Murder on the Yellow Brick Road (6 page)

“He says he didn't do it,” I told him as I walked through the squadroom. The handcuffed couple was still there, and the shirtless guy adjusted his tie as we passed.

“He sticks to that and we'll end up with a trial,” shrugged Seidman. “You know who some of our witnesses are?”

I told him I knew.

“Now that'll really be publicity,” he said. “Might be a good idea if his lawyer or someone.…”

“Like me?” I said.

“Someone,” continued Seidman, “suggested that he plead guilty. We have other things to work on, and this can be handled quietly.”

“It's a thought,” I said. “Thanks for letting me talk to him, and give my best to Phil.”

“I'll tell him you were sorry you missed him,” Seidman said getting in the last crack. His white face looked pleased, and I had nothing more to say. As I walked out, the thin black guy between the two cops drinking coffee put his head in his hands and leaned forward. It looked like he was going to throw up.

I stopped at a Pig-n Whistle on the corner and had a burger and Pepsi. I liked the Pepsi and Pete ads the company put out with the two comic cops. When Coke came up with something better, they'd regain my gourmet trade. While I waited for my sandwich, I called Warren Hoff and told him what had happened. He said he'd get a lawyer for Wherthman. I didn't ask him what the lawyer would tell the little man, but I doubted if they could get the little guy to confess to the murder.

The next step was to talk to the witnesses and try to get a lead on the Canadian midget with the bad temper, so I asked Hoff where I could reach Fleming and Gable. I already knew Grundy's address. Hoff had the information in front of him.

“Victor will be having dinner at the Brown Derby tonight. He'll get there around six, and he's been told that you might drop by to ask him a few questions. Clark is spending the weekend at Mr. Hearst's ranch in San Simeon. If you want to talk to him by phone, he should be arriving there soon. He drove up.”

I noticed that Fleming and Gable were Victor and Clark but Hearst was Mr.Hearst. Even Hoff realized how silly it would have sounded for him to say that Gable was at William Randolph's or Willie's or Bill's.

“Thanks,” I said. “I'll be in touch.”

He gave me his home phone number in case I wanted to reach him later in the evening, and I let him hang up first.

I spent another nickel and called M.G.M. again. This time I asked for Judy Garland and gave my name. I got her on the line in about thirty seconds. She said she was finished for the day.

“The person who called you this morning and told you to go to the Oz set. You said it was a man with a high voice.”

“That's right,” she said.

“Could it have been a midget?”

She said it could and I asked the important question.

“Did he have an accent? You know, Spanish, French, German?”

“No, no accent.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I'll get back to you. Tell Cassie I said hello.”

“I'll tell her, she's right here.” She laughed and hung up. She had a hell of a nice laugh. Either Wherthman had a helper, or someone unconnected with the murder called Judy Garland, or Wherthman was right, and he was being framed. It wasn't evidence to go to the cops with, but it gave me a little confidence in what I was doing.

I ate my burger and headed home.

Home until a month earlier had been a walkup near downtown and my office and a long trot to the Y on Hope Street. But my former landlady had taken exception to a difficult night in which the apartment was shot up and a guy who was trying to kill me went through the window. I couldn't blame her too much, and it wasn't hard to move. My clothes, food and books fit nicely into two cardboard suitcases I got for almost nothing in a pawnshop on Vermont. The pawnbroker, a guy named Hill, owed me a favor for catching a thief who was robbing him blind during the day. Cameras, radios, binoculars, watches had been missing every day at closing time. I staked myself out under a counter with a couple of sandwiches and watched the store between two boxes. The thief turned out to be the seventy-one-year-old lady who brought Hill his lunch from the deli across the street. Hill always ate standing in the store so he wouldn't lose business. She did all her grabbing on the way out, dropping things into the shopping bag she used to deliver Hill's food. She hadn't resold or used any of the stuff. She had just stolen it for the excitement. It was piled up in her room down the street. Hill had paid me, but four hours under that counter with my bad back had me laid up in bed for a week. He felt guilty, and I used that guilt to get things from him, like the suitcases and the .38 automatic owned and never used. It was the second .38 I got from Hill. The first one had been taken by the cops after a guy took it from me and killed a couple of people with it.

That was old business. New business was the place I was living in on Long Beach Boulevard near Slauson. It was small and cheap, partly because the place had the smell of fast decline. It was one of a series of two-room, one story wooden structures L.A. management people called bungalows. To people passing by, the place looked like a motor court that had lost its license and sign. Paint was peeling from all the houses in the court like the skin from a sunburned, ageing actress. Like the actress, the bungalows were functional, but not particularly appealing. When it rained, the ground in front of my place became a swamp. The furnished furnishings were faded and the shower didn't work, but it had a great advantage. It was cheap. Jeremy Butler, the poetic wrestler who owned my office building, also owned this place and suggested that I move in and keep an eye on the property for him. In return, I paid practically nothing in rent. A few days earlier I had paid with a sore stomach when I caught a kid trying to break into one of the bungalows at night. The kid had butted me with his head and taken off. His head had hit the point where I had recently taken a bullet, and the wound had just barely scarred when the kid hit it.

When I pulled the Buick in front of my place, it was about four in the afternoon. The Sante Fe moaned, rattling the walls, and I went inside, kicking off my shoes at the door. Through the thin walls I could hear a couple with hillbilly accents arguing, but I couldn't make out the words.

I ran the water in the bath full blast. Full blast meant it would be about three-quarters full in half an hour. The half hour was spent getting coffee and pouring myself a big bowl of Quaker Puffed Wheat with a lot of sugar. I finished the Puffed Wheat while I took a bath and read the comics. It was the day before Sadie Hawkin's Day, but I was sure Li'l Abner would be all right. I ran through Mary Worth's Family and Tarzan and got happy for Dick Tracy. He said he was going on vacation.

I put on a pair of shorts, plopped on my bed and listened to the radio for about an hour with my eyes closed. By a few minutes after six I was dressed in my second suit and ready to go. Such was the domestic life of Toby Peters, which suited me just fine most of the time.

The hillbilly couple were still arguing when I left, but they weren't breaking anything so I ignored them and got into my Buick. When I was a kid, my father and brother and I always named our cars. Since my dad's car was always a heap, we needed a new one every year or so. I remember one was called Valentino, a Model A Ford. I'd thought about naming the Buick, but nothing seemed right for it. I decided to ask Butler. As a poet, he might have some ideas. I took Long Beach to Washington and went up Normandie heading for Wilshire.

It was on a stretch of Normandie near some factories that the bullet missed my head. The street was pretty well deserted, but a car pulled up behind me and gave me the horn to get out of the way. I didn't even look in the rear view mirror. As the car passed, my neck began to itch, and I started to turn. The bullet went through the driver's side window near my nose and right out the opposite window. I hit the brakes, held the wheel and ducked down below the door. My tires hit something and the Buick spun around and stopped. I didn't have my .38 with me. I crouched over, listened for a few seconds to be sure the other car had gone. When I sat up, the street was clear and the sun was still shining. The holes in both windows were small, but they sent out rays like the sun in a kid's drawing. I rolled the windows open so no one would ask about the holes.

Then, I headed back to my place and got my .38. It was getting late for my meeting with Victor Fleming, but I needed some solid reassurance. It could simply have been a nut. There are plenty of nuts in Los Angeles, especially kids who are looking for dangerous thrills. There is something about the monotony of L.A. that sometimes drives people mad. Maybe it's coming to the ocean and finding there is no place further to take your life. It was also possible that an enemy had been laying for me. I had a few old enemies and some recent ones. It was also possible that it had something to do with the dead Munchkin. That seemed just as wild since I didn't know anything the cops didn't know. Or did I? I went over everything in my head as I drove, keeping my eyes open for another attack. I came up with one idea. Late or not, I had to check it out. I stopped at a gas station and called my office while a guy with a Brooklyn Dodgers cap and an old, grey sweater gave me half a buck's worth.

Shelly was still in the office. He wanted to talk about his root canal, but I didn't have the time and he sounded a little hurt.

“You had a call Toby,” he said accepting temporary defeat. “A guy with a high voice. Said he wanted to hire you and had to get to you fast. So I gave him your address. Did he find you?”

“He found me Shelly, thanks.” I found out the caller had no accent and told Shelly I'd see him when I could.

It didn't make sense, at least not to me. I dropped it, after deciding to bill the cost of new car windows to M.G.M., and headed for the Brown Derby. It was almost seven when I got there. I found a space a few blocks away and jogged. The Derby was a greyish dome with a canopy in front and a single line of rectangular windows running around it. Perched on top of the dome and held up by a tangle of steel bars was the replica of a brown derby. The place looked something like an erupted boil wearing a little hat.

I told the waiter that Fleming was expecting me and was led to a table in a corner. The room was jammed but the noise level was low.

Fleming got up and shook hands when I introduced myself. He was a tall guy, about sixty, with well-groomed grey hair. His nose looked as if it had taken one in the past. He was wearing a tweed suit, a checkered tie and a brown sweater. He looked very English, but his voice was American.

“Have a seat, Peters,” he said. There was another guy at the table and Fleming introduced him as Dr. Roloff, a psychiatrist.

Roloff was equally tweedy and even more grey than Fleming though about ten years younger.

“Dr. Roloff has been kind enough to give me some ideas for my next picture,” Fleming explained, “a version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

I must have looked surprised because Fleming added, “I know its been done with Freddie March. A good film, but I have some ideas and Spencer Tracy is interested. But that's another game. What can I do for you, Peters? Can we get you something to eat?”

“Nothing to eat, just some information and I'll get out of your conference. The police talked to you today about an argument you saw between two people dressed in Munchkin suits.”

Fleming nodded and I went on.

“What exactly did you see and hear?”

“Very little,” said Fleming, taking a belt of coffee. “I was coming back from breakfast with Clark Gable, and we saw the two little people arguing. Clark looked. I wanted nothing to do with it. I had a year of working with them. Most of them were fine, but a lot of them were a pain in the ass. They argued, disappeared, showed up late. Once they screwed up a take on purpose by singing “Ding Dong the Bitch is Dead”. I didn't notice it. The sound man didn't notice it. We had to reshoot it.”

“It's not surprising,” Roloff put in, “short people, midgets especially, are sometimes inclined to be highly agressive toward normal size people. They're also inclined to use obscenity more than the average to assert their adultness, to overcompensate. I had one midget as a patient who knew he was overcompensating with big cigars and sexual overtures to full-sized women. He knew he looked ridiculous and obscene to others, but he couldn't stop. It was a kind of self hate, a punishment for himself. It's hard to live your life knowing that whenever you go out on the street people will stare at you. Exhibitionism may result or the person may become a shy and bitter recluse.”

“Just like movie stars,” I added.

“Sure,” said Roloff.

“Sorry I can't help you, Peters,” Fleming joined in. “I can give you a lot of stories about Munchkins, but I don't think it will help. It just supports what Dr. Roloff has been saying. I'll give you an example. One of them got drunk one day and almost drowned in a toilet. Another time one of them pulled down his drawers in a crowd scene. We didn't even notice that the first time through the rushes. As for the fight this morning, when I saw it was two little people in Munchkin suits, I paid no attention. I stepped in between them a few times when we were shooting the picture, and I had no desire to take the abuse again. When I saw those two this morning, I didn't know why they were wearing costumes from the movie and I didn't give a Hungarian crap.”

He paused to look around the room and regain his composure. The thought of the Munchkins had sent his temper flying.

“I like what we did on that picture,” he continued patting down his hair. “I came in on it late after a couple of other directors, and I was pulled off it early to take over Gone With The Wind. Still, I spent more than a year on Oz and it was the toughest damn thing I've ever done. Those two pictures have been damn good for me, but I wouldn't want to make either one of them again. Even if no one remembers Oz, I will and with mixed memories.”