Stuart Kaminsky - Murder on a Yellow Brick Road

I noticed that Fleming and Gable were Victor and Clark but Hearst was Mr. Hearst. Even Hoff realized how silly it would have sounded for him to say that Gable was at William Randolph’s or Willie’s or Bill’s.

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll be in touch.”

He gave me his home phone number in case I wanted to reach him later in the evening, and I let him hang up first.

I spent another nickel and called M.G.M. again. This time I asked for Judy Garland and gave my name. I got her on the line in about thirty seconds. She said she was finished for the day.

“The person who called you this morning and told you to go to the Oz set. You said it was a man with a high voice.”

“That’s right,” she said.

“Could it have been a midget?”

She said it could and I asked the important question.

“Did he have an accent? You know, Spanish, French, German?”

“No, no accent.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll get back to you. Tell Cassie I said hello.”

“I’ll tell her, she’s right here.” She laughed and hung up. She had a hell of a nice laugh. Either Wherthman had a helper, or someone unconnected with the murder called Judy Garland, or Wherthman was right, and he was being framed. It wasn’t evidence to go to the cops with, but it gave me a little confidence in what I was doing.

I ate my burger and headed home.

Home until a month earlier had been a walkup near downtown and my office and a long trot to the Y on Hope Street. But my former landlady had taken exception to a difficult night in which the apartment was shot up and a guy who was trying to kill me went through the window. I couldn’t blame her too much, and it wasn’t hard to move. My clothes, food, and books fit nicely into two cardboard suitcases I got for almost nothing in a pawnshop on Vermont. The pawnbroker, a guy named Hill, owed me a favor for catching a thief who was robbing him blind during the day. Cameras, radios, binoculars, watches had been missing every day at closing time. I staked myself out under a counter with a couple of sandwiches and watched the store between two boxes. The thief turned out to be the seventy-one-year-old lady who brought Hill his lunch from the deli across the street. Hill always ate standing in the store so he wouldn’t lose business. She did all her grabbing on the way out, dropping things into the shopping bag she used to deliver Hill’s food. She hadn’t resold or used any of the stuff. She had just stolen it for the excitement. It was piled up in her room down the street. Hill had paid me, but four hours under that counter with my bad back had me laid up in bed for a week. He felt guilty, and I used that guilt to get things from him, like the suitcases and the. 38 automatic owned and never used. It was the second. 38 I got from Hill. The first one had been taken by the cops after a guy took it from me and killed a couple of people with it.

That was old business. New business was the place I was living in on Long Beach Boulevard near Slauson. It was small and cheap, partly because the place had the smell of fast decline. It was one of a series of two-room, one story wooden structures L.A. management people called bungalows. To people passing by, the place looked like a motor court that had lost its license and sign. Paint was peeling from all the houses in the court like the skin from a sunburned, aging actress. Like the actress, the bungalows were functional, but not particularly appealing. When it rained, the ground in front of my place became a swamp. The furnished furnishings were faded and the shower didn’t work, but it had a great advantage: It was cheap. Jeremy Butler, the poetic wrestler who owned my office building, also owned this place and suggested that I move in and keep an eye on the property for him. In return, I paid practically nothing in rent. A few days earlier I had paid with a sore stomach when I caught a kid trying to break into one of the bungalows at night. The kid had butted me with his head and taken off. His head had hit the point where I had recently taken a bullet, and the wound had just barely scarred when the kid hit it.

When I pulled the Buick in front of my place, it was about four in the afternoon. The Sante Fe moaned, rattling the walls, and I went inside, kicking off my shoes at the door. Through the thin walls I could hear a couple with hillbilly accents arguing, but I couldn’t make out the words.

I ran the water in the bath full blast. Full blast meant it would be about three-quarters full in half an hour. The half hour was spent getting coffee and pouring myself a big bowl of Quaker Puffed Wheat with a lot of sugar. I finished the Puffed Wheat while I took a bath and read the comics. It was the day before Sadie Hawkin’s Day, but I was sure Li’l Abner would be all right. I ran through Mary Worth’s Family and Tarzan, and got happy for Dick Tracy. He said he was going on vacation.

I put on a pair of shorts, plopped on my bed, and listened to the radio for about an hour with my eyes closed. By a few minutes after six, I was dressed in my second suit and ready to go. Such was the domestic life of Toby Peters, which suited me just fine most of the time.

The hillbilly couple were still arguing when I left, but they weren’t breaking anything so I ignored them and got into my Buick. When I was a kid, my father and brother and I always named our cars. Since my dad’s car was always a heap, we needed a new one every year or so. I remember one was called Valentino, a Model A Ford. I’d thought about naming the Buick, but nothing seemed right for it. I decided to ask Butler. As a poet, he might have some ideas. I took Long Beach to Washington and went up Normandie heading for Wilshire.

It was on a stretch of Normandie near some factories that the bullet missed my head. The street was pretty well deserted, but a car pulled up behind me and gave me the horn to get out of the way. I didn’t even look in the rear view mirror. As the car passed, my neck began to itch, and I started to turn. The bullet went through the driver’s side window near my nose and right out the opposite window. I hit the brakes, held the wheel and ducked down below the door. My tires hit something and the Buick spun around and stopped. I didn’t have my. 38 with me. I crouched over, listened for a few seconds to be sure the other car had gone. When I sat up, the street was clear and the sun was still shining. The holes in both windows were small, but they sent out rays like the sun in a kid’s drawing. I rolled the windows open so no one would ask about the holes.

Then, I headed back to my place and got my. 38. It was getting late for my meeting with Victor Fleming, but I needed some solid reassurance. It could simply have been a nut. There are plenty of nuts in Los Angeles, especially kids who are looking for dangerous thrills. There is something about the monotony of L.A. that sometimes drives people mad. Maybe it’s coming to the ocean and finding there is no place further to take your life. It was also possible that an enemy had been laying for me. I had a few old enemies and some recent ones. It was also possible that it had something to do with the dead Munchkin. That seemed just as wild, since I didn’t know anything the cops didn’t know. Or did I? I went over everything in my head as I drove, keeping my eyes open for another attack. I came up with one idea. Late or not, I had to check it out. I stopped at a gas station and called my office while a guy with a Brooklyn Dodgers cap and an old, grey sweater gave me half a buck’s worth.

Shelly was still in the office. He wanted to talk about his root canal, but I didn’t have the time and he sounded a little hurt.

“You had a call, Toby,” he said, accepting temporary defeat. “A guy with a high voice. Said he wanted to hire you and had to get to you fast. So I gave him your address. Did he find you?”