“Toby, you just answer my questions. No jokes. No lies.”
“Right,” I said.
“Your full name?” continued my brother. Seidman lifted his pencil to write.
“Toby Peters.”
“Not your alias,” said Phil, opening the file. Then to Seidman, “His full name is Tobias Leo Pevsner. His alias …”
“My professional name,” I interjected.
Seidman wrote nothing. He didn’t give a shit for a family argument.
“You’re a private investigator?” Phil went on.
“I’m a private investigator. Offices on Hoover.”
I went for my wallet to get a business card. I still had a few thousand of them. They’d been given to me as payment by a job printer whose sister-in-law had stolen his 1932 Ford. I’d found her and the Ford in San Diego. It had taken me a week. She had done a bad job of disappearing with a delivery man. It’s hard for people to suddenly disappear. You have to give up everything, every tie with your past, or a good cop or private investigator with a little time will get that string on you and pull you in.
“You want to tell us what happened in your apartment tonight?” said Phil with a smirk. He did not expect the truth the first time through. I wasn’t going to disappoint him.
“I surprised three burglars going through my apartment. They overpowered me and threatened to kill me. They started to assault me when a couple of friends came by. Two of the assailants ran, and the other one pulled a gun. I threw a lamp at him after he took a couple of shots at me, and he went through the window. I can identify the other two.”
“Three guys were burgling your apartment.” Phil shook his head. “Did they get lost in the rain? Maybe they thought they were in Beverly Hills or Westwood. What the hell have you got worth stealing?”
“Well, I do have a collection of matchbook covers and …”
“Who were the two friends who came to your rescue?”
“I’m not at liberty to say. They’re sort of clients.”
Phil clasped his hands together and looked at Seidman, who looked back at his pad and pretended to write something.
“You tell me who they were or you spend some lockup time,” said Phil.
I smiled cautiously.
“You mean,” I said, “you’re not booking me for murder.”
Phil ran his hand through his steely hair and touched his slightly stubbly chin before opening the manila folder in front of him.
“The character who took a dive out of your window was Martin Langer Delamater. You’re lucky. He had a record going back to 1923. Twenty-two arrests and two convictions for everything from assault to attempted rape.”
“Did he ever hold down a paying job?” I asked.
Phil cocked his head at me.
“A couple. Bartender, mechanic, security man …”
“Where?” I asked.
Phil grinned and spoke with mock amazement:
“Well, what a coincidence. He worked at Warner Brothers for two months in 1935. You were there then, weren’t you, Toby?”
“Yes, I thought he looked familiar.”
“And he came to your apartment by chance?”
“Maybe he was after my famous matchbox collection.”
“Well,” said Phil, sighing and removing his tie as he stood, “I think you and I are going to have to have a private talk.”
“You get that down too?” I asked Seidman who, obviously, had not.
“Lieutenant,” said Seidman. It was his first word and came out with remarkable confidence. “I’d like to suggest that you finish this interrogation as soon as possible. We still have the Maloney murder and …”
Phil sat down again and nodded in semi-resignation.
“Delamater was fired from Warner’s,” Phil said, “for theft. The studio didn’t charge him, but before he went to San Quentin in ’38, we ran an investigation on his past activities, and they were happy to tell us all about it. You want more coincidences?”
“Why not?”
“Cunningham worked for Warner’s.”
“Cunningham, who’s Cunningham?” I said, looking blankly at my brother, who tried to look into my soul.
“The guy who got shot. The cute one with the bullet in his eye whose hand you were holding.”
“I thought his name was Deitch?”
Phil actually smiled slightly.
“It is,” he said. “He was using the name Cunningham, like you use Peters. And he had a job at Warner Brothers. Strange coincidence, huh?”
“Lots of people work or worked for Warner’s,” I said. “This is a movie town and that’s a big studio.”
“And,” he jumped in, “a man with a rotten fake Italian accent answering your description was seen coming out of Deitch or Cunningham’s apartment early this morning.”
I shrugged.
“Lot of people probably fit my general description. Even you.”
“Within twenty hours, you have been involved in two deaths, both of convicted felons, both of whom had worked for Warner Brothers. It’s nice to get these people off the street, but we’d like to do it legally and handle it ourselves. Now you are going to tell me what you know about all this. You’re not going to tell me stories about protecting labor leaders or surprising burglars. We’ll start with your telling me who your two witnesses are. You’re going to tell me in the next five minutes or you get locked up.”
“On what charge?”
“Obstructing justice. Disturbing the peace. Suspicion of murder. Pissing in the park.”
Seidman wrote quickly and passionlessly. My brother’s fists were red, knotted balls with white knuckles.
“I’ll have to ask my clients,” I said.
Phil pointed to the phone on his desk, and I shook my head no.
“I’ll call from a pay phone,” I went on.
“There’s one downstairs,” Phil sighed. “Seidman will take you down.”
“No. I go to an outside pay phone. Nobody listens when I call, Phil, or there’s no deal. I’ve spent nights in the lockup before. I can do it again.”
“Call me Lieutenant Pevsner. Steve, go with him and give him five minutes in the booth. No more.”
Phil looked down at his folder and began reading, or pretending to. I picked up the wire mesh tray he had thrown at me and placed it gently on the desk.
Seidman opened the door and we went out.
The outer room was a lot more active than it had been earlier this morning. A woman with curlers in her hair was sitting at a desk with her arms folded looking at the ceiling. A cop was earnestly trying to tell her that there were no grounds for holding Frank, whoever Frank was.
Two uniformed cops flanked a thin guy wearing a sweater and a big, secret smile. He was either cuckoo, on drugs or simply drunk.
“Phil’s your brother?” said Seidman, walking at my side toward the street. He nodded at the uniformed cop behind the desk in the lobby.
“Right,” I said. “We love each other.”
We went out the front door and Seidman pointed down the street. We walked. It was cool, and the sky was clear and filled with stars.
“You know about his older kid?” asked Seidman.
I said I didn’t, and he told me that David, the 10-year-old was in the hospital, a car accident. The kid was going to be all right, but it had looked bad for week or so. There had been surgery, and the whole thing was sure to
