The Man Who Shot Lewis Vance Read online

  Arnie’s eyes went from sandpaper brown to shiny amber.

  “I’ve got a yellow ’41 Crosley,” he said, wiping his hands again on his overalls in anticipation of touching the cash.

  “I don’t think a indent-size human can fit into a Crosley,” I said.

  “Are you kidding? There’s plenty of room. What do you want for four hundred dollars? A new car. You can’t get new cars unless you’re a doctor or a nurse.”

  That wasn’t quite true. I knew it and Arnie knew it. Ministers and people in certain civil services could buy new cars, in addition to all persons directly or indirectly employed in the prosecution of the war, including factory workers, miners, farmers, and lumberjacks. What Arnie meant was that I was one of the few people in Los Angeles who couldn’t buy a new car even if I could afford one.

  “Crosley’s a good car,” he whispered confidentially, though there was no one within five blocks. “Four-cylinder cobra engine made out of brazed copper and sheet steel, weighs about sixty pounds and gives twenty-six point five horsepower at fifty-four hundred rpms.”

  “Arnie …”

  “Only eight thousand miles on the little beauty,” he said, patting my Ford wreck. It wasn’t much of a pat but it knocked out the radio. In the silence, I made the deal and handed the money over to Arnie, who wrote out a receipt on the back of the ticket the cop had given me.

  “One more thing, Arnie,” I added, and then I told him about Vance’s body in the trunk. For another fifty bucks Arnie promised to put Vance on ice.

  Less than an hour later my wreck was off the street and I was driving down Wilshire heading for home in my two-seater Crosley. Crosley’s weren’t bought new from dealers. You got them from your local hardware and appliance shop. They were made by the Crosley Radio and Refrigerator Company and were about the size of a refrigerator. At least this yellow beauty had a radio and a working gas gauge.

  7

  To secure California for Spain before the French, English, or even the Russians could grab it, in 1781 a series of small towns, called pueblos, were established. The second pueblo was Los Angeles. The first settlers didn’t come seeking a land of sunshine and promise. They were recruited in Northern Mexico and forced to march four hundred miles or more to build shelters and plant crops.

  By 1840, Los Angeles had enough bodies, willing and unwilling, to qualify as a city or ciudad. It had earned a reputation for the beauty of its location and for the largest congregation of gamblers, thieves, drifters, and cutthroats in the New World. When the United States annexed California after the war with Mexico in 1848, hordes of Yankees streamed into the city led by Marine Lieutenant Archibald Gillespie, who made it clear that he held no love for the Mexican residents. A few months later, Gillespie and his garrison were surrounded on Fort Moore hill by the L.A. residents he and his boys had been stepping on. The Marines were kicked out and promised never to return. They were back in a few weeks with reinforcements and had a hell of a time retaking the city. Los Angeles became an occupied territory chest-deep in soldiers at odds with the sullen cutthroats they had defeated. The peaceful citizens were caught in the middle.

  Almost a hundred years later things were pretty much the same. The Yankees were still coming by land, sea, and air to the last stop on the trail of Manifest Destiny. If they came running too fast, they found themselves in the Pacific Ocean before they could stop or catch their breaths. If they did stop, they discovered that serpents slithered in the New Eden and the Angels in the City of Angels were mostly fallen ones.

  I had plenty to do in my little Crosley. I could go back to the Alhambra and have another chat with the Larchmonts. I could look for the Dole pineapple twins. I could pick up the trail of Teddy Spaghetti and his partner, Alex. I could also find Charlie Chaplin and see how he fit into all this. I decided to go for Chaplin, not because it was the best lead, but because it might be the most interesting.

  Besides knowing Chaplin was funny, I knew where he lived. Anyone who had ever taken a guided tour in Hollywood knew where Charlie Chaplin lived. I also knew from reading the papers that he and Paulette Goddard were “estranged,” and that Charlie had stuck his oversize shoe in his mouth by speaking at a San Francisco rally a few days ago held by the American Committee for Russian War Relief. America’s love affair with Charlie was a little strained. Acouple of columnists had started wondering why Charlie had never become a U.S. citizen. Others thought he was too chummy with our friends the Russians. There was even a rumor that the income-tax people were having long, serious talks with him.

  It was a pleasant afternoon. Vance’s body was on ice and I had a new car. I headed for Beverly Hills on the chance that I’d get past the gates and that Chaplin would be home. I got there in about fifteen minutes and turned down Summit Drive. I parked in front of the gate and looked at the house, a combination of Basque and modern Spanish architecture I’d glanced at a few dozen times before. The house was yellow like my car, a big stucco box, probably forty rooms or more, with a tile roof. There was a circular drive, from which I was barred by an iron gate. Fortunately, there was a black button in the brick post on one side of the entrance to the driveway. I pushed the bell, adjusted my gray jacket, straightened my tie, tried to wipe off a few of the more obvious dirt spots, and succeeded in grinding them in deeper. I was certain to make a great impression. I clutched the folder from Teddy’s apartment under my left arm and waited.

  I rang again and looked in at the house. The door opened and a head peeked out, followed by a body and a thin, bald man in his forties wearing a dark suit with shiny lapels. It took him a few months to walk down to the gate. When he got there, he did a great job of resisting the urge to raise his eyebrows. His accent was British and his manner superior.

  “Yes?” he said.

  “You should install a speaker,” I suggested. “How many times a day do you have to make this trip?”

  No expression.

  “Your business?” he asked.

  “I want to talk to Charlie Chaplin,” I said with a pleasant smile.

  Madmen in shabby suits probably kept him busy for most of his workday and he knew how to deal with my ilk.

  “If you’ll leave your name and address,” he said, the gate still separating us, “I’ll inform Mr. Chaplin that you were here. He’ll answer your inquiry by mail and send you an autographed photo.”

  “I’m not a fan,” I said. “I’m not selling scripts. I’m not with the income tax service. I’m not an actor. I’m not an anti-communist. And I’m not selling anything.”

  A tour bus drove by, its windows open. I could hear the driver identify me as John Garfield, “a frequent visitor to Charlie Chaplin’s.” I waved my purloined folder at the bus while the servant stood erect and waited through this indignity. When the bus rolled down the street, I said, “They thought I was John Garfield.”

  He was unimpressed. “I am frequently identified as Arthur Treacher,” he said. “I’m afraid I must get back to the house. If—”

  “Tell Charlie I have information on the Larchmonts and the donation,” I said, holding up the file.

  “The Larchmonts,” the servant said dryly.

  “And the donation,” I reminded him.

  “If you’ll give me—”

  “I’ll wait,” I cut in.

  He was a pro. No sigh, no shrug, no sarcasm. He turned and walked at the same pace back up the drive, crunching gravel beneath the soles of his finely polished shoes. I resisted the urge to look down at my shoes and maybe shine them up a bit on my pant leg. Should a man who has been mistaken for John Garfield do something that crude? I examined the black metal gate, counted the drifting clouds in the sky, glanced at the house to see if curtains were moving, and hummed a medley of tunes. I was well into “Sleepy Lagoon” when the front door opened and the world’s slowest servant made his way back to me and opened the gate.

  He didn’t even say “Follow me” or “Walk this way.” He let me in, closed the door, and started up the driveway
with me a pace behind. The house was surrounded by tall trees and woods. As we got to the rise at the top of the drive, I could see down a slope to a swimming pool and nearby tennis court. Someone was playing, a small man in a white polo shirt and white pants. His curly white and black hair bobbed as he rushed to hit the ball. His opponent was lanky and young and wore shorts and a matching polo shirt.

  The servant opened the front door and held it while I entered, and then he closed it behind me. The wooden floor creaked under our feet as we stepped in. I found myself in a massive hall two stories high and extending deep into the house. On one side was a winding stairway leading up to a balcony. About halfway up the stairway was a suit of armor and a big brass gong with a black-handled knocker on a peg above it. Dangling from the ceiling was a massive chandelier. I was impressed.

  “You will wait here,” the servant said, and then he took off toward the rear of the house, taking small creaking steps.

  While I waited I looked at a black cabinet with little drawers, dozens of little drawers. The cabinet was against one wall. It was covered with colorful pictures of dragons. I squinted at one fire-breather that snaked around to the rear of the cabinet.

  “It’s more than five hundred years old,” came a voice behind me, a high male voice with a touch of British in it. I turned and found myself about ten yards from Charlie Chaplin, who was looking at me and my folder with open curiosity. Chaplin was a little older than I was, somewhere in his early fifties. His hair was mostly white but there were still dark strands in it. His face looked unlined. I had known he was small but I hadn’t known how small till this moment. I was five-nine and had at least three or four inches on him, maybe five. He was dressed in white, had a tennis racket in one hand, and a pink towel draped over his neck.

  “It’s nice,” I said.

  “Yes, it is,” he agreed. “I don’t wish to be rude Mr.…”

  “Peters, Toby Peters,” I said, still a first down away from him. Our voices echoed in the hall. I felt as if I were being interviewed by the Duke of Westphalia and my answers had better be good or I might find myself separated from my head. “I’m not a blackmailer. I don’t work for the Larchmonts. Here.”

  I stepped forward and handed him the file. His hand was small, long-fingered. He took the file, pursed his lips, and glanced at it.

  “I found this in the apartment of a hotel clerk name Teddy Longretti, also known as Teddy Spaghetti.”

  “Colorful,” said Chaplin.

  “The name, yes. The man, no,” I said. “Teddy shot a grunt named Vance on Sunday. Killed him. Then he shot a house detective named Beason. He did it with my gun.”

  “Your gun,” said Chaplin with a smile designed to humor the madman who had tricked his way into the castle.

  “I’m a private investigator,” I said, pulling out my wallet and flashing my Dick Tracy badge. “I’m working for John Wayne.”

  “John Wayne,” he said with a smile, as he shifted his racket to his right hand in case he had to hit me with it.

  “Right,” I went on. “Look, I thought you’d like to have these. It might be embarrassing if they were found in Teddy’s place.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Chaplin. “And you’d like a reward for keeping them from public scrutiny.”

  “Right,” I said, watching Chaplin begin to circle nonchalantly toward a telephone on a small table near the stairs. “But I don’t want money. I want information on the Larchmonts and what they’re up to.”

  Chaplin stopped his circling maneuver, put his racket and the folder on the table near the phone, and turned to me, his head tilted to one side, his hands on his hips.

  “You really are a private detective,” he said.

  “I am.”

  “I suppose I could check this with the police,” he went on surveying my less than shabby ungentility.

  “My brother is Captain Phil Pevsner, Los Angeles Police Department, Wilshire District. The desk sergeant on duty about now is Veldu. The number—”

  His right hand came up like a traffic cop’s to stop me. “That won’t be necessary,” he said. “I’ve never met a real private detective before. I am intrigued.”

  I turned around in a circle so he could get a good look, and he laughed, a sudden short laugh.

  “Come,” he said, and bounded up the stairway. I came. As we passed the gong, Chaplin reached out to ping it with his fingertips. “Listen to the muted answer,” he said as he went on. The gong murmured.

  “My sons are not home today,” he said, leading the way when we got to the top of the stairs. “They’re visiting their grandparents in the valley.” There were three doors. Chaplin plunged through one with me behind. The room was a big bedroom; a musky odor of men’s cologne filled the air. The room was bright with big windows. In one wall was a fireplace. A writing table and chair stood under the window. There were neat stacks of paper and a one-ton Webster’s dictionary on the desk. Against one wall were twin beds and a nightstand between them. A pile of pulp magazines were piled on the stand. Near another window was a telescope. The rag on the floor was Persian and strangely shabby.

  “We’ll not be disturbed here,” he said. “This is my sanctum. My refuge.”

  “Nice,” I said. I wandered over to the dark oak writing table and glanced down at the manuscript on it.

  “Shadow and Substance,” he said, moving over to look through the telescope. “The play you are looking at. It will be my next film. The story of a young Irish girl of simple faith and a most cynical canon. I’ll be the canon and—”

  Something caught his eye in the telescope and he stopped speaking to adjust the lens.

  “Ah,” he said. “Harold Lloyd is at his croquet on that ostentatious meadow of his. His smile is most genuine when he makes a decent point. None of the affectation … out of sight.” Chaplin turned to face me. “Your question?”

  “What kind of donation did you make with the Larchmonts?”

  Chaplin rubbed his palms together, removed the towel from his neck, and dabbed his forehead.

  “A sizeable check for the establishment of a center for the improvement of Soviet-American cultural relations,” he said. “The world will not always be at war. The hope for prolonged peace rests on the United States and the Soviet Union living in respect and harmony.”

  I leaned against the writing table, careful not to sit on Shadow and Substance.

  “The Larchmonts share this desire,” I said.

  “The Larchmonts share in the more than ten thousand dollars I foolishly placed in their care to use as seed money to establish this project. They have had the cash for more than a year and my efforts to discover what has been done with it have been met with silence or lies.”

  “Did the Larchmonts ever mention John Wayne?”

  Chaplin laughed again. “I doubt if they would have approached John Wayne in the expectation of getting his support for this enterprise. Mr. Wayne is known for his lack of sympathy for the Soviet endeavor and sacrifice. Mr. Larch-mont, in the two meetings I had with that infamous individual, may have mentioned Mr. Wayne in a less than complimentary context, but I don’t recall.”

  “Two men, look-alikes, one a little smaller than the other, probably wearing loud Hawaiian shirts. That ring a gong?”

  Chaplin smiled and tapped his cheek. “I believe a pair answering to that description did accompany Larchmont to a meeting here. They drove Larchmont to the gate and then departed. I got a very good look at them through the telescope. As I recall, the one I could see most clearly was wearing a gauche red shirt with hula girls imprinted on it. Would you like something to drink?”

  “Pepsi if you’ve got it.”

  Chaplin picked up the phone near the pile of pulps on the nightstand and ordered a Pepsi and an Alka-Seltzer. Then he sat on the edge of his bed.

  “It will take a few minutes,” he said. “My regular servants are gone. They were Japanese. All of them are in the camp at Manzanar. You’re familiar with it?”

  I nodde
d.

  “Do you know why they are in that camp?” he asked. And then he answered. “Because the United States government recognizes the intellectual superiority and determination of the Japanese. Couple that with gross prejudice and unreasoning fear and we have the insanity of Manzanar.”

  We went on for a while talking about my job, the detective pulps he read every night to get to sleep, his nervous stomach aided somewhat by the Alka-Seltzer, and the Larchmonts.

  “I suspect,” he said, “that others were and are equally displeased with the Larchmonts, but I shall now count myself lucky to be rid of them. I plan to burn this file when you depart. It has been a most illuminating discussion, most illuminating. Tell me, Mr. Peters, would you consider taking on a job for me? I’d be willing to invest a few hundred dollars more to recover my investment with the Larchmonts. You could serve as a collection agent. Do you do such work?”

  Chaplin had downed his second Alka-Seltzer and it was getting late in the afternoon.

  “Five percent of anything I recover,” I said, rattling the melting ice cube in my glass. “That’s a maximum of five hundred dollars.”

  “More than fair, more than fair,” said Chaplin, bouncing forward to shake my hand on it. His hand was firm and strong.

  Since I wasn’t going to take any cash upfront from Chaplin, I wouldn’t feel guilty about not pursuing his investment with too much zeal. I’d bear it in mind as I went after my gun, Teddy, and Alex. With Chaplin as a client, I also had some cover for harassing the Larchmonts. It was a good deal all around.

  “I’m having a few people over on Sunday for tennis and swimming should you like to return with a report,” Chaplin said at the front door. “I’m sure you could tell us some interesting tales of mayhem.”

  “Mostly lost grandmas, stolen cars, and people who need a few hours of protection,” I said.

  “Nonetheless,” Chaplin added, “you are welcome to join us.”

  “Thanks for the Pepsi,” I said.

  “My pleasure,” Chaplin countered, and I bounded down the gravel driveway with another client and a little more information.