We closed the scene with Jeremy saying that he was sure she could stay with Alice Palice for a day or two. That sounded like a good idea to me since Alice was nearly as formidable as Jeremy himself. I wished them a good night and waited in the street to be sure no car was hidden in a driveway ready to follow. Satisfied, I got back into my Ford and drove home.
I made it to my room in the darkened boarding house without waking anyone, and removed my clothes. My original plan was to change my underwear, but I altered my plan. Never let the enemy anticipate what you might do. In this case the enemy was my own desire to keep reasonably respectable.
In my Sunday night dreams, Johnny Pesky threw me out in a close play at second, Lucy chased me through Pershing Square with a giant lock, and Koko the Clown kept saying “Monks, monks, monks.” And then it all came together. Lucy threw her lock to Pesky who heaved it at Koko, taking off his clown’s hat.
I woke up thinking it had been one hell of a throw and was disappointed to find that it had all been a dream.
“Are you stirring?” came Gunther’s voice through the door just as I was sitting up.
“I’m astir,” I said, and he came in.
He was wearing a lighter suit today, but it was still three pieces, including tie. My wall clock said it was almost eight. Gunther held a stack of cards in his hand and a very tiny satisfied smile on his lips.
“I have information,” he announced, tapping the cards with his finger. “I could not work last evening so I made a sojourn to Broadway. It being Sunday there were not many people traversing the streets, but there were restaurants. And,” he said triumphantly, “it was in one of these establishments that I encountered success.”
“You found Martin?” I asked, sitting up further.
Gunther had not only found Martin Lyle, but had tapped some resources, mostly writers he knew, who gave him a profile of the man and his business. Lyle’s office was in the 900s on Broadway right near Little Joe’s Italian Restaurant. Lyle ran an office, the New Whigs, a political group of reactionary Republicans who had left the party deciding that even the most conservative branches were too soft. The New Whigs were, according to Gunther, believed to have plenty of money and no more than a few dozen members, six of whom lived in or around Los Angeles and the rest in Washington, D.C.
“And this I discovered this morning,” Gunther concluded. “I made a most early call to an acquaintance who has actually written a piece on the group for the New Politics Review. He is, like me, a Swiss. He told me that a principal aim of the group is to discredit President Roosevelt and the Republicans so they can propose their own presidential candidate. Apparently, they have been in touch with both Generals Patton and MacArthur about running as New Whig candidates. My friend does not know how either of these army officers may have answered. And, finally …”
The pause was for effect and I didn’t want to deprive Gunther of it since he had done such a first-rate job.
“Finally,” he repeated, “your Doctor Olson was a founding member of the New Whigs. Is that not an interesting piece of datum?”
“An interesting piece of datum,” I agreed, getting up and putting on my neatly pressed suit. The suit from Doc Olson was heaped in a corner. I’d worry about that, and about making the bed and changing my underwear, some other time.
“What is it that we now do, Toby?” Gunther said seriously.
“You stay here in case I get a call,” I said. “Jeremy’s guarding an important witness and Eleanor Roosevelt may be in touch.”
“I will listen attentively and keep Mrs. Plaut from chaotic intervention,” he said.
“Perfect,” I said, putting my shoes on. “I’ve got time for coffee and some cereal. Join me.”
“I have eaten,” he said, “but I will have some coffee if you permit me to rewash the cups.”
I permitted him and he drank while I downed two bowls of Little Kernels and we worked on a plan. It wasn’t much of a plan but it might do. I read the side of the cereal box to Gunther using my best Georgia accent.
“To me it sounds correct,” Gunther shrugged, “but having my own difficulty with exact pronounciation I am not able to know the subtleties of accent. I am sorry.”
It would have to do. In the hall, I looked up the number of the New Whigs, dropped in my nickel, gave the operator the number, and waited. It was a few minutes after nine. Lyle himself answered on the fourth ring. I recognized his voice from the warning call on Saturday. I felt like shouting “Bingo.”
“The New Whig Party,” he said. “Can I help you?”
Dropping my voice and plunging in, I croaked, “Mah name is O’Hara. Ah’ve heard good things, good things about you from a friend in Washington, a big fellah, good smile.”
“Allen Hall,” he supplied.
“Sounds about right,” I said. “Suggested I should get in touch with you should I get to this part of the country on business. That’s just what I’m doing.”
For some reason the image of Thomas Mitchell as O’Hara in Gone With the Wind had popped into my mind and now I was tangled in my awful Southern accent overlaid with an even worse Irish brogue.
“Well, Mr. O’Hara,” Lyle oozed, “would your schedule permit a visit to our modest but adequate West Coast offices some time in the next few days?”
“Got a big meeting this afternoon with some folks at Pacific Electric Railway. Let’s see heh. Could make it this mornin’ if that’s okay on your side of the border?”
Lyle agreed and we set the time for ten, one hour away. I hung up and tried to recite some Mother Goose with a Southern accent.
I was well into “Taffy was a Welshman,” and almost to the bottom of the stairs, when Mrs. Plaut appeared, large wrench in hand.
“You are saying if all wrong, Mr. Peelers,” she corrected. “There is an impediment.”
“Thank you,” I shouted and then had an inspiration that would better have been forgotten. “You have an old Western hat in the garage. White hat, in the back seat of the car in the garage.”
Mrs. Plaut had a 1927 Ford in her garage. It had been there since 1928 when Mr. Plaut died. She had worked on it when the mood struck her but had never driven it. I had borrowed her tools a few times for minor surgery on the piles of scrap Arnie had sold me, and I remembered the hat.
“I’m sorry Mr. Peelers,” she said, holding the wrench in two hands. “I thought you said you wanted Myron’s hat from the car.”
“That’s just what I do want.” I nodded furiously. “I just want to borrow it.”
She stood blinking at me for a full ten seconds.
“Myron’s hat?”
“Myron’s hat,” I agreed.
She shrugged, turned, and led the way through the house, out the back door and down to the garage, where sat the old Ford with Myron’s hat in the backseat. I reached back, dusted off the hat, and tried it on. It was a bit small, but it would do. I looked at myself in the windshield, which Mrs. Plaut kept spotlessly clean. The effect was less than perfect.
“You look like Tom Mix,” said Mrs. Plaut, eyeing me critically. “Though Mix had a very large shnoz and you’ve got practically none. Though you are a match in the homely department.”
“Thanks for your honest appraisal, Mrs. P.,” I said.
The hood of the Ford was up and she inserted the wrench, turning her back on me.
“That hat,” her voice echoed from under the hood, “originally belonged to Uncle Cruikshank, the one in chapter four of the family book you will recall.”
“I recall,” I said, stepping toward the garage door.
“That’s Uncle Ned Cruikshank, the assistant sheriff in Alemeda, Kansas, before the gout epidemic of 1867.”
“I’m going now Mrs. Plaut,” I shouted.
“Uncle Cruikshank died in that hat,” she said. “A bully named Sousa or something like that blew him out from under it in the environs of Alemeda.”