A Few Minutes Past Midnight Read online

  “Illuminating,” Chaplin said, sipping his tea and beaming at Mrs. Plaut.

  “I’m sorry,” I said as Mrs. Plaut took a seat across from Chaplin.

  “For what? This woman is a nonstop fountain of ideas. And she and her house could well be models for the film I’m working on.”

  “Mr. Peelers,” Mrs. Plaut said, “is an exterminator.”

  “Really?” said Chaplin with interest.

  “And an editor of books,” she added.

  “A unique combination,” Chaplin said with a laugh.

  “Howard Sawyer and Fiona Sullivan,” I said. “Their names don’t ring any bells?”

  “None,” said Chaplin.

  “Elsie Pultman?”

  “No,” said Chaplin after a moment of thought.

  “Jenny Malcom, Elizabeth Gornashuski, May Kelly, Donna Curtain, Zoe Fried?”

  “No, I don’t believe so,” said Chaplin. “What do they have in common?”

  “I think they’re all dead. I think Howard Sawyer may have killed them. I think maybe Howard Sawyer was the one who knocked at your door.”

  “Why?” asked Chaplin.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Why are you two discussing gardening?” Mrs. Plaut said. “Mr. Voodoo and I were having a delightful conversation about history.”

  Chaplin crossed his legs and nodded to Mrs. Plaut.

  “Mrs. Plaut’s great-great-grandfather almost killed George Washington,” Chaplin said.

  “That’s in the pages awaiting you in your room,” she said.

  “I can’t wait to read about it,” I said.

  “You’ll find the tale fascinating,” Chaplin said.

  “You know,” Mrs. Plaut injected, squinting at Chaplin, “you look like someone.”

  “We all do,” Chaplin said with a tolerant smile.

  “A person in the moving pictures,” she said.

  “Thank you,” he said, nodding his head and putting his right hand to his chest with a small bow.

  Mrs. Plaut pondered. We waited. And then it hit her.

  “He has a mustache,” she said. “That funny man, Charlie …”

  I was working fast on an answer.

  “Charlie Chase,” she said with satisfaction, sitting back. “But he’s taller and he doesn’t have curly hair. It’s brushed straight back. And his face is pinched.”

  “Then the resemblance is quite superficial if flattering,” said Chaplin.

  “I’ll see you in the morning,” I said. “Your room all right?”

  “Mrs. Plaut has given me a delightful room,” he said.

  “With a view, next to Miss Simcox,” Mrs. Plaut added. “When the sun comes up, you can see the garage.”

  “I delight at your landlady’s selective hearing,” Chaplin said.

  “Nobody is getting younger,” she said in response.

  “With the possible exception of your father’s cousin Orton,” Chaplin added, holding up a finger.

  “An error,” she said. “I do intend to write about that incident and bring the truth to light for posterity.”

  I left with Chaplin leaning attentively toward Mrs. Plaut, who said, “Would you care for some chop suey pickles?”

  When I got to my room, I turned on the lights, hung up my clothes in the closet, and changed into a pair of boxer shorts. Mrs. Plaut was certain to burst into my room early in the morning, mop in hand, with questions about the pages she had left for me to read.

  Dash was curled up on the sofa, his head resting on the “God Bless Us, Every One” pillow. He looked up at me and went back to sleep.

  I put on an undershirt, walked down the hall, showered, brushed my teeth, shaved with a new Gem razor, and looked at myself in the mirror, brushing back my hair. I needed a haircut. I needed a new nose. I needed a bowl of Wheaties.

  When I got back to my room, I poured myself a bowl of Wheaties and milk and a dish of milk for Dash, who walked regally over my mattress on the floor and leaped on the table to join me.

  While we ate, I read Mrs. Plaut’s latest entry:

  My great-great-grandfather Simon was a gentleman farmer in the then colony of Delaware. Some reports have it that he was neither a gentleman nor a farmer but a farmhand who was sent in the place of the farmer to fight for the new United States against the British and their many Indians and Germans and Chinese, mercenaries all with no talents other than killing if we exclude the cooking skills of some of the Chinese.

  My great-great-grandfather Simon was given a rifle, an almost new pair of shoes, a knife, and a farewell from my great-great-grandmother Theodora.

  Theodora and her six children, four of which belonged to her husband and two of whom, it is believed in the family, bore a more than coincidental resemblance to the farmer.

  Simon was gifted with a keen sense of smell, a fine set of teeth, and crossed eyes. Simon met up with the son of a Dover blacksmith named McNally. McNally promised to check up on my great-great-grandmother Theodora if he went back home before Simon, a promise Simon accepted with tears and appreciation and an eventual child who resembled McNally which, by all accounts, was not a good thing because though McNally was large and strong he looked like a piece of rock.

  The near tragedy occurred in the winter. Encamped near the Delaware River, McNally and my great-great-grandfather were night guards while the others slept and snored loudly, some of them passing air. We know of this and the event that followed from McNally’s journal which was left to my great-great-grandmother who gave it to her daughter, Mineola, who became my great-grandmother and who misplaced the journal or threw it away considering McNally a man of little honesty and no virtue.

  So on that fateful night near the Delaware, Simon and McNally were discoursing quietly on the virtues of rum over other alcohol. Great-great-grandfather Simon was out of sorts having long since exhausted his supply of laudanum.

  It was, by McNally’s account, Simon who heard the horses coming.

  “Hear that?” Simon said.

  “Yes.”

  “It is coming from there,” Simon said, looking in two entirely different directions at the same time.

  The two Delawarians took aim into the darkness from where there was abundant evidence the sound was coming. The evidence was the smell of horses and men who had not bathed in some time.

  “Halt,” McNally is reported to have said.

  “Identify yourselves,” cried my great-great-grandfather.

  “It is the party of General Washington,” came a voice.

  “The password,” called Simon.

  “There is no password,” came the voice which McNally described as either being filled with exasperation or just plain tired, or doing a good job of acting.

  “The password is ‘Allentown,’” shouted Simon.

  “Allentown, then,” answered the weary voice.

  “I just told you that. So it doesn’t count.”

  “General Washington is tired,” the man said. “Let us enter the clearing so you can see our uniforms.”

  “Anyone can steal uniforms,” said Simon.

  “We haven’t the time for this,” came the voice from the dark. “Put up your weapons and let us pass. There is a battle looming tomorrow and the general needs sleep.

  “Will one of you please fetch an officer who will provide a modicum of sense to this situation.”

  With that my great-great-grandfather knew, or thought he knew, that these were not Americans. Americans would not use the word “modicum.” My great-great-grandfather was not sure what the word meant but he was certain it was something the British or Chinese would say. And so he fired into the darkness.

  The horses in the darkness were displeased and loud and a man groaned. Then shots were fired back at my great-great-grandfather and McNally, who later claimed to have returned the fire.

  McNally was hit by a ball in his left leg. He said he took it without a scream. I am convinced that he danced around crying, “It hurts.” It was that wound t
hat sent him home early from the war. Well, not home but to Simon’s family.

  The five or six or seven men on horses came into the clearing.

  “You have killed Colonel Pryor,” the man on the horse said and indeed an officer was slumped over atop his horse. Next to him rode General George Washington himself.

  “What is your name?” General Washington is reported to have said.

  “Simon.”

  “Simon, you have killed a gallant soldier and came near killing me,” said Washington trying to keep his horse from going crazy nuts. “You have nearly accomplished what the British have been unable to do.”

  “It was an error in judgment,” my great-great-grandfather said.

  “Your eyes are crossed,” said Washington.

  “From birth,” said Simon.

  Washington and the dead fellow and the others rode past McNally and my great-great-grandfather. My great-great-grandfather went into a much understandable panic.

  “They shall surely kill me,” he said.

  “My leg hurts,” McNally kept saying.

  With this my great-great-grandfather threw his rifle into the woods and shouted, “I am heading north to hide in Canada.”

  McNally claimed that my great-great-grandfather actually had headed west. There is some support for this view. Reports came back to my great-great-grandmother and her kin for more than a dozen years that a cross-eyed wild man in the Ohio territory was occasionally seen quite naked singing something about General, later President, Washington being dead. He was known as Cross-eyed Crazy Joe and became legendary. Sometimes at night in the dark he was heard to change his voice and say, “Your eyes are crossed.” There is little doubt that this poor creature was my great-great-grandfather Simon.

  The end of this section. Good night.

  I cleaned up the bowls, put out the lights, and lay down on my mattress, one pillow behind my head, another next to me to keep me from rolling over. I couldn’t sleep on my stomach. The bad back. I had a thin patchwork quilt over me that Mrs. Plaut had made. I heard Dash leap to the window and go out into the cool night.

  When I woke it was raining. My Beech-Nut Gum clock on the wall said it was a few minutes after seven. I got up, my back warning me to move slowly. It was too early to call Gunther at Fiona Sullivan’s and I didn’t know what time Chaplin had gotten to bed.

  I could hear the sound of rain on the window. Dash was sitting on my table watching it. It wasn’t raining hard but it was enough to keep the sky gray.

  I gathered my Kreml shampoo, Dr. West’s Miracle-Tuft toothbrush (medium), Pepsodent, and Gem razor, and staggered to the bathroom where I brought myself to some semblance of life. Back in my room I dressed in reasonably clean brown Yank slacks, a definitely clean white shirt with a hole torn low on the tail which I could tuck in and hide, and a dark raincoat. I rolled up my mattress, copied the list of women’s names from Howard Sawyer’s desk, and wrote a note to Chaplin: “Dear Mr. Voodoo, I’m on the job. Please stay inside. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”

  I slid the note under the door of the room Chaplin was in, next to Miss Simcox. Through the curtained window at the end of the landing, I could see the rain coming down gently. Chaplin would wake to its sound and a reasonable view of Mrs. Plaut’s garage.

  Mrs. Plaut was an early riser. There were times when I was convinced that she didn’t sleep, that she stayed up all night writing her family history, searching for recipes, cleaning crevices.

  My shoes were in my hand as I tiptoed past Mrs. Plaut’s door toward the outside. I came very close to making it this time.

  “Mr. Peelers,” she said behind me. “Why are you tippy-toeing?”

  “Didn’t want to wake anyone,” I said.

  “That makes no sense,” she said sternly. She was fully dressed and wearing her blue apron, the one she always wore when she did battle with dust. “I have no cake in the oven. What about my chapter?”

  “I left it on my table,” I said trying to find the right voice level between letting the boarders sleep and getting through to Mrs. Plaut.

  She nodded and said, “And what are your thoughts?”

  “Riveting,” I said.

  She smiled.

  “Suggestions?”

  “Don’t change a word,” I said. “Not one word.”

  “Nothing I can do about the bird,” she said sadly. “Westinghouse is a talker. It is all gibberish or Polish or some such like, but it is talking. Where are you going?”

  “I think a man murdered five women,” I said. “I’m going to try to stop him from killing any more.”

  “I prefer it when you are not making morbid jokes in bad taste,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” I answered backing to the door.

  “Put on your shoes,” she said.

  I put on my shoes, but I didn’t stop to tie them.

  “I’m making eggs mullah for Mr. Voodoo and the others this A.M. in addition to the vitamin pie,” she said. “You may stay.”

  “Can’t.”

  “Extermination or editing?”

  “Extermination,” I said.

  “You should have said so,” said Mrs. Plaut. “Meet the day with a smile even though the rain may fall. That is what the Mister said right up to the day he died.”

  I escaped and stood on the porch for a beat. The rain was a light drizzle. I ran for the Crosley, keys in hand. My brother was probably already in his office. I wanted to catch him before he went out on the street.

  On the way I stopped at the Big Round Donut, a shop shaped like a giant donut. I got two coffees and four donuts, three for Phil, one for me.

  Armed with this offering in a brown bag, I drove to the Wilshire Avenue police station.

  CHAPTER

  6

  MY BROTHER HAD a small cubicle of an office on the far side of the squad room. I made my way around desks of working cops filing out reports or talking to victims or suspects. Phones rang, typewriters chattered, men and women wept, the guilty proclaimed their innocence as convincingly as if they had been innocent, and the innocent looked as guilty as if they had committed a crime.

  One wide-eyed kid with a scraggly beard and no shirt was leaning forward toward a cop who paid no attention to him. The kid was trying to read what the cop was typing. The cop didn’t care. He bit his lower lip.

  “How do you spell ‘orchestra’?” he asked the kid.

  None of the cops were young. The young ones were in the army. This was an army of retreads and men who had been persuaded to put off retirement till the war ended. For some of the cops, the war had been a secret gift. They had been scheduled for retirement with no idea of what they were going to do. They couldn’t retire to California. They were already here.

  My brother, behind the door and through the walls of his small office, could hear every sound in the room I was wading through. He liked it that way. Once he had been promoted to captain and sent across the hall to a big, quiet office. When demotion came, I think he secretly welcomed it.

  I stood in front of his office door for a beat. His name was painted on the frosted glass in black letters: Lieutenant Phillip Pevsner.

  My name is Toby Peters. As I said, I was born Tobias Leo Pevsner. Just before I became a cop I changed my name to Toby Peters. Why? Less ethnic, easier to remember. That’s what I told myself. Now I tell myself other things. Maybe I changed my name to put some distance between me and my past, between me and my brother. My mother had died when I was born. My father had died when I was a kid. I can’t remember much about being a kid in Glendale other than that I didn’t like it.

  My brother never changed his name, never considered it, and didn’t like the fact that I had. There was a lot about me that Phil didn’t like. He didn’t like my work. I had started out as a cop like him, but I had become a studio guard at Warner Brothers and then a private investigator. I had joined the enemy. I had been married. Ann had left me. No kids unless you count me as one, which Ann did. So, I was just passing
through, nothing to leave behind.

  Phil had a wife, Ruth, and two sons, Nathan and David, and a two-year old daughter, Lucy. Nate was eleven. Dave was thirteen. Phil had a home in North Hollywood. He was a responsible father, a good husband, and he had a steady job.

  When I was a kid, Phil had joined the army. He didn’t talk much about the war, the war to end all wars, the war now called the First World War. Twenty-three years had passed since he came through the door of our house and took off his uniform for the last time. Two days later he was wearing a blue police uniform. In those twenty-three years, I don’t think I ever saw him smile with joy. He was dead serious. I was always a kid. Now, nearing fifty, I still didn’t know what I wanted to do when I grew up.

  Phil knew what he wanted. He wanted every criminal jailed, crippled, beaten, or run out of town. It was his personal responsibility to do these things. The philosophy was simple, but it had gotten him into a hell of a lot of trouble. For a little over a year he had been a captain in the Los Angeles Police Department, but his heart had been in the streets not behind a desk. His take-no-prisoners approach had gotten him booted back down to lieutenant, which was probably still a notch higher than his temper could handle.

  I knocked and he told me to come in.

  Phil had a thin stack of stapled papers in his hands. His teeth were clenched. He didn’t like what he was reading and when he looked up, he didn’t like what he saw.

  Phil is about my height, but he is about a foot wider than I am. He’s a small tank with steel-white hair cut buzz short. I once said he looked like Ward Bond with a very bad attitude. Phil took it as a compliment.

  “Close the door,” he said, putting the papers down on his cluttered desk.

  I closed the door.

  “Sit,” he ordered.

  I sat at the single chair across from his desk.

  “You’ve got five minutes,” he said, checking his watch.

  I looked at my father’s watch on my wrist. It told me the time was 11:14, which wasn’t off by more than three hours. Phil looked at the watch and sat back, his big hands flat on the desk.