I stopped at a pay phone and called a North Hollywood number. My sister-in-law Ruth answered.
“You’re coming for dinner tomorrow, aren’t you, Toby?” she said.
“I’m coming,” I answered. “Listen, I’ve got two tickets for Volez and Yolanda tomorrow night. You and Phil can go. I’ll sit with the kids.”
“I don’t know,” she said, her voice making it obvious that the idea excited her. “Let me ask Phil.”
She put down the phone and wandered away and then I heard light breathing on the other end.
“Smush,” said a little voice.
“Lucy?” I said. “This is Uncle Toby.”
“Lock,” she said and clobbered the phone with her pet lock, a lock that had found my head more than once with velocity well beyond what you could expect from a two year old. She had her father’s arm and probably his disposition.
“Terrific,” I said. “Get Mommy.”
“Toby?” came Ruth’s voice. “He said okay Can you come early for dinner then, about four?”
“I’ll be there,” I said.
When I hung up, I checked at a nearby restaurant and found out that it was almost five in the afternoon. I had expected a night with someone who called herself Anne Olson. A tailor on the corner was closing his door when I caught him and persuaded him with an ugly look and the promise of a good tip to let me in. It took him about five minutes to sew up the tear in Olson’s pants.
“Good as new,” he said, stepping back to admire his work after I had the pants back on and he had two bucks in his hands.
“You want to come around with me and tell that to everyone who thinks different?” I asked.
“It’s what I tell them all,” said the tailor, tucking the two bucks away. “And it is good as new, better, only it don’t look so good. Looking and being good is different,” he said with some slight European accent.
“You got a point,” I agreed and went back to my car.
My session with the fake Mrs Olson should have left me satisfied, but I couldn’t hold back the urge to get over to Spring Street and Levy’s Restaurant. My appetites were up and to avoid figuring out what was happening in the Fala case, I decided to make an assault on a Levy corned beef sandwich and on Carmen the cashier.
The corned beef proved easy, complete with pickle and a chocolate phosphate. Carmen proved to be, as always, Carmen. She sat dark, placid, a counter fighter with formidable front, and large brown eyes.
“You’re voluptuous,” I said, holding up the line of three people behind me wanting to pay their tabs.
“You’re holding up the line,” she said without a smile.
“Phil Harris is still at the Biltmore Bowl,” I whispered. “Name a night.”
“Come on, bud,” a guy behind me whimpered.
Carmen gave me a look that could with imagination be read as a smile. She was a widow of great reserve and resistance and I was probably one of the more resistible elements in her life.
“No wrestling this week?” she asked softly.
“Thursday at the Eastside Avenue over on Pico,” I said. “I’d like to get together before that.”
“I am sure you would,” came the voice of the guy behind me, “but I’ve got a show to get to.”
“The wrestling match next Sunday,” she said, ringing up my bill.
“I can’t wait,” I said.
“You’ll wait,” she said, promising nothing. So it would have to be five days before my next assault on the Mona Lisa of the restaurant world.
“Ain’t love grand?” said the little guy who was late for his show as he plunked down a half a buck to pay for his sandwich.
“Ain’t it,” I agreed before stepping outside to see the sun coming down over Spring Street. I got back in my car, ignoring the bruised far side, and drove up to Eleventh and then across to Broadway, where I found a parking space right in front of the Peerless Book Shop. I’d been in the place a dozen times or so, twice to look for books and ten times to look for leads on missing people or people with not too savory reputations.
The Peerless Book Shop had a good collection of cheap used books. There were also some new ones that went for used prices because the owner, Morris “Academy” Dolmitz, would, from time to time, pick up four or five hundred copies of some title from a source he didn’t want to know too much about. When I walked in this time, the place was piled with copies of John Steinbeck’s The Moon is Down and Robert Frost’s A Witness Tree. There were other books all over the place, in boxes, on shelves. If Academy had to rely on book sales, he would have been a poor man. As it was, his main income came from bets he placed in the back room.
No one was in the shop but Academy, who sat behind the counter on his stool, his mop of white hair falling into his eyes, a white zippered sweater over a red flannel shirt covering a little pot belly. Academy was around sixty-five and had seen and heard it all.
“What can I do you for?” he said, looking up at me with tiny gray eyes and a smile of even false teeth.
“I’m looking for a fella,” I said.
“I deal books,” said Academy, holding out his hands, “not fellas. You know that, Peters. Ask me one. You know what I mean. Ask?”
He sat up, waiting.
“Best actor, 1934,” I said.
“Victor McLaglen, The Informer,” he said, in disgust. “Give me a hard one for chrissake. Whatdya think I am, a dumb putz here?”
“Best cartoon, 1935,” I said.
“Three Orphan Kittens, Walt Disney, Silly Symphony. One more.” He grinned, eyes open wide.
“Sound recording, 1929,” I said.
Academy was bouncing in his chair like a kid.
“You’re a good one, Peters, a good one. Douglas Shearer, MGM, for The Big House.”
“I’m looking for a mountain named Bass,” I threw in, and Academy stopped grinning. His mouth closed tight, and his false teeth went clickety-clack. “You can’t miss him.”
“Not a familiar name,” he said through his teeth, trying to go back to his book.
“Your memory’s suddenly failing you?”
“It happens like that,” he said with a shrug. He opened the book and pretended to go back to his reading. I reached over the counter, closed the book, and looked at it.
“That’s a dirty book,” I said.
“It’s a classic,” he answered, reaching for the book. “What do you think you are doing here anyway?”
I held the book away from his hand and he sat back, shaking his head. “Peters,” he clacked. “You know I got a button down here and you know I can push it and you know two guys’ll come through that door and squash you like a rose between the pages of a bible.”
“Colorfully put, Academy, but I’ve got questions and a big mouth,” I answered, handing him the de Sade. “You know my brother’s a captain now?”
“I know,” he said. “Things like that I know. It’s my business. What are you, threatening me or what?”
“Threatening you,” I agreed.
“So that’s the way it is,” he said, feigning defeat. “Human nature. All these books, you know, they’re about human nature. I know human nature.”
“And who won the Academy awards,” I said impatiently. “Bass. He worked for you. I want to know why you hired him, where he is now, who his friends are, or who else he’s been working for.”
“Ten bucks,” said Academy, folding his arms on his chest.
“Come on Academy,” I said. “You don’t need my ten bucks.”
“Principle’s involved here, Peters,” he said. “I give you something for a threat and pretty soon every bit player on the avenue’s in here paying in closed fists and loud voices instead of cash. I’m running a business here. Know what I mean?”
I fished out the ten and handed it across the counter.
“Bass is a putz,” he said.
“Everybody’s a putz to you. Give me something hard.”
“Bass is special putz,” he said. “Doesn’t show a temper. Cold, a little dumb, one of those that likes hurting. You know the kind?”
“I’m waiting for news here, Academy,” I said impatiently.