The Devil Met a Lady (22 page)

“God, I love the resonance of this place,” said Wiklund. “I’m afraid our lights will have to be minimal for this performance. Too much illumination might attract the air-raid wardens or the police. The night watchman is, unfortunately, tied up and will not be able to attend this performance, which means that we have ample time.”

Two stage lights came on, not bright, but enough for me to see figures and to make my way to a front-row seat.

Wiklund, Jeffers, and Bette Davis were on stage. Davis held a champagne glass in her hand. There was a small table in the middle of the stage with an old Victrola record player perched upon it. I figured Stevens—Hans—was somewhere working the lights.

Bette Davis, dressed in a floor-length green gown glistening with a rainbow of sequins, looked in my direction—her eyes wide, her face revealing nothing. Jeffers was dressed in a tuxedo, as was Wiklund.

“You are privileged,” said Wiklund. “And Mr. Jeffers and I are honored to share the stage with Miss Davis. We’ve been working on our lines since last night. It’s only a scene, a bit of Oscar Wilde, but …” He shrugged. “Cucumber sandwiches with Miss Davis, who has graciously consented to appear with us, are as good as caviar with a queen.”

Bette Davis forced a small smile.

“We are, unfortunately, missing a few subsidiary performers,” Wiklund said as Jeffers looked at his watch and then toward me, less than lovingly. “Mr. Pinketts, Mr. Gray, and the lovely Inez are—”

“Dead,” I said.

Wiklund’s confidence wavered.

“I fail …” he began, looking at Jeffers and then at me.

“Gray and Pinketts are dead,” I said, “and Inez is on her way to Jersey,” I lied.

Wiklund was decidedly pale.

“You killed them?” asked Jeffers, moving forward toward the edge of the stage.

“No,” I said. “I thought you people might have some idea of who killed them. I have a thought or two. Want to hear?”

Jeffers and Wiklund looked at each other, and I could see they had a thought or two of their own.

“I think whoever hired you to get these plans and this record,” I said, holding up the package from under my arm, “wanted to beat you out of your cash. I think whoever hired you has come to the same conclusion I have.”

“Which is?” asked Wiklund.

“That you are,” said Bette Davis, stepping forward, “a company of amateurs, both as criminals and as performers.”

The scene didn’t look like any play I’d ever seen. I hadn’t seen many plays, but I liked the way it was going, and Bette Davis and I were getting all the good lines.

“You said …” Wiklund said.

“Many things,” said Davis, moving close to Wiklund, who backed away. “Many things to convince you that I planned to cooperate. But do you want to know what I think, what I’ve thought since I encountered you?”

She turned dramatically on Jeffers, who had moved menacingly toward her. “And you,” she said. “You are suited for nothing better than low comedy. Your timing is terrible. Your voice is weak. Vaudeville, if it still existed, would reject you, and burlesque would place you at its outer fringes.”

Jeffers’s hand came up, but Davis proved her point about timing by throwing her drink in his face.

I put my package down on the seat next to me and applauded.

“This is all wrong,” Wiklund said as Davis and Jeffers glared at each other, and wine or water dribbled down Jeffers’s face. “You’re lying about Pinketts and Gray.”

“You’ve been upstaged, Wiklund,” I shouted.

Someone was moving toward me out of the darkness near the stage.

“Stop it,” shouted Wiklund. “You’ve ruined the scene, my moment.”

Bette Davis had turned her back on Jeffers and was facing Wiklund again. Her hands were on her hips and she was looking at him with amused pity, a reaction he did not want to field.

“The scene is over,” said Davis.

Wiklund’s face was bright red. “Mr. Stevens?” he called.

“I’m here,” said Stevens, stepping in front of me.

“Take the package from Mr. Peters and dispatch him,” he said.

I had my gun out and pointed at Stevens’s stomach as he took a step toward me. “Let Miss Davis walk down the steps and join me,” I said, “or no package.”

“No,” shouted Wiklund. “She stays up here till I am convinced that you have given me the genuine article.”

“Impasse again,” I said.

“Hell, no,” said Jeffers, pulling a gun out of his tux and aiming it at Davis.

I handed the package to Stevens, who grinned, took it, turned his back on me and my weapon, and moved to the edge of the stage where Wiklund came forward to take it.

Wiklund moved to the Victrola, tore open the carbon-paper box, and placed the record on the machine. He hit a switch and stood back. The speaker crackled and the needle picked up the first scratches before the voice of Kate Smith burst out with “God Bless America.”

Things moved fast now. Bette Davis kicked Jeffers between the legs. The gun in his hand went off, sending a wild bullet into the Victrola and cutting Kate Smith off in mid “land that I love.” Davis took Jeffers’s gun hand and bit it. The gun fell to the stage. Davis tried another kick at the bent-over Jeffers, but his arm went out and he blocked it as he went to his knees groping for his gun.

Wiklund hesitated, but Stevens turned toward me and reached into his jacket. Before he could get it out a shot went off, echoing through the Hollywood Bowl.

“Nobody moves and nobody touches metal,” came the calm deep voice of Lieutenant Steve Seidman.

The trio on stage froze in a drawing-room tableau as Seidman moved down the aisle between the seats and a pair of uniformed cops stepped in on either side of the stage.

“You followed me,” I said.

“Phil thought it might be a good idea,” he said.

“He was right.”

The uniformed cops moved in, one on the stage to round up Wiklund and Jeffers, the other to take Stevens and his weapon.

“What was that crap about two people being dead?” Seidman asked, stepping next to me.

Bette Davis exited stage right.

“Made it up,” I said. “I don’t know where those guys are.”

“Toby,” Seidman said softly. “You are full of shit.”

“Wait,” Wiklund shouted from the stage, pulling out of the grasp of the policeman. “This isn’t the way it’s supposed to end. I simply won’t tolerate another failure.”

“Who hired you?” I asked.

“Never,” he said suddenly, standing erect.

“Goddamn ham,” Jeffers said behind him, trying to straighten up.

“Who hired you?” I asked Jeffers.

“How the hell do I know?” he answered. “King Lear here took care of everything. For all I know, he made the whole goddamn thing up.”

“It’s over,” Bette Davis said, appearing at my side.

“Almost,” I said.

“You are an enigma, Mr. Peters,” she said. “And while Arthur and I are indebted to you, it is my fond hope that we never see each other again.”

Seidman moved away from us toward the stage, from which a broken Wiklund and a sagging Jeffers were being led.

“I’ve got one little thing you could do for me,” I said.

“Besides having Arthur pay you?” she asked.

“Instead of that.”

I told her what it was.

“And the recording? The real one of me and Howard Hughes?”

“I’ve got it someplace safe,” I said. “If this didn’t work out, I thought we might have to use it. I’m going to go break it and get a few hours’ sleep.”

“Thank you. Now, if you don’t mind, I think I’d like to call my husband.”

“Lieutenant Seidman will get you home,” I said. “Don’t forget tomorrow morning.”

“Tomorrow morning,” she said with a smile. “I will not forget.”

Dash was sleeping in the Crosley. I didn’t disturb him. I drove back slowly to the Farraday, thinking without thinking. I listened to Artie Shaw from the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago on the radio.

I had no trouble parking this time. It was late. My plan was to be sure that Alice and Jeremy hadn’t gotten into any trouble helping me, and then to try to track down the person who had killed Niles, Pinketts, and Fritz. There was only one person it could be.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, I didn’t have to put my plan to work. When I put my key into the outer door of the Farraday a figure spoke from the shadows.

“I’ve been waiting for you.”

“How did you know I’d come back tonight?” I asked.

“Didn’t, but I’m very patient and very determined,” said Inez, showing me a gun that looked far too large for her hand but which she held with ease.

“And you want?…”

“The record,” she said. “My mission is to get those plans from Farnsworth. I believe that he will still be willing to trade them for his wife’s reputation. My mistake, as you well know, was getting involved with that idiot Wiklund. I should have handled it myself from the start, but there are others who insisted … Please open the door and let’s go inside.”

I did what I was told. The lobby of the Farraday was dark except for the exit signs in the rear of the building and the single night-light on each floor.

“You killed Pinketts and Gray,” I said.

“Ah, you found them. Well, their passing will not be mourned,” she said. “Nor, I believe, will that of Grover Niles. Up the stairs.”

“Can’t make it up the stairs,” I said. “Elevator.”

“You found the incentive to overcome your agonies when we were in bed,” she said.

“I was highly motivated. You want to take fifteen minutes going up? We’ll walk.”

“Elevator then,” she said, and we got in.

We didn’t say anything else until we got inside Shelly’s office. The place was cleaner than I had ever seen it. Jeremy and Alice had done a great job.

“Where did you put it?” Inez asked.

“I didn’t touch it,” I said.

“The record,” she said. “Now.”

I turned toward her and scratched my head. “We’ve got a problem here, Inez,” I said. “I give you the record and you kill me. It’s going to be hard for me to believe anything else. So, I’ve got to come to the conclusion that if I’m going to die anyway, I might as well make it a bad day for you.”

“I won’t kill you,” she said calmly.

“Why not?”

“I like you.”

“Not convincing,” I said.

“Do you have a suggestion?” she asked.

“You answer a question and I’ll give you a plan.” I tried moving to sit in Shelly’s chair, the same chair in which Andrea Pinketts had bought a scalpel in the neck from the lady in front of me.

“Ask.”

“You killed Niles, Pinketts, and Stevens,” I said.

“Yes, but that is not a question, and I’ve already as much as told you that I had.”

“You work for the Nazis.”

“Again, not a question,” she said. “But technically incorrect. I am a Nazi—not a German, but a Bolivian. My family will be among those who bring a new National Socialist Party dominance to all of South America when the war is over. More questions?”

“No,” I said. “That will be fine. John, you want to bring the record out for the lady?”

The door to my office opened and John Cawelti stepped in with a uniformed cop. Both had guns pointed at Inez. Cawelti also held a record in his hand.

Inez let out a little gasp and tightened her finger on the trigger.

“I’ll blow your goddamn head off, lady,” Cawelti said.

“He’s a charmer, Inez.”

“Lean over and put the gun on the floor and do it slow,” Cawelti continued.

Inez leaned over and put the gun down. The cop moved quickly to pick it up.

“Where are the bodies, Peters?” asked Cawelti.

“I don’t know, John,” I said as Inez glared fire at me and said something fast in Spanish through clenched teeth.

“You’re a lying son of a bitch,” he said.

“But I’m not a killer,” I reminded him. “You heard Inez confess, and Seidman has her helpers.”

He walked over to me in the chair while the cop cuffed Inez.

“How did you know I was here?”

“Saw you come in earlier,” I said. “Your car is still parked in front.”

“This record,” he said, holding it up. “What the hell is it and what was it doing under all those dishes in the sink?”

“Well,” I said, getting up slowly, “I think it’s …”

And my hand went out, hitting the record about in the middle of the label and sending it flying across the room and into the wall, where it shattered in a hail of black shards.

“You son of a bitch,” Cawelti hissed, slapping me in the face.

I took it.

“Slipped,” I said. “Sorry. It was Kate Smith singing ‘God Bless America.’”

“The station, Peters,” he said, his face going bright red. “Now. We’re going to have a long, long talk.”

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN

B
efore I opened my eyes the next morning, I knew someone was standing over me.

The night before, Cawelti had personally taken my statement, making clear that he believed a little less than half of it. Some time after midnight and before dawn he let me go home. I’d made it to my room, yanked the mattress onto the floor, pulled off my pants and shirt, and crawled into bed without washing, shaving, brushing, or thinking. If I dreamed, I don’t remember what my dreams were.

But I do remember the sense of dawn and someone over me.

I opened my eyes and looked up at a man in a neatly pressed gray suit and an old school blue-and-white tie. He was about forty, clean-shaven, with short auburn hair and no smile at all.

“Mr. Peters,” he said.

“Yeah.”

I tried to sit up or at least get my tongue to respond as he reached down with an open wallet. One side of the wallet held a small badge. The other side held a card which identified him as Special Agent Raymond Fielding of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“You been standing there long?” I asked, sinking back against my pillow.

“Not long, Mr. Peters,” he said politely. “And I won’t take much of your time.”

“I’m in no hurry,” I said, closing my eyes. “Have a seat.”

“If you don’t mind,” said Fielding. “I’ll stand.”

“I don’t mind.”

“The Bureau has, through Federal Agency Proclamation 32.321, assumed jurisdiction over a highly classified investigation into an attempt to compromise the integrity of the United States by a foreign country with which we are at war. There is the possibility that three citizens of the United States were killed in connection with this attempt. The Bureau and its director would, in the interest of national security, prefer that all inquiries regarding this situation of national security be pursued exclusively by the Bureau.”