“Stay there,” he said and hung up.
I went back to the ballroom. Pook was leaning against a wall, arms folded. He glared at me when I came in. Jerry and Shelly were sitting on the edge of the bandstand. Jerry wouldn’t meet my eyes. Shelly would. He pointed at me and said, “You are going to get me killed. I volunteered to help you and you are going to get me killed.”
“No one is going to kill you, Shel,” I said.
“And who’s going to stop him?” Shelly said, trying to keep his glasses on his nose. “These actors? Gunther, who’s two feet tall?”
“Gunther’s out of town,” I said. “And he’s more than three feet tall.”
“Ah, so you’re going to keep me alive with a full supply of fingers? Comforting,” he said, turning to Jerry, who ignored him. “I can sleep nights now. Toby Peters is on the case.”
The four of us waited, trying not to look at the beautiful corpse, until Phil, Steve Seidman, and two uniformed officers showed up twenty minutes later.
Phil, a block of a man with short steely-gray hair, came in first. His tie was loose and his jacket was open, but reasonably pressed. My sister-in-law, Ruth, saw to that. There was a look of annoyance on Phil’s face that looked uncannily like the look on his face in the photograph in my office. Steve Seidman, a thinning-haired scrawny man, was four or five steps behind Phil, as he had been since they had become partners two decades earlier. Phil waved the uniformed cops back to the double door and moved to the body.
“Luna Martin,” he said, looking down at her.
“Right,” I said, nodding to Seidman.
“Girlfriend of Fingers Intaglia,” Phil went on.
“A fact which everyone seems to know with the possible exception of Mrs. Intaglia,” I said.
“What happened?” Phil said.
“We got here about. .” I began, but Phil cut me off with, “Not you and not the crying dentist. You.” He pointed to Pook.
“Jerry and I have nothing to do with this,” Pook said. “Peters hired us to come here this morning and look tough. We’re actors. A few minutes after we got here this woman staggers in, points to him, and falls dead right there.”
“I don’t know her,” Shelly protested, crossing his heart.
“Well,” said Phil to Seidman, “if the dentist crosses his heart, he must be telling the truth. Go home, Minck. You’re clear.”
Shelly looked at me hopefully.
“He’s being sarcastic, Shel,” I said.
Shelly groaned.
“Just the four of you here?” said Phil.
“Five,” I said, pointing to Luna.
“Six,” Pook amended. “The old piano player.”
“I’m corrected,” Phil said, moving to the table and sitting.
“What about Intaglia?” Shelly said, looking at me, Pook, and Jerry.
“What about him?” Phil said, pouring himself a glass of no-longer-iced water.
“He was here with a Jap giant,” Shelly said. “He threatened to kill me, to kill us all, to kill Fred Astaire.”
“Dentists have access to all kinds of drugs,” Seidman said wearily.
“I’m not. . I don’t take drugs,” Shelly cried. “Tell them, Toby.”
“He doesn’t take drugs,” I said.
“Was Intaglia here?” Phil asked.
“Arthur Forbes and a man named Kudlap Singh came in right after Luna,” I explained.
“And they left?” Phil asked.
“They left,” I agreed.
“Steve,” Phil said.
“Check,” said Steve.
It didn’t take more when you’ve worked with someone almost every day for two decades. Seidman herded Shelly, Pook, and Jerry over to the bandstand. Then he took them individually up to the piano, where he interviewed them in a whisper the others couldn’t hear.
“The piano player?” asked Phil.
“He took a cab back to Glendale,” I said. “He’s over eighty.”
“What are you doing here, Toby?” my brother asked, rubbing his forehead.
“I was supposed to give Miss Martin a dancing lesson,” I said.
Phil looked at his palms and then rubbed them together. “There’s almost nothing I can say to that,” he said, “but it’s my job, so I’m going to try. You’re a private investigator, not a dance teacher. Besides that, you can’t dance.”
“I faked it,” I said. “Fred Astaire gave me some tips.”
“Fred Astaire.”
“Shelly was right. Fred Astaire hired me to get Luna Martin to stop demanding that he teach her to dance. And when Luna Martin has a boyfriend like Fingers Intaglia. .”
“Let’s call him Arthur Forbes,” Phil suggested. “And sit down. I don’t like looking up at you.”
“Hurts to sit,” I said. “Forbes’s bodyguard, the Beast of Bombay, hit me in the ass.”
“Should I ask why?”
“A warning to Fred Astaire.”
“It’s all clear now except for one thing,” he said. “Who killed Luna Martin?”
“I don’t know who or why or how.”
“Astaire didn’t maybe hire someone who got carried away?” Phil asked and then, with amazing restraint for my brother, added, “Will you for chrissake sit down? I don’t care who hit you.”
I eased myself onto the chair across from him, biting my lower lip and wishing I had brought the pillow in from the Crosley.
“Phil, would I kill someone? Kill a woman who was giving my client a hard time?”
“I didn’t mean you,” he said, looking toward the bandstand.
“They didn’t even know why they were here. Do I need to call Marty?”
Martin Leib was my lawyer. “My” is a little too strong, since I didn’t give him much business and what little I gave him required payment in advance. Martin Leib was a mercenary. Martin Leib looked at me and talked to me as if I were an annoying insect. Martin Leib was a hell of a good lawyer.
“No,” said Phil, starting to get up, as a man with a small leather bag from the medical examiner’s office and a trio of uniformed policemen came in. One cop was carrying a rolled-up stretcher over his shoulder. Another had a camera. Phil looked over at Seidman, who nodded. Phil got up and so did I.
“What now?” I asked.
“Now, you go home or wherever you go,” said Phil wearily. “And I talk to hotel staff, Fred Astaire, and Mr. Arthur Forbes.”
“Mr. Arthur Forbes, not Fingers Intaglia?”
“In this town,” said Phil. “Arthur Forbes is spoken to politely.”
“By you?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never met the man.”
This was not my brother. My brother Phil had a lifelong vendetta against all felons, all crime. In spite of his lousy temper and honesty, he had made it to the rank of captain and actually headed the Wilshire District for a couple of years. He was forced to step down as head of the Wilshire when he couldn’t be polite to important people in the community and he couldn’t keep his fists off of suspects.
“Phil,” I said as he shooed me out of the ballroom. “This is Fingers Intaglia.”
“I like catching criminals,” he said. “I want to keep catching them. It helps me stay calm with my family. I have been informed by the chief of police that if I have one more complaint I’ll be suspended without pay. So I’m going to do my best to be nice to Arthur Forbes.”
We were in the hallway now, right in front of the phone I’d called him from.
“Okay,” I said.
“Hell, it’s not okay,” Phil said, plunging his hands into his pockets to keep them still. “But I’m going to do it, Toby.”
“This is crazy,” called Shelly, as Seidman hurried him down the corridor.
Pook and Jerry went quietly. Both of them gave me a look which made it clear I shouldn’t come to them for help again. But I knew better. Actors, even successful ones, which Pook and Jerry were not, would pretend they were the toilet cleaners at Grauman’s Chinese Theater if it was the best role they could get.
“Can I ask?” I said, holding up my hands. “Don’t get mad. How are Ruth and the kids?”
In the past, this simple family question had driven Phil to violence. He never clearly explained why, other than that I had given little or no thought to them when they needed me. I had made an effort to be a better brother-in-law and uncle since Ruth got sick. She had been in and out of the cancer ward for more than a year now. She seemed to be getting better, but it was slow and she never carried the weight for a good fight.