Stuart Kaminsky: Murder on a Yellow Brick Road

“You’ll live again,” said Parry, cleaning his hands in a sink. “You think you can tolerate our company long enough to spend a day here while we watch you for any little problems like brain damage?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. I was placed in a wheelchair, and the nurse built like a lamp wheeled me into the hall. Phil was standing there with his arms folded and displeasure on his face. I closed my eyes in agony.

A guy with a Southern accent x-rayed my head none-too-gently while chewing gum. The nurse wheeled me back down the hall past Phil. Doc Parry checked me out and asked me to do some tough things like following his finger with my eyes and telling him my name and address. I passed the test.

“You are a mass of scar tissue shaped like a man,” he said, “but you’re probably all right.” He nodded and the frail nurse wheeled me back in the hall. Phil followed us down a corridor and into an elevator. No one spoke. We went up to a room and the nurse helped me into a gown. Her touch did nothing for me, and I apparently did nothing for her.

“You want these kept?” she said, holding my bloody clothes up for me to see.

I said no and laid back on the bed. As soon as my stitched head hit the pillow I shot up in pain. Phil was leaning against the window.

“We found Grundy,” he said. I turned on my stomach and groaned. “You’re doing great, Toby. We’ve got you for two murders, Peese and Grundy. Your prints are on the knife, aren’t they?”

“You tell me,” I said.

“I’m telling you. You’ve done some stupid things in your life, but yesterday may mark your all-time high. I told you to come to my office, and you went after Grundy. What happened? He push you around, and you stabbed him in self-defense?”

“No,” I said. “I went out when he cracked my head. When I woke up, he was sitting in front of me with a knife in him, just like Cash, the one on the Yellow Brick Road. That suggest anything to you, like the same murderer?”

“I thought you said Grundy threw Peese out the window?”

“Right,” I said. “It had something to do with pornographic movies Grundy was making with midgets. He was stealing footage from M.G.M. and… Did you find that roll of film?”

“Toby, Toby,” he said moving toward me, “there was no roll of film. The main witness we had against the little Nazi…”

“He’s Swiss…”

“… is dead,” continued Phil. “The best alternate suspect, Peese, is dead. You were with both of them before they died. You argued with both of them. You are up to your ass in trouble.”

“Search Grundy’s place,” I said. “Maybe you’ll find some names, numbers.”

“Anything worth getting, you’ve got,” said Phil. “You went over that place fast and messy.”

“You mean someone went through Grundy’s things?”

“You know it, Toby.”

Phil put his hand on my leg and started to squeeze. The nurse came in.

“I’d like some rest now,” I said.

“I’ll see you a little later, Toby,” Phil said, pushing past the nurse.

“That’s my brother,” I told her. She didn’t look impressed.

In the hall I could hear Phil asking the nurse when she came out how long I’d be laid up. She said I wouldn’t be able to move for a day at least.

There was a phone next to the bed. I called Shelly Minck, told him to get to my place, get my last suit, put it in a bag, and come to the hospital. I also told him to pick up a clean white smock, and come up to my room. If anyone asked him, I said, he should identify himself as Dr. Minck.

“That’s who I am,” he said.

“Then you won’t be lying,” I answered and hung up.

The nurse came in with a pill and a newspaper for me. I pretended to take the pill, and I took the paper. It told me that 50,000,000 people were expected to vote today. It told me that the first election results were from Sharon, New Hampshire, where Willkie had taken the lead 24-7. On the next page, a Japanese Ambassador named Yoshiaki Muira from Japan said the United States and his country would not fight over China.

It took Shelly over two hours to get to the hospital. He hadn’t changed into a clean smock, and he came in waving his cigar. The important thing was that he came in and he had a small black suitcase with him.

The room bounced me around while I dressed, and Shelly kept talking about root canals. I almost threw up, but managed to keep it down.

“See if you can get a wheelchair,” I said.

I sat on the edge of the bed waiting for the nausea to pass while Shelly was gone. He came back with a chair, and I climbed in. He pushed me into the hall and down the corridor, talking all the time about tooth decay. I hoped no one stopped to listen to him. We made it out of the hospital with no problems, and Shelly helped me to his car. I didn’t know where mine was. My gun was either in the trunk or Phil had it, unless the killer had gone through the trouble of getting my keys when I was out, then getting the gun and putting the keys back. I doubted it, but what the hell did I know.

Shelly drove around, squinting through his glasses, while I tried to think. His driving was a series of near misses which he didn’t seem to notice. It was hard to think.

Somewhere about 8000 on Sunset he pulled to the curb. His Ford was a ’37 in only slightly better shape than my Buick. I took one of the pain pills Shelly gave me and watched while he bought a map to the stars’ homes. The seller was a guy sitting under a big umbrella. He rocked back and forth on a wicker rocker and had his feet up on a chair whose back had been sawed off. He was in no hurry. He might not be making much money, but no one was trying to kill him. I thought about asking him for a job. I’d take the chair without a back.

Shelly drove on looking for Jack Benny’s house. Somewhere beneath the stitches my brain was working. An idea was coming.

Shelly turned on the radio, and we found out that Hank Greenberg, the Detroit outfielder, had been named Most Valuable Player in the American League. Twenty minutes later we stopped at Awful Fresh MacFarlane for a twenty-nine cent pound of candy in a paper bag. We were somewhere between Union and Hoover, and I asked Shelly to look up an address for me. He found three listings for a James Cash. I borrowed some change from him and went into a bar. What I really wanted to do was go home, but too many people knew where that was. I couldn’t even go back to the office.

The Cash idea was a longshot, but I didn’t have any short ones. My head felt better with Shelly’s pill inside me, and with a hat on I looked almost respectable. I called the first James Cash. It was a Venice number. James Cash answered, and I said he was the wrong one. I called the second in Burbank, and a woman with a very small voice answered. I asked for James Cash, and she told me he was dead. I asked if he was the same James Cash who had worked in The Wizard of Oz, and she said he was; she agreed to see me.

Shelly was tired, and I was feeling better, so I dropped him a block from the office. He wanted to work for a few hours more. We agreed that I’d return his Ford later. He reminded me to vote, and I told him I’d try.

“Go with a winner for a change, Toby,” he said. “Willkie.”

I made it out to Burbank on one more pain pill, a Pepsi, and two chicken tacos. It was a little after noon when I pulled into a driveway next to a sign that readVISIT OUR FURNISHED MODEL HOME. The Ford bumped through the field toward a quartet of small, white wooden homes. They were lined up in a field of mud. Each one was exactly like the one next to it. Some of these developments could line up the little homes for miles. This one was just getting started.

The house I was looking for was on the end. The view must have been terrific from the inside: nothing but rubble, telephone poles, and dirt that had broken the monotony last night by turning to mud.