Think Fast, Mr. Peters Read online

  “What do you want me to do, Mrs. Plaut?” I said in surrender.

  “You are to confront and convince Mr. Albert Tortelli that he must give up that rubber bone. I am giving up my preserve jar rings. He refuses to listen to me or to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I’m sure Fala has given up his rubber bone.”

  “I’m sure,” I said. “I’ll talk to Mr. Tortelli as soon as I get back home.”

  “As soon as you return?”

  “The very instant,” I said.

  “As a publisher and exterminator you come into contact with the public and certainly have to be most persuasive,” she said, beaming in triumph and finally explaining. “Mr. Tortelli will be oatmeal in your hands.”

  “A charming image,” I said making my way through the door and toward the stairs.

  If by chance you are confused by Mrs. Plaut’s belief that I am an editor and exterminator, try to accept it as I have. It is easier. When you unwind a ball of string, you don’t come to the meaningful core. You end up with empty air. So, too, with attempting to understand Mrs. Plaut.

  I escaped down the stairs, touching my stubbled face, running my tongue over my gravelly teeth, and burst onto the porch. Heliotrope was silent at this hour except for Mr. Tortelli’s dog next door who was whining either because he was in great need of a favorite curb or because he sensed that, later in the day, Toby Peters was coming for his beloved bone.

  2

  There were plenty of parking spaces at seven-thirty and my Crosley didn’t need a very big one. I parked on Hoover about a block from the Farraday, eased myself out of the car, and walked quickly down the street. I wasn’t in a hurry to see Shelly even though the paper bag I held away from my body was leaking.

  I elbowed into the Farraday’s lobby taking in the ever present smell of Lysol our landlord Jeremy Butler dosed the place with. The Farraday was relatively quiet as I listened to my footsteps echo on the tile floor and bypassed the elevator to head up the stairs. The elevator worked. It just didn’t work very quickly. I put one hand under the soaked sack while the other grasped its top as I took the steps two at a time. Somewhere on the second floor someone, male or female, either screamed or yawned or called a name. I kept going. By ten that morning a simple scream would be one of the more reassuring sounds in the Farraday, whose tenants included a shyster, several quacks, various frauds, a petty pornographer, two fortune tellers, three one-room “schools” for whatever was hot that day, a baby photographer, an unsuccessful loan shark, a dentist, a poet-landlord, and a private detective named Toby Peters who now stood in front of the door bearing his name in black letters on pebbled glass just below that of “Sheldon Minck, D.D.S., S.D., D.R.L.”

  My hand was sticky, warm, and wet. I pushed open the door, kicked it closed behind me, ignored the mess in the small outer waiting room and opened the door to Shelly’s office. He was sitting where I expected him to be, in his dental chair, His nose twitched, pushing his glassed back a fraction of an inch. His pudgy hands were crossed on his stomach over a wrinkled white smock. His cigar drooped unlit in his mouth and he looked up at me near tears.

  “Look around,” he said. “What do you see?”

  I saw a mess of an office, dirty instruments piled on the tray next to the chair on top of a copy of Collier’s magazine. I saw, in the corner, a sink filled with coffee cups and small dishes. The water was dripping. I saw Shelly’s instrument cabinet with some of the drawers open. I saw the door to my cubbyhole office partly open. The place looked the way it always looked.

  “I see a mess,” I said.

  He looked at me sadly and shook his head in sorrow.

  “No,” he said. “You see a meaningless space. An empty space. The inside of an abandoned shell. Toby, if you could see inside of me …” With this he pointed to his chest to let me know where I would have to look if I could but see inside him. “If you could see inside me, you would see the same emptiness.”

  I opened the bag in my hand, pulled out a dripping container of coffee, and handed it to him.

  “Fill some of the emptiness with this and tell me what happened,” I said.

  He put his cigar on the end of the nearby work table and reached up halfheartedly to take the coffee.

  “Danish?” he asked.

  I handed him a Danish. He balanced the coffee in one hand, the damp Danish in the other. There was something wrong with the scale.

  “I asked for two,” he said, biting the coffee-sogged roll.

  “Contain your grief,” I said, pulling out the other roll and placing it on a semiclean space on the Collier’s right next to a slightly rusted metal pick.

  “Food helps,” he said, and washing down a mouthful of Danish with a gulp of coffee. He made a face. “This isn’t triple sugar?”

  “Double sugar,” I said, throwing the soaked bag toward the already filled metal trash basket near the dental chair. I missed. The sack landed right next to a crumpled cloth which was dry and bloody.

  Shelly sighed. First his wife had run away with a movie actor and now he had to endure coffee without a triple sugar. Life was not only tragic. It was unfair.

  I went to the sink and rinsed my sticky hands under the dripping faucet. Behind me Shelly ate noisily and sighed between gulps. When I turned, my own coffee in hand, the first Danish was gone and he had started on the second.

  “That woman is a saint, Toby,” he said, chewing slowly. “A saint. Like … a saint.”

  “Shel,” I said, pulling out the stool he usually sat on when he attacked natives foolish enough to walk into his dental trap. “What makes you think Mildred has run away with Peter Lorre?”

  I sat on the stool, sipped my tepid coffee, and wondered when I was going to get to shave. Shelly grunted and nodded toward the small table. His pudgy cheeks jiggled. His nose twitched. He finished his second Danish and looked at his fingers in the hope that something had somehow clung to them, something worth eating. I followed his nod and got off the stool. Sticking out of the magazine was an envelope. I took it, finished my coffee, tossed the empty container toward the garbage (missed again), and pulled a single sheet of white linen paper from the envelope.

  “Look at the outside. Look at what it says,” the myopic dentist said, pointing at the envelope.

  “It says, ‘Dear Sheldon.’”

  “Dear Sheldon,” he repeated forlornly, leaning forward. “She still has feeling for me, Toby.”

  “You’re sure it’s her writing?” I asked.

  “Am I … did Napoleon know Josephine’s handwriting?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Did he?”

  Shelly sank back.

  I read the note aloud: “Dear Sheldon: I am with Peter Lorre, the actor ….”

  “How many Peter Lorres are there, for Chrissake?” he moaned.

  I went on reading. ‘“We are in love. It can’t be helped. It is bigger than both of us.’”

  “That’s not hard,” Shelly mumbled. “The guy’s nothing but a bug-eyed dwarf. She left me for a bug-eyed Italian dwarf.”

  “I think he’s German or Hungarian or something,” I said. “YOu want me to finish reading this, or do you want to spend the next day or two interrupting?”

  “Go on,” he moaned.

  “‘I’ve taken most of my things,’” I read. “‘I’ll send for the rest. You’ll hear from my lawyer about the divorce. Don’t forget to clean up the office. Love, Mildred Evangeline Minck.’”

  “Love,” Shelly sighed loudly. “What am I going to do without her, Toby? What? You’ve lost a wife. Tell me.”

  I found it impossible to compare Anne’s walking out on me to Mildred’s abandonment of Shelly. There was probably a lot to compare. I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I didn’t answer.

  “What do you want from me, Shel?” I said with what I hoped had the sound of sympathy. “I brought the Danish and coffee. I’ve heard your story. Now you’ve got to start living with it. There are things you’ll learn to like.”


  “Never,” he said, standing up and sending a spray of Danish crumbs to the floor from the lap of his dirty smock. “I want you to find her, find them. I want to talk to her in person. I want to know she’s all right, that he hasn’t hypnotized her or something. Toby, I think he’s after her money. I really do.”

  “It’s a possibility,” I agreed. Actually, it seemed the only possibility, though I didn’t know why an apparently successful actor would need money and a possible scandal. My imagination has been praised by the police and bad guys, actors and bums, but I couldn’t come up with a plausible picture of the person who would want to spend a life of love with Mildred Minck.

  “I had such plans, Toby,” Shelly said, looking around the room. The only worthwhile plans I could think of for the space would involve total demolition. “Without Mildred … it doesn’t seem worthwhile.”

  And without Mildred’s money, it, whatever it was, wouldn’t even be possible.

  “OK. So I find her. What then?”

  “Nothing,” he said showing his palms to make it clear that he was concealing nothing. “A simple talk, an opportunity to discuss it. I just want to know she’s all right, that he didn’t.…”

  “… hypnotize her,” I finished.

  “It’s possible,” he said.

  “Ten bucks a day plus expenses,” I said, running my palm across my stubbled face.

  Shelly looked at me, puzzled.

  “Ten bucks … are you saying? Are you telling me you’re going to charge me?” Shelly said pointing at himself.

  “Ten bucks a day plus expenses,” I said. “That’s my rate for friends.”

  “I can’t believe this,” Shelly looked up and told the ceiling. “My best friend, my closest … in my time of torment. Would I charge you for dental work? Have I ever charged you for dental work?”

  “I’ve never wanted you to work on my teeth,” I said. “If I’m ever drunk enough to let you, feel free to charge me. I’ll deserve it. Maybe it’ll teach me to stay sober. You charge me rent for the closet, don’t you?”

  “But that’s different,” Shelly whimpered, retrieving his cigar. “That’s business.”

  “And looking for Mildred is pleasure?”

  “Five dollars and no expenses,” he said.

  “Ten and you clean this place up,” I said. “Today.”

  “Clean it …?” he asked, looking around the room.

  “It’s what Mildred wants,” I said, holding up the letter.

  He sank back in his chair giving me the look of one betrayed, which I was sure was meant to make me feel the guilt.

  “No charge for the coffee and Danish,” I said. “I’ll be in my office. You think about it.”

  I stopped at the sink, turned on the hot water, waited for about thirty seconds while it got hot, rinsed out a coffee cup from the pile of dirty dishes and filled it from the tap. I turned off the dripping water, knowing it would start again by the time I was seated in my office. With my free hand I grabbed the soap and one of Shelly’s towels, reasonably clean, and went into my office, closing the door behind me.

  There was a pile of mail on my desk but I had something more urgent to do. I sat down, glanced down through my window at the alley behind the Farraday, opened my desk drawer and pulled out the Gillette safety razor I kept there for emergencies. I took out the rusty blade and put a fresh one in. The sun was up and I couldn’t make out my face in the window. Using the cup of warm water and the bar of soap, I shaved. My office was barely large enough for my desk, my chair and one chair for a client, though I did my best not to meet clients in my office. It wasn’t just that Shelly tried to trap them into orthodontia before they made it to my door. A look around my office made it a little tough to convince the client of my success.

  I looked at my framed State of California license, the old dusty photograph on the wall of me when I was a kid, my dad with one arm around me, one arm around my brother Phil. In front of us sat Kaiser Wilhelm, our dog.

  When I finished shaving and started to wipe the soap from my face, Shelly opened my door without knocking. His head floated in like a bespectacled beach ball.

  “It shouldn’t take you long to find her, should it?” he asked.

  “If she’s really with Peter Lorre, it shouldn’t take long,” I said.

  He contorted his face into something resembling thought.

  “OK,” he said. “Ten dollars a day.”

  “Plus expenses,” I reminded him.

  “You’ve got soap on your nose,” he said, and closed the door.

  Shelly could have done what I did next. I picked up the phone, called Warner Brothers studios, and asked for security. The guy who answered said his name was Lyons. I didn’t know Lyons. I asked for Mike or Bill Durban. I had worked in security for the brothers Warner till ’38 when Jack Warner got upset after I gave one of his B-movie cowboy stars a nose almost as flat as mine. The cowboy, whom I was supposed to be guarding, made an unpleasant comment about the origin of an actress. I’d asked him to shut up. I’d asked him very politely. There was a Depression on. I was married and I didn’t want to lose my job but there are some things a man just can’t avoid stepping into. Jack Warner didn’t see it that way when his cowboy star missed four days in front of the camera after I flattened his nose. The Durban brothers had been at the studio almost as long as the Warners. I had the feeling the Durbans would have made better producers too.

  “Durban,” came a raspy voice.

  “Peters,” I said. “Mike?”

  “Mike, right,” he said. “How you been, Toby? Heard you were counting stacks of green, living off the fat, that kind of stuff. Heard you did a job for Cooper a while back. Me and Bill been thinking of striking out on our own.”

  I didn’t believe him, but I wanted a favor.

  “You’d probably do better than I’m doing, Mike. I still have to fill in as a night-shift house dick here and there.”

  “Hell, Toby, maybe there’s no easy money,” he sighed.

  “You can always go in front of the cameras.”

  “What do you mean, could? Bill and I are filling in all over the place. Young guys, extras are off killing Japs and Krauts. Director sees us holding down a door and right away they put us in a cowboy suit or a ganster pinstripe. Even played a postal clerk a few weeks back.”

  “That’s a face?” I said.

  “It gets us a few extra bucks but it’s not our line,” he said. “We are not acting material. If we could lop off a few years, Bill and I would be out there on some island in the Pacific. Bill’s a shot, he is. You remember.”

  “He’s a shot, Mike,” I said.

  “We’ll maybe tip an ale to the past if you make it this way,” he said. “But that wasn’t on you mind this day.”

  “Peter Lorre,” I said. “Is he working a picture with you? Or do you have a number on him?”

  “He was here back at Christmas. Something like All Through the Night, but I hear he’s over at Universal on something. Nice man. Took Bill for eight bucks and some change at poker one noon before he took off. Nice man though. You want a number, you say?”

  He gave me a home number and I asked him what he knew about Lorre.

  “Know? Some kind of German or something. Wouldn’t think it to look at him but the little fella’s a bit of a lady’s man. Got a wife but there was this woman, another German, in the picture and they seemed to be getting on pretty good. This the kind of thing you want?”

  Beyond the closed door of my office I heard the outer door open and Shelly’s professional voice, about two octaves lower than normal, greeting a potential victim.

  “That’s the kind of thing I want,” I said.

  “You ask me,” Mike said lowering his voice. “There’re too damned many Germans at the studio. Directors, actors, camera guys. There’s a war, you know.”

  “I know, Mike. Anything else you can tell me?”

  The pause was short and I could hear his labored breathing as he hesitated and th
en sighed a what-the-hell sigh.

  “Bill and I hear they’re going to offer Lorre a contract here, but keep it under your fedora. Nothing like what the big boys are getting but maybe seventeen hundred and fifty a week with a two-, maybe three-picture guarantee.”

  “Thanks, Mike,” I said as Shelly’s drill began to whine in the next room. “We’ll have that ale soon.”

  He laughed. “When the Yanks roll into Berlin.”

  “Why not?”

  I hung up, looked at the phone number, and listened to Shelly singing a mournful version of “Lulu’s Back in Town” to the accompaniment of the electric drill. He didn’t sound exactly happy but he was doing what he liked best. I called the number Mike Durban had given me and listened to the phone ring seven times before someone picked it up. The instant a woman’s voice answered, Shelly’s drilling stopped.

  “Yes?”

  “Is Mr. Lorre in?” I asked.

  “No, may I ask who is calling?” Her voice had more than a trace of Europe.

  “Arnold Sapir, Warner Brothers,” I said. “It’s important that I find him immediately.”

  “Arnold …”

  “Sapir,” I said. “I really must talk to him before …”

  And Shelly’s drill burst into song along with Shelly doing a loud but somber imitation of Nelson Eddy singing “Shortin’ Bread.”

  “I can’t hear …” she began.

  I put my hand over the mouthpiece of the phone and shouted out to Shelly to be quiet. He stopped suddenly. Into the phone I said, “Nelson Eddy rehearsing. I’m in the studio.”

  “Ladislav … Mr. Lorre is at a meeting with a friend. They are at a restaurant, Levy’s on …”

  “Spring Street,” I said. “I know it. Thanks.”

  The drill had begun again before I hung up, but Shelly wasn’t singing. It didn’t look as if Peter Lorre had run off with Mildred Minck, but I was going to bill Shelly for a full day anyway so I decided to head for Levy’s. Even if Lorre weren’t there I’d get in a minor assault on Carmen the cashier. I stood up, rattled the loose change in my pocket to see if I had a dime-size hole, and pushed down on a few wrinkles in my pants. They popped back up.