Stuart Kaminsky: Tomorrow Is Another day

"I need a lawyer?" I asked.

"This day and age everyone needs a lawyer," Price said, sighing.

"Al Ramone used to be an actor," I said.

"That a fact? Which question you answering?"

"He owed my client a few dollars," I said, turning my most sincere unblinking look at the chief. It was wasted. His eyes were closed.

"A few?" he said, eyes still closed.

"Two hundred and change," I said. "I get forty bucks if I collect from Ramone."

"Client got a name?" Price asked dreamily.

"Everybody's got a name," I said.

"Can I trouble you for it?"

"I don't…"

"Just to check if you're on the up-and-up about this," he said, opening one eye to watch my reaction.

"Sheldon Minck," I said. "A dentist in L.A. In the Farra-day Building."

"Report says Ramone had a full set of dentures in his lap. What'd he need with a dentist?"

"Old bill," I said.

"This dentist, he doesn't happen to look like, say, some movie star, Robert Taylor maybe?"

Both of Price's eyes were open now.

"Dr. Minck is five-six, about two hundred pounds, bald, and sporting glasses as thick as Yorba Linda."

"Guy who was with you who started the fight…" Lane Price went on, checking his watch.

"Don't know anything about him. Just a guy who had a few drinks and was looking for someone to tell his troubles to. He offered me a beer. I took it. He started to tell me the story of his life and wife in Omaha. Then Ramone came out… and everything started when the guy from Omaha punched your man and was gone. Ramone left the stage and I went after him." ' "Guy from Omaha looked like a movie star," the chief said, sitting up again.

"Maybe," I said. "A little like Edward G. Robinson maybe."

"Not the way I heard it," said the chief.

"Closest star I can give you," I apologized, holding my hands up.

"Backstage. Next scene," said Price. "And slow it down. This is a homicide."

"Looked for Ramone. Couldn't find him. Went into the toilet and there he was."

"That's it?"

"That's it. Didn't see anybody. Didn't hear anything."

The chief started to open his desk drawer, changed his mind, and closed it again.

"Curtain rod from his dressing room," said Price. "Skewered like that Hungarian stuff I hate."

Price demonstrated a two-handed jab with a curtain rod aimed, I guessed, at an imaginary brother-in-law.

"Damn thing doesn't even have a point," he went on. "I mean the curtain rod. Take some strength, don't you know, even if you got lucky and went in right under the ribs, which he did."

"Take some strength," I agreed.

Price stood up and worked the kinks out of his legs.

"Got the knees of an old ballet dancer," he said.

I held back a good comeback with another one in the wings and just nodded. Price had no sense of humor.

"Hell," he said. "I'll buy your story but I'll check it out. Can't see any reason you'd go coconuts on me with a curtain rod for forty bucks. Hell, these are boom times, boom times this side of the Rockies. People don't kill for forty bucks, but you never know."

"You never know," I agreed.

He was standing over me now, looking down, his face sour with the realization that he'd soon be back with the little woman and her brother.

"Some of what you told me is maybe half true," he said. "I find it's not and you killed Ramone, I'll haul you back to Glendale so fast your ears'll bleed."

"I'm always happy to come back home," I said, "but I didn't…"

"Hell," he said with another sigh. "I'm shorthanded here, Peters. You get cleared on this I'll take you back, promotion to sergeant."

I stood up now.

"Damn war's got my good men. Thinking of taking on women for street work," he said to a photograph on the wall of Herbert Hoover.

"I'll think about it," I said as Price walked to his door and opened it.

"No, you won't," he said. "I'm gonna have to make it for the duration with Carmen, Frank, amazons, little kids, and dwarfs."

"Little persons," I corrected.

He looked back at me, puzzled.

"Little persons. They don't like to be called dwarfs. My best friend is a little person."

"That a fact?" said Price.

I nodded as he called out the door for Officer Cooper.

"Those sailors didn't start that fight with our cops, and the guy in the booth didn't either," I said as he stepped away from the door, leaving it open. "Your boys started it."

"Figures," said Price, adjusting his suit jacket. "Damn thing is I can't get rid of 'em. They're tough, stupid, and 4-F, one for a trick shoulder and the other for flat feet. Best I can do. When Johnny comes marching home, Frank and Carmen can join the job market. Wait. Now things are coming back to me here. You used to live on…"

"Linden," I said. "My dad had a grocery store on Canada."

"You had a brother…" he said, squinting at me and trying to remember.

"Phil. He's a cop. Wilshire District. Captain."

"Change his name too?"

"No," I said. "He's still Pevsner."

"Think he'd be interested in a return to his family roots?" asked Price hopefully.

"You can ask," I said as Officer Cooper, lean, teen, and neatly pressed, came in with a notebook in hand.

"How do I look?" asked Price, tugging at his jacket.

"Elegant," I said before Cooper could speak.

"Distinguished," said Cooper seriously.

"Can't trust either of you," Price said. "Take his statement and send him home."

Cooper nodded.

"My car's still at the Mozambique," I said as Price went out the door.

"Cooper," called the chief.

"I'll take him back," said the young cop as the door slammed.

"Doesn't care for his brother-in-law," I said.

"Brother-in-law's the county water commissioner," Cooper was whispering, even though the chief's freshly polished shoes were tapping well down the hallway.

I checked my watch. It told me it was eight-twenty. My watch was wrong as usual. It was the only thing my old man left me besides memories.

"It's five after midnight," Cooper said.

"Let's get to it," I said, sitting again.

Cooper didn't take the chief's chair. He sat opposite me in a chair in front of the desk, balancing the notebook in his lap.

"You know there's more than one way to spell cagey," I said.

"Never thought much about it," Cooper said, smoothing his pants and taking out his pencil.

It took about ten minutes to give my statement and another twenty for Cooper to type it up for my signature. I signed and he drove me back to my car in the parking lot of the Mozambique. There was one other car in the lot, an old Ford that glowed with wax or fresh paint by the night light of the Mozambique window.

"Ramone's car?" I asked.

"Wouldn't know," said Cooper.

I got out and went to my Crosley. It wasn't locked. I slid in and started the engine. Cooper just sat there watching me. I pulled out into the street and headed north. When I got to the first corner, I turned right, parked at the curb, turned off the lights, and turned my engine off.

I rolled my window open and thought I heard the sound of Cooper's patrol car pulling out on the dead street behind me. I waited a few minutes, got out of the car, and headed for the Mozambique in the shadows.

The place was dark and the front door was locked. I knocked gently, hoping Lester had had enough for the night and had gone home instead of sitting in the dark on a tinder pile of broken chairs, tables, shot glasses, and beer mugs.

"Wow," Sidney screamed inside.

I waited a few beats, ready with a lie for Lester, Officer Cooper, or an air-raid warden, but I didn't need it. I went to the east side of the Mozambique along the pink adobe wall to the window of Al Ramone's dressing room. It was closed now, but I doubted if anyone had fixed the latch in the last hour. It didn't make much noise as I slid it up and carefully climbed inside.