Now You See It: A Toby Peters Mystery Read online

  “Right,” I said. “She’s in a show. Blackstone the Magician at the Pantages.”

  He put down his hand, shrugged, and said, “Four-twelve. Elevator’s on the left.”

  “Anyone else come in here from the show in the last ten minutes or so?” I asked.

  “Why?” he asked suspiciously.

  “She was with a guy with a beard, turban,” I said.

  “No guy like that,” he said. “I don’t see why….”

  I pocketed the keys, went through the lobby door, and headed for the elevator. There was no one in the small lobby. The elevator doors were closed. I pushed the button and watched the brass arrow move down 4-3-2-1. There was a ding and the doors slid open.

  She was sitting on the floor, her back against the rear wall, sleek in an almost skin-tight stripped costume. Both of her hands were pressed against her stomach.

  “He shot me,” she said, eyes open wide in surprise.

  Blood was beginning to seep through her fingers. She looked down, saw it, and then looked back at me.

  “I think maybe he killed me,” she said.

  The elevator door started to close. I held it back with both hands and reached for the switch to turn it off.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said and ran to the doorman.

  “Call an ambulance, quick,” I said.

  “What?”

  “She’s been shot.”

  “Who?”

  “Just call an ambulance. Hurry.” I turned and called back, “Elevator.”

  Gwen Knight had gone pale. There was more blood. I’ve seen plenty of blood, much of it my own. I knelt next to her and gently moved her hands.

  “I’m dying right?” she asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “You’re just sayin’,” she said.

  “No, I can see the bullet. It didn’t even break your rib. Just keep your hands on it to stop the bleeding.”

  “It was a little gun, you know?”

  “A little gun.”

  “Like …,” and she moved her hands, bloody palms facing each other to show how little the gun was that shot her.

  I placed her hands back on the wound.

  “Like they use in the show. Pellets,” she said. Her eyes rolled back. “I think I’m going to throw up.”

  “Why did he shoot you?” I asked.

  “I saw him coming out of my dressing room,” she said. “I went into the dressing room and there was poor Robert.”

  “Dead?”

  “Almost,” she said. “You’re sure I’m not dying?”

  “Positive,” I said, though I was thinking more along the lines of ninety-five percent that she would be all right. “He say anything?”

  She closed her eyes and said, “The guy with the turban?”

  “No, Robert.”

  “Yeah, but it didn’t make any sense.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Wild on Thursday.”

  “Wild on Thursday?”

  “What did he mean?”

  “Search me,” she said.

  She tried to shrug, but it sent a twitch of pain through her.

  The doorman came running up and looked down at Gwen, whose eyes moved back in focus. She had great, even white teeth.

  “They’re comin’,” he said. “Ambulance. And the cops.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and then to Gwen, “The one who shot you?”

  “Same guy who shot Robert,” she said. “Sure I’m not dyin’?”

  “Sure, cross my heart,” I said.

  “That guy I told you about with the beard and turban,” I said to the doorman.

  “Nobody like that came in in the last four hours,” said the doorman. “I’d have remembered.”

  “Forget the turban and beard,” I said. “Anyone come in who didn’t live here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who?”

  “You.”

  “Besides me.”

  It was faraway and beyond the lobby doors, but I heard a siren on the way.

  “No. Yes,” he said. “A doctor, just a few minutes before you. On his way to make a house call on Mr. Collins. Hey maybe I should call up there and he can come down and….”

  “You check with Collins before you let him in?”

  “No, the guy looked like a doctor, gray hair, glasses, nice suit, one of those pebble leather doctor bags.”

  “He asked for Mr. Collins?”

  “Yeah, well I thought he said Cowens, but I asked him did he say ‘Collins’ and he … I let the shooter in, didn’t I?”

  “Looks that way,” I said.

  “Shit.”

  He stepped back and shook his head.

  “And I’ll bet you’re not a doorman,” he said.

  “No, I’m not,” I confirmed. “I’m a private detective.”

  “Shit.”

  His hands were on his hips now, and I figured he was wondering how he would look without his uniform and without a job.

  “Hey,” said Gwen. “Remember me? I’m the one was shot.”

  “Let’s get your sister,” I said.

  “Not home.”

  The siren was close, very close now. It whined down, and the lobby door rattled. It was two uniformed cops and Detective John Cawelti of the Wilshire District. I put it together fast as the doorman ran back to let them in. I had asked Pete Bouton at the Pantages where Gwen lived. He had told the cops. I hadn’t asked him not to. They had come after me. Wounded woman. Hated private detective.

  I got into the elevator, flicked the switch, and pressed the button for the fourth floor. As the doors closed, I could hear the sound of at least three sets of feet clapping against the tile floor.

  “What’re you doin’?” Gwen screamed.

  I held out my hand to calm her.

  “Getting out at four, sending you back down to the lobby. “You’ll be alright.” The elevator started up. “You never saw the guy who shot you and Cunningham?”

  She closed her eyes tightly.

  “Hurts?” I asked.

  “No, I’m trying to think. There was something familiar about him, but … I don’t know. I’m gonna live, right?”

  “I don’t know if you’re going to live right, but you’re going to live.”

  The elevator stopped, and the doors lazily opened. I reached back in and pushed the lobby button.

  “You’ll be fine,” I said as the doors started to close.

  I smiled and gave her a thumbs up. Then the doors were closed and she was gone and I looked for a way to get out of the building.

  I ran past the steps next to the elevators. No point in going down. The police would see me when I hit the lobby. The hallway was wide with worn-out but reasonably clean green carpet. Someone was blaring a radio behind a door on my right. Johnny Mercer was singing Ac-cen-tuate The Positive.

  “What did they do just when everything looked so dark?” Mercer sang.

  In my case, when everything looked dark, I ran for the window at the end of the hall. Beyond the window was a fire escape. The window went up easily and I stepped out, closing it behind me.

  Down or up? I looked down. Narrow driveway. No one in sight. I started down, heard something below, looked and saw someone on foot turning the corner into the driveway. A cop. I started up. Too noisy. I took off my shoes and climbed. I didn’t look back till I was on the roof.

  I saw someone dart from behind a whirling metal air vent I was more surprised than I had been by Blackstone’s floating lightbulb. The shooter had gone up, too.

  He was lean and fast and about thirty feet away. I couldn’t see his face, but I could see that he was carrying something in one hand. I had no gun, but he did, a very little one that shot pellets, but enough of a weapon to make a hole in Gwen’s chest and, with a lucky or accurate shot, take out an eye and lodge in whatever small brain I may have had.

  He dashed. I followed. And then he was gone. I stopped and looked around, panting. A chimney a few feet from a square brick seven-
foot-high block with a door. The door was closed. I was pretty sure it hadn’t been opened.

  I stood waiting, still panting.

  “Come out,” I said. “Hands out and empty.”

  Nothing. I took a step forward.

  “There are two guns up here,” I said. “Mine, which shoots real bullets, and yours which shoots little balls. If I find you with a gun in your hand.…”

  He stepped out from behind the wall next to the door, gun at arm’s length and fired. He was a damned good shot. The pellet thudded into my left shoulder. I spun around. The door opened. Yellow light beamed out. I had a clear shot at his back, if I had a gun. With an electric ache in my shoulder slowing me down, I headed for the open door looking around for a weapon, a brick, a stick, something, anything. I came up with nothing.

  A few feet from the door, I suddenly felt like I was going to lose my last meal, a couple of tacos, and a Pepsi at Manny’s on Hoover.I stopped and leaned over. By the light of the open door, I watched blood dropping lazily from the wound in my shoulder.

  There was no point in chasing him. I hoped the cops downstairs would stop him.

  I stood up and moved toward the open door. Three steps below me was the turban, its green stone catching the yellow light. A few steps further down were the beard and mustache. I had seen a collection of guns in Ott’s house. I had seen a poster of a man with a beard and mustache in a turban on his wall. And the turban, right down to the green piece of glass, looked just like the one on the steps. Not proof, but I didn’t need proof. I was a private investigator, not a cop. I went down, slowly picking up the evidence.

  When I reached down to pick up the turban, a young cop, with very pink cheeks, the visor of his cap perfectly balanced over his eyes, stepped out and leveled his gun at me.

  “Don’t move,” he said.

  I froze.

  “Arms up and come down slowly,” he said.

  I got my right arm up. My left throbbed with pellet pain, but I managed to get it almost to shoulder level.

  “You’re bleeding,” he said as I came down the last few steps.

  “I’ve been shot. Did someone come past you on the way up?”

  “No,” he said.

  “I need a doctor,” I said.

  “There’s one downstairs with the woman you shot,” he said backing away, gun leveled at my chest.

  “I didn’t shoot her,” I said.

  “Tell the detectives,” he said.

  He moved behind me and picked up the turban, beard, and mustache.

  It didn’t look great for me, but I was reasonably sure I could talk my way out of it. This time, I’d just tell the truth. With about three quarters of the detectives in the Los Angeles Police Department, it would have worked.

  But it was John Cawelti waiting for me in the lobby of the Blue-dorn Apartments.

  Chapter 6

  Lay a pencil, telephone, hat, watch, glasses, lipstick, and a book on a table. Seven objects. Ask someone to pick an object, but not tell you what it is. Turn your back and tell them to arrange the objects any way they wish. Tell them to think of the first letter of the object shown. Tell them to then spell the object silently and slowly as you touch the objects saying one at a time, “First letter,” etc. When the person finishes spelling, your hand will be on the object they chose. Solution: Each object has a different number of letters in it. It doesn’t matter what the first two objects you touch are. There are no objects with only one or two letters. One of the first two objects you touch might even be the one the person thought of which will make the trick even better because they’ll think you have missed the chosen object. If the person selecting the object says “stop” at the number three, your hand will be on the hat. At four it will be on the book, etc. Thinking of the first letter is a meaningless red herring.

  —From the Blackstone, the Magic Detective radio show

  AT THE L.A. COUNTY HOSPITAL emergency room, a kid doctor plucked the pellet from Gwen’s chest and said she would have to stay overnight. Then he took the pellet from my shoulder and patched me up.

  “I’ve never seen so many scars on a living human,” the kid said.

  “And each one has a story,” I said.

  “War?”

  “No, mostly mistakes, bad timing, stupidity,” I said.

  The pellet had barely penetrated the flesh. At the distance I had been shot, that was about the best the shooter could have hoped for other than hitting my eye.

  “You’ll be fine,” said the kid doctor dressed in crumpled whites who looked as if he hadn’t slept in a week. “In Casino if that had been a bullet, we would have pulled it out, splashed on some iodine and a bandage and handed you your rifle.” No overnight for me.

  Two waiting uniformed cops took me to the Wilshire Station.

  I knew the Wilshire Station. My brother had been a captain there. That was right after he had been a lieutenant and right before he had been busted back to lieutenant again.

  Lieutenant John Cawelti, he of the pocked face, red hair parted in the middle, and perpetual look of badly concealed hatred for all things Pevsner or Peters, sat behind a desk in a small office.

  He pointed to the chair on the other side of the desk and got up to close the door and stepped over to me.

  “Where do we start?” Cawelti said standing over me.

  The office hadn’t changed much since Phil had left it less than a month before. Same desk with a murky window behind in and a view of a brick wall. Same three chairs, one behind the desk, two in front of it. The top of the desk had a full in-box in the left corner and a full out-box in the right, with a few files laid out unevenly between them. A coffee-mug stain marked the top file. The only change I could see was the plaque on the wall across from the desk.

  I turned my head to look at the plaque, ignoring Cawelti who hovered over me with Listerine breath. The plaque read: To John Merwin Cawelti, in recognition of his efforts on behalf of the Los Angeles Police Department’s annual picnic for the widows and orphans of our comrades who have fallen in the line of duty. Both the Mayor and the Chief of Police had signed it. About half the members of the department had the same plaque.

  “Where do we start?” Cawelti insisted.

  “Merwin?” I said turning my head and looking up at him.

  He pointed a finger at me and jabbed it into the spot where the pellet had struck. I did more than wince. I clamped my teeth together and almost passed out.

  “I want my lawyer,” I said.

  “Why?” he asked. “You haven’t been accused of anything yet?”

  “Then I want to leave,” I said, starting to get up.

  I leaned quickly to my right to avoid the jabbing finger.

  “You shot Birmingham,” he said.

  “Cunningham, and I didn’t shoot him.”

  “You shot him and went after the girl because she saw you shoot him. Then you shot her.”

  “And then I shot myself,” I said.

  “Yeah. And pitched the gun. We’re looking for it.”

  “Ask the girl,” I said. “She’ll tell you I didn’t shoot her.”

  “And she’ll tell me you didn’t shoot Cunningham, right?”

  “The girl saw the shooter. She’ll give you a description.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Beard, turban, bullshit. We’ve got the beard and turban where you dropped them on the steps.”

  “I was onstage about to be sawed in half by a buzz saw when Cunningham was shot,” I said.

  “We don’t know exactly when he was shot.”

  “Check with the doorman. Check with Gwen. They’ll tell you I couldn’t …”

  “And I’ll tell you you could,” he said. “You’re working for the magician. Cunningham was trying to blackmail him. You shot him. Then you went after the witness.”

  “I helped her, and who do you think shot me?”

  “Shot yourself,” said Cawelti, face inches from mine.

  “And threw the pellet gun away? Did you find i
t?”

  “Not yet,” he said.

  “You’ve got the other gun?” I asked.

  “What other gun?”

  “The one that was used to kill Cunningham,” I said. “That was no pellet hole.”

  “You had plenty of time to dump it,” he said, finger hovering over my arm.

  “Time for my lawyer, Merwin. Martin Raymond Leib,” I said.

  Cawelti’s face was bright crimson. He reached out for my wounded shoulder, and I shuffled my chair backward. He took a step toward me.

  The door behind him opened. I couldn’t see who it was. Cawelti was between me and the door. He stopped, turned his head, and came flying past me, hitting the wall.

  Phil stood there, door open behind him.

  A couple of detectives I recognized were in the doorway.

  “You’re under arrest,” Cawelti shouted at my brother.

  “For what?” Phil said.

  “Assaulting a police officer,” Cawelti said, pushing himself away from the wall.

  “You fell,” I said.

  “Looked that way to me,” said one of the detectives in the door, a big bald sergeant named Pepperman, who had been mustered out of the army in 1919, the same year as my brother.

  “Didn’t see it,” said the man next to him, Bill O’Keefe, who Phil had once pushed out of the way of the knife of a drugged-out Mexican kid named Orlejo Sanchez.

  “Get the hell out of my office,” Cawelti said, taking a step toward Phil and then thinking better of it.

  “You alright?” Phil said, ignoring Cawelti and looking at me.

  “Lovely,” I said.

  “Your brother killed a man tonight and shot a woman,” Cawelti said. “You don’t get out, you’re under arrest for interfering with a murder investigation.”

  Phil turned his unblinking eyes on him.

  “You’ve got nothing,” Phil said.

  “At the least,” Cawelti said. “At the goddamn least, I’ve got him for leaving the scene of a crime, two crimes.”

  “I was chasing the killer,” I said.

  “Chasing yourself?” Cawelti asked.

  “We’re going,” said Phil, motioning to me to follow him.