precise than his. Precise is the proper word, is it not?”
“It is the proper word,” I said.
“Did he fight with any other little person?”
“I see,” said Wherthman, “Yes. Perhaps someone of my size is attempting to blame me.”
“I don’t know how many little people there are around Los Angeles,” I said, “but there can’t be a whole hell of a lot, and the list of those who knew Cash and the studio well enough to get a costume this morning must be even smaller. Finding a patsy would be a good idea.”
“Patsy,” he mulled. “I thought this was a female name?”
“It is, but it’s also a kind of slang for someone to take the blame for something you did.”
Wherthman took all this seriously. I could see him storing it for future use.
“That would be the Canadian,” said Wherthman. “The one with the nasty temper. He also did not like me and was a confidant of the one called Cash. I think ‘confidant’ is the right word for they were not friends, but they were much together, sometimes arguing, sometimes fighting. They spoke of going into some business together when the movie was finished.”
“What was the Canadian’s name?” I asked.
Wherthman couldn’t remember. He gave me a vague description, but I needed more. It wasn’t a great lead, but it was something. I asked him to try to remember the name, and he said he would.
“Don’t tell the police anything more,” I said, reaching out my hand. He took it this time. His hand was small but not soft, and his grip was firm even though his fingers barely reached past my palm.
“I will not,” he said, standing.
“They’re going to charge you with murder and book you. Tell them your lawyer will be in touch with them. And I have another bit of advice. Shave that mustache. It makes you look a little like Hitler.”
His finger went up to his face.
“I did not think of that,” he said. “I have no wish to look like Hitler. I will do as you suggest. Mr. Peters?”
He had only heard my name once and in a tough situation, but it had stuck.
“Mr. Peters? Do you believe I did not do this murder?”
“I believe it,” I said, “but I’ve been wrong before. I’ll be in touch.”
There was more confidence in my farewell than I felt. Not only had I been wrong before, I’ve been wrong most of the time about my life and other people. The only people who felt any confidence in me were a myopic, sloppy dentist and a Swiss midget.
Seidman was pretending to read a report on a clipboard right outside Phil’s door.
“He says he didn’t do it,” I told him as I walked through the squadroom. The handcuffed couple was still there, and the shirtless guy adjusted his tie as we passed.
“He sticks to that and we’ll wind up with a trial,” shrugged Seidman. “You know who some of our witnesses are?”
I told him I knew.
“Now that’ll really be publicity,” he said. “Might be a good idea if his lawyer or someone…”
“Like me?” I said.
“Someone,” continued Seidman, “suggested that he plead guilty. We have other things to work on, and this can be handled quietly.”
“It’s a thought,” I said. “Thanks for letting me talk to him, and give my best to Phil.”
“I’ll tell him you were sorry you missed him,” Seidman said, getting in the last crack. His white face looked pleased, and I had nothing more to say. As I walked out, the thin black guy between the two cops drinking coffee put his head in his hands and leaned forward. It looked like he was going to throw up.
I stopped at a Pig ’n Whistle on the corner and had a burger and Pepsi. I liked the “Pepsi and Pete” ads the company put out with the two comic cops. When Coke came up with something better, they’d regain my gourmet trade. While I waited for my sandwich, I called Warren Hoff and told him what had happened. He said he’d get a lawyer for Wherthman. I didn’t ask him what the lawyer would tell the little man, but I doubted if they could get the little guy to confess to the murder.
The next step was to talk to the witnesses and try to get a lead on the Canadian midget with the bad temper, so I asked Hoff where I could reach Fleming and Gable. I already knew Grundy’s address. Hoff had the information in front of him.
“Victor will be having dinner at the Brown Derby tonight. He’ll get there around six, and he’s been told that you might drop by to ask him a few questions. Clark is spending the weekend at Mr. Hearst’s ranch in San Simeon. If you want to talk to him by phone, he should be arriving there soon. He drove up.”
I noticed that Fleming and Gable were Victor and Clark but Hearst was Mr. Hearst. Even Hoff realized how silly it would have sounded for him to say that Gable was at William Randolph’s or Willie’s or Bill’s.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll be in touch.”
He gave me his home phone number in case I wanted to reach him later in the evening, and I let him hang up first.
I spent another nickel and called M.G.M. again. This time I asked for Judy Garland and gave my name. I got her on the line in about thirty seconds. She said she was finished for the day.
“The person who called you this morning and told you to go to the Oz set. You said it was a man with a high voice.”
“That’s right,” she said.
“Could it have been a midget?”
She said it could and I asked the important question.
“Did he have an accent? You know, Spanish, French, German?”
“No, no accent.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll get back to you. Tell Cassie I said hello.”
“I’ll tell her, she’s right here.” She laughed and hung up. She had a hell of a nice laugh. Either Wherthman had a helper, or someone unconnected with the murder called Judy Garland, or Wherthman was right, and he was being framed. It wasn’t evidence to go to the cops with, but it gave me a little confidence in what I was doing.
I ate my burger and headed home.
Home until a month earlier had been a walkup near downtown and my office and a long trot to the Y on Hope Street. But my former landlady had taken exception to a difficult night in which the apartment was shot up and a guy who was trying to kill me went through the window. I couldn’t blame her too much, and it wasn’t hard to move. My clothes, food, and books fit nicely into two cardboard suitcases I got for almost nothing in a pawnshop on Vermont. The pawnbroker, a guy named Hill, owed me a favor for catching a thief who was robbing him blind during the day. Cameras, radios, binoculars, watches had been missing every day at closing time. I staked myself out under a counter with a couple of sandwiches and watched the store between two boxes. The thief turned out to be the seventy-one-year-old lady who brought Hill his lunch from the deli across the street. Hill always ate standing in the store so he wouldn’t lose business. She did all her grabbing on the way out, dropping things into the shopping bag she used to deliver Hill’s food. She hadn’t resold or used any of the stuff. She had just stolen it for the excitement. It was piled up in her room down the street. Hill had paid me, but four hours under that counter with my bad back had me laid up in bed for a week. He felt guilty, and I used that guilt to get things from him, like the suitcases and the. 38 automatic owned and never used. It was the second. 38 I got from Hill. The first one had been taken by the cops after a guy took it from me and killed a couple of people with it.
That was old business. New business was the place I was living in on Long Beach Boulevard near Slauson. It was small and cheap, partly because the place had the smell of fast decline. It was one of a series of two-room, one story wooden structures L.A. management people called bungalows. To people passing by, the place looked like a motor court that had lost its license and sign. Paint was peeling from all the houses in the court like the skin from a sunburned, aging actress. Like the actress, the bungalows were functional, but not particularly appealing. When it rained, the ground in front of my place became a swamp. The furnished furnishings were faded and the shower didn’t work, but it had a great advantage: It was cheap. Jeremy Butler, the poetic wrestler who owned my office building, also owned this place and suggested that I move in and keep an eye on the property for him. In return, I paid practically nothing in rent. A few days earlier I had paid with a sore stomach when I caught a kid trying to break into one of the bungalows at night. The kid had butted me with his head and taken off. His head had hit the
