Beatrice Kay or Eddie Cantor. Did I tell you I used to be a singer?”
“You did,” Phil said impatiently.
“
“You said,” said Phil.
“Did I? Well …” he shrugged, put his pipe back between his teeth and looked down at his newspaper as we went out the door.
I looked at Phil. He looked at me.
“What?” he said.
“You could have been nicer to the old man,” I said.
“Oh crap. You want me to go back in and ask him to sing me an aria?”
“Too late,” I said.
“Fine. Let’s go find a magician with red socks.”
We stopped at a Rexall Drug Store where I called Mrs. Plaut’s while Phil had a cup of coffee and a pair of donuts. Mrs. Plaut answered.
“Can I speak to Gunther?” I said. “This is Toby Peters.”
“Of course you can speak to him,” she said. “I do not make a habit of keeping telephone calls from people who reside in my abode.”
“May I speak to him?” I tried.
“You are capable of speech,” she said. “Therefore you can speak to him. And I just told you you don’t need my permission.”
“How should I say it?” I asked.
“Please get Mr. Gunther on the telephone,” she said.
“Please get Mr. Gunther on the telephone,” I repeated.
I heard the phone drop on the cord and bang into the wall. While I waited, I looked at Phil. In one month, he had lost his wife and his job and gone into business with me, and business was not looking as good as we would like. And now his son had whooping cough, and I could see that he was thinking that he had another son and daughter who could also get it. My brother did not look happy. This was a dangerous time for the world. When Phil wasn’t happy, it was best to keep a reasonably safe football field length between you and him.
“Toby?” came Gunther’s voice.
I could picture him standing on the small stool next to the phone on the second floor landing.
“Yes, anything yet?”
“I’ve been most fortunate,” he said. “Following the autopsy of the unfortunate Calvin Ott, there will be a funeral at Horskey’s Funeral Home in Sherman Oaks not far from the late Mr. Ott’s home.”
I knew Horskey’s. One of my ex-wife Anne’s ex-husbands had funeraled there.
“It seems the funeral arrangements are being made by a group called the Torch Bearers of Dranabadur,” said Gunther.
It was the group that had been meeting the night Phil and I had gone to Ott’s house. I was sure I had seen some if not all of them at the Blackstone dinner. I didn’t remember any of them being blonde. Ott had given their names. I couldn’t remember any of them but Leo.
“Can you get their full names and addresses?”
“I will endeavor to do so,” Gunther said.
“I’ll call you back.”
We hung up, and I went to sit next to Phil, who was working on his second donut and second cup of coffee. There was a mug steaming for me and two sinkers.
“Gunther’s got a line on the guy’s who were at Ott’s house the other night,” I said.
Phil grunted and looked at what was left of his donut, probably considering whether he would go for a third.
“He’s trying to find out their names and where they live,” I said. “We can find out if they wear red socks.”
Phil grunted again, reached into his jacket pocket, came out with the same notebook he used when he was a cop, flipped it open, and read:
“Wayne Dutton, Paul Steele, Walter Masonick, Milton Beck-stall, Steven Freemont, William Teel, Richard Karkette, and Leo Benz.”
He handed me the notebook. Each name had an address next to it.
Phil ordered another donut.
“Checked them out this morning. Ott had given us the first names. They were all registered with that magicians group. Took ten bucks to a secretary to get it.”
“We’ll put it on Blackstone’s bill,” I said. “I better call Gunther and tell him we don’t need the names and addresses.”
“I’m having someone in the department checking to see if any of our Dranabadurians have arrest records,” said Phil.
“You’re a treasure,” I said, leaning toward him as the waitress leaned forward to refill our cups.
“Kiss me on the head and I’ll break your face.”
“It’s okay,” I told the waitress. “He’s my brother.”
I ordered another donut and called Mrs. Plaut’s back, praying that Gunther would answer the phone. He did.
“Gunther, forget about tracking down those names and addresses. We’ve got them.”
“Then what task shall I perform?”
“How about going back to Columbia Pictures and seeing if someone working on the picture when Cunningham showed up can give you a better description of the person who was with him when he talked to Wilde?”
“I would prefer not to talk to that Phil Silvers person.”
“Then don’t.”
“I shall leave immediately,” Gunther said.
I went back to Phil and said, “Let’s go find a magician with red socks.”
Being trained investigators with a combined total of more than thirty years of police work, we quickly figured out that we didn’t have to talk to all of the Dranabadurians on our list. We just had to find one who could tell us which of his friends wore red socks.
We could work alphabetically or by distance from the drugstore. We went to the closest address. It was in Hollywood, on Vine, not far from Mrs. Plaut’s. The address, a doorway wedged between a small bakery and an even smaller shoemaker’s, was called Karkette’s Gags amp; Tricks. We rang the bell in the doorway and waited. No answer. Rang again. No answer. No conference was necessary. We entered the shop and were greeted by a five- foot-high cardboard cartoon cutout of Adolph Hitler looking over his shoulder at us with his bare behind in the air just below eye level. Adolph looked as if we had surprised him getting off the toilet. We were definitely not in anyone’s idea of a high class establishment.
Before we could pass Adolph, he passed air. I could tell by Phil’s tightened jaw that he didn’t find Hitler farting funny. I didn’t either. Richard Karkette, however, clearly did.
He appeared from behind the cutout and said, “Funny, huh?”
I didn’t recognize him from Ott’s or the Roosevelt ballroom, but that may have been because he wasn’t wearing a tux but a pair of tan trousers and a light green shirt with dark green buttons.
He was about my height, my age, and thin with a little belly that made him look like a pregnant stork. He was bald and grinning.
“Can I help you with …?”
He stopped, looked at us both with recognition and went on, “You were at Marcus’s house the other night and the ballroom last night.”
He wasn’t grinning anymore.
“I can see you’re all broken up about Calvin Ott’s murder,” said Phil, moving to within a foot of the man’s face.
“An act,” Karkette said. “I’ve got a business to run, a living to make. I’m grinning on the outside, see.”
He grinned, showing large, not very white teeth.
