Stuart Kaminsky - He Done Her Wrong

“Used to work in the estuary down near San Luis,” Dot told no one in particular as he took his pipe out and looked into the bowl before returning it to the corner of his mouth.

There is no end to the eccentricity of this world, I observed silently waiting for Gunther, who finally came on after a scraping of the chair in the hall on which he always stood to cope with the phone.

“This is Gunther Wherthman here,” he said with his usual accent and dignity.

“This is Toby, Gunther. I’ve had a slight accident.”

“Toby, are you all right?”

“I’m O.K. Can you come and get me? I’ll tell you where I am. What did Mrs. Plaut mean about the cops looking for me?”

“You are, it seems wanted for interrogation concerning the murder of a Mr. Grayson. I heard through the door. As you know I am not fond of the Los Angeles police.” He paused politely and waited for my next question.

“Was my brother one of the cops who came?”

“That is correct,” he said.

I gave him directions and spent the next hour and ten minutes playing poker with Dot, who took me for four bucks and informed me that he would use the money to go into town and see Veronica Lake in This Gun for Hire .

“She gets kissed by Robert Preston,” he said, his eyes glazing over with the look he reserved for Sergeant York and Veronica Lake.

“I’ll have to catch it,” I said.

When Gunther arrived, I picked up my package, thanked Dot, petted Thomas, and got into the car next to Gunther. Gunther’s Olds was equipped with built-up pedals so he could reach them.

“Little fella,” said Dot, pointing at Gunther with his pipe.

“I hadn’t noticed,” I said, and we pulled into the night heading back to L.A.

The next morning I got up early, had some coffee and the Wheaties, and put on my last suit, a brown wool that looked reasonably good if you didn’t get too close. Since it was Sunday, I couldn’t get my milk-smelling suit cleaned and the button sewed on, and I couldn’t contact Arnie to try to make a deal on the ’38 Ford before the price went up again. Dot had remembered to take the license plates off the old Buick and drop them in the box with the other goodies.

A call to the Wilshire District Police Station told me that Phil was in and working. Crime doesn’t stop on Sunday. In fact, Saturday night is usually enough to make Sunday a cop’s daymare.

No backache. No major bruises. I decided to walk the three miles and take in the California sea air, but by the time f hit Fairfax, the rain had started. I ducked into a doorway and looked for a cab. The streets were not quite empty, but Sunday mornings are not carnival time in Los Angeles. Everybody always seems to be someplace else. Too much land too spread out to absorb us all, but the war was helping make up for it by sending thousands in every day. Common sense would have had it the other way. The coast was the most vulnerable part of the States to Japanese attack. The Japanese were warning us every few days that they were coming. Maybe the bombing of Tokyo last week would give them something else to think about, maybe it wouldn’t.

What brought people were the jobs. Soldiers, sailors, and marines shipped out from the coast. The fleet was always coming to San Diego. The big money was in the armed forces, and the jobs were where the big money was.

California was having a love affair with men in uniform. They could drink, shout, maim, and abuse, usually one another, and they’d be forgiven like cute three-year-olds. Civilian guilt paved the way until their time ran out and they had to get on those ships and sail to hell island.

The men in uniform who weren’t having a great time in L.A. were the cops. By the time I caught a cab and got to the station, the rain was slowing down. A quartet of uniformed cops stood at the top of the stone steps trying to decide if they should go out into the streets, dampen their uniforms and spirits, and look for the bad guys, who were too damned easy to find.

I went in and nodded at the desk sergeant, an old-timer named Coronet, who nodded back. A sailor was sleeping on the wooden bench against the wall.

“Got rolled,” said Coronet, nodding at the kid. “Swears it was two guys and Jean Harlow. I told him Harlow’s dead. And if she weren’t, why would she roll a sailor?”

“Could have been someone who looked like Harlow?” I said.

Coronet shook his shaggy white head wisely and offered me a stick of Dentyne. I stuck it in my jacket pocket. He unwrapped his and began to chew.

“Naw,” he said. “That makeup, the whole ambience is out of touch.”

“Ambience?” I repeated.

“Heard it on ‘Believe It or Not’ last night,” Coronet nodded. “Very educational show. You should catch it.”

“I will,” I said and went up the twenty creaking brown stairs through the often-kicked wooden door at the top and into the squad room. As it always did, the room smelled of food, humanity, and stale smoke.

Business was booming. Fat Sergeant Veldu sat at his desk with one salami hand in the ample hair of a Mexican kid. Veldu was holding the kid’s face inches from his own and whispering. The kid looked scared. I couldn’t hear what Veldu whispered because there was too much going on.

Two women dressed for a big night out were sitting on a bench in the corner, smoking and talking as if they were waiting for the maitre d’ to lead them to a seat at the Cafe La Male. One of the women, a blond, had a black and purple eye. The other woman had a thick bandage over her ear.

The blond laughed and said over the noise, “You should have bit it off.”

Next to them a ragbag wino in a long coat was looking through Veldu’s wastebasket. Veldu reached back without taking his hand from the Mexican kid or moving his eyes and coshed the ragbag with his free hand. The ragbag sat up.

My least favorite detective in the solar system, John Cawelti, was sipping coffee and playing with a pencil while he listened to someone on the phone, who didn’t give him a chance to speak. Cawelti’s checked jacket was off, and his shoulder holster rested comfortably over his heart. As always, except for one time when Jeremy Butler had shaken him up, Cawelti’s black hair was plastered down and parted in the middle as if he were about to try out for tenor in a barbershop quartet. He looked up and saw me. I smiled at him. It was love at first sight. Then he made the little gesture that cemented our relationship, and I mouthed “Same to you” and winked. He glared for a few seconds more, jabbed his pencil into his desk, and turned away.

Two uniformed cops were standing over a seated guy built like a Norwegian tanker. He tried to stand but they pushed him back. He paused, blank-faced, tried to stand again, and the cops pushed him down again. Neither side seemed to be enjoying the game. I could see why the cops didn’t want him to get to his feet. He was a dead ringer for heavyweight contender Tami Mauriello.

I spotted Seidman in the corner sitting on his desk going through some papers and made my way to him over bums, through bruisers, ladies of last night, cops, and piles of paper.

He didn’t bother to look up. He had cops’ eyes and knew when I’d stepped into the squad room.

“Usually we have to go out and find you,” he said in his dead, even voice, which matched his complexion. “We changing the rules?”

“I’m getting older and mellower, Steve,” I said, sitting next to him on the desk and trying to read with him. He put the papers down, folded his arms over his thin chest, and looked at me.

“So am I, Toby,” he said. “And I’ve been up all night. So has Phil. Now if you go into his office and get him riled up and I have to come in and make peace, I may move a little slower than usual. You may not be lucky. Give it a rest. There’s a war on.”