Stuart Kaminsky - The Fala Factor

“Then that’s it,” Keaton said, stepping back and waving. “Kaiser Wilhelm.”

I drove down the dusty dirt road and watched Keaton in my rearview mirror turn and follow the dog toward the farmhouse. I found a gas station as fast as I could and used a few of the fifteen dollars to fill the tank. Then I headed back to Los Angeles.

I got back late in the afternoon and called the office. Shelly said he was busy, that the sign painters were coming in to put the names on the door, and that I had had a call from Anne.

I found some change and the number of Lyle’s house and called. Anne Lyle answered the phone.

“This is Toby Peters,” I said.

“Martin’s dead,” she said.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Why, you didn’t do it, did you?”

I could tell from the way she said it that if she wasn’t drunk, she was as close to it as a person could be without getting credit.

“I didn’t kill him,” I said. The truth was that maybe I helped to get him killed, but she was in no condition and I was in no mood to go into that.

“Police won’t tell me much,” she said. “Ha. I’m a very rich widow, Toby. You want to come on over and be nice to a very rich widow?”

“Some other time,” I said. “Anne, you didn’t kill him either.”

“I didn’t even like him,” she said. “And he knew it. Am I going to see you again?”

“Sure,” I said, but I wasn’t sure at all.

“Is that why you called?”

“I just returned your call,” I explained.

“I didn’t call you. At least I don’t remember calling you. I’ve …”

“It’s all right,” I said. “You didn’t call. I made a mistake. Take care of yourself.”

I hung up and dropped another coin in the phone. I was standing in a Rexall and a man with a cap who looked like a trucker flipped a quarter nearby and looked at me to let me know he wanted the phone. I turned my back to him and told the operator the number. It was the other Anne, the real Anne, who had called me.

My palms were wet as the phone rang. I wiped them on my pants and looked at my dark reflection in the polished wood of the phone booth.

The trucker tapped his watch. I watched him tap and waited. Finally, someone answered.

“Howard residence,” said a woman’s voice.

“Mrs. Howard,” I said. I didn’t think I would ever be able to say Mrs. Howard, but when the moment arrived, I had managed.

“Who is calling?” the woman said.

“Her husband,” I said. “Her first husband.”

“I’ll tell her you are on the phone,” the woman said, unmoved by my revelation. “And your name?”

“Toby. She won’t need the last name. Her memory will almost certainly cover that period of her life.”

The phone was put down gently and I waited, giving the trucker a shrug to show I couldn’t help the insolence and delay of others.

“Toby,” came Anne’s voice.

“It’s me,” I said.

“How have you been?” she said.

“Fine,” I told her and the trucker. “Just finished a job for Mrs. Roosevelt; the president called personally to thank me.”

“Toby,” she said in familiar exasperation, “I’m not up for your games. I never found them funny. Not then and certainly not now.”

“I know,” I agreed. “You couldn’t tell the difference between my serious moments and the comic ones.”

“Was there a difference?” she countered.

“Come on, buddy,” said the trucker, “I’ve got a call to make.”

“Anne,” I said, “you called me, remember. And I’m calling back. You told me to stay away. Okay. You got married, okay. I didn’t call to start it all again, but it comes. It just comes automatically, like a-”

“I need your help,” she said. “But I don’t want it unless you keep this on a business level.”

“No more work for Hughes,” I jumped in. “The last time I worked for him I got too little thanks, too little money, and almost killed.”

“Which was just what you wanted,” she said. She knew me too well. “It’s not Hughes. It’s Ralph, my husband. I can’t talk about it on the phone. Will you come over, please?”

“Anne,” I said, “I’ll go wherever you want me to go.”

“That’s today. It wasn’t always like that.”

She gave me the address and I pretended to write it down. I knew where she lived in Santa Monica. I had driven by there twice at night just to see the place.

“It’ll take me a while to get there,” I said. “I’ve got to stop off and pick up a report on a client.”

I hung up the phone, got out of the way of the trucker, and stood back to look down at myself while he barked at the operator.

In the next two hours, I borrowed fifty dollars from Gunther and, while Arnie worked on my car, charging me thirty for the inconvenience of having to put aside another job, I found a store and bought a new suit, shirt, and tie, and had my shoes polished.

When Arnie found I didn’t have the cash to pay him and saw that I had just gotten a complete wardrobe, he upped the price by another five.

Car shined, door fixed, sun bright, and new clothes on my back, I took a Doc Hodgdon magic pill, scratched at my itching chest, and headed for Santa Monica.

The house was on the beach, separated from its nearest neighbor by a few hundred yards. A trio of gulls swooped down to greet me as I turned and let my Ford glide down the driveway. I parked next to the three-floor white wooden house and got out to look around and give my ribs one last scratch. It was then I noticed the body on the shore and the man standing over it.

I ran down the slope and through the sand, ruining the shine on my shoes. When I was about thirty yards away I recognized both the corpse and the standing man. The corpse was my ex-wife’s husband, Ralph, and the bewildered man standing over him wearing only a gold bathing suit was the heavyweight champion of the world, Joe Louis.