The Howard Hughes Affair: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Four) (13 page)

“But.…”

“But,” Seidman continued, “the body was so far from the makeshift line that it had clearly been thrown and had not fallen. Reles had no reason to run. He was supposedly in the safest place in the world for him.”

“You mean the cops killed him?” I said.

“I didn’t say that,” Seidman added quickly. “Someone killed him. They’ve got another guy in the hole who says he worked with Siegel on the Greenie killing, name’s Allie Tannenbaum. Case comes up in a few months, but Tannenbaum won’t be enough to convict Siegel. That’s all I can give you without an hour or two of reading, and I have a disgruntled taxpayer behind me who needs my attention. Take care, Peters. Siegel isn’t a good guy to play games with.”

I said I’d take care and hung up. Outside, the strip wasn’t really crowded yet. It was still too early for that.

The Hollywood Lounge had both an awning and a doorman, which was what you needed to be a recognized joint on the strip. The doorman looked at me lazily and polished a button on his grey uniform. Inside the door was darkness and music from a juke box. Harry James was blowing “You Made Me Love You.” I listened for a few seconds while my eyes adjusted to the interior browns. I started to make out shapes and tables. There was a small platform for a floor show, a bar with a bartender and a dozen or so tables. A man and a woman were drinking and smoking at the bar. Four men were sitting at one of the tables, talking in low tones. At a table near the stage a woman sat alone. It was Miss Show Business with the sharp shoes. She saw me across the empty room and it was hostility at second sight. I put my hands up in a sign of peace and moved to the bar. The barkeep, a wheelbarrow of a man with enormous bags under his eyes, moved to take my order.

“Mr. Siegel’s expecting me,” I said softly. “Name’s Peters.”

The barkeep grunted and waddled to the end of the bar where he picked up a phone, said something into it and nodded at the response. Miss Show Business looked darts at me. I smiled back. Her darts softened and in another few seconds they might have turned to smiles, but I didn’t get the few seconds.

The barkeep nodded at a door a few feet away from me. I said thanks, wondering what his voice was like, and went through the door. I found myself in a small hallway facing a narrow flight of stairs. As I started up, I became aware of someone standing at the top and it was a big someone. I was constantly running into big someones.

This big someone waited till I got to the top step and then made a sign with his hands that it would be nice if I raised my arms. I raised my arms and he searched me. Our eyes met and I didn’t like what I saw in his. He nodded me through a door and closed it behind me.

The room was a large office with the desk off in the corner as if space had been cleared in the middle for something. Next to the desk stood an ape of a man in a light grey suit with big lapels. Behind the desk sat a guy with even white teeth and a false smile.

The smiler, I decided, was Bugsy Siegel. He was a well-built man with a prominent nose which had taken a break and veered to the left. His dark hair was parted evenly on the left and was receding slightly. His suit was dark and his tie blue. He had a neat handkerchief in his pocket. I suddenly recognized his face.

“You Peters?” said Siegel, getting up and letting the smile drop slightly. The touch of Brooklyn was still in his voice.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I know you from somewhere,” he said suspiciously.

“The YMCA,” I said.

He snapped his fingers and looked at the ape next to him. The ape was sweating and didn’t respond.

“Right,” Siegel said easing up, “you work out there too. We never really met.”

“Right,” I said with a smile at my fellow Y member. I had seen him working out occasionally at the Y for the last few years. We never talked and I hadn’t known who he was—the two guys who watched him while he worked out didn’t promote friendliness. The guy I recognized as Siegel did a lot of running and swimming, and I had seen him boxing a few times.

“You’re not here to challenge me to four or five rounds, are you?” he said amiably, looking at the ape to appeciate his joke. The ape did so with a small smile. I appreciated his joke too.

“No challenge of any kind,” I said. “I need some help. I told you on the phone I’m working for Howard Hughes. On the night of the party you went to at his house in Mirador, someone tried to steal Hughes’ plans for some important military weapons.”

Siegel got up quickly from behind his desk. Ape didn’t move. Siegel’s smile was gone.

“Wait,” I said quickly. “I came here for your help. I’m not accusing you of anything.”

Siegel nodded cautiously for me to continue.

“At first I wasn’t sure if someone had actually tried to steal anything that night,” I said, looking at him and trying not to blink and look nervous. “But last night a guy named Frye tried to kill me to stop the investigation and got himself strangled. And this afternoon Major Barton, who was at the party, caught two bullets in his heart before he could tell me anything.”

“I didn’t like Barton,” said Siegel. “You know why I didn’t like him?” I said I didn’t know and Siegel went on, “Because he knew who I was and said something that didn’t please me. He had a few too many belts, of booze in him and said things people shouldn’t say.”

“That won’t do you any good if the cops start putting things together and find out you knew him,” I said, to keep Siegel talking. “They’ve got reasons for trying to nail you, and you’ve got one indictment on your head now.”

“You know a lot about my business,” Siegel said suspiciously, coming around the desk and stepping toward me. The ape didn’t move a muscle, just stood there, sweating.

“Not enough to get me in trouble,” I said quickly. “My only interest is in finding out who tried to get those plans and, maybe, who put away two people in the last eighteen hours. They’re probably the same person and they’re probably up to something that won’t be good for this country.”

I hoped patriotism would move Siegel or at least back him away from suspicion toward me. It did.

This country has given me some rough times,” he said. “But it’s given me a lot too.”

You mean you’ve taken a lot, I thought to myself, resisting the almost overwhelming urge to say it aloud. I was proud of my restraint.

“You know what that Hitler bastard is doing to Jews?” he said.

I said I had some idea, and he said I didn’t.

“If there’s a war,” he said earnestly, “I’m going to do what I can to help beat Hitler. I was going to tell Hughes that, but his party broke up early and I never got the chance. You can tell him for me.”

“I will,” I said. “Now about Major Barton.…”

“If the cops try to hang that on me, they’ll be wasting their time. I didn’t do it. In my business, we only kill each other.”

Siegel calmed himself by taking a deep breath and looking at his well-scrubbed hands. Then he answered the phone that was ringing on his desk. He listened for a few seconds. “Carbo? All right,” he turned to me. “I’ve got to go downstairs for a few minutes. Talk to Jerry and make yourself a drink if you want.” Siegel went out the same door I had come through. I looked at the ape named Jerry and he looked at me. I moved to a chair in the corner and sat down.

“Worked for Mr. Siegel long?” I tried.

“A month,” Jerry said in a surprisingly high voice. “And I don’t work for him the way you think. I’m a teacher, ballroom dancing.”

I started to smile at Jerry’s joke and held back the smile because he wasn’t smiling back. I also realized that the reason the furniture was in a corner and Jerry was sweating might give some support to his crazy tale.

“No kidding?” I said.

“I like dancing,” Jerry said defiantly, taking a step toward me.

“So do I,” I said, hoping he wasn’t going to ask me to dance.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Jerry said. “You’re thinking a guy that spends most of his time fox trotting, waltzing, rhumbaing must be some kind of a fairy, right?”

“No, never entered my mind.”

Jerry’s move toward me wasn’t exactly ungraceful.

“I can clean and jerk two fifty,” he said. “I’m in a baseball league that plays two nights a week, year around.”

I wondered what position he played but didn’t have time to ask.

“You think you can do that?” he said. “You think a fairy can lift two fifty and play baseball?”

I couldn’t see any reason why not, but I said I saw his point.

“People think a dance teacher walks around on his tiptoes and has a limp wrist,” he went on. “Nobody thinks Fred Astaire is a fairy.”

I didn’t know and didn’t care, but I told him he was right. At that point Siegel returned with Miss Show Business behind him. Her coat was gone, and she spangled and glittered like a dime store.

“Peters, this is Verna,” Siegel said. “She’s in the lounge show. I’m taking a few dance lessons, advanced stuff from Jerry, and Verna’s helping out.”

“Pleased to meet you, Verna,” I said, wondering what I had wandered into.

“Listen,” Siegel said, coming over to me, “I’ve got big friends in this town. I know a Countess, a real one, society people, show business, you know. If I can help, let me know. Anything I can do. I didn’t see anything at Hughes’ that night. I don’t know anything. If you want me to, I’ll ask some questions, but I don’t think this is exactly the kind of thing my people would know about. Know what I mean?”

I said I knew, and he put a hand on my shoulder to guide me out. He stopped at the office door, looked back at Verna and Jerry at the other side of the room. Jerry was demonstrating a step to Verna, who was having trouble understanding.

“You look like an honest guy, Peters,” Siegel whispered. “Tell me. You think I’m losing my hair?”

I looked at his hair, and he looked like he was losing it. I said no he wasn’t losing it and I wished I had as fine a crop as he. Siegel patted my shoulder, smiled and opened the door. I walked out and shared the small hallway with the guy who had gone over me for the gun.

“Remember,” said Siegel. “You need help—you know where to come.”

“Right,” I said. “Thanks.”

The door closed, and I eased my way past the muscle and went down the stairs, feeling his eyes on me.

My father’s watch told me it was two-forty-five. My body told me time was running out, and the doorman of the Hollywood Lounge told me it was almost 7:30. I decided to believe the doorman. I had four and a half hours till my meeting with Hughes, and I decided to spend a few of those hours at the Y, urging my body toward a few more years of abuse. The sky rumbled a rain warning.

I drove to the Y on Hope Street, showed my card to the night man, and went down the stairs to the locker room.

The locker door bounced, banged and vibrated, adding a familiar sound to the equally familiar smell of sweat, chlorine and urine and the sight of peeling walls, narrow wooden benches and bare 40-watt bulbs. It was a comforting jazz of light and sound for a confused Toby Peters. I absorbed it with all of my still intact senses as I hung my jacket on the hook and began to take off my shirt.

The sound of running shower water off in the shower room echoed with indistinguishable voices as I slowly undressed and changed into shorts, T-shirt, jock, socks and shoes. A dozen lockers down, a tall kid with sloping shoulders sat in a wringing wet T-shirt and panted heavily. The kid pushed his moist hair back but seemed too tired to reach up and open his locker. I adjusted my soiled supporter, frayed from overwashing in the sink. My shorts were slightly torn at the crotch, my T-shirt was crumpled, sweat-dry and a little stiff, and my gym shoes were worn tennis-flat and giving away at the seams. I savored my socks. They were new, soft and absorbant.

I took a last look at the tall kid and moved down the row of lockers toward the stairs leading to the gym. I was aware of moving, shuffling bodies even before I got to the gym floor. When I came up from the stairway darkness, I faced a volleyball game with five people on each side, all men. The server was a stocky young guy with a white shirt. I turned away from them and headed far the light bag in the corner. I banged away on it for about ten minutes with my handball gloves, softening the gloves and working up a slight sweat. Leaving the plop of the volleyball behind me, I went up the stairs and did a mile on the track.

I was feeling good and not thinking. I made my way to the handball courts and struck it lucky. Dana Hodgdon, a proctologist who was about sixty, was alone on a court. He was a thin guy with white hair which he kept out of his eyes by wearing a sweat band on his forehead.

He was already dripping with sweat when I knocked at the door and asked if he wanted a game. He said sure and after I got a few whacks at the ball, he served. My palms started to swell as they always did. I was feeling great and only lost the first game 21–14. My legs felt good, and my hands were in control of the ball. Some days everything felt right, and I could put the ball where I wanted it. Other days, I could strain and concentrate, relax and forget, change my style and still blow easy shots. In four years of playing, I had only beaten Doc Hodgdon twice. Both games were on the same day and I just barely won. Then he disappeared for a month. When he came back he explained that he had played that day with double pneumonia and a temperature of 102.