“And,” he jumped in, “a man with a rotten fake Italian accent answering your description was seen coming out of Deitch or Cunningham’s apartment early this morning.”
I shrugged.
“Lot of people probably fit my general description. Even you.”
“Within twenty hours, you have been involved in two deaths, both of convicted felons, both of whom had worked for Warner Brothers. It’s nice to get these people off the street, but we’d like to do it legally and handle it ourselves. Now you are going to tell me what you know about all this. You’re not going to tell me stories about protecting labor leaders or surprising burglars. We’ll start with your telling me who your two witnesses are. You’re going to tell me in the next five minutes or you get locked up.”
“On what charge?”
“Obstructing justice. Disturbing the peace. Suspicion of murder. Pissing in the park.”
Seidman wrote quickly and passionlessly. My brother’s fists were red, knotted balls with white knuckles.
“I’ll have to ask my clients,” I said.
Phil pointed to the phone on his desk, and I shook my head no.
“I’ll call from a pay phone,” I went on.
“There’s one downstairs,” Phil sighed. “Seidman will take you down.”
“No. I go to an outside pay phone. Nobody listens when I call, Phil, or there’s no deal. I’ve spent nights in the lockup before. I can do it again.”
“Call me Lieutenant Pevsner. Steve, go with him and give him five minutes in the booth. No more.”
Phil looked down at his folder and began reading, or pretending to. I picked up the wire mesh tray he had thrown at me and placed it gently on the desk.
Seidman opened the door and we went out.
The outer room was a lot more active than it had been earlier this morning. A woman with curlers in her hair was sitting at a desk with her arms folded looking at the ceiling. A cop was earnestly trying to tell her that there were no grounds for holding Frank, whoever Frank was.
Two uniformed cops flanked a thin guy wearing a sweater and a big, secret smile. He was either cuckoo, on drugs or simply drunk.
“Phil’s your brother?” said Seidman, walking at my side toward the street. He nodded at the uniformed cop behind the desk in the lobby.
“Right,” I said. “We love each other.”
We went out the front door and Seidman pointed down the street. We walked. It was cool, and the sky was clear and filled with stars.
“You know about his older kid?” asked Seidman.
I said I didn’t, and he told me that David, the 10-year-old was in the hospital, a car accident. The kid was going to be all right, but it had looked bad for week or so. There had been surgery, and the whole thing was sure to put Phil even deeper in debt than I knew he already was.
Seidman led me into a drug store and pointed toward a telephone booth in the back. He sat at the soda fountain where he could watch me and ordered a Green River.
I called the studio. Adelman wasn’t there. I convinced the girl on the switchboard that I was working for him and needed his home number. Some woman with a young voice answered and reluctantly called Sid to the phone.
“You find him?” he asked immediately.
“Not yet. You hear from the blackmailer again?”
“No. You calling for the latest news? Turn your radio on and listen to Raymond Swing.”
“Wait,” I stopped him. “You ever hear of a man named Delamater? Used to work for the studio about five years ago, a security man.”
“No, is he involved in this dreck?”
“He’s dead. Tried to get the photograph of the girl from me.”
“Schmuck,” he screamed, “who told you to kill somebody?”
“I didn’t kill him. He fell out of a window. Listen Sid, I haven’t got time to talk. The police know Cunningham worked for Warner’s. They’ll probably be out to talk to you tomorrow. They’ve got me now, and I think I should tell them something or they’ll lock me up.”
“That would be bad?” he asked.
“That would be bad for you, because it would cut off the time I have to find the guy who’s trying to blackmail you and bring you that much closer to paying off.”
“Can you keep Flynn out?”
“I don’t know,” I said, “I’ll try.”
“You know he made the top ten box office list last year, top ten and The Sea Hawk …”
“You told me about The Sea Hawk, Sid, and Newsweek.” Seidman was walking toward the phone booth. “I’ve got to go now. I’ll get back to you tomorrow.”
“Don’t kill anybody else.” He hung up.
“I’ll try not to,” I told the dead phone.
When we got back to Phil’s office, I decided to do my best to cooperate. Seidman gave me an encouraging nod, but my best wasn’t good enough.
“Who’s your client?” Phil said, putting down his pencil and making a new effort at being calm.
“Somebody at Warner’s,” I said, “somebody fairly high up. He said I could tell you everything but his name.”
“I don’t give a shit what he said,” stormed Phil, throwing his tie on the desk. “This is a case of murder, maybe two murders. I don’t need your client’s permission to carry on an investigation.”
“But I do,” I said. “Do you want what I have to give you or do you want to start throwing things at me?”
“Talk.”
I talked. I said Cunningham had been trying to blackmail someone at Warner’s with a photo. I had gone to make the exchange and been clobbered. The killer, I said, had gotten away with the photo and the money, and my gun. Phil wanted to know why the blackmail hadn’t been reported to the police. I said that was my client’s business, but I didn’t think he trusted the police. Delamater and his two clowns had, I went on, probably come to my apartment to get me off the case. They were probably working for the blackmailer.
“You can identify the two who got away?” he interrupted.
“I told you I could, but I don’t think they know who they were working for. Delamater looked like the thinker of the trio. He wasn’t good at it but he was the best they had. Someone probably hired Delamater, who picked up the other two.”
“Just the same,” said Phil, “you go through the pictures and we’ll try to turn them up. Now your story’s fine. What I need are some names. Who is being blackmailed? Who knows about it? Who are the two guys who were in your place when Delamater went out the window?”
“The guys in my room had nothing to do with the case,” I lied, “but you can check with them. They’re Bruce Cabot and Guinn Williams.”
“The movie actors?” asked Seidman.
Phil and I looked at him.
“Right,” I said.
Phil made unveiled threats about my lying and had Seidman take me to the library in the basement. It was a musty room with two overhead 60-watt bulbs swinging from black cords. Seidman pulled out a pile of frayed, heavy green volumes, and I began to go through them looking for the mailbox and the giggler.
It took me over an hour. After a while the faces began to merge and look alike. Two or three faces looked exactly like mine, and dozens of them looked like Guinn Williams. But I found the two and indicated them to Seidman. The giggler was Judd “The Shiv” Chesler, and the mailbox was Steve Fagin.
When we got back to his office, my brother told me that Cabot and Williams had confirmed my story and would come in the next day to sign statements.
“Your client’s name, Toby?” he said evenly.
“Two days, Phil. Give me two days, and I’ll hand you the name and maybe the killer.”
“You’ll hand me the killer?” He actually laughed, but it didn’t sound as if he were having fun. “You can’t even hold down a job; you lost your client’s money and your gun, and everybody beats the shit out of you.”
“We all have bad days,” I said.
“You’re having a bad lifetime,” he said. “Get out. You’ve got two days providing no one else gets killed.”
I got up.
“Phil, I’m sorry about David.”
My brother didn’t look up. He just handed me my toy gun. “Don’t shoot yourself, Sherlock,” he grunted.