Dancing in the Dark Read online

  “You weren’t supposed to come today, Lou,” I reminded him.

  Lou glanced at the trembling Shelly and said, “You teach her to dance and you can keep my pay.”

  Lou was back working on the piano when he finally took a good look in our direction and saw the bloody Luna on the floor. He calmly began to collect his music and put it back in his portfolio.

  “I just realized,” he said, facing us. “I wasn’t supposed to come today.”

  “Nobody moves. Nobody leaves and nobody speaks,” Forbes said.

  We all stood quietly while Forbes knelt, touched Luna’s hair, and muttered so low that I was the only one who heard him, “You were a bitch and a half, lady, but you made me feel alive.”

  He stood up, adjusted the line of his trousers, and looked at each one of us to be sure he remembered.

  “I start with the little fat one,” he said, looking at Shelly, “and then the rest of you.”

  Lou strode over, his portfolio tucked under his thin arm, his toolbox in the other hand.

  “What do I hear, threats?” he said. “You threatening me?”

  “No, just shut up and go home, old man,” Forbes said wearily before he turned and pointed to me. “You know what Luna was to me?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “No,” said Forbes. “You do not. She was nothing to me. I barely knew the lady. And that’s what I plan to tell the cops. And that’s what you tell the cops.”

  “Why?” said Lou. “You already said you’re gonna kill them all. You gonna kill ’em twice if they tell the cops you were bouncing the babe?”

  “I told you to go home, old man.”

  “I’m going home,” Lou said. “Peters, drop by with cash and hand it to me if you still have fingers.”

  And Lou was gone.

  “Eight floors over our heads my wife is sleeping after a long night of making my life miserable,” Forbes said. “She is why I am telling you that I barely knew Luna. Play this on my side and maybe I’ll let the three of you live. But the fat one goes.”

  “Sounds like a good deal to me,” said Pook.

  “Me too,” said Jerry.

  “Look at him, Forbes,” I said, pointing to Shelly. “He’s a goddamn dentist.”

  “She pointed to him?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Jerry helpfully.

  “Enough for me,” said Forbes. “He goes and your Fred Astaire goes with him. If Luna hadn’t got this thing in her head about Astaire …”

  He looked down at Luna once more, shook his head, and left the ballroom with Kudlap Singh two steps behind him.

  “Don’t touch anything and don’t leave,” I told my quivering crew. “I’m calling the cops.”

  “Forbes said …” Jerry started as I walked toward the double doors.

  “I’m calling the cops,” I repeated. “Shelly, go sit down and have a glass of water.”

  “Fingers,” Shelly mumbled, looking at his hands. “Fingers. I’m a dentist. I need my fingers.”

  “He said he was going to kill you,” Pook said helpfully. “Not cut off your fingers.”

  “He could do both,” Shelly answered defiantly.

  I went to make my call. There was a pay phone in the carpeted hallway. No sign of Forbes or the Beast of Bombay. I called the Wilshire District station and got a woman’s voice I didn’t recognize. I asked for Lieutenant Pevsner or Lieutenant Seidman. She asked me why. I said, “homicide,” and she put me through to my brother.

  “Pevsner,” he answered as if someone had just jolted him from a nap and he didn’t like being jolted.

  “Toby,” I said.

  “I’m in the middle of something,” Phil said. “Call back.”

  “Murder,” I said.

  A long nothing on the other end and then a resigned sigh and, “Who’s dead?”

  “Woman named Luna Martin. Ballroom of the Monticello Hotel. A few minutes ago.”

  “Stay there,” he said and hung up.

  I went back to the ballroom. Pook was leaning against a wall, arms folded. He glared at me when I came in. Jerry and Shelly were sitting on the edge of the bandstand. Jerry wouldn’t meet my eyes. Shelly would. He pointed at me and said, “You are going to get me killed. I volunteered to help you and you are going to get me killed.”

  “No one is going to kill you, Shel,” I said.

  “And who’s going to stop him?” Shelly said, trying to keep his glasses on his nose. “These actors? Gunther, who’s two feet tall?”

  “Gunther’s out of town,” I said. “And he’s more than three feet tall.”

  “Ah, so you’re going to keep me alive with a full supply of fingers? Comforting,” he said, turning to Jerry, who ignored him. “I can sleep nights now. Toby Peters is on the case.”

  The four of us waited, trying not to look at the beautiful corpse, until Phil, Steve Seidman, and two uniformed officers showed up twenty minutes later.

  Phil, a block of a man with short steely-gray hair, came in first. His tie was loose and his jacket was open, but reasonably pressed. My sister-in-law, Ruth, saw to that. There was a look of annoyance on Phil’s face that looked uncannily like the look on his face in the photograph in my office. Steve Seidman, a thinning-haired scrawny man, was four or five steps behind Phil, as he had been since they had become partners two decades earlier. Phil waved the uniformed cops back to the double door and moved to the body.

  “Luna Martin,” he said, looking down at her.

  “Right,” I said, nodding to Seidman.

  “Girlfriend of Fingers Intaglia,” Phil went on.

  “A fact which everyone seems to know with the possible exception of Mrs. Intaglia,” I said.

  “What happened?” Phil said.

  “We got here about …” I began, but Phil cut me off with, “Not you and not the crying dentist. You.” He pointed to Pook.

  “Jerry and I have nothing to do with this,” Pook said. “Peters hired us to come here this morning and look tough. We’re actors. A few minutes after we got here this woman staggers in, points to him, and falls dead right there.”

  “I don’t know her,” Shelly protested, crossing his heart.

  “Well,” said Phil to Seidman, “if the dentist crosses his heart, he must be telling the truth. Go home, Minck. You’re clear.”

  Shelly looked at me hopefully.

  “He’s being sarcastic, Shel,” I said.

  Shelly groaned.

  “Just the four of you here?” said Phil.

  “Five,” I said, pointing to Luna.

  “Six,” Pook amended. “The old piano player.”

  “I’m corrected,” Phil said, moving to the table and sitting.

  “What about Intaglia?” Shelly said, looking at me, Pook, and Jerry.

  “What about him?” Phil said, pouring himself a glass of no-longer-iced water.

  “He was here with a Jap giant,” Shelly said. “He threatened to kill me, to kill us all, to kill Fred Astaire.”

  “Dentists have access to all kinds of drugs,” Seidman said wearily.

  “I’m not … I don’t take drugs,” Shelly cried. “Tell them, Toby.”

  “He doesn’t take drugs,” I said.

  “Was Intaglia here?” Phil asked.

  “Arthur Forbes and a man named Kudlap Singh came in right after Luna,” I explained.

  “And they left?” Phil asked.

  “They left,” I agreed.

  “Steve,” Phil said.

  “Check,” said Steve.

  It didn’t take more when you’ve worked with someone almost every day for two decades. Seidman herded Shelly, Pook, and Jerry over to the bandstand. Then he took them individually up to the piano, where he interviewed them in a whisper the others couldn’t hear.

  “The piano player?” asked Phil.

  “He took a cab back to Glendale,” I said. “He’s over eighty.”

  “What are you doing here, Toby?” my brother asked, rubbing his forehead.

  “I was supp
osed to give Miss Martin a dancing lesson,” I said.

  Phil looked at his palms and then rubbed them together. “There’s almost nothing I can say to that,” he said, “but it’s my job, so I’m going to try. You’re a private investigator, not a dance teacher. Besides that, you can’t dance.”

  “I faked it,” I said. “Fred Astaire gave me some tips.”

  “Fred Astaire.”

  “Shelly was right. Fred Astaire hired me to get Luna Martin to stop demanding that he teach her to dance. And when Luna Martin has a boyfriend like Fingers Intaglia …”

  “Let’s call him Arthur Forbes,” Phil suggested. “And sit down. I don’t like looking up at you.”

  “Hurts to sit,” I said. “Forbes’s bodyguard, the Beast of Bombay, hit me in the ass.”

  “Should I ask why?”

  “A warning to Fred Astaire.”

  “It’s all clear now except for one thing,” he said. “Who killed Luna Martin?”

  “I don’t know who or why or how.”

  “Astaire didn’t maybe hire someone who got carried away?” Phil asked and then, with amazing restraint for my brother, added, “Will you for chrissake sit down? I don’t care who hit you.”

  I eased myself onto the chair across from him, biting my lower lip and wishing I had brought the pillow in from the Crosley.

  “Phil, would I kill someone? Kill a woman who was giving my client a hard time?”

  “I didn’t mean you,” he said, looking toward the bandstand.

  “They didn’t even know why they were here. Do I need to call Marty?”

  Martin Leib was my lawyer. “My” is a little too strong, since I didn’t give him much business and what little I gave him required payment in advance. Martin Leib was a mercenary. Martin Leib looked at me and talked to me as if I were an annoying insect. Martin Leib was a hell of a good lawyer.

  “No,” said Phil, starting to get up, as a man with a small leather bag from the medical examiner’s office and a trio of uniformed policemen came in. One cop was carrying a rolled-up stretcher over his shoulder. Another had a camera. Phil looked over at Seidman, who nodded. Phil got up and so did I.

  “What now?” I asked.

  “Now, you go home or wherever you go,” said Phil wearily. “And I talk to hotel staff, Fred Astaire, and Mr. Arthur Forbes.”

  “Mr. Arthur Forbes, not Fingers Intaglia?”

  “In this town,” said Phil. “Arthur Forbes is spoken to politely.”

  “By you?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never met the man.”

  This was not my brother. My brother Phil had a lifelong vendetta against all felons, all crime. In spite of his lousy temper and honesty, he had made it to the rank of captain and actually headed the Wilshire District for a couple of years. He was forced to step down as head of the Wilshire when he couldn’t be polite to important people in the community and he couldn’t keep his fists off of suspects.

  “Phil,” I said as he shooed me out of the ballroom. “This is Fingers Intaglia.”

  “I like catching criminals,” he said. “I want to keep catching them. It helps me stay calm with my family. I have been informed by the chief of police that if I have one more complaint I’ll be suspended without pay. So I’m going to do my best to be nice to Arthur Forbes.”

  We were in the hallway now, right in front of the phone I’d called him from.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Hell, it’s not okay,” Phil said, plunging his hands into his pockets to keep them still. “But I’m going to do it, Toby.”

  “This is crazy,” called Shelly, as Seidman hurried him down the corridor.

  Pook and Jerry went quietly. Both of them gave me a look which made it clear I shouldn’t come to them for help again. But I knew better. Actors, even successful ones, which Pook and Jerry were not, would pretend they were the toilet cleaners at Grauman’s Chinese Theater if it was the best role they could get.

  “Can I ask?” I said, holding up my hands. “Don’t get mad. How are Ruth and the kids?”

  In the past, this simple family question had driven Phil to violence. He never clearly explained why, other than that I had given little or no thought to them when they needed me. I had made an effort to be a better brother-in-law and uncle since Ruth got sick. She had been in and out of the cancer ward for more than a year now. She seemed to be getting better, but it was slow and she never carried the weight for a good fight.

  “They’re fine,” he said.

  “Good. Phil, how quiet are you going to keep this?”

  “Arthur Forbes is an important citizen,” he said, looking back toward the ballroom. “I think the chief will be happy to keep this investigation confidential. At least for a while.”

  It wasn’t Forbes I was worried about and Phil knew it. It was Fred Astaire. The guy from the medical examiner’s office came out, following two guys lugging a stretcher. A gray blanket covered the body of Luna Martin. A corner of her silk dress fluttered as they carried her past Phil and me. The fabric brushed against my hand. And she was gone.

  The medical examiner was a twig named O’Neil whose hair was never combed and whose glasses were never clean. He paused next to us, nodded at me, and said, “In front of him?”

  Phil shrugged, hands out of his pockets now, searching for something to do with them.

  “Suit yourself,” O’Neil said. “Lady’s throat was cut, nice thin, even stroke. She was also strangled, but there are no bruises. Not sure which killed her. I’ll know more about the weapon and the cause of death sometime tonight or tomorrow morning. I’ve got bodies piling up. Riot, gangs, something in Little Mexico. I’ll get to the little lady as fast as I can.”

  “Thanks,” said Phil.

  O’Neil was shaking his head and looking down the corridor in the direction Luna’s body had been carried. “Seidman says it looks like she walked all the way into the middle of the ballroom after she had been attacked,” he said.

  “Right,” I said.

  “She couldn’t have come far,” said O’Neil. “A miracle that she could walk at all. That was a dead woman walking. I’d say she was murdered right out here, in front of the door to the ballroom probably. That was some determined woman.”

  “Amen,” I said.

  O’Neil strode down the corridor. When the M.E. was gone, Phil walked back to the door of the ballroom and looked down at the carpet. There were a couple of dark spots that might have been blood. There was no knife, nothing that looked like a murder weapon. On the chance that the killer had hidden the weapon, Phil looked behind the mirrors and paintings down the hall and went into the men’s room.

  “You want me to help?” I asked, standing behind him.

  “You’re a witness,” he said. “Don’t touch. Don’t help.”

  Phil didn’t need my assistance. When he was done, he went to the sinks against the wall, turned on the cold water full blast, and when the basin was half full he plunged his face into it and held it there for about five seconds. When he came up for air, he shook his head like a wet dog and dried his face with one of the towels piled in the corner. I’d watched this before. He had never explained the rite. I had tried it myself but it didn’t seem to work the same magic for me. Phil looked refreshed.

  “Time to see Mr. Forbes and his friends,” he said.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  “You go home. I see Mr. Forbes. We’re getting along just fine so far. Let’s not test it right now.”

  “Phil, I …”

  “Go now, Tobias.”

  I went, but not out of the hotel. I hid behind some plants in the lobby. Phil went to the desk, where Seidman joined him. They talked to a clerk and headed for the elevator. When the elevator doors had firmly closed, I ran for the phone in the corridor near the ballroom and called the number Fred Astaire had given me. A man answered and I identified myself and asked for Astaire, telling him I thought it was important. Astaire came on about ten seconds later.

  �
�Peters?”

  “Luna Martin’s dead.”

  He listened quietly while I told him what had happened, let him know that the police would be talking to him, and informed him that it probably wouldn’t make the papers.

  “I should have given her the damned lessons,” Astaire said.

  “I’d say the odds are very good that Luna Martin’s death had nothing to do with you, me, or her dancing lessons.”

  “But Arthur Forbes doesn’t think so.”

  “No, he doesn’t.”

  “Then I’ll have a talk with Arthur Forbes,” said Astaire. “I don’t want you or your friends getting hurt because you work for me.”

  “I don’t think it’ll do any good and it might be dangerous. Why don’t I try to see him? Talk to him.”

  “A very good idea,” came a deep accented voice behind me.

  I turned and found myself looking up into the face of Kudlap Singh.

  Chapter Five

  Let’s Dance

  The big Indian didn’t say another word. He walked slightly in front of me, certain that I wouldn’t run and I wouldn’t try to make my own impression on his behind. The man had confidence, good posture, and a poor choice in bosses.

  He led me down the corridor to a door that brought us into the hotel kitchen. Two male cooks in white and a bellboy sat in one corner at a white metal table, talking and smoking. They looked up, saw Kudlap Singh, and went back to their conversation.

  The smell of fried eggs, bacon, grilled sausage, and bananas accompanied us past the reasonably clean wooden cutting and serving tables and the metal sinks. We went through another door and into a small service area where an elevator stood open, waiting for us. Singh stepped aside so I could get on and then he followed, facing forward, and pressed a button. We jerked upward.

  “Read any good books lately?” I asked.

  “They Were Expendable,” he answered, without turning.

  He was not only bigger than I was, he was funnier. I shut up and we went up. A jerk-stop on eight and the Indian stepped out and waited for me. I followed him down a carpeted hotel corridor to room 813. Singh knocked and waited for Forbes’s “Come in.”

  We entered, Singh behind me. It was a normal hotel sitting room with a closed door to the left, which I assumed was the bedroom. The dark, flower-patterned sofa had its back to the sunny floor-to-ceiling draped window and there were two matching chairs facing the sofa. There was an old, highly polished wooden table and two chairs in a corner. On top of the polished table sat a cake-box sized chrome metal box with a cord running out of it. On one wall hung a painting of a guy in one of those white colonial wigs.