landing ring. I ran past him to beat Mrs. Plaut in case she might be hovering around. I caught it on the third ring.
“Hello,” I said, “Mrs Plaut’s boarding house.”
“Toby Peters, please,” said a man’s voice I had heard somewhere but couldn’t place.
“You’re talking to him,” I said.
“You have been making some inquiries about me,” he said. “I don’t like that at all. I would prefer that you stop.”
“I can’t stop, Marty,” I said. “I’ve got a client. Why don’t we just get together and talk it over. I’ve got some questions about who scrubbed Doc Olson and his wife, who the lady pretending to be Mrs. Olson was, and what you have to do with a hulk named Bass.”
“I was afraid you wouldn’t listen,” he said patiently. “But I wanted to give you the opportunity. What happens next will be your responsibility, not mine.”
“Is that the way it works? You drop the bomb and if I don’t get out of the way, it’s my fault?”
“Something like that,” he said.
“Give back the dog and I stop looking,” I said. “Maybe I don’t care who gave Olson and his wife a bath.”
“You care,” he said. “I know that sound in your voice. We have nothing further to discuss. You have my sincere warning and, if it will do any good, you have my assurance that what I have done has been for the security of our country.”
“And which country is that?” I said.
“The United States of America,” he answered and hung up.
8
No one tried to kill me on Sunday morning, but then again I didn’t try to find Martin or the fake Mrs. Olson. I read the L.A. Times over a couple of bowls of Wheaties and a cup of coffee. I went right for the funnies after finding out that the Japanese were a few miles from the Chinese border. Dixie Dugan, Mickey Finn, Texas Slim, and Dirty Dalton kept me company through breakfast. I had to wait for the bathroom because Joe Hill the mailman was taking a bath, but some time after ten I got in, shaved, washed, and made ready.
I was dressing in my room when Mrs. Plaut burst in with a bundle in her arms. She paid no attention to my near nudity and plopped the bundle on the sofa.
“Found this on the doorstep this a.m.,” she said.
“Thanks,” I said, getting into my pants. She just stood there in her blue paisley dress and waited. There would be no getting rid of her till her curiosity was satisfied. I started to put on my shirt.
“I’m late for church,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said, getting my second arm in and moving to the bundle without buttoning up. TOBY PETERS was printed on the outside of the brown paper wrapper in neat letters. I pulled off the string and found my neatly pressed suit, the one I had traded with Doc Olson. The torn sleeve had been neatly repaired. Lying on top of the suit was a card on which was written in what looked like a feminine hand:
“It’s your suit,” said Mrs. Plaut, disappointed.
“I’m sorry it’s nothing more exciting,” I apologized, and Mrs. Plaut left in disgust.
For about an hour I sat making notes and trying to sort the case out. Nothing came so I finished dressing, hung my suit in the closet, and went out into the late morning with a book under my arm. The sun was bright and the two little girls who lived next door to Mrs. Plaut were throwing a ball against Mrs. Plaut’s steps.
“My mother says you’re a criminal,” said the younger girl. She was about eight and wore pigtails. There were blue ribbons in her pigtails.
The older girl, about ten, looked embarrassed, and whispered, “Gussie, no.”
“I’m a private detective,” I said.
“My mother said you kill people,” the girl went on, looking up at me.
“Only them what needs killing, little lady,” I said in my best Harry Carey. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got my work to do.”
My work consisted of a run up to Burbank with some worry about how much gas might be left in my gaugeless tank. Rationing was soon going to officially cut me to five or six gallons a week. I knew I could get more through Arnie, but I wasn’t sure I could pay the price.
Jeremy was parked halfway down the block where he could keep his eye on the stairs leading up to Jane Poslik’s apartment. I parked behind him and walked over to lean through the window and hand him the Robert Frost poems and the paper bag I had stopped for on the way.
“Tea, hard rolls, and some poetry,” I said, handing him the bag. “Your favorite.”
“You are very thoughtful, Toby,” he said, laying aside the pad of paper he had been writing on and taking the book and the package.
“Right, very thoughtful. I send you out on a Sunday morning to wait for the Frankenstein monster and I go off for dinner with the family,” I said.
“Sunday is like any other day to me, Toby. It holds no special significance. The sun is warm. I am relaxed and this is a good place to work and to read. Forget your guilt. Would you like a roll?”
I declined and he told me that Jane Poslik had gone out an hour earlier to pick up a newspaper but was now safely back in her apartment. No one had come or gone.
“I’ll relieve you this evening,” I said.
“I would prefer,” Jeremy put in, examining the first roll, “that you devote your time to finding the person who threatens this woman. That would be more effective than protecting her at the point of her greatest vulnerability. It’s a simple principle of wrestling.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll keep at it.”
When I arrived at my brother’s small house on Bluebelle in North Hollywood, it was about three. Lucy greeted me at the door, her hands behind her back probably concealing her padlock. Nate and Dave, my nephews, were seated in the small dining room playing with toy soldiers. Nate was almost fourteen and Dave about eleven. I picked Lucy up carefully to avoid hidden locks and said hi to the boys.
“Uncle Tobe,” Nate called. He touched something in front of him and a toothpick flew across the table mowing down a lead soldier. Dave groaned.
“How’s it going, Huey and Dewey?” I said, pinching Lucy’s nose gently.
“Okay,” said Nate. “I’m smashing him. He’s the Nazis.”
“No I’m not, Nate. You’re the Nazis.”
Ruth came in, skinny, tired, with tinted blond hair that wouldn’t stay up and a gentle smile.
“Toby, you’re early,” she said.
“I’ll go away and come back,” I said, starting to put Lucy down.
“No, Uncle Toby,” Dave said.
Phil came through the front door, a package in his arms, and grunted at me.
“Take this and put it on the kitchen table. Make yourself useful.”
I put Lucy down, took the package, and went into the kitchen.
“How’s Seidman?” I said over my shoulder.
“Minck almost killed him,” Phil said, following me in after picking up his daughter, who stuck her finger in his hairy ear. “He has a hell of an infection. An oral surgeon at the university is taking care of him. Steve may kill that dirty dentist when he gets out of the hospital.”
The rest of the afternoon went fine. Lucy clipped me once on the shoulder with a wooden toy. We listened to a baseball game on Nate’s short wave. The Red Sox snapped a thirteen-game Cleveland winning streak, 8–4, in Boston. Charlie Wagner was the winning pitcher. Bobby Doerr had three hits. Pesky picked up a couple and Ted Williams had one. Foxx and DiMaggio were blanked. Nate, a Red Sox fan, was happy.
Ruth had made turkey, salad, iced tea, and a jello mold with little pieces of pineapple in it.
“Remember when I used to think you killed people every day,” Dave said after dinner. “That was dumb. No
