you stay alive.”
His voice was deep and rasping, as if years of shouting had turned his vocal cords to gravel. It was very effective.
I managed to pull the Woolworth gun from my pocket.
“Sorry boys,” I said trying to sound tough and confident, “but you are going to move across the room and sit very quietly while I call the police. And while we’re waiting for them to pick you up on a breaking and entering, maybe you can tell me who asked you to pay me this visit.”
They didn’t move.
I aimed the gun at the mailbox, who neither moved back nor grinned. The tall grinner giggled.
Mailbox reached over and pulled the gun from my hand.
“The photograph, Peters, quick,” said the croaker with the grey hair.
I sat up, started to go for my pocket and put everything I had behind a punch to the mouth of the mailbox. He took a step back, his mouth bleeding, while I made a move toward the door. My bad back slowed me up. The croaker grabbed me. I threw an elbow at his stomach. He turned and took it in the side, but held on. The tall grinner belted me in the lower back, over the kidney. He was either wearing brass knuckles or a roll of nickels in his fist. The pain in my back was electric. I moaned and slumped down. The mailbox moved toward me, wiping a touch of blood from the corner of his mouth with an ugly fist. I was going to be dead or very sick.
He pulled his tree-stump hand back to mash my face when the door burst open.
Bruce Cabot and Guinn Williams were standing in it. Cabot was grim, his arms out at his side. Williams was squinting at the mailbox.
The croaker dropped my arms, and I leveled a left to his groin. He went back against the wall.
Williams, his curls bobbing, went for the mailbox, who showed his teeth. Williams’ closed fist thudded off the bald man’s skull, and the stricken man went down, his head bouncing on my wooden floor. Williams shook his first and went for the down man.
Meanwhile, the tall giggler had stopped giggling and had pulled out a tall knife. He held it low as if he knew how to use it and had come up against other bellies before. He was behind Williams. Cabot reached out, grabbed the giggler’s hand, pulled him around and grimaced as he threw a right into the man’s stomach. On the way down, the tall man took a swing with the knife at Cabot, who backed away.
The grey-haired croaker was behind me pulling at my jacket and hitting me in the neck with his fist. I was trying to get back on my feet. Williams and Cabot pulled him off. The giggler and mailbox headed for the door.
“Let them go,” I gasped.
The croaker was in good shape. He pulled away from the two actors and came up with a gun in his hand. It wasn’t mine, but it wasn’t a toy. The first shot missed my head, but I don’t know by how much. It hit a lamp behind me. Cabot and Williams dropped to the floor, and Williams started up to go after the croaker who was leveling the gun at me again.
My hand touched something on the floor, the broken lamp. The shade was demolished. Still on my knees I threw the lamp at the croaker. At ten feet, he wasn’t likely to miss a second time.
The lamp caught him in the neck and head. The gun went off, the bullet smashing into my bathtub in the next room and making an eerie sound as it ricocheted.
The croaker fell backward with the smashed lamp and went out of the closed window. Glass flew across the room, and I felt a splinter hit my hand.
Williams and Cabot went to the window. It was three floors down and he might survive, but I doubted it.
“He’s not moving,” said Cabot.
“I didn’t think he would be,” I groaned.
Williams came back to help me up.
“What were you two doing here?” I said.
“How about, ‘thanks,’” said Cabot, taking my arm and helping me to the nearest chair.
“Thanks,” I said, “I think you saved my life. But …”
“Errol asked us to stay with you, keep an eye on you,” said Cabot. “He thought you might run into trouble. He likes you.”
“You driving a green Dodge?”
“Right,” said Williams, “you spotted us?”
“Well, you’re new at this. Now, you two better get out of here.”
Cabot cocked his head:
“The police?”
“I’ll tell them what happened, and they can come and talk to you if they want to,” I said, looking at my hand. “If they call tell them you came to see me on business. Don’t mention Flynn. Tell the truth about the fight.” My hand was bleeding slightly. I took a handkerchief from my pocket. “The other two won’t be back. They were hired muscle and brass, and the man who rented them is all over the sidewalk on Eleventh Street. Thanks, I mean it.”
They left. I could hear noises in the street. The rain had stopped. A crowd was gathering around the body.
I reached for the phone and dialed my brother’s office.
“Lieutenant Pevsner,” came the familiar voice.
“Phil, it’s Toby.”
“Where the hell are you? I said eight. It’s five after.”
“I know. I’m going to be a little late.”
“Oh no, you’re not,” he hissed.
“Then you better come over here and get me,” I said, rubbing my kidney where the giggler had struck me. “I think I’m about to be arrested for throwing a guy out of my apartment window.”
I hung up as Phil started to say, “Shit,” but I let him get no farther than “Sh …” It sounded like a call for silence, and I needed a few minutes of that before I saw him.
7
Before an overcautious beat cop made his way up to my apartment with a gun in his hand, I did a few things.
First, the photograph of Brenda Stallings Beaumont and Cunningham, or Deitch, if you want to be accurate, went into the pages of William Faulkner’s
At 9:30, I was sitting in my brother’s office. The rain had moved south. If the giggler hadn’t played hamburger with my back, it would have been back to near normal. My confidence was returning.
My brother made me wait half an hour. I wasn’t about to be caught looking at anything on his desk, so I sat going over the whole screwy case. I didn’t get anywhere.
At 10:15, my brother came in followed by a thin guy with a very white face, sandy hair and a gray suit. Phil slammed his door shut on the voices outside. It seemed to be a busy night for the L.A. police.
“This is Sergeant Seidman,” said Phil, slapping his worn manila folder on the desk. “He’s going to take notes on what we say.”
Phil stood glaring at me.
“How’s the family?” I said with a slight smile.
My brother’s hand happened to be on a wire mesh box for memos. He threw the box in my direction. Memos, reports, photos and junk mail went flying. The box sailed past my nose crashing against the wall. The voices outside stopped for a few seconds and then went on.
Sergeant Seidman looked at neither of us. He pulled the second chair a few feet further from me and calmly sat down. Phil sat down too and pulled his tie even further open. He pointed a finger at me and turned pink.
