Dancing in the Dark Read online

  “Admiring the painting?” Forbes said from where he sat, knees crossed and arms spread over the back of the sofa.

  With the sun at his back, Forbes was a black cutout, which was probably what he wanted.

  “Yes,” I said, standing about six feet in front of him. “Washington.”

  “Thomas Jefferson,” he corrected. “Jefferson and Washington didn’t look anything alike, for chrissake. Painting of Jefferson in every guest room. I’d change the name of the hotel to the Thomas Jefferson if there wasn’t already a Jefferson in Los Angeles. So I renamed it for his home, Monticello. You know he planned every brick in Monticello?”

  “No,” I said, preferring the history lesson to what he might have planned after it.

  “Do you know it took him thirty-five years to build Monticello?”

  “No,” I said again.

  “Do you know he started the University of Virginia? Not only did he found it, he designed the buildings.”

  “I didn’t know that,” I said, looking at Kudlap Singh, who showed no sign of whether or not he knew the accomplishments of Thomas Jefferson.

  “In my home I’ve got furniture from Monticello, books,” Forbes went on. “I tell you, I was born too late. In my heart I know I should have been around for the Revolution.”

  “Maybe you could buy the Jefferson Hotel,” I suggested.

  “Too high profile,” he said. “I like to do things without drawing attention to myself. You want a drink?”

  “Pepsi,” I said.

  “Fridge over behind the table. Help yourself. Kudlap Singh doesn’t serve. He gets paid for only one thing. To keep me alive and well and in a good safe mood.”

  I went to the fridge, crouched, got a Pepsi out from a rack of wine and pop bottles. I stood up, looking for an opener. Kudlap Singh took the bottle from my hand and flipped the cap off with a thumb that looked like calloused leather.

  “Jefferson was nothing like Washington,” Forbes continued as I sat in one of the chairs facing him and gulping at my Pepsi. “Never went to battle. Jefferson was a blue blood, class. Grew up without a father, like me. When he was twenty-six, he was elected to the Colonial legislature of Virginia. When I was twenty-six, I was invited to join a well-known Detroit organization. Jefferson came up with the best ideas for the Declaration of Independence. I came up with a nonwritten agreement with all the organizations in Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Jefferson was governor of Virginia twice, and I was head of the organization for two years.”

  “Similarities are uncanny,” I said.

  Forbes nodded and Kudlap Singh slapped me in the head. The right side of my head rang cold and metallic. I looked at Forbes, who hadn’t moved.

  “You make wise with me and you make pain for yourself. Got me?”

  “Got you,” I said.

  “Pepsi cold enough? Need a glass, some ice, anything?”

  “I’m fine,” I said, trying to force my eyes back into coordinated operation.

  “One time,” he went on, “Jefferson missed by five minutes being captured by Tarleton’s raiders. Same thing happened to me.”

  “Tarleton’s raiders missed you by five minutes, too?” I asked, gripping the cool glass of the half-full Pepsi bottle, ready to take a swing at Kudlap Singh if he took another slap at me. I was sure the bottle would boink off of his head with no effect, but I was ready to try it. I watched Forbes for a nod. It didn’t come.

  “You know what your problem is, Peters? You’ve got guts and no brains,” he said. “I’m talking history and I’m coming to a point, if you’ll just shut up and listen and sit down.”

  “I’m listening,” I said, sensing Kudlap Singh right over my shoulder.

  I eased myself into one of the chairs in front of Forbes. The pain on my rear wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been. I’d describe it now as the searing horror of a branding iron.

  “I built my own place back in Royal Oak, exact duplicate of Monticello. I like to garden, read. What color are my eyes?” Forbes asked.

  “Your eyes?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “I can’t see them,” I said, squinting into the sun.

  “Hazel,” he said. “Like Jefferson. And when I was a kid I had sandy red hair like him. Can you believe that?”

  “I’ll take your word,” I said.

  “Nobody much knows this, but Jefferson had some lady friends,” Forbes went on a little more softly. “Mostly Negro women. Slaves. Even had kids by them. A lot of the black Jeffersons you see cleaning your house, dancing in the movies, are descendants of the third president of the United States.”

  “I thought that was because their families and slave owners had admired Jefferson,” I said.

  “Some of that, too,” Forbes said, waving off this line of thinking with an impatient hand. “This was Luna’s room. Look around.”

  I looked around and my eyes met those of Kudlap Singh, who wasn’t looking around. He was looking straight at me.

  “Doesn’t look lived in, does it?” he said. “Looks a little more like it in the bedroom, but …”

  A long moment of silence while Forbes’s head turned to look at the portrait of Jefferson before he went on.

  “My wife is two stories up in the presidential suite. That’s where we stay when we’re in town. Right now I figure your brother the cop is talking to her, and she’s finding out for sure that Luna Martin died in this hotel. Some point soon I’m gonna have to talk to the cops and talk to Carlotta. I’d rather face Bataglia or one of the boys from Chicago than talk to Carlotta about this. Carlotta’s a pack rat. She never lets go of anything—a grudge, an old dress.”

  I nodded in understanding and sipped my Pepsi.

  “What I said in the ballroom,” he went on. “I was hot. I’m not killing anybody, you, the fat guy with the glasses, the two actors. I’ve got one person to kill. That’s whoever murdered Luna. Cops are going to look for the killer. I’m gonna look for the killer. You are gonna look for the killer. One of us is gonna find the killer fast. You find him and you get five thousand cash.”

  “I’ve got a client,” I said.

  “Now you’ve got two clients,” Forbes said, a note of irritation creeping into his voice as he took an envelope from his jacket pocket and pushed it toward me.

  “Can’t,” I said. “Fred Astaire’s my client and his case is mixed up in this. I’d need his permission.”

  “I can fix it so you’ll never learn to play the harpsichord,” said Forbes.

  “I can always do war drums with my fist,” I said.

  “I think you don’t understand, Peters. I think Kudlap will have to explain it to you.” Forbes nodded.

  I turned, fingers around the now-empty Pepsi bottle as the Indian took a step toward me. I started to get out of the chair. Singh put the envelope in my shirt pocket as someone knocked at the door. Kudlap Singh stopped and looked at Forbes, who said, “Who is it?”

  “Room service.”

  “I don’t want room service,” Forbes said irritably.

  “Then I’m Admiral Nimitz,” the voice beyond the door said.

  I recognized the voice. I raised an eyebrow at Forbes. He looked at me and with a deep sigh said, “Let him in.”

  Kudlap Singh went to the door, opened it, and Fred As-taire strode in, glanced around, and plunged his hands in his pockets. He was wearing a tweedy sport jacket, a white shirt, and a blue handkerchief tied around his neck. Kudlap Singh closed the door and put his back to it.

  “Mr. Forbes, I—” Astaire began.

  “How’d you find me?” Forbes cut him off.

  “When Mr. Peters hung up in the middle of our telephone conversation, I came right over here, inquired, and found a maid whose name will be forever a secret who gladly exchanged the number of the room you were in for the promise of an autographed photo of me and Ginger.”

  “You came to rescue Peters,” Forbes said.

  “To try,” Astaire said, patting down his remaining hair and
looking around the room, his eyes coming to rest on the portrait on the wall. “Jefferson was supposed to be a superb minuet dancer,” said Astaire admiringly.

  “I know,” said Forbes. “Now we cut the shit. Luna’s dead. You were supposed to teach her to dance. Now she’s dead. She had a big mouth. She was a pain in the ass, but she was a good kid and a great … cops are gonna be all over me and my people and my wife.”

  “I’ll be happy to talk to your wife and the police,” Astaire said sincerely. “Miss Martin’s death may well have something to do with my refusal to teach her. I can’t help thinking that she might be alive if I had come and faced her directly.”

  “It was hard to say no directly to Luna,” Forbes said.

  “You can’t believe Peters or his associates had anything to do with this,” Astaire said.

  “I can believe what I want to believe,” Forbes said, finally moving his arms. “And I know I want you to tell Peters to start looking for Luna’s killer. The cops give me a choice—go big with this and look for the killer, knowing that the papers will get it; or go small, keep the publicity down, and maybe never find him. Or, if they do like they do in Detroit, they find someone, shoot him in an alley with two guns in his hands, and lay every murder in the last year on his bloody chest. You want headlines like, ‘Astaire Involved in Investigation of Murdered Blonde He Was Teaching to Dance’?”

  “It’s too long for a headline, but you have a point,” Astaire said.

  “You want your wife, your kids, the studio to know you got involved in something like murder?” Forbes continued.

  Astaire’s hands were out of his pockets now, but Forbes was unimpressed.

  “You don’t know much about me, Fingers,” Astaire said.

  Forbes shook his head and said, “Five-nine, weigh a hundred and thirty-eight or thirty-nine pounds fully dressed. Brown eyes. When you’re not working, you wear two-piece underwear. When you do a dance number, you wear a union suit. You’re mild-mannered and hard to burn, but when you blow you’ve got a bad temper and you break furniture and anything handy. Might something handy include a big-mouthed blonde who wants you to teach her to dance and won’t take no for an answer?”

  “Look, Forbes,” Astaire said angrily, not noticing that Kudlap Singh had stepped away from the door and toward us.

  “Maybe we should—” I began, but Forbes went on, pushing: “Your shirts, underwear, pajamas, and dressing gowns are monogrammed and you have a hell of a time each morning deciding what tie to wear. You and your wife sleep in separate beds. You wear silk, usually blue, pajamas, and you wiggle your toes in your sleep. Your wife’s name is Phyllis and your kids—”

  “You son of a bitch,” Astaire said, frail body shaking, hands in a fist.

  Forbes seemed amused.

  “You want a career, feet, a family,” he said, pointing at Astaire, “see to it that he finds who killed Luna because I’m gonna tell you something personal about me. I loved Luna and I don’t like it that someone killed her. I don’t like it at all. I want the bastard caught and brought to me. I don’t care who finds him. That’s what I want.”

  “You two-bit Capone,” Astaire said as I stepped between him and Forbes, who didn’t even get up.

  “Capone, between you and me, was a publicity-seeking blowhard who didn’t control half of what we had in Detroit.” Now Forbes rose, let out a sigh, and straightened the creases in his trousers. “Sit down, calm down, and think things over,” he said, moving past me and Astaire and toward the door with the Indian. “You’ll hear from me.”

  And then they were gone.

  “He threatened me, my wife, and my children,” Astaire said, his face a distinct shade of red. “That fart-faced—”

  “He’s on his way to owning half of Los Angeles,” I said.

  “And I know the people who own the other half,” Astaire countered hotly, now pacing the room. “And I think I’ll have a talk with some of them.”

  “I think we should consider carefully before we say anything more,” I said, pointing to the metal box on the table in the corner.

  Astaire kept pacing and glancing at the box.

  “That’s not a listening device,” he said. “It’s a wire recorder. It has a microphone inside the box so you can record on spools of wire.”

  “You know how it works?” I asked, moving to the machine.

  “Yes,” he said, striding impatiently to my side, unhooking a clasp on the side of the box and lifting the lid.

  There was a microphone inside with a wire wound round it and a spindle with a spool the size of a salt box fitted over it. Gray metal, most of it with thin lines across it, covered the spool.

  “Would you say Luna recorded something on this wire?” I asked, looking at the thing.

  “Somebody recorded something,” Astaire said. “I’d guess Luna was copying songs from the radio.”

  “Or …” I said.

  “Can’t hurt,” he said, and turned the machine on.

  The quality wasn’t bad.

  There were two songs at the start of the recording. Astaire asked me if I knew what steps they were. I didn’t. He told me they were a fox-trot and a rumba. After the second song, I said, “Let’s go.”

  “We’re here,” he said. “We’ve got nothing better to do but find a killer and talk to the police. The least we could do is hear the lady out.”

  I shrugged and moved back to lean against the wall as an announcer said, “Hello, we’ve been waiting for you. It’s time to play ‘Truth or Consequences.’”

  This was followed by the bleating of Beulah the Buzzer and Ralph Edwards saying, “Aren’t we devils.”

  I reached over to turn it off but Astaire stopped me. We kept listening. A woman and her husband were asked if a hen sits or sets when she lays an egg. Before the couple could answer and collect their fifteen dollars, Beulah squawked her into submission and a “consequence.” Edwards then sent the wife off and had the husband dressed as a woman. The husband was placed behind a cashier’s window, pretending he was the woman who was going to pay off the wife when she came back on stage. When the wife was brought back, Ralph Edwards offered her sixty dollars if she could find her husband, who was in plain sight in the small studio. The woman lost one dollar for every second she didn’t find him.

  “I don’t think—” Astaire said, and then a phone rang, a phone on the tape.

  The audience was giggling and then the muffled sound of Luna answering the phone. It was hard to make out her words as the woman on the wire recording got more frantic, the audience laughed, and Edwards egged her on, but Luna’s side of the conversation sounded like, “No … I’mmot … look Immot gnn peck to thad … no … no fke Tuesdip in any Hollywood stirfunt … [Laughter and Ralph Edwards too loud to hear this part, and then] … Yucatan tk yur post age sighs eggs ques fura bllrum and … don thread on me. Cumner me anfingersll tarut yurhert … [Phone is hung up].”

  “Truth or Consequences” went on with the wife on the radio crying frantically, “Where are you?”

  Luna, now closer to the microphone, said something fast and turned off the machine.

  The silver spool continued to run with a hum. Astaire reached over and rewound it.

  He listened to Luna’s side of the phone conversation once more and turned off the machine.

  “Did you understand what she said?” he asked.

  “Not much.”

  “It’s like doing a bad loop in a cheap studio. She said, ‘Look, I am not going back to that. No fake two-step in any Hollywood storefront … You can take your postage-size excuse for a ballroom…. Do not threaten me…. Come near me, and Fingers will tear out your heart.”

  “Then she went to the machine,” I continued. “And in answer to the contestant’s question, ‘Where are you?’ answered ‘Where you’ll never have the nerve to find me, Willie.’”

  “So …” Astaire began, his hand to his chin.

  “Willie may have had the nerve to find Luna,” I said. “Find h
er and kill her.”

  “We’re not sure what he threatened her with or about,” said Astaire.

  “And it probably has nothing to do with her murder,” I went on.

  “But then again …” Astaire said.

  “I go looking for a Willie connected to a storefront ballroom.”

  “We go looking, and my guess is we’re talking about a storefront dance studio, not a real ballroom. Probably the one where she supposedly taught.”

  “I don’t want to argue but …”

  “Look, Peters,” he said, a hand to his chest and the other pointing at me. “I’ve been a police follower all my life, city to city, since I was a kid. Crime is more than a hobby with me. It’s a passion. I’m going to help. It’s my case too, remember.”

  “I thought you had a show and a bond tour.”

  “I’ve got a few days. When is ‘Truth or Consequences’ on?”

  “Sunday, eight-thirty,” I said.

  “So Willie called her Sunday at about ten minutes after eight. That means …”

  The door flew open and a woman stormed in, dark and on fire.

  “Where is he?” she asked.

  She was little, no more than four-ten, pretty, long dark hair brushed straight and to her neck with evenly trimmed bangs across her forehead. She had on too much makeup and too few clothes. What she wore looked like a sarong held up by a pair of very full breasts.

  “Who?” I asked as she started across toward the bedroom, suddenly stopped and turned around, red mouth open.

  “Fred Astaire,” she said.

  “Caught,” Astaire said with a winning smile.

  The woman came back toward us.

  “I’ve seen all your movies, even the one you did with Joan Crawford …”

  “Dancing Lady,” Astaire said. “Let me guess. You’re Mrs. Forbes and you are looking for your husband.”