“Jefferson was nothing like Washington,” Forbes continued as I sat in one of the chairs facing him and gulping at my Pepsi. “Never went to battle. Jefferson was a blue blood, class. Grew up without a father, like me. When he was twenty-six, he was elected to the Colonial legislature of Virginia. When I was twenty-six, I was invited to join a well-known Detroit organization. Jefferson came up with the best ideas for the Declaration of Independence. I came up with a nonwritten agreement with all the organizations in Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Jefferson was governor of Virginia twice, and I was head of the organization for two years.”
“Similarities are uncanny,” I said.
Forbes nodded and Kudlap Singh slapped me in the head. The right side of my head rang cold and metallic. I looked at Forbes, who hadn’t moved.
“You make wise with me and you make pain for yourself. Got me?”
“Got you,” I said.
“Pepsi cold enough? Need a glass, some ice, anything?”
“I’m fine,” I said, trying to force my eyes back into coordinated operation.
“One time,” he went on, “Jefferson missed by five minutes being captured by Tarleton’s raiders. Same thing happened to me.”
“Tarleton’s raiders missed you by five minutes, too?” I asked, gripping the cool glass of the half-full Pepsi bottle, ready to take a swing at Kudlap Singh if he took another slap at me. I was sure the bottle would boink off of his head with no effect, but I was ready to try it. I watched Forbes for a nod. It didn’t come.
“You know what your problem is, Peters? You’ve got guts and no brains,” he said. “I’m talking history and I’m coming to a point, if you’ll just shut up and listen and sit down.”
“I’m listening,” I said, sensing Kudlap Singh right over my shoulder.
I eased myself into one of the chairs in front of Forbes. The pain on my rear wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been. I’d describe it now as the searing horror of a branding iron.
“I built my own place back in Royal Oak, exact duplicate of Monticello. I like to garden, read. What color are my eyes?” Forbes asked.
“Your eyes?”
“That’s what I said.”
“I can’t see them,” I said, squinting into the sun.
“Hazel,” he said. “Like Jefferson. And when I was a kid I had sandy red hair like him. Can you believe that?”
“I’ll take your word,” I said.
“Nobody much knows this, but Jefferson had some lady friends,” Forbes went on a little more softly. “Mostly Negro women. Slaves. Even had kids by them. A lot of the black Jeffersons you see cleaning your house, dancing in the movies, are descendants of the third president of the United States.”
“I thought that was because their families and slave owners had admired Jefferson,” I said.
“Some of that, too,” Forbes said, waving off this line of thinking with an impatient hand. “This was Luna’s room. Look around.”
I looked around and my eyes met those of Kudlap Singh, who wasn’t looking around. He was looking straight at me.
“Doesn’t look lived in, does it?” he said. “Looks a little more like it in the bedroom, but. .”
A long moment of silence while Forbes’s head turned to look at the portrait of Jefferson before he went on.
“My wife is two stories up in the presidential suite. That’s where we stay when we’re in town. Right now I figure your brother the cop is talking to her, and she’s finding out for sure that Luna Martin died in this hotel. Some point soon I’m gonna have to talk to the cops and talk to Carlotta. I’d rather face Bataglia or one of the boys from Chicago than talk to Carlotta about this. Carlotta’s a pack rat. She never lets go of anything-a grudge, an old dress.”
I nodded in understanding and sipped my Pepsi.
“What I said in the ballroom,” he went on. “I was hot. I’m not killing anybody, you, the fat guy with the glasses, the two actors. I’ve got one person to kill. That’s whoever murdered Luna. Cops are going to look for the killer. I’m gonna look for the killer. You are gonna look for the killer. One of us is gonna find the killer fast. You find him and you get five thousand cash.”
“I’ve got a client,” I said.
“Now you’ve got two clients,” Forbes said, a note of irritation creeping into his voice as he took an envelope from his jacket pocket and pushed it toward me.
“Can’t,” I said. “Fred Astaire’s my client and his case is mixed up in this. I’d need his permission.”
“I can fix it so you’ll never learn to play the harpsichord,” said Forbes.
“I can always do war drums with my fist,” I said.
“I think you don’t understand, Peters. I think Kudlap will have to explain it to you.” Forbes nodded.
I turned, fingers around the now-empty Pepsi bottle as the Indian took a step toward me. I started to get out of the chair. Singh put the envelope in my shirt pocket as someone knocked at the door. Kudlap Singh stopped and looked at Forbes, who said, “Who is it?”
“Room service.”
“I don’t want room service,” Forbes said irritably.
“Then I’m Admiral Nimitz,” the voice beyond the door said.
I recognized the voice. I raised an eyebrow at Forbes. He looked at me and with a deep sigh said, “Let him in.”
Kudlap Singh went to the door, opened it, and Fred Astaire strode in, glanced around, and plunged his hands in his pockets. He was wearing a tweedy sport jacket, a white shirt, and a blue handkerchief tied around his neck. Kudlap Singh closed the door and put his back to it.
“Mr. Forbes, I-” Astaire began.
“How’d you find me?” Forbes cut him off.
“When Mr. Peters hung up in the middle of our telephone conversation, I came right over here, inquired, and found a maid whose name will be forever a secret who gladly exchanged the number of the room you were in for the promise of an autographed photo of me and Ginger.”
“You came to rescue Peters,” Forbes said.
“To try,” Astaire said, patting down his remaining hair and looking around the room, his eyes coming to rest on the portrait on the wall. “Jefferson was supposed to be a superb minuet dancer,” said Astaire admiringly.
“I know,” said Forbes. “Now we cut the shit. Luna’s dead. You were supposed to teach her to dance. Now she’s dead. She had a big mouth. She was a pain in the ass, but she was a good kid and a great. . cops are gonna be all over me and my people and my wife.”
“I’ll be happy to talk to your wife and the police,” Astaire said sincerely. “Miss Martin’s death may well have something to do with my refusal to teach her. I can’t help thinking that she might be alive if I had come and faced her directly.”
“It was hard to say no directly to Luna,” Forbes said.
“You can’t believe Peters or his associates had anything to do with this,” Astaire said.
“I can believe what I want to believe,” Forbes said, finally moving his arms. “And I know I want you to tell Peters to start looking for Luna’s killer. The cops give me a choice-go big with this and look for the killer, knowing that the papers will get it; or go small, keep the publicity down, and maybe never find him. Or, if they do like they do in Detroit, they find someone, shoot him in an alley with two guns in his hands, and lay every murder in the last year on his bloody chest. You want headlines like, ‘Astaire Involved in Investigation of Murdered Blonde He Was Teaching to Dance’?”
“It’s too long for a headline, but you have a point,” Astaire said.
“You want your wife, your kids, the studio to know you got involved in something like murder?” Forbes continued.
Astaire’s hands were out of his pockets now, but Forbes was unimpressed.
“You don’t know much about me, Fingers,” Astaire said.
Forbes shook his head and said, “Five-nine, weigh a hundred and thirty-eight or thirty-nine pounds fully dressed. Brown eyes. When you’re not working, you wear two-piece underwear. When you do a dance number, you wear a union suit. You’re mild-mannered and hard to burn, but when you blow you’ve got a bad temper and you break furniture and anything handy. Might something handy include a big-mouthed blonde who wants you to teach her to dance and won’t take no for an answer?”