The Fala Factor: A Toby Peters Mystery Read online

  It sounded kind of reasonable and was a little bit true at the same time. I don’t know where it came from, but I heard it coming out of me when I needed it. It was usually like that. I was one hell of an on-the-spot liar. It was what every good private detective had to be in a world of liars. Phil, on the other hand, was a lousy liar. He didn’t have to lie. He had a cop’s badge and the gun that went with it.

  “Why you?” he asked, pausing, his head cocked to the side.

  “You know I used to work for Warner’s. They throw me business once in a while.”

  “Warner would have had the gulls going for your liver if he had his way,” Phil said. “He hates your face.”

  “We have an understanding,” I lied. “I did some work for him a few years back and—”

  “Toby, how much of this is horseshit?” His hand slammed down on the desk sending a spray of pencils flying from the clay cup his son Nate had made for him five years ago. Beyond the closed door the Mexican guy seemed to be whimpering in sympathy for me.

  “About half,” I said honestly, which was a lie. “Phil, it’s nothing, a missing dog, a two-bit case. No scandal, no politics, no danger for the First Lady, just a lost dog. I said I’d keep it quiet, but, okay, call Mrs. Warner, check it out. I promised I wouldn’t tell, but the hell with it. Check it out. I need the few bucks. It’s either look for a lost pooch or do the night guard shift at a defense plant, and you know how I hate uniforms.”

  Phil pulled his pouting lip back in and looked at me for about half a minute while I tried on the wide-open, sincere, and slightly pathetic face I had come near perfecting by looking into the mirror on humid summer nights.

  Finally he sighed, a sigh to take in all of his troubles and those of the Allies. “Get out,” he said, turning his back again. This time he put his hands behind him. “If anything happens on this, anything, I’ll come for you, Toby. I’ll come and all the bad times in the past will be Mother Goose compared to it.”

  “Thanks Phil,” I said, inching for the door. “Give my best to Ruth and the kids.”

  “Ruth wants you to come for dinner, Sunday,” he said gruffly.

  “I’ll be there,” I said, my hand on the door knob. “And Phil, you deserve to make captain.”

  Something like a laugh came from him. I couldn’t see the face that matched it, but the voice had a touch of gravel in it. “The war got me this promotion,” he said softly. “Younger guys are gone, younger lieutenants. Tojo and Hitler got this promotion for me. Without them I’d go out a lieutenant. Funny, huh?”

  “You’re selling yourself short, brother,” I said.

  “I’m selling myself at street prices,” he said. “I can live with that. What’s your price?”

  I left without telling him I had no minimum. What I did have was a pocketful of Eleanor Roosevelt’s cash. Seidman didn’t see me leave. Across the room I saw his thin frame leaning over to finish filling his artichoke crate. Caweiti was out of sight, probably discussing current events or Goethe with the Mexican in one of the interrogation rooms down the hall. Slaughter and a uniformed kid were in earnest, head-to-head conversation with the Negro kid still handcuffed to the bench. He was nodding his head in full agreement to everything they whispered to him, probably confessing to crimes committed a century before he was born.

  I almost collided with a well-dressed woman wearing a tiny black hat with a large black feather. She was about forty, maybe a little older, good-looking in a way that reminded me of my ex-wife, and perfumed heavily enough to break through the squadroom smell, at least at close range.

  “Excuse me,” she said, looking around the room with obvious distaste, “can you tell me where I might find the detective in charge of providing security for bridge parties?”

  “Bridge parties?” I said.

  “We are going to have a bridge party to raise funds for the USO and we would like a detective present to keep unwanted people out, if you understand,” she said with a smile reserved for people like me, who could not possibly understand people like her.

  “Sergeant Cawelti,” I said. “That’s his desk right there. You just have a seat. He’ll be right back. Tell him Captain Peters said he should take care of you.”

  “Thank you,” she said, taking off her glove and offering me her hand. I took it. It felt soft. “Thank you, Captain Peters. It’s difficult to know what the right thing to do is at times like this.”

  “You’re doing the right thing,” I assured her, taking her hand in both of mine. Behind us, Slaughter grumbled, “No, no, no,” to the Negro kid, who had apparently given a wrong answer. The woman drew her hand away.

  “My son’s in the army,” she said, trying to keep her eyes away from the scene on the bench. “It’s hard to know what to do.”

  “Leave it to Sergeant Cawelti,” I said, feeling guilty but not knowing how to get out of it. “Good luck.”

  “Thank you, Captain,” she said as I walked out the door and left her perfumed presence to be engulfed by hell.

  Veldu called, “Take care, Toby,” as I walked past him and into the light of Wilshire Boulevard. A lone cloud crossed in front of the sun, and I looked down at the watch I had inherited from my father. It was his only legacy to me, besides a tendency to feel sorry for most of the people who staggered into my life. The watch could never be relied upon for the right time. Now it told me that it was six, but it couldn’t have been later than two.

  My car radio, after “Wendy Warren and the News,” told me that it was two-fifteen. A stop at a drugstore got me a Pepsi and a phone book that let me know that I was a twenty-minute drive away from Dr. Olson’s office in Sherman Oaks. I called the number in the phone book and a man answered, “Dr. Olson’s office.”

  “I’d like to see the doctor,” I said. “This afternoon. It’s an emergency.”

  “What kind of pet do you have?” he said. “And what is the problem?”

  “Little black Scotch terrier,” I said, a sob in my voice. “He just seems different, like a different dog. You know what I mean?”

  “I’ll tell Doctor,” he said with dull efficiency. “You can bring your dog in at four. The dog’s name?”

  “Fala,” I said. “We named him after the president’s dog. My wife thought it was kind of a cute idea. What do you think?”

  “We see lots of Scotch terriers named Fala,” he said. A phone was ringing behind him. “Sorry, Mr …?”

  “Rosenfeldt,” I said. “Myron Rosenfeldt. That’s why my wife, Lottie, thought it would be cute to name the dog Fala.”

  The man grunted and the phone continued to ring behind him. “Four o’clock,” he said and hung up.

  Having given Dr. Olson something to think about in case he might be guilty of dognapping, I made another call to a second doctor, Doc Hodgdon, who agreed to cancel his two-thirty patient and meet me at the YMCA on Hope Street. Doc was thin, white-haired, and well over sixty. My hope was that he would slow down enough soon so that I could finally beat him at least once at handball. I sometimes wondered why he wanted to continue to play with me. “Sadist and masochist,” Jeremy had suggested. “He likes beating you and you like being beaten. A symbiotic relationship.”

  I didn’t like thinking about that so I turned on the radio when I got back in the car and headed for Hope. One hour later, after having lost three straight games to Hodgdon, I was showered, resuited, and heading for Sherman Oaks singing “I Came Here To Talk For Joe.”

  I was refreshed, unshaved, and unworried as the gas gauge in front of me bounced happily from full to empty. I was ready to do my part for victory by confronting what might be the most important dognapper in history.

  A collie with a bad cough, a white Persian cat with a missing ear, a whimpering spaniel, and a white parrot in a cage with what looked like a bandage on his right leg, were ahead of me in Dr. Olson’s waiting room. The people who had accompanied the patients were a silent lot: a thin, chain-smoking woman in a cloth coat had the collie, a teenage girl wearing a jacket
with the letter L on it comforted the spaniel, an old couple holding hands guarded the Persian in the woman’s lap, and a birdlike man with a straight back wearing glasses, a small smile, and a white suit rested his hand protectively on the cage of the white parrot at his side.

  Dr. Olson’s Sherman Oaks Hospital for Pets was on a cul-de-sac one block off Sherman Avenue. It was a new one-story brick building. The street itself had a number of driveways with houses set back beyond the trees. The only building near the street was Dr. Olson’s place. There was no parking lot, but finding a place on the street had been no trouble.

  My trouble came when a door opened off the waiting room and the sound of barking and whining accompanied the appearance of a white-coated giant who looked like a block of ice. His face was bland and dreamy under straight blond hair that tumbled across his eyes. The white coat was generously dappled with blood, some of it still moist.

  “Mrs. Retsch,” he announced in a surprisingly high voice. The woman with the collie stood up nervously, looked for someplace to put her cigarette, found an ashtray, and, head down, moved past the huge blond man and through the door, her collie coughing docilely at her side.

  “You,” the man said looking at me. “You got no animal.”

  He was observant.

  “That’s what I want to see the doctor about,” I said. “I’m looking for a pet. My name’s Rosenfeldt. I made an appointment.”

  “But you got no pet,” he repeated.

  “Mr …?”

  “I’m Bass,” he said. “You’ve got an appointment and no pet.”

  “That’s about it,” I agreed.

  Though I didn’t see that anything had been settled, Bass nodded, wiped his hands on his coat, and looked at the others waiting.

  “You’re next,” he said, pointing at the parrot man. He turned and disappeared through the door.

  Amidst the smell of blood and animal I passed an hour with Collier’s, enjoying particularly a story about Chiang Kai-shek’s vow that China would never fall to the Japanese. He certainly looked determined in the pictures, and his wife at his side looked even better.

  At five, one hour later, the door to the interior of the building opened and the teen with the spaniel emerged and sped past and out. Bass stood looking down at me, so I assumed since I was alone that it was my turn. I stood up and put Collier’s and the Orient aside.

  “Doctor’s ready,” he said.

  “I’m ready,” I said and followed Bass down a narrow corridor. The walls were white and the little surgery-examining rooms we passed were white and stainless steel and looked clean. The blood smell, however, was strong, as was the sound of whining animals.

  Bass stopped and put out a hand. I almost ran into it.

  “In there,” he said. “Doctor will be with you.”

  I went into the room he was pointing to, and he closed the door behind me. It was like the others we had passed, one chair in a corner, a cabinet, a sink, a counter against the wall with bottles and instruments on it, and in the center of the room, firmly bolted to the floor, a stainless steel table with lipped sides. The table was big enough to hold a fair-sized dog or a very short man. I didn’t think I could fit comfortably on it. I didn’t think anyone, even my friend Gunther, who doesn’t top four feet, could be comfortable on that table.

  My thoughts were on the table when the door opened and a man who looked like Guy Kibbe came in, rosy-cheeked and rubbing his hands together rapidly. His freckled balding head was fringed with white hair that grew down over both ears. He wore an open white jacket over a very neat, three-piece suit with a matching blue striped tie.

  Without looking at me, he moved to the counter, opened a cabinet, turned a knob, and music filled the room. It sounded like a tinny piano.

  “Harpsichord,” explained Dr. Olson, turning to me with a benevolent smile, rubbing his palms together. “Louis Couperin, Suite in D Major,” he said. “‘Le Tombeau de M. Blancrocher.’ Seventeenth century. Louis Couperin lived from 1626 to 1661. Some people confuse him with his nephew, François Couperin, who was sometimes called Le Grand Couperin. This is Louis. Listen.”

  We listened for a minute or two with Olson leaning back against the wall, arms folded.

  “Animals like music,” he said. “Most animals anyway. Not orchestras, not the big loud stuff like Beethoven. That scares them, but baroque they go for every time. Bach, Mozart, Haydn. Cats even like Vivaldi sometimes. Don’t know what to make of that. What can I do for you Mr. Rosenfeldt? Bass says its something about a dog?”

  “I’m looking for a dog.” I said.

  “Wait, wait, listen to this part.” Olson said, holding a finger up to his lips. His hands were clean and looked as if they had just been powdered. “That trill, holding back, the undulation. What can you compare it to, Mr. Rosenfeldt?”

  “Sex?”

  Olson looked at me seriously.

  “Why not,” he said. “Heightened emotion, combination of mind and body like good music. The animals have it. They are not inferior to us, not at all. We’ve just moved away from our origins, made things more artificial. That makes us think we’re better. Is thinking better than feeling, Mr. Rosenfeldt?”

  “I came about a dog,” I said.

  Olson scratched the inside of his ear with a clean pinky and with a sigh moved to the cabinet, reached in, and turned off the record.

  “I’m attentive,” he said, turning to me.

  “My dog is sick,” I said.

  “So Bass told me, though it seemed a bit cryptically stated to him when you called.”

  “My dog is dying,” I said without emotion. “I’d like another just like it, a small black Scotch terrier, just like the president’s Fala. You familiar with the dog?”

  “Alas,” sighed Olson, “I’m not in the business of selling dogs, only in keeping them healthy. Perhaps if you bring your dog in there might be something we can do to help him or, if you are correct, make his final days less painful.”

  “Alas?” I said.

  “I beg your pardon?” Olson said, beaming at me.

  “I never met anyone before who used alas in normal conversation,” I pushed. Olson was not unsettling as easily as I hoped he might, which suggested that he was one hell of a liar or had nothing to hide.

  “Well, you have now and may your life be enriched for the experience, Mr. Rosenfeldt,” Olson went on. “I’m afraid we have no business together unless you or your missus wishes to bring your pet into the clinic. Believe me, if anything can be done, I will do it.”

  He put out a friendly hand across the small room to guide me to the door. I pushed away from the wall and took a step toward it before turning.

  “You sure you wouldn’t know where I could pick up a dog to replace Fala,” I said. “It would save me and other people a lot of trouble.”

  Olson shook his head sadly and, arm out, came to my side to guide me to the door. “I’m afraid I simply cannot give you solace or help,” he said. “Many people want black or white Scotch terriers. Now, I’ve had a long day with my patients. Between us, Mr. Rosenfeldt, there is no essential difference between what I do and that which is done by an expensive Beverly Hills surgeon who makes incisions into movie stars. The anatomy of the mammal is essentially the same regardless of species. The knowledge needed to treat, to cure, is essentially the same. Ah, but the mystique is different. As a veterinary surgeon, I remove the mystique. For example, I see you have a slight limp. Sore back?”

  He guided me with a surprisingly strong arm to the door of the room.

  “Sore back,” I agreed, “but it comes and goes.”

  “Yes.” He chuckled. “If I were a big downtown surgeon, I could put you right up on that table and have you taken care of within an hour.”

  “Taken care of?” I said, pushing the door closed as he opened it.

  “Yes.” He smiled. “I could take care of all your problems.”

  “I’m determined to get that little black dog, Doc,” I whispered.
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br />   “Who are you?” he whispered back, licking his lower lip.

  “The name is Peters.” I pushed, feeling that I was getting through to something. “I’m a private investigator looking for a missing dog.”

  “A missing dog?”

  “You make a nice echo,” I said. “Let’s try for some original material.”

  “Leave,” he said, his voice cracking, but the smile still frozen in place. “You’ve come to the wrong place.”

  “I don’t think so, Doc,” I said.

  “Bass,” Olson said. He hadn’t raised his voice much, so the big blond must have been right outside the door waiting. He came in fast, the door catching me on the shoulder as he pushed through.

  “Doc?” he said.

  “This man’s name is Peters,” Olson said slowly. “Please look at him.”

  Bass looked at me obediently.

  “He is not to be allowed in this clinic again,” said Olson, shaking his head sadly. “He is not a lover of animals.”

  “He’s not?” said Bass.

  “I am too,” I stuck in, but Bass wasn’t listening to my voice. I wondered if he, too, was soothed by baroque music.

  “So,” Olson went on, putting an immaculate, paternal hand on Bass’s substantial arm, “I’m afraid he will have to leave now. I would prefer that he not be hurt, but we cannot be responsible if he offers resistance, can we?”

  “No, we cannot,” said Bass, grabbing my shoulder as I tried to work my way behind him to the door.

  “I’ll leave quietly,” I said, trying to remove my jacket from Bass’s grasp.

  “Let us hope so,” sighed Olson. “Alas, Mr. Bass is a former professional wrestler. I would not like you to get hurt on the premises. It might result in some trauma for you, perhaps an emergency situation in which I would have to treat you as a patient.”