Stuart Kaminsky - The Howard Hughes Affair

Phil stopped a few inches in front of me. A blue vein throbbed in his forehead. I was fascinated. He stopped dead.

“Get out,” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose.

I collected the file and its contents from the floor and put it on his desk, pocketing the photograph of the message in blood.

“Phil,” I said, looking at his back. “I’m sorry, if …”

“Just get the hell out of here. I’ll probably find your corpse somewhere in the next few days, and that’ll just add to my work load.”

A few more cops and robbers were in the squad room. It still smelled of sweat and coffee. The fat lady was telling her tale to a young uniformed cop, who listened attentively. Seidman was in a corner talking to a tall, skinny guy who kept nodding in agreement. I left, feeling pleased with myself that I had gotten something to work on.

I made phone calls from the Rexall Drug Store near the station and marked each one in my Hughes expense book. The first call was to Dean at Hughes’ Romaine office. I told him Hughes owed me for two more days work. He said he’d have it delivered to my office. Then I called Bugsy Siegel. After I convinced a guy with marbles in his mouth that Siegel knew me, he gave me the phone number of a gas station on Sunset where I could reach him. I called the station, and a guy named Moll answered. He got Siegel to the phone.

“It’s me, Peters,” I said. “You said you’d help if I had a problem. I’ve got a problem. I want everyone who was at Hughes’ party last week to be there again on Saturday at eight. Some of them might not want to come.”

“And you want to be sure they’re there, right?”

“Right,” I said.

“I already got my invitation from Hughes this morning,” Siegel said. “Give me the list, and I guarantee they’ll all be there.”

I pulled the list from my pocket and read the names and addresses to him, omitting the now deceased Major Barton. I also thought Hughes was one efficient son-of-a-bitch to get invitations out so fast.

“I’ll call Rathbone,” I said. “I’m sure he’ll come. I’m worried mostly about the Gurstwalds and your friend Norma Forney.”

I was also worried about Siegel, but I let that pass.

“The krauts will be there,” Siegel said amiably. “So will Norma. Anything else?”

“No,” I said.

He hung up. Then I called Rathbone and asked if he wanted to take a ride out to Mirador with me to talk to Schell, the butler. He said he would, so I headed to Bel Air to pick him up after taking a look at the photograph of the word in blood. It got me nowhere. My reasons for taking Rathbone were more than just to satisfy his curiosity. I figured that with him at my side, Sheriff Nelson and Alex the Deputy might be less inclined to lynch me, which is why I also agreed to let Rathbone take his car and drive.

He talked about his new Holmes movie script, and I brought him up to date on the case including my trip to Calabasas, the identification of the corpse in the dental chair, and the fact that Barton knew that corpse. I also told him about the FBI’s interest.

“Curious,” said Rathbone, who was wearing a dark suit and a white sweater. “If your skeletal friend is to be believed, he and his cohorts did not murder the man in the chair and probably did not murder Major Barton.”

“Maybe,” I said, playing my tongue against my raw cheek. “Then who did and why? I’m grinding up bodies, but I don’t know if I’m getting any closer to finding out who killed anybody or who, if anybody, took Hughes’ plans.”

“And so,” he said, “out of frustration, you set up a little gathering of suspects for Saturday night in the hope that something will happen.”

“Like Holmes,” I said, watching the telephone poles flit by.

“No,” said Rathbone, “you, like so many others, have not read the Holmes stories. Holmes did not gather the suspects. That, I think, was a creation of the American theater which Conan Doyle deplored. It is a bit of bravura and vanity which would not have been beyond Holmes, but would probably have struck him as ungentlemanly, though it is sometimes difficult to penetrate that persona so carelessly created.”

We were nearing Mirador and the turnoff. I told Rathbone about Sheriff Nelson, and he suggested I slouch down even more. I slouched, and Rathbone drove evenly down the wide main street of Mirador. Alex wasn’t at his post in the window. The yellow police Ford wasn’t in front of the station. The car door still lay in the middle of the road, but there was no cat or kid. I sat up and Rathbone drove down the road, past the Gurstwald’s and into the Hughes’ driveway.

The Mirador police car was there. I sighed and led Rathbone to the front door. Toshiro answered.

“Good to see you Peters, Mr. Rathbone. You came just in time for a problem,” he said seriously.

He turned and led us down a corridor to a big paneled door, which he slid open. It was a billiard room pretty much like any billiard room you see in the movies except for the sheriff and the deputy at the table and the corpse in the butler’s uniform lying on his back on the green cloth. I knew it was a corpse by the open eyes and the knife in his chest. That didn’t surprise me. I was used to corpses, even ones with open eyes and knives in their chest. I wasn’t even surprised by the fact that the corpse was wearing a butler’s uniform. What did surprise me was the fact that I recognized the corpse on the table. He was the skeleton who had taken me for a ride to Calabasas.

“Come right in, Mr. Peters,” Nelson said, glancing at Rathbone, whom he recognized. “Mr. Rathbone? Sir, a pleasure to meet you, even under such circumstances.”

Rathbone took his hand and looked at the corpse.

Nelson looked at the corpse as if he were trying to line up a double rail shot but didn’t know how to do it with this obstacle. Alex just stood looking at us.

“We seem to have Mirador’s first murder in a decade,” Nelson said with a false grin. He looked scared and confused. He was a man who didn’t know what to do with a corpse.

“Last murder we had was back in 1930,” he said, avoiding the immediate problem. “Wife hit her husband with a rock down at the beach after a party.”

I looked at the body.

“Victim’s name is Schell,” said Nelson. “Martin Schell, part-time butler here. Case looks pretty simple.”

“How is that, Sheriff?” said Rathbone with sincerity.

“Only two people in the house,” he said. “Cook is in a drunken heap in his room. Jap here,” he said nodding at Toshiro, “is still standing. He must have done in the butler. Fight or something.”

“If I killed him,” Toshiro said reasonably, “why would I call you?”

“Cover yourself,” he said. “Happens all the time.”

“I thought your last murder was in 1930,” I said. “That’s not all the time.”

“With apologies to Mr. Rathbone here,” Nelson said, removing his straw hat and mopping his brow, “I’m gonna have to tell you to keep your remarks to yourself, Peters. I might start asking you questions about this.”

“Sorry,” I said, “I’ve got an alibi. I just drove in from Los Angeles with Mr. Rathbone.”

“I wasn’t accusing you,” he said peevishly, “just checking all the possibilities.”

“Well you might start by calling the State police,” I suggested. “The longer that corpse lies there, the tougher it’s going to be to get any information from it. I assume you are going to call the State police to handle this, or were you going to take it on your own?”

“I was just about to have Alex call them when you came in,” Nelson said nervously. “Alex, find a phone and call the State police. Tell them there’s a murder here. Tell them.…”