Think Fast, Mr. Peters Read online

  “Mildred Minck,” I said.

  “That’s a question?” Kindem asked with a shrug, after taking a drag on his cigarette and looking at Elisa for support. She gave him none.

  “I’m making it a question,” I said. “I’m asking with a smile.”

  “Who,” he asked, “is Mildred Minck?”

  I took out Mildred’s photograph and handed it to him. He examined it, squinted at it, held it at arm’s length, shook his head and, taken altogether, did much more than he should have to show he was giving it a careful look and didn’t recognize Mrs. Minck.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know this woman,” he said softly, handing the photograph back to me. “Has she committed some crime?”

  “She’s missing,” I said, holding the photo out to Elisa. Kindem started to reach out for an interception, but I held him off. Elisa took the photograph, looked at it, me, and Kindem, and returned it to me.

  “Three years ago I was almost a star,” she said.

  “I remember,” I said, but I didn’t.

  “Remember me in Trail of the Lonesome Pine?”

  “A small part, but you were beautiful,” I said, looking at Kindem. “She really was. You’ve seen Mildred Minck? The woman in the photograph?”

  “With him,” Elisa said, pointing at Kindem with a well-polished fingernail.

  “That is ridiculous,” Kindem wailed, German accent no longer, soft whisper becoming shrill cry. “I have never …”

  Elisa took a deep drag of her cigarette, threw the butt off the roof, let out smoke, and ignored Kindem.

  “Cheap pictures with imitations,” she said with what was supposed to be withering glance at Kindem. “You know why this company is called Miracle Pictures? Because it’s a miracle every time they finish a movie.”

  “That’s not funny,” Kindem said, returning to his Lorre character.

  “I don’t get paid enough to be funny,” Elisa said.

  “Ah,” he said. “That explains it. You don’t get paid enough to be funny or to act. You just mumble lines like a telephone operator.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with telephone operators?” Elisa said, leading me to the conclusion that she may well have been one not long ago, like yesterday.

  “What’s the use?” sighed Kindem, turning away from us.

  “Where and when did you see Mildred Minck?” I asked Elisa.

  “Yesterday, with him. Today, with him. I think they’re planning a horror movie together.”

  “Ready for the next shot,” Gregor, the old cameraman said.

  “Ready for the next shot,” the kid with the tape repeated.

  “Then shoot it,” sighed Eric, the blind director, who seemed to have lost all interest in what was going on.

  “I want to see Mildred Minck,” I said sweetly to Sidney Kindem. “I will see Mildred Minck. I will see her today and you will tell me where she is or I’ll rearrange your face so you can only do Marjorie Main and Wallace Beery imitations.”

  Kindem sneered but there was no heart in it. He would tell me where Mildred was and I could wrap all this up and go home to help Mrs. Plaut gather rubber for the war effort. I stepped back to watch as Gregor called, “Camera rolling.”

  The shot was a close-up of Kindem. We all got out of camera range and Eric called, “Shoot it,” just as I heard the door to the roof bang open.

  The shot was quick, sharp, and to my right. Everyone was to my right. Everyone plus Bluto and Mildred Minck, who were standing at the door. It looked like a badly posed publicity shot. Everyone stood around in horror. The gun, I couldn’t tell what kind, had been thrown on the ground. Kindem, the imitator, had been shot. He crumpled, clutching his stomach, and looked as if he were going to plunge over the side of the building. I jumped past the rolling camera, jerked the dying actor back, and helped him lie down groaning.

  “Death scene,” he whispered. “God. I wish I could die like me. It’s not right. A man should at least die as himself, you know what I mean?”

  “Makes sense to me,” I agreed. “Take it easy. We’ll get an ambulance.”

  “That’s a good idea,” he said through clenched teeth. Then he said something in German I couldn’t understand.

  “An ambulance,” someone called behind me.

  “Who shot you?” I asked.

  Kindem looked at me, bewildered, and then turned his head toward the others, who were all together except the kid who must have gone to call an ambulance. Kindem released his right hand from his bleeding stomach and raised a feeble finger toward them all.

  “Which one?” I said. “A name.”

  “Steinholtz,” he said, and he was dead.

  “Steinholtz,” I said aloud. “Did any of you hear him say Steinholtz?”

  “I heard him,” said Eric the blind director with irritation. “What is going on?”

  Good. I had at least one other person who had heard Kindem identify the killer.

  “Which of you is Steinholtz?” I asked, gently laying Kindem down on the roof. No one answered, but Bluto, who was standing next to Mildred, cried, “Get some help for him, for God’s sake!”

  “He’s dead,” I said. “Which of you is Steinholtz?”

  “None of us is Steinholtz,” Gregor the cameraman sighed. “My name is Steistel. Eric and I are brothers. The boy is Robert Parotti. I don’t know these people.” He nodded at Mildred and Bluto.

  “Who is dead?” asked Eric the blind director.

  “Lowry,” said Gregor. “Someone shot him.”

  “Shot … shot our actor,” he bleated, looking around with dead eyes for an answer or the killer.

  “You,” I said, looking at Bluto. “What’s your name?”

  Bluto couldn’t take his eyes from the body. His mouth draped open. I’d been right about him in the Y gym.

  “Your name,” I repeated.

  “Lebowitz. Michael Lebowitz,” he said.

  I’d heard the name before but I couldn’t remember where, and then he supplied the answer.

  “I’m Mildred’s brother.”

  “OK,” I said. “It figures. No one here is named Steinholtz. Let’s try the other way. Did anyone see who shot him? Someone up here shot him.”

  “I didn’t see a thing,” said Eric despondently. “I haven’t seen anything since August 13, 1927.”

  “What happened on August 13, 1927?” Mildred asked.

  “I would prefer not to discuss it,” Eric said imperiously.

  “And my name is Elisa Potter,” Elisa said coolly. “Before my name was Elisa Potter, it was Elisa Morales.”

  “So,” I said, walking past the camera, “no one is named Steinholtz and no one shot Kindem.”

  “His name was Lowry,” corrected Eric.

  “His name was Kindem,” I corrected back. “I have a bad feeling in my gut that there won’t be any fingerprints on that gun.”

  “Gun?” asked Eric, standing.

  “About two feet in front of you,” I supplied.

  The door behind Mildred shot open and Bob, the boy assistant everything, and Paul Eskian ran in.

  “What are you, you, you people doing up here?” Eskian moaned.

  “Mostly dying,” sighed Eric, reaching back to find his folding chair.

  “You can’t do this,” Eskian moaned. “You were only supposed, supposed to shoot some stuff for a movie.”

  “We got carried away,” Eric bellowed, turning his head to the sky. “The scene was going too slowly so I shot our actor.”

  “Hold it,” I said. “I think everyone should be a little careful about what he or she says.”

  “Why?” said Eric with a laugh. “Are the police going to suspect me?” He held up his finger as if it were a gun and aimed it about five feet to my right. “I followed his voice, killed my actor, and threw the gun down knowing no one would see me.”

  “Well,” I said with a shrug. “I’ve seen crazier things.”

  “I’d better go call off the ambulance and get the police,” Bob sai
d reasonably.

  “Do that,” I agreed.

  “He deserved to die,” screamed Mildred suddenly. “Deserved to die.”

  “I knew I could count on you, Mildred, to keep your head,” I said. “Would you like to save us all time and just confess? Would you like to say a little more to give the homicide cops an easy conviction?”

  “I didn’t shoot him,” she said indignantly, brushing back the tower of dark hair that threatened to fall over her face. “I didn’t have a gun. But I would have killed him if I had one.”

  A siren wailed. Paul Eskian wailed. Gregor Steistel began to pack his camera with an air of patient resignation while his brother sat with crossed legs and folded arms, brooding. Elisa lit another cigarette. Her hands were shaking but she delivered her line perfectly.

  “I suppose this means the picture is off.”

  “No,” said Eric. “The picture is not off. We get another Peter Lorre and we go on. We write something in. Years passing. Plastic surgery. A brother. Twins. Something. We might even have to pay a writer.”

  “Let’s hope not,” said Gregor.

  “Someone should be sure he’s dead,” Mildred added. “And if he’s not, someone should shoot him again.”

  “Mildred,” I said as the siren approached the building and stopped, the squealing of brakes letting us know the ambulance had arrived, “Mildred, you should shut up.”

  “He’s right, Mil,” Bluto said, putting an arm around her which she shrugged off angrily. She was wearing a limp black dress and the look of a spoiled child who’s been told she can’t have the last peppermint stick.

  “He lied to me,” she said.

  “He’s probably very sorry about it,” Elisa said. “I’m sure that if he were to be given another chance he would apologize.”

  Mildred shot Elisa a killing look.

  “Are you ridiculing me?”

  “But of course,” Elisa shot back. “If you can’t understand basic sarcasm, dear, I’ll simply have to stop talking to or about you.”

  Michael restrained Mildred in the midst of her definite move toward Elisa, who didn’t seem the least concerned. I figured it would be an interesting fight and I wasn’t all that sure Mildred would be the favorite. I hadn’t seen either of them throw a punch, a kick, or a snapping set of teeth, but Elisa’s confidence reminded me of Max Baer in his prime.

  A few seconds later two ambulance drivers in white came banging through the door, looked around, and headed for Eric.

  “Not him,” I said. “The one over there, the dead one.”

  The drivers, one compact and full of muscles, the other a pasty version of Victor Jory, stopped. The compact one was carrying a rolled up stretcher over his shoulder.

  “Dead?” said the pasty one. “Why didn’t someone let us know?”

  “Sorry,” I answered. “He died without warning.”

  “Look like a heart attack?” asked the compact one as the other guy went to kneel over the body.

  “Yeah,” said the pasty guy. “Something attacked his heart. Like a knife.”

  “Bullet,” I corrected. “From that gun.”

  The two ambulance guys looked at the gun.

  “Get it straight,” the pasty one said with irritation. “This is a cop call, not an ambulance call. Next time be sure he’s alive before you call us and if it’s a shooting or knifing …”

  “Or blunt instrument to the head,” added the compact one.

  “Or blunt instrument to the head,” agreed the pasty guy, “or …”

  “We don’t need a catalogue,” Elisa said.

  “We’ll call the coroner,” Compact said, turning back for the door.

  “Medical examiner,” corrected Pasty.

  “The police. Oh my, my, my God. The police,” Paul Eskian wailed, looking at each of us for support, understanding. All this for a lousy eight dollars. Where was justice?

  A new siren wailed toward us. This would be the cops. I didn’t look. I kept my eye on the pistol to be sure no one made off with it or touched it. I walked over to it and knelt down to get a good look. It was a .38, not new, but in reasonably good shape. It had a slight scratch in the shape of an S on the barrel. A small triangular chip was missing from the wooden handle.

  So, at least one question was answered. If this was the gun that had killed Sidney Kindem, I knew who it belonged to—a flat-nosed detective who would have a lot of explaining to do to the cops who were running up the stairs to the roof of Eskian’s hardware store.

  5

  My brother is a cop. Did I mention that? Probably not. I try not to think about it but it keeps coming up, probably because we’re in businesses that keep overlapping.

  Phil is a captain in the Wilshire district. He’s three years older than I am, overweight, nearing retirement. He has short, steel gray hair that he rubs with his right palm when he’s at the last stages of trying to contain his rage and frustration, which was what he was doing now as I sat across from him in his office.

  Phil would never have made captain if it weren’t for the war. He didn’t have the temperament for it. Actually, Phil had no temperament at all when he was playing cop. He had no sense of humor about crime. It made him angry. It wouldn’t go away. I tried to tell him once that if there weren’t any crime he would be out a job, that he should look at increases in murder, assault, and robbery as signs that business was booming.

  He answered by saying that the job of real professionals was to eliminate their profession. Doctors were supposed to want to end illness. Dentists were supposed to want to end tooth decay.

  “So, doctors, dentists, and cops have a suicide drive,” I had said.

  I wouldn’t normally have said something like that to Phil but I’d just been arrested for obstructing justice and I was in a feisty mood.

  I hadn’t planned to obstruct justice this time or irk Phil even a little bit. I was getting too old for that. I’d been baiting my older brother for forty years. He’d been breaking pieces of me for the same time. I couldn’t stop. Suicide drive. We both had it.

  “How’re Ruthie and the kids?”

  That was it. Absolutely guaranteed to turn Phil Pevsner into Larry Talbot, the Wolfman. I never knew quite why my asking about his family did this. Maybe he thought it was some kind of dig at his being a provider. Maybe he thought I didn’t see the family enough. Whatever it was, my asking about the Pevsner clan was high on the list of about two dozen things to say that could get my nose broken.

  “They’re fine,” Phil said, playing with the empty coffee cup on his desk. “Lucy’s got a cold or something, we don’t know, but nothing bad. Dave’s playing baseball and Nate’s building stuff out of ice cream sticks. Ruthie … You know Ruthie. She just keeps going.”

  I didn’t like this. When we were kids, Phil accepted only one night of truce, Thanksgiving. We stopped fighting long enough to break the turkey wishbone. I’d wish for a million bucks or a Tris Speaker glove. I didn’t know what Phil wished for but I think it was chrome steel handcuffs.

  King Kong was his favorite movie. I went with him to see it when it came out; he was just a sergeant in the L.A.P.D. His eyes went wide when Robert Armstrong as Carl Denham announced to the frightened crowd that they had nothing to fear, that Kong was chained with chrome steel.

  “When we were kids, what did you wish for when we broke the wishbone on the Thanksgiving turkey?” I asked.

  Phil was looking down at his desk. He gave a little chuckle and shook his head. Surely he would come after me now.

  “Most of the time I wished I wouldn’t have to grow up and work fourteen hours a day, six days a week in a grocery store like pop,” he said. “Sometimes I wished mon wasn’t dead.”

  “Phil,” I tried. “I didn’t kill that guy on the roof.”

  “I know it,” Phil said, loosening his tie and looking up at me. Phil’s eyes were gray, almost blue. He looked away toward the wall. This quiet resignation was worse than dodging Pevsner kicks.

  “Wha
t the hell is going on here?” I asked. “What happened to my brother Phil? I don’t know who the hell you are. You look like Phil. You sound like Phil. I can’t think of why someone would want to do either one if they didn’t have to, but whoever you are, you’d better come up with a good story or I’m calling a cop.”

  “They’re retiring me, Tobias,” he said. “Full pension. The works. I’ll even get a medal.”

  “What are you talking about? You’ve got seven years to go till you have to retire. You didn’t ask for an early retirement?”

  “Nope,” Phil said standing up. “They just don’t know what to do with me. I haven’t got the touch for this job. I rub people the wrong way.”

  He rubbed his right thumb along his fingers to show his touch. His hand looked calloused, a little hammy.

  “I’m …” I started.

  “They can’t bust me back to lieutenant because they’ve got no charges and they can’t use me downtown. Shit. I don’t want to go downtown. I should have stayed on the street, Tobias. I’m a head-buster. I never liked making duty rosters and talking to ladies’ clubs.”

  “Can’t you …”

  “No,” he cut in. “I’ve got three months.”

  “I don’t like you this way, Phil.”

  “I don’t like me this way,” he agreed. “Well, what the hell. It’ll work out, right?”

  “It’ll work out,” I agreed. “Now you mind getting me out of this?”

  Phil stood up, stretched, and looked out the window. You could see the building next door or, if you bent down, a patch of sky. If you leaned right, you could see a narrow strip of Wilshire. I let Phil look, sigh, and turn to the report on his desk. He picked it up, leafed through it, shook his head. “The crackpot people you get mixed up with, Toby.”

  “Phil, this is Los Angeles. That’s the only kind there are.”

  “Blind movie directors, Peter Lorre imitators, runaway wives. It’s a comedy.”

  “Better than a tragedy,” I tried.

  “Maybe so,” he agreed. “No prints on the gun, not even yours.”

  “The killer wiped them off,” I said.

  “Why your gun? Why you? Where did they get it?”