Read The Man Who Shot Lewis Vance Online

Authors: Stuart M. Kaminsky

Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #General

The Man Who Shot Lewis Vance (8 page)

BOOK: The Man Who Shot Lewis Vance
4.75Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

The office I shared with Dr. Minck was on the top floor of the four-story Farraday Building on Hoover near Ninth. The Farraday was owned by Jeremy Butler, a mountain of a bald man who had made a reasonably good living and a good name for himself as a professional wrestler before retiring to write poetry and manage property he had bought with his sweat. He lived at the Farraday and dedicated himself to keeping the building clean of dust, decay, and neighborhood bums who found their way into the cool recesses of the building.

The steel elevator sat on the main floor, waiting for the unsuspecting to climb in and be trapped into the longest ride this side of the Orient Express. I started slowly up the fake marble stairs, listening to the early afternoon sounds of tenants, the distant whirl of a printing press, the sound of arguing voices, and someone who might have been singing or might have been calling out for help.

On the fourth floor I wandered through the not unpleasant smell of generously sprinkled Lysol and opened our outer office door. The pebbled, opaque glass window had a neatly printed notice in black letters:

D
R
. S
HELDON
M
INCK, DENTIST, D.D.S., S.D.

PAINLESS DENTISTRY AND PERFECT

PLATES SINCE
1916

T
OBY
P
ETERS, INVESTIGATOR

Shelly had agreed to this compromise after pleas, promises, and threats from me. His idea of door lettering was much more fanciful and less given to truth.

The small anteroom held two chairs, a small table, overfull ashtrays, and a pile of magazines in disarray and with covers missing. Jinx Falkenburg looked up at me from one of the magazines. She was everywhere. I wondered if it was time for me to write her a fan letter, maybe try to talk her into trying Pepsi. I pushed through the anteroom door expecting to see Shelly torturing a patient or sitting in his dental chair reading, but the room was empty and silent except for the dripping of water into a cup in the sink near my office. The sink was, once again, piled with dishes and coffee cups. For almost a month after a dental association inspection, Shelly had kept the place reasonably clean, but old habits, like old house detectives, die hard. I turned the handle to slow down the dripping water and noticed that the door to my office was open slightly.

My office off Shelly’s was slightly larger than a toilet stall at Union Station. There was a very small desk with a chair and one window behind it. There were also two chairs across the desk, which could be squeezed into comfortably by normal-size people. The chairs needed replacing, as did the plaster on the ceiling. The walls were dirty white and undecorated except for my dusty framed private investigator’s license and a photograph from when I was a kid. The photo showed me, my dad, and my brother, Phil, plus our dog Kaiser Wilhelm. It wasn’t much, but it was home, except when I had a client. I did my best to keep clients away from Shelly and my office.

Shelly, who was seated behind my desk, didn’t seem surprised or embarrassed by my entrance. He was writing something with one of my pencils, leaning close to the paper, peering with myopic eyes through his thick glasses. His ever-present cigar was shifting from side to side in his mouth, and tiny beads of sweat were dancing on his brow.

“Toby, advertising is the key to the future. I’m convinced of it,” he said, removing his cigar to point its wet end at me.

“What are you doing in my office, Sheldon?” I said, leaving the door open behind me.

“I’m writing,” he said, pointing at the paper. “I’m working on our futures, both of our futures. Translucent teeth.” Then he read: ‘“A size for every face. A size for every case. A shade for every complexion.’ How do you like that?”

“I’ve heard it somewhere,” I said. “I’ve got work to do Shel.”

He waved my work away with a free left hand and then wiped the hand on his unclean white smock.

“Listen.” He read again: “‘Toby Peters, Investigations. You may know but can you prove it? True facts secured and submitted in confidential reports. Local and national investigations. Missing persons our specialty.’”

“Our specialty?” I asked, still standing. “There’s only me. And I haven’t got money for ads. I can’t pay for my gas as it is and if you don’t get out from behind there and let me work I may have trouble coming up with my rent for this place.”

Shelly got up with a sigh and looked at me as if I were a pathetic child.

“You don’t understand,” he said. “You’ve got to invest to earn.”

I came around the desk, looked out the window, vowed to clean it, and sat down, easing Shelly out of the way. “Did Mildred give you the money for your ad campaign?”

“Not yet,” he admitted, “but I’m working on her, got tickets for
Life with Father
at the Music Box. Dorothy Gish and Louis Calhern. Might try to talk to Gish. Her teeth—”

“Any messages for me, Shel,” I asked, handing him the sheet of scrawling he had left on my desk.

“I’m talking about your future here, Toby,” he said. “You’re not getting any younger.”

“Thank God one of us isn’t,” I said, shuffling through the junk mail. “Messages?”

Shelly put the cigar back in his mouth, adjusted his slipping glasses, and slapped his sides.

“Yeah, you got messages. Let’s see. I wrote them down somewhere. Your landlady called. Something about a photograph she found. Hy called—”

“Which …?”

“The one from Hy of Hy’s Clothes for Him on Hollywood,” said Shelly. “He says you owe him eight dollars and something.”

“That it?” I asked, hearing the door to the outer office open.

“No, some guy called. Said his name was Alex. Said something nuts like stay out of it or away from it if you don’t want what Lance got.”

“Lance? You mean Vance?”

“Vance, Lance.” Shelly shrugged.

“You think you might have passed on this death threat a little earlier,” I asked amiably.

“I had a patient,” Shelly said. “You get nut calls all the time. How am I supposed to know what’s a threat and who’s a nut? I got to go.” Someone entered the outer office and Shelly left, closing the door behind him. I searched the top of my desk for the message from Alex. I found it sticking to a letter from Hollywood Tennis and Golf Shop promising me a great discount on restringing my racket.

The note from Shelly didn’t help much. I could make out the name “Alex” and the words “Stay up” or “Stay out.”

I spent the next twenty minutes trying to find John Wayne and listening to the groans from one of Shelly’s patients over Shelly’s off-key singing of “I’ve Got a Gal in Kalamazoo.” I finally got through to Wayne at the Allegheny Hotel through a tip from a guy in the security office at Republic Pictures.

“Hello,” came Wayne’s voice, a little boozy or sleepy.

“It’s me, Toby Peters,” I said. “We’ve got to talk about cleaning up after the party last night.”

“I thought the party was all cleaned up.”

“Not quite. Can you talk?”

“I can talk.” He sighed. “I’ve got a friend here but he’s all right.”

“Vance’s body is missing. Teddy the clerk shot Straight-Ahead with my gun and got away with ten thousand dollars. There’s also reason to believe that Teddy is working with some guy named Alex, who may have a grudge against you.”

“You and your friend really cleaned things up,” he said with reasonable exasperation.

“It happens like that sometimes. I’ve talked to the police, and a cop named Cawelti who’s a fan of yours is working with me to find Teddy and Alex. I just want to be sure nothing happens to you. If I tracked you down, Alex might be able to, too.”

“I’m going on a fishing trip with a couple of friends this afternoon,” Wayne said. “We won’t tell anyone but my manager where we are and I’ll tell him not to tell anyone. I’ll be gone about a week.”

“Your friends are …” I started.

“Their names are Wardell Bond and Grant Whithers. They drink too much, can’t shoot straight, and are damned ugly, but they are friends. And before you ask it, I don’t remember anyone named Alex who might not like my face. In my business you make friends and enemies without knowing it. Any more questions?”

“None I can think of,” I said.

“Good, I’ll send you a check for fifty dollars this week and another fifty next week for finding this guy. Will that cover things?”

“It’s a little less than I usually get,” I said.

“Amigo,” Wayne said with a sigh. “I’m generous to a fault but my business manager has me on a hundred-dollar-a-week budget. He hopes to make me a millionaire. I just signed a hundred-thousand-dollar-a-picture deal with Republic, so maybe I can get Bo to cough up something more reasonable. Hell, if your friend Alex gets me, there won’t be any money for anyone, me, my soon-to-be-ex wife, and all four of my kids.”

I wished him good fishing, told him my address, and said I’d get messages to him, if there were any, through his agent, whose name and phone number he gave me.

With Wayne officially my client, I felt a lot better. I also felt hungry. The next step was something to eat and a trip to wherever Teddy Spaghetti dwelled, but first I had to get past the horror chamber of Dr. Faustus.

“I’m going, Shel,” I said, glancing over the hunched shoulders of Dr. Minck and the twitching legs of a woman.

“The ads,” Shelly grunted in farewell.

On the stairway going down I encountered Jeremy Butler. Jeremy was mopping his way downward step by step. He wore double-extra-large shirts but they didn’t completely cover his almost three hundred pounds of flesh. At first glance Jeremy looked a bit fat, but after an encounter, the unwary realized that he was a sensitive pile of muscle.

“Toby, I was hoping to meet you today.”

“How are things, Jeremy?” I asked.

“The battle with decay and ignorance never really ends,” he said, looking around and listening to the echo of his voice through the Farraday. “But there are bright corners. Alice and I are planning to be married on Friday, a simple ceremony in my office. We’d like you to attend. Four o’clock.”

“Congratulations, Jeremy,” I said, reaching out a hand, which was engulfed and almost devoured. I wondered how many people besides Jeremy and Alice Pallice could fit in Jeremy’s third-floor office and apartment. Alice almost matched Jeremy in bulk. She had been and still was a Farraday tenant. Her profession had involved the publication of pornographic books. Her talent had been the fact that she could tuck the printing press under her arm and escape from oncoming police in seconds. Jeremy had converted her to poetry and children’s books. It did not do to dwell too long on the image of the two of them locked in love, though I assumed Jeremy would be a most gentle suitor.

“I’ll be there,” I said. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

“A simple ceremony,” he said. “A service and perhaps one of my poems. I’d also like to extend an invitation to Gunther. I’ll invite Dr. Minck also.”

“Great,” I said, “I’ll be there.”

An hour later, with a couple of bowls of chili and a Royal Crown Cola in me, I felt better. I also felt worse, but there was more better than worse.

The lobby of the Alhambra seemed to have lost no further illumination since the night before, but it hadn’t picked up any either. I didn’t know the woman behind the desk and there was no one in the lobby to witness our momentous introduction. She was a corrugated box of a woman, neatly suited, brown hair pulled back tight and tied with a rubber band. She looked more like the turnkey in a woman’s prison picture than the desk clerk at a seedy hotel.

“You want a room?” she asked as I approached. There was none of the warm greeting of the innkeeper for the weary traveler in her tone.

“My name is Peters,” I said, holding my wallet open to reveal my investigator’s badge. Actually, I had a certification card from the state but I usually flashed the badge my nephew Dave gave me. It had been issued by the Dick Tracy Club and at six feet looked better than my brother’s real badge. The gray-suited woman took in the badge without comment. “What do you know about last night?”

“Last night?” she asked, playing games.

“Merit Beason getting shot, Teddy Longretti running away with the cash in the safe, little things like that that might have slipped your mind.”

“I am very concerned about this theft. My husband and I own this hotel and several others,” she explained. “I told the other police all about that this morning.”

Her hands had been folded in front of her on the desk but they must have been getting a bit wet. She reached under the desk and came up with a handkerchief to wipe her palms.

“And what about the money, Mrs.…”

“Larchmont, Adrienne Larchmont. The money is missing.”

I moved closer, now that my badge was safely tucked away, and leaned over the counter, intruding on her space. She backed up.

“That was a lot of money,” I said. “A lot to be in a hotel like this on a Sunday night. Didn’t the policeman, Sergeant Cawelti, ask you that?”

Mrs. Larchmont definitely looked nervous now. Her mouth quivered a bit.

“He did not think that entirely relevant, but I explained that my husband and I sometimes kept cash from our various properties in the safe over the weekend pending the opening of the bank on Monday morning and the opportunity to deposit.”

“Which in this case never came,” I said.

“I am less concerned with the recovery of the money than in the apprehension of Mr. Longretti,” she said, looking around for something to do with her hands. Someone blundered into the lobby behind me. I didn’t turn around. “Why don’t you get this from the other policeman? I really have nothing more to add.”

I could hear two pairs of feet moving toward the desk and the whispering voices of a man and woman, but I kept my eyes on Mrs. Larchmont, who was squirming more than she should have been.

“I read minds,” I whispered, leaning in closer. “There was more than ten thousand dollars in that safe Mrs. L., maybe more money, maybe something else that’s missing, something you didn’t mention to Sergeant Cawelti. Maybe you and the mister are not too anxious for Teddy to be caught.”

Her mouth dropped open, but I didn’t expect her to call out bingo. I had hit something but it would take more to get it out of her.

BOOK: The Man Who Shot Lewis Vance
4.75Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Too Hot for TV by Cheris Hodges
Galápagos by Kurt Vonnegut
Watson, Ian - Novel 16 by Whores of Babylon (v1.1)
Friday I'm in Love by Mari Carr
Angels of Moirai (Book One) by Salmond, Nicole
Driven by Love by Marian Tee
What Curiosity Kills by Helen Ellis
She Does Know Jack by Michaels, Donna