The Man Who Shot Lewis Vance (12 page)

“We’ll not be disturbed here,” he said. “This is my sanctum. My refuge.”

“Nice,” I said. I wandered over to the dark oak writing table and glanced down at the manuscript on it.

“
Shadow and Substance
,” he said, moving over to look through the telescope. “The play you are looking at. It will be my next film. The story of a young Irish girl of simple faith and a most cynical canon. I’ll be the canon and—”

Something caught his eye in the telescope and he stopped speaking to adjust the lens.

“Ah,” he said. “Harold Lloyd is at his croquet on that ostentatious meadow of his. His smile is most genuine when he makes a decent point. None of the affectation … out of sight.” Chaplin turned to face me. “Your question?”

“What kind of donation did you make with the Larchmonts?”

Chaplin rubbed his palms together, removed the towel from his neck, and dabbed his forehead.

“A sizeable check for the establishment of a center for the improvement of Soviet-American cultural relations,” he said. “The world will not always be at war. The hope for prolonged peace rests on the United States and the Soviet Union living in respect and harmony.”

I leaned against the writing table, careful not to sit on
Shadow and Substance.

“The Larchmonts share this desire,” I said.

“The Larchmonts share in the more than ten thousand dollars I foolishly placed in their care to use as seed money to establish this project. They have had the cash for more than a year and my efforts to discover what has been done with it have been met with silence or lies.”

“Did the Larchmonts ever mention John Wayne?”

Chaplin laughed again. “I doubt if they would have approached John Wayne in the expectation of getting his support for this enterprise. Mr. Wayne is known for his lack of sympathy for the Soviet endeavor and sacrifice. Mr. Larch-mont, in the two meetings I had with that infamous individual, may have mentioned Mr. Wayne in a less than complimentary context, but I don’t recall.”

“Two men, look-alikes, one a little smaller than the other, probably wearing loud Hawaiian shirts. That ring a gong?”

Chaplin smiled and tapped his cheek. “I believe a pair answering to that description did accompany Larchmont to a meeting here. They drove Larchmont to the gate and then departed. I got a very good look at them through the telescope. As I recall, the one I could see most clearly was wearing a gauche red shirt with hula girls imprinted on it. Would you like something to drink?”

“Pepsi if you’ve got it.”

Chaplin picked up the phone near the pile of pulps on the nightstand and ordered a Pepsi and an Alka-Seltzer. Then he sat on the edge of his bed.

“It will take a few minutes,” he said. “My regular servants are gone. They were Japanese. All of them are in the camp at Manzanar. You’re familiar with it?”

I nodded.

“Do you know why they are in that camp?” he asked. And then he answered. “Because the United States government recognizes the intellectual superiority and determination of the Japanese. Couple that with gross prejudice and unreasoning fear and we have the insanity of Manzanar.”

We went on for a while talking about my job, the detective pulps he read every night to get to sleep, his nervous stomach aided somewhat by the Alka-Seltzer, and the Larchmonts.

“I suspect,” he said, “that others were and are equally displeased with the Larchmonts, but I shall now count myself lucky to be rid of them. I plan to burn this file when you depart. It has been a most illuminating discussion, most illuminating. Tell me, Mr. Peters, would you consider taking on a job for me? I’d be willing to invest a few hundred dollars more to recover my investment with the Larchmonts. You could serve as a collection agent. Do you do such work?”

Chaplin had downed his second Alka-Seltzer and it was getting late in the afternoon.

“Five percent of anything I recover,” I said, rattling the melting ice cube in my glass. “That’s a maximum of five hundred dollars.”

“More than fair, more than fair,” said Chaplin, bouncing forward to shake my hand on it. His hand was firm and strong.

Since I wasn’t going to take any cash upfront from Chaplin, I wouldn’t feel guilty about not pursuing his investment with too much zeal. I’d bear it in mind as I went after my gun, Teddy, and Alex. With Chaplin as a client, I also had some cover for harassing the Larchmonts. It was a good deal all around.

“I’m having a few people over on Sunday for tennis and swimming should you like to return with a report,” Chaplin said at the front door. “I’m sure you could tell us some interesting tales of mayhem.”

“Mostly lost grandmas, stolen cars, and people who need a few hours of protection,” I said.

“Nonetheless,” Chaplin added, “you are welcome to join us.”

“Thanks for the Pepsi,” I said.

“My pleasure,” Chaplin countered, and I bounded down the gravel driveway with another client and a little more information.

The radio in the Crosley was pretty good. I listened to the news and found out that coffee and tea would probably be rationed soon, which meant that millions of people who didn’t even like tea would soon be running out to stock up on it. Basements would fill with boxes of tea, more tea than a hoarder could drink in a lifetime, even if he or she loved tea.

Traffic was heavy heading back to the Farraday, so I stopped for a hot dog, some fries, and a chocolate shake at a stand on Gower.

Inside, the guy next to me asked for the mustard. I told him I had just had a couple of Pepsis with Charlie Chaplin. The guy with the mustard looked like a leather bulldog.

“What’d Chaplin drink?” he said humoring me.

“Alka-Seltzer,” I said. “Nervous stomach.”

“Too bad,” the bulldog man said, and walked off dripping mustard.

      
8

I
t was after five when I got back to the Farraday. At that hour I found a space on the street half a block down. The workers, shoppers, and sightseers of the daylight hours were on their way out of town and the shadowy night crowds hadn’t yet made their way in.

The people on the streets now were mostly young men in soldier and sailor uniforms. They had nowhere to go but shared hotel rooms and afternoon bars till the prostitutes, feeling the shade of night, knew it was time to get up and go to work.

Madame Carpentier was coming out of the Farraday as I walked up. I would have avoided her if I could, but it was too late. Her “study” was in the office on the second floor. Her specialty was the past and the future. Mine was the present. You’d have thought we had nothing in common, but she kept seeing me in tea leaves and Tarot cards. I didn’t want to be seen in tea leaves or Tarot cards or even in my mirror.

Madame Carpentier, also known as Vera Krachnovitz, was about fifty or eighty, carried a knitting bag that weighed her down, and wore loose-fitting black dresses with colorful beads. Her too-black hair was always tied in a tight bun.

“Tobias Leo,” she said when I tried to ease past her. “You’ve been trying to avoid me.”

“I’ve been busy,” I said.

“Too busy to learn the future?”

“Takes the fun out of now,” I said. “I’d rather not know.”

She shifted the knitting bag into her left hand and stared at me.

“How’s business?” I asked politely.

“Murder,” she whispered. A pair of kid sailors heard the word as they passed by and grinned at us.

“That’s too bad,” I said.

“No,” she corrected, holding up her free hand. “I’m not talking about my business. Business is good. These children stream in with their dollars to discover if they will live and prosper,” she said. “I put on a show. I give them their money’s worth. Incense, sometimes even raising the table. They eat it up. No, I mean you and murder.” She shifted the knitting bag back to her right hand again. “Damn thing weighs a ton, but I can’t leave my stuff in the office. Thieves.”

“Murder,” I said.

“Tobias Leo,” she said, remembering the subject. “There will be two murders.”

“Just one,” I corrected her, feeling like a kid who needed a toilet but couldn’t get away from the teacher in the hall.

“Listen to me,” she said. “Pay attention, don’t fidget. Three will die, two of them murdered. This is free information. You could pay some attention here. I’ve had a long hard day. You want me to buy you a drink?”

The first sign of night appeared on the street like a robin in spring. A prostitute named Boom-Boom stepped out of the Anchor Bar across the street, blinked at the setting sun, saw her shadow, and went back inside.

“No thanks, Madame C.,” I said. “I’ve got to work …”

“Suit yourself,” she said with a shrug, finally putting down her load to exercise her fingers. “I wasn’t going to make a sexual attack on your scarred body. Watch yourself.”

“Thanks,” I said, taking a step toward the Farraday before she could say more, but I wasn’t fast enough.

“Damn, I almost forgot,” she said, lifting her burden again. “Two men in yellow are looking for you.”

“Madame C., you are one amazing woman,” I sighed.

“They were here about ten minutes ago. I heard them asking Jeremy about you,” she said. “Stay away from them.”

“Is that from the cards?”

“Hell no,” she said, looking down the street and gauging the journey. “It’s from someone who’s seen too many things on these streets.”

The outer lobby of the Farraday was tiled, clean, and dark. Jeremy had been at his task of scrubbing. The inner lobby echoed my footsteps as I headed for the fake marble staircase. Then a voice came out of the shadows.

“Toby.”

I stopped and Jeremy Butler came out, a pail in one hand, a wet rag in the other. He was wearing dark slacks and a gray T-shirt. His shaved head caught a small glint of dusty light from a small, high lobby window.

“Some men were looking for you,” he said with concern.

“I know. I ran into Madame Carpentier in the street. How are the wedding plans?”

Jeremy looked up into the heights of the Farraday in the general direction of Alice Pallice’s office.

“Perfect,” he said. “Remember. You are coming.”

“I wouldn’t miss it,” I said.

“What else is new?” I asked politely.

“The war,” he said. “The echoes of war on life and art difficult for people to grasp. The War Production Board plans to order the halting of manufacture of almost all musical instruments except violins, cellos, and some guitars. This, they say, will result in striking savings of strategic material.”

“A tough war,” I agreed.

“It’s the metal,” Jeremy explained. “The musical industry used about fifteen thousand tons of war related metals last year including ten thousand tons of iron, three thousand tons of steel, fifteen hundred tons of brass, three hundred and seventy-five tons of copper, and twenty-five tons of aluminum.”

“That’s a lot of music,” I said.

“According to the War Production Board, that iron could have been used to make the casings for eleven thousand five hundred six-ton army tanks; the steel, eighty-three medium tanks; the brass, fifty million rounds of thirty-caliber cartridges; the copper, five hundred hundred-and-fifty-five-milli-meter field pieces; and the aluminum, forty thousand aircraft flares.”

“Jeremy, how do you remember all this?”

“It’s a curse,” he said. “The bathos of human existence brands itself on my soul. I’m working on an ironic poem on the curse, which I will read at the wedding ceremony. Alice thinks it appropriate in this day and age.”

“Sounds fine to me.”

Somewhere above us a door closed, a man coughed.

“The instruments of the orchestra are the first cousins to the weapons of destruction,” he said. “An ordinary piano contains enough steel, copper wire and brass to make a dozen bayonets, a corps radio, and sixty-six thirty-caliber cartridges. A bass drum contains the steel for two bayonets and a trumpet enough brass for about sixty thirty-caliber cartridge cases. If this war continues for three or four years, the orchestra will die, chamber music will be the norm. The irony Toby, the irony. As the war continues, music will be more gentle, thoughtful. I haven’t worked it all out …”

“It’s a job for a poet,” I said.

“Till they take away our pens and scrolls,” he said sadly, looking into his bucket of soapy water for the muse.

“Jeremy, cheer up. You’re getting married,” I said, starting up the stairs.

The thought of the gargantuan Alice brought a small smile to the massive, scarred face of the former wrestler, onetime Terror of Tarzana.

“I’ve got to get back to work.” Jeremy sighed. “It never stops. As Sisyphus discovered, if you don’t keep pushing the rock upward, it will roll back and crush you. Civilization is the realization that the rock will never be pushed to the top. Our meaning lies in the style in which we push and our attitude toward the other pushers.”

“Check,” I said, as Jeremy strode back into the darkened depths of the Farraday Building to push against endless dirt.

Having encountered a mystic and poet within five minutes, Shelly would have been an interesting contrast, but Shelly was already gone, the outer door locked. I had to use my key and was pleased to find that no more of the bodies Madame Car-pentier had promised were waiting in the waiting room.

Shelly’s office was dark, but since the sun wasn’t quite down, there was enough light coming through his window for me to walk toward my office without fumbling for the light switch. I touched the coffee pot. It was warm. I knew there’d be some coffee at the bottom. Shelly never cleaned the pot. I rinsed a mug that had
Venga a Tijuana
enameled on it in red. The coffee was awful but it was coffee.

I stepped inside my office and almost tripped over one of the Hawaiian pineapples. The coffee spilled, some of it, on the floor, but I straightened up and reached over and put the cup on my desk before all of it was lost.

The bigger pineapple on one side of the door closed it behind me. The smaller pineapple moved to block my possible exit. I knew the office better than they did. There was only one way out now, the window through which Shelly and I had lowered Vance a few hours earlier.