I went out and hobbled down the hall as fast as my legs would carry me. I retrieved my shoes from the studio but couldn’t get them on, so I hopped across the parking lot, afraid to step on the pebbles, and got into my car.
Driving to Mirador with a cracked windshield wasn’t the easiest thing I’ve done, but with the help of three more of Dr. Parry’s pills-for-all-ills, I made it by four in the morning.
The front door was answered by one of the two neatly dressed guards. He let me in and followed me up to Hughes’ study. Hughes looked up from his drawings at me as if he had almost forgotten who he was. For some reason, he was wearing his fedora tilted back on his head.
“I’m alive,” I said.
“That’s good, really,” said Hughes with something vaguely near enthusiasm. “Did you find out if they stole any of my plans?”
“Don’t you want to know who murdered three people?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “The less I know, the less people can ask me.”
I pulled the small Leica out of my pocket and threw it to him. He caught it almost as well as Joe Dimaggio.
“What they had is in there,” I said. “They never got to develop it. If you want to develop it, you can just to be sure I’m telling the truth.”
“I will,” he said emotionlessly.
I laughed. “You don’t even know when you’re insulting someone.”
“I thought I was just being practical,” he said. “I wasn’t trying to insult you. You’ve done a good job, and you can be sure your bill will be paid in full.”
“And that’s it?”
Hughes had turned back to whatever he was working on.
“You were hired for a job. You were paid for a job. You did the job. I told you I appreciate professionalism.”
I was tempted to tell him the plans in front of him were of no interest to Japan or probably anyone else, but it wasn’t worth the effort, and I had more work to do, and miles to go.
The bruiser in the flannel suit let me out of the door, and I drove through the first rays of dawn over the ratty main street of Mirador, taking my last look at Hijo’s, the bait shop, the police station and the car door in the middle of the street. I purposely cracked into the edge of the car door, sending it spinning toward the curb. It came to a screeching stop at the door of the police station. I had done my part to clean up Mirador in more ways than one.
I didn’t admire the dawn through my cracked windshield as I squinted my way back to Los Angeles slowly.
It was a strange early morning Los Angeles I seldom saw, with no people on the street.
I stopped for breakfast at a we-never-close place. I still couldn’t get my shoes on.
“What can I get you, Spirit of 76?” said the counter man, looking at my bandaged head and shoeless feet, which brought laughs to some early morning mailmen and a truck driver or two.
“You can get me a cannon for Christmas I can shove in your mouth,” I said and sat at the counter. I didn’t like what I was going to have to do, and I wasn’t in the mood for jokes.
“Hey, I was just kidding,” said the counterman, who looked like a recently converted alcoholic. “The boys can tell you I’m a kidder. Ain’t I, boys?”
The boys agreed he was a kidder, but one of the boys scooted to a stool further from me.
“O.K., Red Skelton, get me a double bowl of Shredded Wheat with what you have passing for cream, and I’ll dump my own sugar on it. And get me a coffee in something like a clean cup.”
“You don’t have to get sore, Mac,” said the counterman, wiping his hands on his apron.
“You’re forgiven,” I said, making a sign like I saw a priest do once in a movie. One of the mailmen thought about laughing, but my mashed face, broken head and ridiculous foot changed his mind. I was really hell on a stool, I was.
I ate the Shredded Wheat and left the counterman a big tip. I’d make a good tale for him to tell the rest of the shift. It was nothing compared to what I could have told him.
I drove the Buick to Al’s garage, but it was Sunday and Al wasn’t there. I left it in the gas station for him with the keys under the front seat. He’d see the windshield and know what to do.
Then I limped to my office. The place was empty. It was Sunday. Even crooked lawyers and pornographers get a day off. I was feeling good and sorry for Toby Peters as I went slowly up the stairs carrying my shoes.
The new sign on the doorway was in gold letters.
Doctor Sheldon Minck, Dentist, D.D.S., S.D.
Toby Peters
Investigator
I wasn’t even “private” any more. The alcove had been cleaned up somewhat, and a new chart, this one showing the inside of a tooth, covered the bullet holes. Someone had cleaned the ashtrays.
Shelly’s office even showed signs that there had been a halfhearted attempt to clean it up. I went to my office, found an envelope from Hughes with two days pay and called the phone company to find out it was almost eight in the morning. Then I called Basil Rathbone.
A woman answered and got him.
“Yes?” he said.
“It’s me, Toby Peters,” I said with a great yawn. Then I told him what had happened.
“I see,” he said, when I had finished. “And now you have one more bit of business to take care of. Would you like my advice?”
“Go ahead,” I said.
“Holmes often took justice into his own hands. It was rather a hubristic act, but he was a man of tremendous ego. While you may not fancy yourself such a man, this case may require other than simplistic action.”
“I understand,” I said, looking up at the baleful eyes of both my father, who had wanted me to be a lawyer, and my brother Phil, who wanted me to leave him alone, and Kaiser Wilhelm, who simply wanted me.
“Thanks for the help, Basil,” I said.
“Glad of whatever assistance I could provide. I’d like to keep in touch.”
“I’ll do that,” I said and we hung up after the goodbyes.
My plan was to make some coffee and wait, but I couldn’t get my feet and body out from behind the desk, so I pulled out my notebook and began to transfer my expenses for the case.
Bumpers, bribes, tremendous quantities of gas, parking, phone calls, dinners, windshields, doctor bills, brought the whole thing to $198.60. I had put in six full days. I decided not to count that morning. That made $288 in per diem rate, minus the $192 advance. That made another $96, which meant Howard Hughes owed me an additional $284.00. Considering what I had gone through, it didn’t look like a hell of a lot, especially after paying for the office and car damage. Without another good job or two soon, I’d be hocking the coat I bought in Chicago.
I typed the bill neatly on some Nevers Trucking Company stationery, which had been given to me as a present by Nevers when his company went out of business after he went behind bars for five years for hijacking. I had done some work for his lawyer, leg work, but everything I found had made Nevers look worse. He had held no grudge and given me a stack of stationery.
Stumbling back into Shelly’s office, I found a scalpel and brought it back to my office to sharpen a pencil, with which I crossed off the letterhead for Nevers, using the side of an envelope to keep the lines straight. Then, I neatly penciled in my name. So much for the professionalism Howard Hughes expected from me. I put the bill in an envelope, licked it and put a two-cent stamp in the corner.
The case was officially closed, but there was that one nagging unofficial thing to do.
I turned on the radio and listened to a Sunday morning preacher warn me about the wicked paths, the evil in the world and my own responsibility. I must have been really in shock. He actually seemed to make sense to me.
Listening got difficult. He yelled louder to keep me awake, and I vowed to remember his words, but my head went down, and some time between heaven and hell I was sleeping with my head on my arms.
