“I’ll tell you anyway. It’s Peters. I’m a private investigator, and I was following that man. He’s involved in a murder.”
“Jesus,” sighed Burt, “you don’t give up, do you?”
“My identification is in my wallet, in my pocket.” I reached for the wallet.
“Don’t prove anything,” Burt replied, as I pulled out the wallet. “Might all be fake.”
“Burt, you are going to find out in about twenty minutes that I have been telling you the truth because no state troopers are coming back here. The trouble is that when you apologize it will be too late, and I’ll have to try to find that man in Los Angeles, which is not easy.”
“Talk all you want, mister, just don’t move.”
I sat forward. Two minutes or so had passed since Beaumont went to the door. I looked around the room at the furniture and a tire company calendar on the wall. I leaned forward with my head in my hands, but I wasn’t relaxing. Burt was going to have a hell of a time standing over me at attention, but in a few more minutes it wouldn’t matter. Beaumont would be so far gone that I might as well just wait it out.
A car pulled into the gas station outside. Burt heard it first. He was used to the ocean. He turned his head toward the door, unsure of what to do. I ran at him head down. His arm with the chisel was up.
My head hit him in the stomach, and the chisel went flying. Burt was gulping for air and holding his stomach with both hands when I straightened up. I considered hitting him to be sure he’d stay off my back, but I didn’t have the time or the desire. Beaumont was simply a better liar than I was a teller of truth. His whole career had been built on convincing people that he was someone else. My career was based on convincing people that I was a responsible character named Toby Peters.
I ran through the weeds to the station and my car. The hood was up. I slammed it closed and jumped in. An old lady in a DeSoto tried to tell me she wanted two dollars worth of gas. I ignored her and took off.
Burt staggered out of the shack as I pulled away. The old lady tried to get him to listen to her order, but he was following me out into the road.
Beaumont had a good enough start on me to beat me back with no race now. But I still had a possible ace. He might feel confident enough of his performance to think that there was no hurry. He might even stay inside the speed limit. I pushed my Buick over the limit, put my foot to the floor and felt it rattle as I began passing law- abiding citizens.
Within ten minutes I saw the Caddy in front of me. We were alone on a stretch between rocks. Beaumont spotted me around a turn, and I figured him to try to outdistance me. Beaumont had something to hide, and from the way he was acting, it probably was something he had in the car with him. It might be too much cash or a gun of mine or a negative.
I was wondering about who he had called, back at the shack, when I lost sight of him for a second or two behind a turn. When I came through the turn and could see around the formation of rock, he was gone.
I braked and pulled over. A cloud of dust was settling a few dozen yards ahead. I could see a small road. I got back in my car and moved forward. I turned up the road slowly and heard an engine go mad in front of me.
Beaumont’s Caddy was coming back down the narrow road toward me, and he was coming fast. We were going to hit head on, and the momentum, if not good sense, was on his side. I threw the Buick in reverse and started back. Before I turned to look at the road I could see Beaumont’s face under the trooper’s cap. He was not in a friendly mood.
I didn’t know if anything was coming down the highway, but I didn’t have time to worry about it. Going as fast as I could in reverse, I shot across the two-lane strip.
A small truck barely missed me, and I went backwards off the road and hit my brakes. Beaumont skidded behind the truck and looked back at me.
One of my wheels was spinning over the edge of a drop into the ocean. If Beaumont turned around and rammed me even gently, I’d go over. He might have had it in mind, but the truck that had barely missed me stopped about fifty yards ahead, and the driver got out.
I kept spinning my wheels. The truck driver had his hands on his hips and was yelling back at us. Beaumont decided to forget the ram and head toward L.A. and his secret meeting. The truck driver hurled some great quotes down the road and left.
The Buick wouldn’t move forward. I gunned it, coaxed it, and cursed it, but it wouldn’t move.
I got out and walked in the direction of Los Angeles. About a mile down I found a truck stop. I had a cup of coffee and waited for a guy in the garage to take a tow truck out and pull me off the ledge.
The guy in the tow truck talked all the time, but I didn’t listen. My mind was on Harry Beaumont. I didn’t even think of the case or the money. I just wanted to sink my fists into that man’s face. When I was a kid, I used to break the wishbone with my brother on Thanksgiving and wish for a million bucks or a Tris Speaker baseball glove. I daydreamed that I had the long part of that bone, and I wished for Beaumont in front of me. The wish kept me going all the way back to Los Angeles.
10
Finding Beaumont among the million and a half people in Los Angeles was not as easy as I hoped it would be. I should have figured he would find a hole. Holes were easy to find in Los Angeles, the largest municipality in the world. The city was really 451 square miles of suburbs loosely strung together. The original Spanish name for this mass was appropriately ponderous: El Pueblo de Neustra Senora La Reina de Los Angeles de Porciuncula. The studio had only one address for Beaumont, the one in Beverly Hills. I called Brenda Beaumont. The Mexican maid said she wasn’t home. She said Lynn Beaumont wasn’t home either.
I had a burger at the Carpenter’s Drive-In sandwich stand on Sunset. The waitress was a skinny woman with a fake smile.
Then, I headed for Dayton Way in Beverly Hills. My idea was simple; scare the shit out of Brenda Beaumont and get her to give me a lead on her husband.
It was still light when I pulled up in front of the gate of the Beaumont house. But I didn’t stop. There was a white ’39 Cadillac in the driveway. Harry Beaumont was home. I parked about fifty yards down in the shade of a short palm. Beaumont came out in about five minutes. He was wearing a white suit and an angry scowl.
Following him in traffic was easy. He was a lousy driver, easy to anticipate, and he had no idea he was being followed. We drove back to Hollywood, or what’s called Hollywood. Hollywood isn’t a separate place but a district in the city on the foothill slopes of the Santa Monica mountains. The movie studios aren’t even located there, except for Columbia. When Beaumont pulled into a parking lot on Franklin off of Hollywood Boulevard, I turned into a small lot on the other side of the street. The old guy in the lot was wearing a blue uniform that didn’t fit. He looked like an ancient kid playing policeman. I handed him my keys and a five-dollar bill and hurried back to the street. Beaumont came out a few seconds after I did and went into one of those buildings that couldn’t make up its mind if it was a hotel or an apartment.
The place was called “Aloha Palms,” but there were no palms. There was a kind of lobby with a desk. Beaumont bypassed the desk and the man behind it and went for the stairs.
My suit was new, my stomach was full, and I was anxious to meet Harry Beaumont in a nice quiet place for a talk. I walked into the lobby of the “Aloha Arms” slowly, looking around as if everything had a slight odor. The guy at the desk pretended not to see me. He went on listening to Baby Snooks on his radio. He was young and skinny, with plastered down hair and a bad complexion. He also looked a bit stupid. I flashed my tin, a private investigator’s badge I bought for a quarter three years earlier.
“Pevsner,” I said, “Homicide.” I leaned forward over the desk. Fanny Brice had just finished playing bridge with Robespierre, her little brother. She had placed him between two chairs and walked over him. The clerk didn’t smile. I didn’t smile.
“Yes, sir,” he said.
“Man who just walked in here,” I whispered, “who is he, and what room is he in?”
“Mr. Simmons is in Apartment Fourteen.” He touched a pimple.
“Did he kill somebody?”
“Sorry, I can’t talk about it. Does he have many visitors?”
