Buried Caesars Read online

  “Yesterday …” I began.

  “… was yesterday,” she concluded. “Toby, I’ve got to get ready for work and you can’t come in.”

  “Annie,” I said. “Just give me …”

  And then I heard the cough inside her apartment, over her shoulder, back toward where I remembered the bedroom was. The cough was deep, confident, masculine. Ann heard it too. She chewed on her lower lip, brushed her hair back and looked in my eyes, without apology but with some embarrassment.

  “Annie, Annie was the miller’s daughter,” I said, the song I used to sing to her in my comic voice when we were first married. “Far she wandered from the singing water. Idle, idle Annie went a-maying, uphill, downhill with her flock astraying.”

  She closed the door quickly and I turned to leave. I didn’t really feel like finding murderers and MacArthur’s papers. I didn’t feel like saving the Western world from the postwar threat of communism. I felt like going to a hotel, getting in bed, pulling the covers over my head and sleeping for a month.

  I told myself I didn’t care, shouldn’t care. After all, I’d spent some time in bed with J.V. in Angel Springs. I’d done it partly because she reminded me of Ann, but I’d also done it out of need, hers and mine. I shouldn’t judge Ann. I shouldn’t, but I knew I would. I gave up the idea of going for the hotel and decided instead to wait outside of Ann’s apartment to get a look at whoever it was in the bedroom. I wasn’t sure it would make things better but it would get rid of some of what I would soon start imagining. Before I could turn away, Ann’s door opened again, just a crack, and again slammed shut.

  “Ann,” I called.

  There was no answer this time.

  “Phil was right again.” Seidman’s voice came from over my shoulder.

  I turned around and found myself facing the pale and placid Lieutenant Steve Seidman.

  “About what?” I asked, following him out from behind the palms and cactus.

  “About where to find you,” he said. “When in doubt, go to your ex-wife’s. Let’s go.”

  And we went. Seidman said nothing on the trip to the Wilshire Station. He drove and I looked out the window feeling sorry for myself and wondering if it was going to rain. He parked his unmarked Ford in the small lot and walked with me around the stone building to the front, up the steps and into the lobby.

  “What kind of a morning is it?” I asked Seidman.

  “Don’t know,” he said as we walked past the ancient sergeant on duty at the desk, whose face turned sour in greeting. “He called me at home and told me to have you here when he got in.”

  “You were lucky to find me,” I said as we went up the dark, wooden steps toward the squad room.

  “You left an easy trail,” he said. “Give me a minute with him.”

  “Take your time,” I said, following Seidman through the squad room door. The grimy clock on the wall read almost nine, which meant a shift had changed within the hour. A pair of handcuffed Oriental boys sat on chairs in front of the desk of John Cawelti, a sergeant who didn’t love me. John wasn’t there. The Oriental boys were leaning against each other. One of them was sleeping. As we passed I could see that the wide awake and frightened boy was really a girl who looked at me as if I might have a reprieve for her, or at least some hope. I had neither.

  Another cop, a horsey guy whose name I couldn’t remember, sat at his desk in the corner near the dirty window smoking a cigarette and staring at a sheet of paper in front of him. The rest of the squad room was empty, at least empty of humans. The trash cans were overflowing with last night’s reports and ordered-out sandwiches and the place smelled like the Griffith Park lion house.

  We maneuvered around the desks to Phil’s old office in the corner, the rat hole he had crouched in for a dozen years before his promotion and to which he had now been sent back. Seidman pointed to the scratched wooden chair outside the door. I sat. He knocked and went in. I tried to avoid the eyes of the Oriental girl, who looked at me across the squad room over the head of the young man dozing on her shoulder. I tried to avoid her eyes but I couldn’t. I shrugged, held my hands up as if they were handcuffed and pointed to myself in an attempt to let her know that she and I were in the same boat. She nodded sadly as if she understood and turned her head away, letting her cheek touch the hair of the sleeping young man.

  Phil’s door opened and Seidman stepped out. He looked at me but his pale, emotionless face told me nothing. I got up and went in. Seidman stayed outside and closed the door.

  Phil was standing at the barred, narrow window behind his desk. The office was only a little bigger than my own in the Farraday, but Phil’s presence took and needed more space. His shirt was starched fresh and white, his tie dark and unwrinkled, his face neatly shaved, his short steel-gray hair brushed back. In his right hand was a steaming cup, in his left the remains of a sandwich on white bread.

  “Hungry?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said warily.

  “Have a seat and a sandwich,” Phil said, looking over his shoulder at me and nodding at the paper bag on his desk. “Ruth made three of them for my lunch but I missed breakfast. I’ll pick up something at the Greek’s later.”

  I moved around the two chairs in front of the desk and reached into the paper bag for a sandwich. It was wrapped in crinkly brown paper and smelled good. Ruth was good with food and kids.

  “Spam,” Phil said, going back to the fascinating view of the wall across from his window.

  I sat down and opened the sandwich.

  “You want a coffee?” he asked, still not looking at me. “I can have Steve get one for you.”

  “No thanks,” I said, starting on the sandwich but eating it like a wary chimp who expects someone or something to try to snatch it from him. Phil was being too calm. “How’s it feel to be back in here?”

  “Comfortable,” he said. “Like home.”

  “Ruth and the kids okay?” I asked, not sure whether Pwas trying to provoke him and whether I was really interested.

  “Fine,” he said. “Told her I’d be seeing you. She wants you to come for dinner Sunday. Three o’clock.”

  “I … I’ll be there,” I said. “Good sandwich.”

  “Dave and Nate asked about you, and Lucy’s talking a lot,” Phil said.

  He finished his sandwich and let me finish mine before he turned, clenched his teeth and began.

  “Two days,” he said. “What have you got on the Hower murder?”

  “Another murder,” I said. “Andrew Lansing.”

  “Hower’s roommate,” said Phil, sitting at his desk and placing his cup in front of him.

  “Right,” I said. “Police found him on the estate of a guy named Pintacki in Angel Springs. My guess is Pintacki killed Hower and Lansing.”

  “Why?” he asked, reasonably.

  I shrugged. Keeping MacArthur out of this was part of the job.

  “Money, I suppose,” I said. “I have information that Lansing had a pile of cash.”

  “Where’d he get it?” Phil asked.

  “Client of mine,” I said.

  “And you want the money back, for your client?” he said calmly.

  “Right,” I said.

  “You don’t suppose your client might shoot Hower and Lansing to get his or her money back and not tell you?” he asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “Think you might like to tell me now who this client is so I can talk to him?” he asked, reaching for his cup.

  “Phil, you want Pintacki and his two boys. Their names are Conrad and Wylie, and …”

  “… they were found dead, shot on a little street off Coldwater Canyon about twenty minutes ago,” he finished.

  “Pintacki,” I said.

  Phil didn’t look convinced.

  “Call Chief Spainy in Angel Springs,” I said. “He knows.”

  Phil reached for the phone and told someone to get Chief Spainy in Angel Springs on the phone. He held the receiver to his ear and we said no
thing while we waited. I wanted the third sandwich but I didn’t ask for it or suggest that we split it. I have some sense of timing.

  “Spainy? This is Captain Phil Pevsner, L.A.P.D. I’m calling about a murder in Angel Springs, a man named Lansing found on the property of someone called Pintacki … right … okay … spell that, please … right. I’ve got two more bodies here, tentatively identified as Wylie Simms and Conrad Stock. Source here says they work for Pintacki … I see … right … thanks.”

  He hung up and looked at me.

  “Spainy has quite a vocabulary,” he said.

  “He works at it a lot harder than he does at being a cop,” I said. “And he’s got a thing about rabbits.”

  “Spainy didn’t say anything about rabbits, but he did say Lansing’s body was found on the road south of Angel Springs, nowhere near Pintacki’s place. He says Pintacki’s a law-abiding citizen. The Chief says that he knows nothing about two men named Wylie and Conrad who work for Pintacki.”

  “He’s lying,” I said.

  “You’ve got some evidence, someone who can back you up?” asked Phil.

  All I had was Hammett, Castle, J.V. and Spainy’s man Barry. I’d caused J.V. enough trouble and I owed Hammett a head start to the East Coast. Major Oren Castle was, in a sense, my client. To name him would lead to a clear line to MacArthur.

  “No,” I said.

  “You didn’t happen to shoot this Wylie and Conrad, did you?” Phil asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “Steve says you’ve had a busy morning,” Phil went on, pausing to sip from his cup. “Two men showed up at your boarding house shooting and being less than pleasant. Your landlady thinks they’re Nazis. From the description, I’d say they’re our boys in Coldwater, Wylie and Conrad.”

  “I wasn’t there,” I said.

  “You weren’t there,” said Phil pleasantly. “How about an hour later at your office? You drove into the alley in the DeSoto they were found dead in. Minck says the two now deceased came to your office, waved their guns and threatened to kill you. He thinks they were bill collectors.”

  “Maybe I need a lawyer,” I said.

  “Maybe you need a new goddam brain,” Phil went on, his voice still even but showing a slight quiver that only a brother would recognize. “I’ve got four connected murders and you know what connects them? You. You connect them, Toby. You are—and not for the first time, as any assistant district attorney will see when he looks into your hippo-choking file—a murder suspect. We’re talking possible indictment. We’re talking loss of license.”

  “I didn’t kill anyone, Phil. This is all circumstantial.”

  “Circumstantial is what gets most murderers the death penalty,” Phil explained. “I’m trying to keep even here, Toby. The day’s just starting. My stomach is full and I’m back in investigations where I want to be, but you are not going to make my first day a disaster.”

  He stood up and heaved the almost-empty coffee cup past me into the corner, where it shattered. It was a good sign. He hadn’t thrown the cup directly at me and he had finished most of the coffee.

  “What’s going on, Toby? Now, and straight.”

  He ran his left hand over the top of his bristly hair, which was not a good sign. I had a client to protect. I also had my body to protect and I had the sudden flash of an hourglass, Jeremy’s hourglass, with not all that much damn sand left in the top.

  “Off the record, Phil,” I said. “It has to be off the record.”

  “No,” he said.

  “Then I can’t tell you.” I said, hands at my side ready to protect myself from what would probably be my brother’s next move.

  “Son of a bitch,” he hissed, fists clenched.

  “I can’t, Phil,” I said. “I’ve got an office smaller than a broom closet, a furnished room in a seedy boarding house, no wife, no family, no money, no property. All I’ve got is my word. If I give that up, I’ve got nothing left. I can’t tell you, Phil.”

  Phil’s face went red and the first drops of perspiration began to dot his rapidly wilting shirt. He pounded once on the desk with his right hand and sat down.

  “Off the record,” he agreed. “But you’d better give me all of it.”

  I gave him all of it including MacArthur, Castle, the missing papers and the money. I didn’t give him Hammett’s name and I didn’t tell him about J.V.

  Phil listened quietly, his face growing serious and calm as I went through the tale right up to the moment Seidman’s hand touched my shoulder in front of Ann’s apartment.

  “I was in the Rainbow Division in the war,” Phil said quietly when I had finished.

  “I know, Phil,” I said.

  “MacArthur was the C.O. He turned a collection of random militias from all over the country into a proud unit,” Phil said softly. “I would have died for that man. I almost did.”

  Phil had been wounded during the war and had almost died. He’d never talked about what had happened and I could see that he was having trouble with it now.

  Phil stopped talking, looked at me and made a decision.

  “America needs MacArthur,” he said. “Not just for the war but after, when my kids are growing up, when everyone starts getting soft again and someone else decides to stick a knife in our back so that Nate and Dave have to go out and fight and maybe get killed. America needs Douglas MacArthur.”

  I wasn’t as sure about that as my brother was, but this wasn’t the time to debate it.

  “So,” I said. “What do we do?”

  “I’ve got a job to do,” Phil said, folding his hands on the desk in front of him. “We’ve got four murders with no place to hang them. That makes me nervous, Tobias.”

  “I know. But I’m close. How about two more days?”

  “No.”

  “One more. Twenty-four hours. We’re talking about saving General MacArthur’s reputation,” I said. What I didn’t say was that I thought there was a chance I might have to save more than his reputation. I might have to save his life. I’d have to find Pintacki and find him fast.

  “Twenty-four hours,” Phil said. “And no more bodies.”

  “Twenty-four hours,” I said, standing up. “And I’ll be at your house for dinner on Sunday at three.”

  “If you’re not in jail,” Phil said.

  “Right,” I agreed and went out the door.

  Seidman was sitting at his desk nearby. He looked up as I came out, saw no visible scars and nodded. I nodded back and headed toward the squad room door. The same cop was still smoking and thinking near the window. The two Oriental kids were still seated in front of Cawelti’s desk and he still wasn’t there. Another pair of cops, both in uniform, were standing in a corner and talking loudly about a pinup one of them had just stuck on the wall near the water fountain.

  “Better than Grable,” said one cop. “Look at them legs, that smile, those lips. Mary Martin is Miss Blue Ribbon, for chrissake. The California Models’ Guild ain’t wrong.”

  “Not bad,” agreed the other cop, “but not Grable either.”

  I stopped in front of Cawelti’s desk.

  “What’d you do?” I asked the girl.

  “We did nothing,” she said softly, to keep the boy on her shoulder from waking. “We were walking home from a friend’s this morning.”

  “And you were arrested?”

  “Yes,” she said. “And my brother is frightened. He sleeps when he is frightened. My parents will be frightened.”

  “What did the cops say who picked you up?” I asked.

  “That we were Japanese and should be in a camp,” the girl said. “We are not Japanese. We are Chinese. They wouldn’t believe us. My brother Chou was frightened. He didn’t understand. He fought them, tried to help me and they hit us and brought us here. And the man who sits there.” She pointed with her free hand at Cawelti’s empty chair. “That man said we will go to jail.”

  I felt rather than heard someone at my side and I turned, expecting to see the
red face of John Cawelti, but it was Seidman.

  “You heard that?” I asked.

  “I heard,” he said. “I’ll talk to Phil. They’ll be okay.”

  The girl looked at both of us, trying to understand, and the dozing boy started to awaken. I smiled at her and she smiled back carefully. I went for the door.

  12

  I took a cab to No-Neck Arnie’s and checked through my receipts for food and cabs to keep from thinking about Ann and Chinese girls with fear in their eyes.

  “The sands in the hourglass are running out, Arnie,” I said, when I got there and discovered that my Crosley hadn’t arrived yet.

  “I don’t give a shit,” grunted Arnie the short, stout and neckJess, who probed for something in his teeth with greasy fingers. “I just cut my hand on a cylinder block. You thought over what I said about the gas-ration books?”

  “I’m thinking,” I said. “How about a loaner for the day?”

  Arnie had paused in his work under the hood of a battered Dodge when I came in. Now he turned his small brown eyes back to his love, the mangled intestines of the machine.

  “Don’t have loaners,” he said, shoving a wrench into a space between the engine and some wires. “Don’t give loaners. My job’s fixing cars. I don’t fix teeth. I don’t look for lost wives. I don’t give no loaners.”

  “You are a lovely man, Arnie. Have any kids?” I asked.

  “What’s that got to do with tea in China?” he asked back.

  “Nothing,” I admitted. “You have anything running I can rent?”

  “See the Chrysler in the corner?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Transmission’s a little drunk but it goes. I’m working on it for a doctor. He’s out of town. Maybe it’s fine. Maybe it’s not so fine. Twenty bucks and you can have it till four.”

  “Everything’s twenty bucks with you,” I said.

  “Used to be everything was fifteen,” he agreed. “But there’s a war on.”

  “Twenty,” I agreed.

  “In advance,” he said.

  “I’ve only got nine in my pocket, and a Luger,” I said.

  “I’ll take five, leave you four and you give me thirty-five when you pick up the Crosley,” he said. “You can keep the Luger.”