“Mr. Astaire won’t. .”
“Don’t say it again,” Forbes cut in. “Something very bad will happen if you say it again. I strive for the patience of Thomas Jefferson, but I live with the temper of my sainted father, who ducked five manslaughter charges.”
I shut up.
“Can we go now?” said Lou. “I’m working tonight at the Mozambique.”
“Shut the old fool up, Arthur,” Luna said, moving to Forbes’s side and taking his arm.
“Give this message to Astaire,” Forbes said, ignoring Lou and Luna both.
I looked at Luna. She was enjoying the moment. I almost missed Forbes’s nod. I tightened up and started to turn. I was too late and the Beast of Bombay was too fast. I expected the blow to come to the kidney. Instead there was a zap, a feeling of being hit by a jolt of electricity and then pain that almost sent me to the floor.
Forbes was a professional. I had to give him that. The Beast had done something my old man had never even considered. He had spanked me. One whip of his giant hand. A second or two of humiliation followed by who knows how many hours or days of searing pain.
Luna tittered and I did my best not to fall. I started to go down anyway. Kudlap Singh held me up.
“I’ve seen this stuff before,” Lou said with a bored voice of an ancient mariner who has seen and done everything.
“Got the message, Peters?” Forbes said.
I wasn’t sure I could speak. I nodded.
“Good,” he said. “You’re gonna be sitting on pillows and taking warm baths for a while. Accidents like this happen. Astaire could be dancing in concrete shoes. Tomorrow, right here.”
Forbes walked toward the door with the air of a man who had put things in order for everyone. The Beast of Bombay looked down at me and nodded before he followed his boss out of the ballroom. Luna, still holding Forbes’s arm, smiled, patted her behind, puckered her lips, and made a kissing sound. She clicked toward the door with Forbes, swinging her red purse.
When the three of them were clearly and certainly out of the room, Lou came to me and said, “For twenty- five bucks, who needs this?”
I exhaled and decided to try talking. “I thought you weren’t afraid,” I said, trying to ignore the pain.
“I lied,” Lou said. “Almost made in my pants. How are you doin’?”
“Could have been a lot worse if you weren’t here. Thanks.”
“A bonus is in order here,” he said, helping me to the table Luna had abandoned.
I leaned against the table while Lou poured me an ice water. He filled the glass. I drank it all.
“Twenty-five bucks,” I said.
“I’m satisfied,” said Lou. “Now, how about a ride to Glendale?”
“I’ve got someone you should meet,” I said, moving slowly toward the door. “I think you and my landlady might hit it off.”
Lou shrugged. “I’m in the market,” he said.
We made it out of the Monticello and to my khaki Crosley in the Monticello parking lot. When I had driven into the lot earlier, the attendant, a young guy about twenty-five with a decided limp, had looked at me as if my car was carrying a highly communicable automobile disease. Lou and I had watched him park it deep in the back of the lot, quarantined along with a slightly battered Hudson where the two cars were unlikely to infect the huddled Packards, Cadillacs, Lincolns, Chryslers, and a sleek black Graham parked up front where people would see them.
“How much?” I asked the kid. He was square-faced, in a clean blue uniform, and couldn’t keep his hair out of his eyes.
“You a veteran?” he asked.
“No, but I feel like one. I’ve got a bad back, a sore ass, I’m pushing fifty, and I’ve got somewhere to go.”
Lou ignored the two of us and headed for the car.
“He can’t do that,” the attendant said. “I get the cars.”
“He’s old and he’s hard to stop.”
“He a W-W-One veteran?”
“More likely the war with Spain,” I said.
“All right, then,” the attendant said. “Since he’s a veteran, you get the discount.”
“Thanks.”
“Forty cents,” he said, holding out his hand.
I fished out a buck, put it in his palm, and said, “Keep the change. You a veteran?”
“I was on the
The kid’s eyes were glazed and far away, off the coast of Midway on a June afternoon a little less than a year ago.
“Caught flying metal in the leg,” the attendant said, touching his right leg. “And my head. Mom’s got the shrapnel from my leg and my medal on the fireplace right under Jesus. I’m still lugging iron up here.”
He tapped on his head.
“Glad you’re okay now-?”
“Cotton,” he said, holding out his hand. “Cotton Wright.”
“Toby Peters.”
He nodded as if he expected me to be named Toby Peters and then he limped off to get my Crosley.
It was Thursday, March 11, 1943. The Japanese were bombing Guadalcanal. Our planes had hit the Japs at Balle in the Shortland Islands. General Sir Bernard L. Montgomery said Rommel was desperate in Tunisia, and the Royal Air Force had hit Munich hard with five-hundred-ton blockbuster bombs. Roosevelt had just proposed a birth- to-grave Social Security that included medical care and payments for college education.
The war was getting long and I was getting twenty-five dollars a day plus expenses to convince a daffy woman and a semiretired gangster to leave Fred Astaire alone.
Cotton Wright pulled the Crosley next to me and crawled out of the door, which wasn’t easy. The Crosley could hold a driver and a passenger if they didn’t mind bending over like clowns packing into one of those circus cars.
“Thanks, Cotton,” I said, trying to ease into the driver’s seat.
The burning from Kudlap Singh’s whack grew close to unbearable as my rear end hit the seat. I eased down, gritting my teeth, and closed the door. I was sweating and starting to imagine the rare and exotic pain that I could bring to Fingers Intaglia.
I waved to Cotton as we pulled into the traffic on Sunset.
“Glendale,” Lou said.
“Glendale,” I agreed.
Chapter Two: I Wanna Be a Dancing Man
The whole thing had started two days earlier, a little before eleven in the morning, when I went to my office. The Farraday is downtown on Hoover, just off Ninth. I was in a good mood. I’d just finished two tacos, a couple of cups of coffee, and a sinker at Manny’s on the corner. That was my early lunch. I could afford it. I had a little over two hundred dollars left of a fee from Clark Gable.
I had paid off my fifteen-dollar rent for March and the advance on April to my landlady. Mrs. Plaut had tucked it into her dress next to her unample bosom. I had also paid two months’ advance rent on the closet I used for an office and sublet from Sheldon Minck, D.D.S. I had a cupboard full of Wheaties and no overly demanding aches or pains.
Life was good. I entered the Lysol-smelling outer lobby of the Farraday and checked the board to be sure I was still listed. There I was, in neatly typed letters, Toby Peters, Private Investigator, Room 602. Above me on the
