“You blame a guy?” asked Dolmitz, scratching his scalp through his mop of hair.
“And you had your daughter go to work for Olson to find out what profits you could make from the deal. After all, Lyle had a lot of money and he must have had some reason for wanting to keep an eye on Olson.”
“I didn’t send her,” Dolmitz said. “On that I could cross my heart. It was her idea. She was between jobs. More like a regular job it was.”
“And then,” I went on, “when she found out and people, the FBI, others, started asking questions, she decided to cover herself by writing the letters, claiming that Olson had kidnapped the president’s dog.”
“We figured they were going to check anyway.” Dolmitz shrugged. “So she might as well push a little and sit back and see how far they took it. What the hell, if the FBI or the cops moved in and took the dog then we were out a little time. Jane collected her salary. I got paid a commission for Bass’s services. You lose once in a while on an investment, but let me tell you, you cover yourself. Right? Is it a bad idea to cover yourself? That was Walter Brennan’s mistake in The Westerner, you know, Judge Roy Bean, best supporting actor. He walked into that theater where Gary Cooper could get him. You gotta learn from a good performance like that.”
“But things went bad?” I asked.
“Bad?” he asked, looking around the room. “What are you, the crown prince of understatement? Bad? If my daughter weren’t here, I’d use a word to tell you how bad it got. Killing, shooting. Let me tell you, I thought I got out of all that many years ago back East. You think I want my daughter involved in this dreck?”
“She’s up to her neck in it,” I said, as the dog leaped off the table and went to the door.
“It was all accidents,” Dolmitz said. “Bass got carried away with the Olsons. I, I must admit, got a little nervous when I saw Lyle coming in here. Bass hadn’t come back last night with the pooch or the fifty grand, so Janey and me came looking for you and who should we see prancing in the doorway downstairs like the best supporting actress of 1936, who was?”
“Gale Sondergaard for Anthony Adverse,” I answered. He had picked another Warner Brothers production.
“He’s good,” Dolmitz said to his daughter. “You are very good. You know how hard it’s going to be to shoot you?”
“Very hard I hope,” I said.
“Pa,” Jane sighed in little girl exasperation.
“Lyle came prancing into the Farraday like Gale Sondergaard,” I jumped in.
“Right,” said Dolmitz. “We stopped him, asked him where he was going and he tells us he is going to see you, tell you what he knows, which is not all that much, but enough to get me in trouble maybe, especially with you knowing Bass is connected to me. We follow him up the elevator trying to talk him out of it but he’s not listening, just goes on like a meshuganeh about generals and presidents. So I shot him when we got to the fourth floor, which, by the way, took forever. Our mistake was we left him there and didn’t make sure he was dead, but it was morning, people might come. You know how it is. Listen, in my imagination I may be a Spencer Tracy, a two-time winner, but when it comes to shooting real people, I’ll confess to you, I’m not such a brave character.”
“That’s enough, Pa,” Jane interjected.
Dolmitz held up his hands as if to say, What are you going to do with kids? I wasn’t sure how much time I had to stall. I’d have to use my last trick, which would give me perhaps a minute or two extra.
“Has any animal ever won an Oscar?” I asked.
“No animal,” Dolmitz said, “but you may remember in ’37 Charlie McCarthy was given a special wooden Oscar. What’s with the animal question?”
“The dog over there deserves a nomination,” I said.
Dolmitz scratched his chin, looked at his daughter, and then back at the dog.
“Pa,” Jane said. “How long do you think I can hold this gun up like this?”
“What’s the cryptic comment on the dog?” Dolmitz asked. “You’ve got a point here or just making conversation? That’s the way you want to die, saying something stupid about a dog?”
“That’s not Fala,” I said.
“It’s Fala,” Jane said.
“No Fala, no fifty thousand bucks,” I said. “You did a lot of killing for nothing. Any performance ever been good enough to get people to kill themselves over it?”
“No,” said Dolmitz suspiciously, “but a few years ago when Cable took his shirt off in It Happened One Night and wasn’t wearing a T-shirt, the undershirt business went to hell. I think, Mr. Private Detective, you are lying to us.”
“I put it together this way,” I said, ignoring his insult. “Olson was told by Lyle to snatch the dog in Washington, but Olson was too scared or smart to do it. He switched dogs. He did something to the real Fala, prescribed some medicine, vitamin, gave him some spiked food, who knows, but enough to make the real Fala act strange so there might be some concern about it, some doubt if and when Lyle followed through with his threat to use the dog to get some political foothold.”
“So you are telling us that the real Fala is in Washington right now?” said Jane, putting the gun into her other hand.
“In the White House where he’s always been,” I said.
“I don’t believe you,” Jane said.
“It’s hard, Peters,” Dolmitz agreed. “Put yourself in my place.”
“Even with the gun on me,” I said. “I think I’d rather be in mine. No one, Lyle, you, Jane here, bothered to take a good look at this dog. You didn’t have to. You thought it was Fala, but a friend of mine went to the library and looked up the pictures in the Times, even got a print made from a negative and blown up, and an old guy in the park gave me a dog lecture. Our friend shivering in the corner-not Lyle, the black furry one-is bigger, curlier, has longer legs.”
“Dogs like this look alike,” said Dolmitz. “A cocker’s a cocker.”
“I don’t know anything about dogs, but it doesn’t take an expert to check,” I said. “Face it, Academy, you got taken by a second-rate performance.”
“The dog’s?” he said, shaking his head.
“Not just his,” I said, getting up slowly and nodding toward the door. “Mine.”
The door shot open, this time hitting Dolmitz. The dog let out a yowl and ran under the desk as Jane let go with a shot that went through Lyle’s corpse, giving him an extra bullet he did not need.
Bass, still tied, lurched into the room and against the wall with Jeremy behind him. My office was now three people beyond its maximum occupancy. Jane’s gun came up, leveled at Jeremy’s massive chest, and Dolmitz staggered away from the door, kicking it shut and moaning.
“Don’t move, anyone,” Jane said, now holding the pistol in two hands. “Pa, are you all right?”
“No,” groaned Dolmitz, holding his right hand to his face. “Do I go around groaning like Lionel Barrymore when I’m feeling all right? I’ll survive, but I’m not all right.”
“Toby, they haven’t-” Jeremy began.
“I’m fine,” I said.
“Cut me loose,” said Bass. “I’ve got things to do to these two.”
He looked first at Jeremy and then at me.
Dolmitz examined his hand to see if there was any blood on it from his nose and said, “More killing, putz? You know why we’re all crowded in here instead of reading a book or off at Loews’? Because you kill. You are the last person in California I would untie.”
“Mr. Dolmitz,” Bass whined.
Dolmitz held up a finger and said, “Shah, still.”
“So,” I said. “You going to shoot me, Jeremy, Bass, and the dog? You up for mass murder, Academy?”
“You’ve got a point, Peters, but I tell you, what am I going to do? I shot the poor yetz in the corner. Now Janey’s shot him. I don’t want to see my only daughter get, God forbid, the gas chamber, and I don’t want it to happen to me.”
“You can make a deal,” I said. “My brother’s a cop, a captain, you know that. You give him Bass and the two of you get a few years. It’s that or you start shooting and I can tell you that as soon as that gun in Jane’s hand goes off, the person it doesn’t hit is going to be all over her. The way she shoots, even in this little box she might wind up hitting you or nothing. Now I don t want to risk that, but it’s better than just sitting and waiting to let her take aim.”