I didn’t care for this new air of confidence. I followed him down a short flight of stairs and along a corridor. He stopped at an apartment. Down the hall someone was playing Buddy Clark’s “Hugo and Igo.”
“That’s the stairway down,” he said softly, gesturing. “Keep an eye and ear on it. Somebody comes, give me a call and we’ll get the hell out of here. It’ll only take me a couple of minutes.”
He went in and closed the door while I waited in the corridor.
Buddy Clark sang on and two minutes passed, or what seemed like two minutes. My old man’s watch on my wrist seemed to indicate that time had gone backwards.
I tried the handle of Talbott’s apartment. It was open.
The place was a mess. Twinkle-Toes may have been a lousy housekeeper but this was abusing the privilege. Someone had been through the place, tossed and turned it.
“Willie,” I called, stepping over a faded tan pillow that had been thrown from the sofa against the wall.
No answer.
The place wasn’t big. Living room, kitchen combination, and what looked like a bedroom on the left. The door was closed. I avoided a purple table lamp on the floor. The lamp had lost its shade. I turned and picked up the lamp. I didn’t know if I would need a weapon.
I opened the door and looked into Talbott’s bedroom, a horror of seduction-purple velvet and dirty white. The bedding and mattress had been ripped to shreds. My lamp and I went to the closed door beyond the bed. I tripped on a small radio but kept my balance. I pushed open the door and found a small empty bathroom. The window over the tub was open. I went for it and heard a shot. There was a narrow space between Talbott’s apartment building and the next one. I could imagine Talbott, who knew the best ways in and out, inching his way to the windowsill and then reaching up to the roof and pulling himself up. There was no way I could make it through that space, even if I were thirty and didn’t have a sore ass.
I could hear footsteps on the gravel of the next roof. I dropped the lamp and hurtled through the maze of bad taste that littered the floor. I ran down the corridor and up to the roof the way we had come. I looked to my left, saw nothing, and then looked right, where Talbott lay sprawled facedown on the next roof, his left knee bent, his right hand over his head as if he were about to demonstrate one of those steps he had promised Astaire. There was nobody else in sight, but the door to the roof a few feet from Talbott was open.
The space between the two buildings was only a couple of feet. I climbed on the wall and jumped and tumbled, rolling over on my right shoulder and tearing my poplin jacket.
I ran to the edge of the roof at the rear of the building and leaned over. A small space between garages. No people. I ran to the front of the building. Someone was getting into a dark car right below me. The car was parked in front of a fire plug. I didn’t see the face of the person getting in the car, but I did see his or her gloved hand. It was clutching what looked like a leatherbound ledger book. The car door closed with a slam and the driver screeched out of the space and down the street.
Talbott wasn’t moving. I got down on one knee and turned him over.
The hole in his shirt was black and the blood that stained his chest was thick. No doubts here-Willie Talbott was dead. I went back over the roofs and followed the trail Talbott had taken to get to his apartment.
In the garage turn-around Astaire was leaning back on the front fender of his car, his arms folded. He stood up, looked beyond me, and saw no Twinkle-Toes.
“I thought I heard a shot,” he said.
“Talbott’s danced his last bad samba,” I said. “He’s dead and I think the killer got away with Luna’s appointment book. Let’s go.”
“Where?” he asked, opening the door.
“To my car,” I said, going around the hood and heading for the passenger side.
We got in and closed the doors. Astaire started down the narrow driveway.
“Needless to say, I have some questions, Peters,” Astaire said, turning right when we hit the street. Behind us a small gathering of neighbors on the sidewalk looked up at the building where Talbott lay dead. One of them was pointing.
“I probably don’t have very good answers. I’ll take my car, go to the cops, tell them what happened. I’ll leave you out of it. You’ve got nothing to tell them that I can’t. The way I figure it, Talbott got the appointment book and went out the bathroom window. I think he figured that if he could get five hundred from you, he might be able to get a lot more from someone whose name was in that book. That someone was waiting for Talbott on the roof, was familiar with Talbott’s exits, shot him, took the book. Of course, I could have it all wrong and the bulldog and Saint Bernard you took apart just caught up with him and were in a bad mood, but they didn’t know about the appointment book, at least I think they didn’t.”
“So?. .” asked Astaire.
“We’ve got two dead dancers,” I said. “And no idea who killed either one of them.”
“I’m going with you to the police,” Astaire said as we headed back toward Los Angeles.
“What’ll it get you? Some very bad publicity? Who is it going to help? I’ll tell you what. Give me a couple of days and if the police or I don’t turn anything up, I’ll set up a meeting between you and a homicide detective. Three days.”
“You said ‘a couple.’ That’s two.”
“Okay, two days. Then you can go to the police and ruin your career.”
He drove me to my car around the corner from the now-ownerless On Your Toes Dance Studio and I headed for the Wilshire Police Station, which was a long way from Venice. My behind was sore. My stomach was upset. I’d lost a witness and let the killer get away. My jacket was torn and my ex-wife was marrying a movie star. I took off the jacket and placed it on the passenger seat. Exhibit A. I was not having a good day.
I parked behind the Wilshire station in a spot reserved for patrol cars and went through the rear door, passing a pair of uniformed police, one too old, the other too young. A wartime phenomenon.
“Russ,” I said to the older cop. “How are things?”
Russ paused, and his young partner, who I didn’t know, looked impatiently at his watch.
“Remember my kid, Charlie? You met him at Sonny’s bar a couple or so times?” Russ asked.
“Sure I remember him.”
“Just got back home. Wounded, but safe. Arm won’t move great.” Russ demonstrated how his son’s arm would be moving. “But what the hell. He’s back in one piece and for good with a Purple Heart.”
“That’s great,” I said.
“Russ,” the young partner said.
“Right,” Russ said. “Gotta go, Toby. Say, you know what’s gnawing at Phil? He’s got a bug up his ass the size of Tarzana.”
“No,” I said, and Russ and his partner headed for their car.
I went down the damp, dimly lit corridor, past the downstairs meeting and interrogation rooms and up the badly worn stairs. Then past the squad room, where shrill nervous voices and deep bored ones came through the closed double doors along with the smell of stale food. My brother was back in his old office at the end of the squad room. When he had been promoted to captain, he had moved into an ugly brown square across from the squad room. The captain’s office would have been enough to drive a monk nuts. He had gone back to his closet-sized office after his demotion for failure to deal effectively with the local business people. He seemed to be happier back with the boys, though it was hard to tell when Phil was happy. I couldn’t remember ever seeing him smile.
The squad room was busy. A thin kid who needed a shave was seated next to Jay Buxbaum. The kid was probably Mexican. He had an accent. He was pointing to his own chest and saying, “You really saying I did this thing? That what you’re saying?”
“That’s what I’m saying,” said Buxbaum, evenly settling his three hundred pounds back in his chair.
At another desk near the window, two detectives, Winslow and Ho, were leaning over a pale man. They were whispering. The pale man was shaking his head. I nodded at a detective named Ponsetto and made my way to Phil’s office. I knocked and he said, “All right.”