Stuart Kaminsky - He Done Her Wrong

“How bad was he?”

“Nothing terrible, really,” sighed Winning. “A few situations in which he had to be removed by the police from Cecil B. De Mille’s house. One confrontation with Joe Louis.”

“Joe Louis? What did he have-”

“That was never quite clear to us,” Winning said, showing a trace of puzzlement. “Ressner said something about Joe Louis as a performer of … but it wasn’t clear.”

“Mae West,” I said.

“What?” he gasped.

“Has Ressner ever had any contact with Mae West?” I said.

“You surprised me with that,” he said. “Miss West appeared at the institute last year. She is very interested in the problems of the mentally ill, among other things. Ressner met her and tried to talk to her. We had to pull him away. He grew more and more animated, insisting that she could help his career. How did you know …?”

“I think he contacted her,” I explained, starting to tear the corner off the envelope. “Bad scene at her place night before last, Dr. Winning. I think your Mr. Ressner is dangerous. I think you should call in the cops.”

Winning’s already pale face grew even more pale.

“No, no. Not if it can be helped. He’s never done anything really violent and the embarrassment to the institute, his family, our … I’d rather avoid it if at all possible.”

“He tried to turn me into diced ham,” I said, inserting my finger under the letter flap.

“Mr. Peters,” Winning stood, leaning both hands on my desk. It put him above me, looking down, which might have worked on difficult patients or their relatives, but only resulted in my turning a near smirk in his direction. “Our institute does some fine work. One of our new patients, for example, should the family so decide, will be Kermit Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt’s son. It can do us no good to have the police brought in followed by the newspapers talking about escaped lunatics and … you can see my point.”

“My fee, Dr. Winning, is thirty bucks a day plus expenses, plus three percent over expenses to cover paperwork. I’ll take the case for four days. If I don’t have him by then, we take it to the cops. Agreed?”

Winning sat again.

“Perhaps we can discuss it if you haven’t found him in four days?”

We were bargaining for pennies.

“Sure,” I agreed. “I’ll call you at the institute if I haven’t got a line on him by Monday, but it’ll just be to let you know that it’s time to go to the cops. Deal?”

Winning touched his chin with his right hand, shrugged, and said, “It is a deal.”

“I’ll need fifty dollars up front,” I said. He pulled out his wallet and fished for the fifty in tens and ones while I glanced at the invitation to my wife’s wedding in two days.

I took the bills from Winning, stuffed them in my wallet, and pulled a pad of paper out of my top drawer. The top sheet had my doodle of cubes attached to cubes. I ripped it off, wrote a receipt, handed the sheet to him, and he fished out and handed me a business card, white, clean, embossed in silver, in hard-to-read script.

“Call me at any time of the day or night,” he said, rising and snapping his briefcase closed. “If my secretary or I do not answer, please keep trying. The institute is a rather busy place, and I spend little actual time in my office.”

I looked down at my invitation to a wedding and then at the psychiatrist.

“You married, doc?”

“I was,” he said, looking at me as if I might be a suitable case for treatment. “My duties proved to take more time and attention than my wife could accept.”

“I know how it is,” I said. “My wife’s getting remarried in two days.”

“Would you like to give me the fifty dollars back and talk about it for a few hours,” he said with a smile.

“No, I think I’ll hold on to the cash and try to work it out myself. Is that what you guys get? Twenty-five bucks an hour?”

“You can get less expensive help,” he said, “but it’s not always as good.”

“Forget it. You have any information on Ressner I might be able to use? A photo?” I said, unable to look up from the invitation.

“Right on your desk, in that folder, but no photo,” Winning said softly.

I hadn’t noticed him putting the folder there.

“I’ll be in touch,” I said with a nod and a look toward Winning, who had walked to the door and had his hand on the knob. He was looking beyond my eyes for something deeper, but I had dropped the shades. Winning gave up, opened the door, and let in the sound of Shelly scraping away and singing, “Where nobody cares for me, sugar’s sweet, so is she.” Then he was gone, and I was alone with my invitation and last week’s Life .

I read the thin file Winning had dropped on my desk. Winning had been a sweet break. I was going for Ressner anyway, for myself, for Mae West, and for Phil. Getting paid for it would be nice.

There was no likely Ressner in the L.A. directory. Same was true of the valley towns. Nothing in the files helped much except for a reference to Ressner’s former wife. Her name was now Grayson. Which reminded me-Anne Mitzenmacher Peters would soon be Anne Howard.

I couldn’t find a Jeanette Grayson in any of the directories, but that didn’t surprise me much. The phone, if it was listed, would be in her husband’s name, and there were too damn many Graysons to start that. The file had no address or phone number for her. So, I looked up at my favorite crack in the white wall of my office, followed it to the corner, and picked up the phone.

Phil wasn’t in, but his partner, Sergeant Steve Seidman, a silent cadaver of a man, asked if he could help. I said no and told him to have Phil call back. Then I waited.

At first I searched for letters to write. There weren’t any. I doodled cubes and tried to find a position on the chair that didn’t make my back worse. Then I looked out the window at the alley and watched a pair of rummies heading toward the Farraday. I lost sight of them below. I would have forgotten them if I didn’t hear something like metal against concrete. I pried open the window and leaned out to see the two bums prying off my hubcaps.

My.38 was in the glove compartment. Even if I had it, I wouldn’t have fired even a warning shot. I don’t shoot well enough. I’d probably kill one of them, put another hole in my car, or fill an innocent passerby with dread and lead. I grabbed a bronze paperweight shaped like Alcatraz and shouted down.

“Drop those caps and run like hell,” I yelled. “Or I’ll bomb you clear to Burbank.”

“Drop them,” I shouted, “or …”

I heaved Alcatraz out the window and watched it turn over three or four times before hitting the roof of my car, bouncing and crashing through the rear window. The bums, thinking that they were being bombed by God, dropped the caps and ran. One cap spun like a top. The other rolled back toward the car and leaned against it.

That’s when the phone rang.

“You think you’ve got troubles,” I said to whoever was on the other end.

“Can the crap, Tobias,” came Phil’s weary voice. “What do you want?”

“Help,” I said.

He didn’t answer.

“With the job we talked about,” I went on.

“What do you need?” he said quietly.

“I’ve got to find a woman in the Los Angeles area named Grayson, first name Jeanette. I think she’s married to someone with money. Her ex-husband is probably the looney who went after Mae West.”

“You at your office?” he said.

“Yeah, I’m at my office. Anne’s getting married Sunday.”

He didn’t say anything, just breathed heavy.

“Sunday,” I repeated.

“What do you want me to say?” he finally sighed. “She knows what she’s doing. It’s your own fault. You’ve heard it all. Get off the phone and let me see if I can get this for you.”