rubbed the stubble on my chin.

“Rude disrespect will not get you into heaven,” she said, pointing a flour-covered finger at me. I wasn't sure if she had miraculously heard what I had said or had come up with an even more unpleasant invention.

“I'm sorry, Mrs. Plaut. I really am. I'm tired and—”

“She should not have married him,” she went on.

“Who?” I tried, feeling the tears of sleep.

“Franklin and Eleanor are cousins,” she explained patiently as if I were a backward second-grader. “That is incest.”

“Let's hope so,” I said. “If I don't get upstairs and into bed, I'm going to tumble down these stairs and make it difficult for Mr. Hill and the others to climb over my body.”

“We'll talk again again when you are in a less jovial frame of mind,” she said, disappearing into her rooms before I could find out when Eleanor Roosevelt had called. My goal was a few hours of sleep followed by a call to Eleanor Roosevelt and a search for Jeremy Butler, who might be able to tell me something about Bass, the former wrestler who seemed to be the only suspect I had in Olson's murder. That would be followed by a search for the missing Anne Olson.

I didn't have to fumble for the key to my room. The rooms in Mrs. Plaut's boarding house had no locks. Mrs. Plaut's philosophy was that adults should change clothes in the bathroom down the hall and decent people should have nothing to hide beyond their own crude nakedness. She respected closed doors only for the time it took her to knock once and enter. If one wanted privacy in this barracks of the outcast and elderly, one resorted to a chair under the doorknob. Even this had been known to do no more than slow down the determined landlady.

I liked my room. It was nothing like me. There was one old sofa with doilies on the arms which I was afraid to touch, a table with three wooden chairs, a hot plate in the corner, a sink, a small refrigerator, a few dishes, a bed with a purple blanket on which
God Bless Us Every One
had been stitched in pink by Mrs. Plaut, a painting of someone who looked like Abraham Lincoln, and a Beech-Nut gum clock on my wall, received in payment from a pawnshop owner for finding his runaway grandmother. Every night I took the mattress from the bed and put it on the floor. This morning I repeated the rite. I slept on the floor because of a delicate back crunched in 1938 by a massive Negro gentleman who took exception to my trying to keep him from asking Mickey Rooney a few questions at a premiere at Grauman's Chinese.

I removed Olson's suit, dropped it on the sofa, ran my tongue over my furry teeth, decided I was too tired to eat and too sensitive to examine my bruises, and fell like an uprooted radiator on the mattress. My Beech-Nut clock said it was 6:34. My father's watch said it was noon or midnight. I fell asleep clutching my second pillow to keep from rolling over on my stomach and ruining my back.

There were dreams, but I didn't remember them well. A city, probably Cincinnati, about which I dream frequently though I've never been there, a plump young woman with glasses saying something to me, a tree and a stag whose branches and antlers had grown together so that they couldn't be separated. I woke up to someone knocking at my door. The clock on the wall told me it was eleven.

“What, what, what?” I grouched.

“Toby?” came Gunther's high precise voice, complete with Swiss accent. “Are you well?”

“Come in, Gunther,” I said, sitting up.

He pushed at the door and stepped in, all three feet nine of him in his usual sartorial splendor. He wore a light brown, three-piece suit with key chain, tie, and tie pin. Gunther was somewhere in his late thirties. We had met two years earlier, when he was my client, and had been friends since then. If given one wish, Gunther would have made me a reasonably clean human with minimal taste.

“You did not come home last night,” he said evenly, indicating concern without interference.

Sitting up on the floor, I was almost at eye level with him.

“Case,” I said, tasting my tongue. “Secret, big.”

“Mrs. Roosevelt,” he said.

“My secret mission seems to be this morning's news,” I said, getting up and groping for my—Olson's—pants.

“Mrs. Plaut and I exchanged information while attempting to take a coherent message,” he explained. “I assumed from your converse just now …”

“You assumed right,” I said, unable to resist the urge to scratch my stomach. “Listen Gunther, I've got to shave my teeth and brush my beard. You want to put some coffee on? I'll be right back.”

Gunther nodded politely and moved to the corner of my room, which served as my kitchen and which Gunther always approached as if on a mission to deal with an attacking horde of army ants.

No one was in the bathroom so I managed to finish my shaving and brushing with a new bottle of Teel in less than ten minutes. I put Olson's shirt and tie back on, slipped on my second pair of socks, the ones with only one hole, and went back to my room. The coffee was poured, and a bowl of Wheaties stood waiting for me with a nearly empty bottle of milk next to it. Gunther sat sipping his coffee with great gentility and dignity, his feet not quite touching the floor.

Gunther had a book in front of him and was deep in thought over something in it.

“What's the problem?” I said helpfully, now that I was awake and capable of thought and movement.

“Passage that requires a translation,” he said, tapping the tome in front of him. “What does it mean, ‘Take a deep breath, and call lung distance? Should that not be ‘long distance'? And even so, I believe there is intended some crude form of wit in this.”

I was well into my second bowl of Wheaties and had used the last of the milk on it when I concluded my explanation. Gunther had sipped coffee silently, nodding occasionally to show that he followed my explanation.

“Would you say it is a good joke?” he asked seriously. “I mean in English.”

“It sounds like Lum and Abner,” I said, finishing my coffee.

“Then I'd best find some means of rendering it in French,” he said seriously. Then he changed the subject, coming to something that I could see had been on his mind.

“What is it, Gunther?”

“If you are engaged in something that will even in a small way help in the war effort, I should like to offer my assistance, even in a small way.”

With anyone else I would have been unable to resist the opening and get in three or four small jokes.

“I have great loyalty to this nation,” he said, back erect, “as you know. Many of my people, most of my people, my own relations in Berne, assure me of their similar feelings though to be neutral is of a necessity.”

“You don't have to explain to me, Gunther,” I said, getting up and gathering the dishes. Gunther must, indeed, have been grappling with weighty thoughts because he didn't stop me. Usually, the thought of my cleaning anything up was repulsive enough for Gunther to not only volunteer, but to insist that he take over. He wiped the corners of his mouth neatly with a paper napkin and hopped with dignity from his chair.

“I have offered my services,” he said. “They are sincere.”

“Okay,” I sighed, “I'll take you up on the offer. I'll give you the address of a veterinary clinic in Sherman Oaks. I want you to go there, wait for a blond hulk. His name is Bass. Follow him but don't let him see you. That shouldn't be too hard. There aren't too many smarts rattling inside him.”

Gunther nodded knowingly, and I explained the whole thing, including Olson's murder, the missing dog, everything.

“I'm relieved,” he said with a small grin. “I was afraid you had chosen that suit. While properly conservative, it does not accommodate your personality.”

“It'll have to do,” I said, thinking that Gunther would also have to do. Normally, it is not a wise thing to send a midget out to tail a suspect. There is no such thing as an inconspicuous midget or little person, but then again there are few people as dense as Bass seemed to be.

Gunther hurried to his room to get on with his assignment, and I decided to do the dishes some other time. In the hallway I flexed my muscles, decided that they still functioned, and moved to the phone on the wall to make a few calls.

Eleanor Roosevelt did not answer at the number she gave me, but a woman with what sounded like an English accent did. I gave her my name and she told me to wait. Gunther passed me, still suited, nodded seriously, and went down the stairs. The phone rang.

“Mr. Peters?” came Eleanor Roosevelt's voice.

“Mrs. Roosevelt,” I said. “Things are getting a bit complicated.”

“I have been informed about Doctor Olson,” she said. “Do you think it has something to do with Fala? I should hate to think that a man actually died because of some intrigue over a dog, but then regard for human life has not been this low since the reign of the Teutons.”

“I guess,” I said. “But this might be getting beyond the stage where I can handle it. You might want to call in the heavier guns, the FBI, whoever.”

There was a pause while she considered what to say next.

“Mr. Peters, it is quite evident to both of us that you wish to continue this inquiry. You have my trust, and I feel confident that you will not betray it. Beyond loyalty, there is little else that can be asked or received.”

“Intelligence would be nice,” I said.

She laughed gently. “You do not strike me as an unintelligent man,” she said. “There are those who pose as men in the heart of our own government, even those who have been elected, whose intellect does not surpass that of a small terrier and whose loyalty lags far behind. The canine reminder is, by the way, quite intentional.”

“I'll get back to work and get to you as soon as I can,” I said.

“Remember,” she said, “I have only a few days. I must be back in Washington for the Peruvian dinner, and Mr. Molotov is coming.”

“Sounds like a fun-packed few months,” I sympathized.

“Mr. Molotov is, in fact, quite nice,” she said. “His English is good, his sense of humor mischievous, and his manner poor. He actually brings his own food and carries a loaded gun in his suitcase.”

There I stood chatting with the First Lady in the hallway of Mrs. Plaut's boarding house when Mrs. Plaut herself appeared at the bottom of the stairs, saw me, and began her resolute way up.

“I'll have to go now, Mrs. Roosevelt,” I said. “Something important just came up. I'll report as soon as I can.”