Stuart Kaminsky - Murder on a Yellow Brick Road

The phone stopped ringing. He had answered it. I put my ear to the door and heard venom spit from his mouth as he said, “Thanks, you mental cripple. He’s here now. Yes, he’s my brother, but how about calling me when they’re down there so I can decide if I want to see them or not. That’s what I pay for.” He hung up.

I pulled away from the door as small footsteps moved toward it. The door opened, and I saw the smallest human I’d ever seen. Wherthman would have stood a head taller if they were side by side. I noticed that, like Wherthman, he was well proportioned. He didn’t look deformed in any way, but he sounded it.

He let out a stream of “fucks” and “assholes” and some colorful additional things about sex and bowel movement. It was a small education.

Peese wore a fancy white embroidered shirt and a soft sweater. I would have spent more time looking at him, but I noticed something else as we stepped into a large room. All of the furniture was scaled down to his size. A door was opened in the wall and I could see into the bedroom. It, too, was scaled down.

He turned and sat in a small dark armchair. His face was childlike, but there was ancient anger on it. He was one of the small, bitter people of the world. Some of them are six feet tall, but their palms sweat; they keep their heads low and turn them only briefly upward as they pass you with the sneer of the cornered animal unsure of whether to bite or cry. He lit a cigar and said, “Sit down.”

I wasn’t sure where to sit. The couch was too small and the little table in the room too fragile looking. He watched my awkward search for a perch and smiled viciously. He puffed at the full size cigar and leaned back.

“You don’t get many full size visitors?” I asked, deciding to sit on the floor. The carpet was dark green and soft enough.

“I get them all sizes,” he said.

“I get it,” I went on, placing my hat on the floor and my back against the wall. “You like full-sized people to feel awkward and clumsy in here.”

“You’re a smart man, Penis,” he said with a grin.

“The name’s Peters, John Franklin. Remember it and I’ll remember not to step on you,” I said, returning the grin. Wherthman had told me that my brother Phil had used that line on him. It had done wonders to ruin Wherthman’s disposition. I wished the same on Peese, but I didn’t get it.

“Well,” he said puffing away, “I feel awkward most of the time in your houses, your buildings. I enjoy having people like you feel foolish.”

He had a point, but I wasn’t going to start giving him points.

“I do keep a few bloated chairs for friends,” he said. Since he didn’t run to a closet to fetch a chair, I assumed I wasn’t in the elite company of his friends. But, after all, we had just met.

“It’s been pleasant getting acquainted with you, John Franklin, and I hate to cut off this stimulating conversation, but I have a few questions.”

“I don’t have any answers,” he puffed. The room was getting smokey and smelled like leftover cow’s breath. I wanted to get out as fast as I could.

“Let’s try,” I said, shifting my weight on the floor. “Why did you kill Cash?”

A cloud of smoke cleared, and I could see his eyes. I wondered if I could defend myself against a knife attack from him while seated on the floor. No knife came out.

“I didn’t kill him,” said Peese. “Didn’t know he was dead. Sorry to hear it.”

“You sound like you’ll never recover from the shock.”

“I’ll get over it,” he answered.

We made a fair act, but I wasn’t sure which of us was Bergen and which was Charlie McCarthy.

“What business were you in with Cash?” I tried.

“We weren’t. I knew him.”

“What business are you in?” I pushed on. He didn’t answer. I wanted to go flat on my back, but that would have made me too vulnerable. “This is a pretty nice place. You live in a fancy hotel, bring in your own furniture, smoke big cigars, wear fancy clothes. A few months ago you were cadging nickels to make the rent in a Main Street flop. Moving up in the world, ain’t you, Rico?”

His face turned red, but it wasn’t going to be that easy to get him. He was still talking, which meant maybe that he knew something. He might be my man or one of them.

“I do some acting,” he said, leaning back and blowing a cloud in my direction.

“Pays real nice, doesn’t it? What’ve you been acting in? Oz finished shooting over a year ago, and that didn’t make you rich.”

He squirmed a little, but not much.

“I don’t have to give you a list of credits,” he said. “You got better questions?”

“You got better answers? What about the fights you had with Cash?” I stood up. I’d lost the battle to try to appear comfortable. He could have that one.

“Who says we fought?” Peese shouted. “We were pals. We didn’t fight.”

“You don’t seem all broken up over the death of your pal,” I said, hovering over him. He looked up, but he didn’t look scared, just mad.

“Who said I fought with Cash?” he insisted.

“Wherthman. Gunther Wherthman,” I said.

He laughed and pointed his cigar at me.

“What would you expect him to say? He’s trying to put the murder rap on someone else and picked me. He didn’t like Cash, and he doesn’t like me.”

It was my turn to smile.

“Why would Wherthman want to put the rap on you?” I asked innocently, just oozing with curiosity.

“Because the cops know he did it,” said Peese through his teeth.

“Where’d you hear that?”

“You told me when you were out in the fucking hall.”

I said no, and he tried again.

“I must have heard it on the radio or read it in the papers.”

I said no again.

“That’s all I’ve got to say,” Peese said, standing. “Now get out and don’t come back, and if you tell the cops anything about what I said, I’ll swear you made it up.”

I started toward the door and tried one more trick.

“Someone else saw you arguing with Cash,” I said. “Saw you Friday morning at Metro just before Cash was killed. Identified you.”

“Who?” he demanded, grabbing my sleeve. I looked down with my best serious face.

“A guy named Grundy, a photographer,” I said. “Identified you right down to your angelic voice.”

Peese exploded and stamped on the floor. He reminded me of a childhood picture of Rumpelstilskin. I thought he was going to put his foot into the ceiling of Apartment 809.

“That double-crossing bastard!” he shouted. “That muscle freak is lying.”

“Be seeing you,” I said, opening the door. He rushed at me and threw a punch at my groin as I turned to wave to him. The punch hit me in the stomach, and I tumbled back into the hall on my back. He slammed the door. There wasn’t much I could do about it. I’d come up with some information, but I’d paid for it by being laid out by a midget.

My wind came back slowly after three or four good gasps. Then I went to the door to listen. I could hear Peese asking the telephone operator for a number. I couldn’t make out the number he asked for. We both waited for what must have been a dozen rings. Peese hung up with a bang, and I pulled my ear from the door and limped to the elevator.

By the time I dropped to the sixth floor and a lady with purple hair got on with a purple dog in her arms, I knew a few things. Grundy was probably the guy who had taken the shots at me. He was the only one of the three witnesses who had heard the two midgets arguing on Friday morning. He had identified one of them as having an accent and being called Gunther. Gable’s testimony about the size of the two midgets might put a small hole in that. How many German accented midgets named Gunther could there be in L.A.? But I wasn’t sure it was enough. If Grundy and Peese were in on something together, as soon as Peese talked to Grundy, he’d be calmed down again. With his temper, though, I doubted if Peese could go through an hour with my brother without giving everything away.