“Thanks,” I said, “I think you saved my life. But …”
“Errol asked us to stay with you, keep an eye on you,” said Cabot. “He thought you might run into trouble. He likes you.”
“You driving a green Dodge?”
“Right,” said Williams, “you spotted us?”
“Well, you’re new at this. Now, you two better get out of here.”
Cabot cocked his head:
“The police?”
“I’ll tell them what happened, and they can come and talk to you if they want to,” I said, looking at my hand. “If they call tell them you came to see me on business. Don’t mention Flynn. Tell the truth about the fight.” My hand was bleeding slightly. I took a handkerchief from my pocket. “The other two won’t be back. They were hired muscle and brass, and the man who rented them is all over the sidewalk on Eleventh Street. Thanks, I mean it.”
They left. I could hear noises in the street. The rain had stopped. A crowd was gathering around the body.
I reached for the phone and dialed my brother’s office.
“Lieutenant Pevsner,” came the familiar voice.
“Phil, it’s Toby.”
“Where the hell are you? I said eight. It’s five after.”
“I know. I’m going to be a little late.”
“Oh no, you’re not,” he hissed.
“Then you better come over here and get me,” I said, rubbing my kidney where the giggler had struck me. “I think I’m about to be arrested for throwing a guy out of my apartment window.”
I hung up as Phil started to say, “Shit,” but I let him get no farther than “Sh …” It sounded like a call for silence, and I needed a few minutes of that before I saw him.
7
Before an overcautious beat cop made his way up to my apartment with a gun in his hand, I did a few things.
First, the photograph of Brenda Stallings Beaumont and Cunningham, or Deitch, if you want to be accurate, went into the pages of William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. Remember, Bill Faulkner and I were in this together. Then, I put the picture of Lynn Beaumont’s head in my wallet, back to back with a picture of my former wife. The toy gun went in a bottom drawer and a bandage went on my hand. Then the cop, a sweating, chunky redhead, found me calmly putting pieces of furniture in place.
At 9:30, I was sitting in my brother’s office. The rain had moved south. If the giggler hadn’t played hamburger with my back, it would have been back to near normal. My confidence was returning.
My brother made me wait half an hour. I wasn’t about to be caught looking at anything on his desk, so I sat going over the whole screwy case. I didn’t get anywhere.
At 10:15, my brother came in followed by a thin guy with a very white face, sandy hair and a gray suit. Phil slammed his door shut on the voices outside. It seemed to be a busy night for the L.A. police.
“This is Sergeant Seidman,” said Phil, slapping his worn manila folder on the desk. “He’s going to take notes on what we say.”
Phil stood glaring at me.
“How’s the family?” I said with a slight smile.
My brother’s hand happened to be on a wire mesh box for memos. He threw the box in my direction. Memos, reports, photos and junk mail went flying. The box sailed past my nose crashing against the wall. The voices outside stopped for a few seconds and then went on.
Sergeant Seidman looked at neither of us. He pulled the second chair a few feet further from me and calmly sat down. Phil sat down too and pulled his tie even further open. He pointed a finger at me and turned pink.
“Toby, you just answer my questions. No jokes. No lies.”
“Right,” I said.
“Your full name?” continued my brother. Seidman lifted his pencil to write.
“Toby Peters.”
“Not your alias,” said Phil, opening the file. Then to Seidman, “His full name is Tobias Leo Pevsner. His alias …”
“My professional name,” I interjected.
Seidman wrote nothing. He didn’t give a shit for a family argument.
“You’re a private investigator?” Phil went on.
“I’m a private investigator. Offices on Hoover.”
I went for my wallet to get a business card. I still had a few thousand of them. They’d been given to me as payment by a job printer whose sister-in-law had stolen his 1932 Ford. I’d found her and the Ford in San Diego. It had taken me a week. She had done a bad job of disappearing with a delivery man. It’s hard for people to suddenly disappear. You have to give up everything, every tie with your past, or a good cop or private investigator with a little time will get that string on you and pull you in.
“You want to tell us what happened in your apartment tonight?” said Phil with a smirk. He did not expect the truth the first time through. I wasn’t going to disappoint him.
“I surprised three burglars going through my apartment. They overpowered me and threatened to kill me. They started to assault me when a couple of friends came by. Two of the assailants ran, and the other one pulled a gun. I threw a lamp at him after he took a couple of shots at me, and he went through the window. I can identify the other two.”
“Three guys were burgling your apartment.” Phil shook his head. “Did they get lost in the rain? Maybe they thought they were in Beverly Hills or Westwood. What the hell have you got worth stealing?”
“Well, I do have a collection of matchbook covers and …”
“Who were the two friends who came to your rescue?”
“I’m not at liberty to say. They’re sort of clients.”
Phil clasped his hands together and looked at Seidman, who looked back at his pad and pretended to write something.
“You tell me who they were or you spend some lockup time,” said Phil.
I smiled cautiously.
“You mean,” I said, “you’re not booking me for murder.”
Phil ran his hand through his steely hair and touched his slightly stubbly chin before opening the manila folder in front of him.
“The character who took a dive out of your window was Martin Langer Delamater. You’re lucky. He had a record going back to 1923. Twenty-two arrests and two convictions for everything from assault to attempted rape.”
“Did he ever hold down a paying job?” I asked.
Phil cocked his head at me.
“A couple. Bartender, mechanic, security man …”
“Where?” I asked.
Phil grinned and spoke with mock amazement:
“Well, what a coincidence. He worked at Warner Brothers for two months in 1935. You were there then, weren’t you, Toby?”
“Yes, I thought he looked familiar.”
“And he came to your apartment by chance?”
“Maybe he was after my famous matchbox collection.”
“Well,” said Phil, sighing and removing his tie as he stood, “I think you and I are going to have to have a private talk.”
“You get that down too?” I asked Seidman who, obviously, had not.
“Lieutenant,” said Seidman. It was his first word and came out with remarkable confidence. “I’d like to suggest that you finish this interrogation as soon as possible. We still have the Maloney murder and …”
Phil sat down again and nodded in semi-resignation.
“Delamater was fired from Warner’s,” Phil said, “for theft. The studio didn’t charge him, but before he went to San Quentin in ’38, we ran an investigation on his past activities, and they were happy to tell us all about it. You want more coincidences?”
“Why not?”
“Cunningham worked for Warner’s.”
“Cunningham, who’s Cunningham?” I said, looking blankly at my brother, who tried to look into my soul.
“The guy who got shot. The cute one with the bullet in his eye whose hand you were holding.”
“I thought his name was Deitch?”
Phil actually smiled slightly.
“It is,” he said. “He was using the name Cunningham, like you use Peters. And he had a job at Warner Brothers. Strange coincidence, huh?”
“Lots of people work or worked for Warner’s,” I said. “This is a movie town and that’s a big studio.”