You Bet Your Life: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Three) (3 page)

Satisfied with my mental effort, and feeling friendly, I asked the young guy if he was going to dinner. He hadn’t moved for lunch. He grunted something and didn’t move. I went to the dining car and was enjoying a Salisbury steak and carrots until we pulled to a stop in Indianapolis and I looked out the window. The young blond guy in the orange shirt was standing on the platform, which was fine with me. What wasn’t so fine was that he was holding my suitcase. I reached for my wallet to throw down a couple of dollars on the table but the wallet was gone. The waiter shouted “wait” but I didn’t wait. The young guy hadn’t seen me. He might still think I was sitting unsuspecting over a steak I couldn’t pay for. I jumped off the train with the steam of the engine drifting back to give me some cover.

I could tell it was cold, but I wasn’t paying attention. I was looking for someone. I spotted him walking fast down the platform. As I moved between people toward him I passed the dining car. The waiter was pounding on the window at me making enough noise so everyone on the platform looked, including the guy with my suitcase. He spotted me and broke into a run. He had at least twenty years and fifteen yards on me but he wasn’t in good shape and he was carrying a suitcase with a few heavy items including a .38 automatic. Bad back or no bad back, I caught up with him in thirty yards when he ran into a woman carrying a two year old.

The woman fell but held onto the kid, and I jumped, hitting the young guy at the waist. I was on his back, hammering his face against the concrete. The woman with the kid sat screaming at us, but I only hit the thief’s head once, and in spite of the blood I knew he had nothing worse than a broken nose. I turned him over, pulled my wallet from his jacket, and freed my suitcase from his hands.

I had some questions for him, and as I sat on his chest I knew he would answer. I wanted to know if I was a coincidence or someone had fingered me. And if so, who and why. But two things changed my mind. The
City of Miami
began to pull out, and about ten cars down on the platform a guy with a cop was hurrying toward us. I got up fast, carrying my bag and stuffing my wallet in my pocket. I stepped over the lady sitting on the ground. Her kid smiled at me and I smiled back. The smile got him. He cried. I made the train with a jump that wrenched my back.

I leaned painfully out to watch the cop stop at the battered punk and help him up. I didn’t think the thief would say much. He probably had a record, and he’d certainly have a lot of explaining if he tried to nail me. I fumbled for a pill in my suitcase and limped back to the dining car. There wasn’t any water on the table. I took the flower out of the glass and used the water to wash down the pain pill. It tasted green.

“Trying to steal my suitcase,” I explained to the waiter, pulling out a five and pushing it toward him. He pocketed the bill, asked if I was all right, and turned away.

I spent the rest of the trip in my seat minding my own business. We hit Chicago just at 10
P.M.
The windows were frosted, and I could make out mounds of snow through the circle I rubbed clear with my sleeve. I put my suit jacket on even though it didn’t match my pants. If no one invited me to a presidential inauguration, I would be all right. I thanked the old conductor and followed a Negro in a heavy coat down the metal steps and into a blast of cold Chicago air. It was night, but the train depot was bright with lights showing swept-up piles of dirty snow. It was the first time I had seen snow this close. I’d seen it on mountains, but never close enough to touch. I didn’t stop to touch it. The cold cut me in half and kicked me in the back for good luck. Then it scratched at my teeth like a nail on glass. I pushed past people who were bundled to their eyes, prepared for the winter blast. Sprinting around a group of lunatic girls who were singing, I almost made it to a door that glowed warm, promising coffee. A hand grabbed my sleeve.

“Peters,” said a deep voice, confident as doom.

The guy holding me was craggy faced and about fifty. His nose was red, but I couldn’t tell if it was from the cold, alcohol, or both. He wore a coat and hat, but no scarf, and the coat wasn’t buttoned tight. He seemed to ignore the cold. His grip was tight and mean, but on his face was a soft, tolerant smile, like he had seen everything and I was no surprise. Another hand grabbed my free arm, and I turned to see who was attached to it. It was a burly young cop in a dark blue coat and cap. He wasn’t smiling. He looked unhappy, cold, and a little angry. I figured that the punk had tried to nail me in Indianapolis, and the call had come ahead.

“Yeah, I’m Peters,” I said, “and I’m cold. Can we go inside?”

The fat lady with
The Grapes of Wrath
passed by us into the door. She saw the cop holding me and let out a triumphant trumpet, like a charging elephant I had once seen in a Tarzan movie. The elephant spewed out clouds of mist in the crisp cold air and disappeared forever.

The red nosed guy let go of my arm and nodded as if my request were reasonable. We pushed through the door and started up a concrete stairway.

“Welcome to Chicago,” he said.

2

The waiting room of the station had a high ceiling and was filled with wooden benches. It was a church with all the pews facing a big ad for Woodbury soap. There were a few people on the benches, but they weren’t worshipping the soap for the skin you love to touch. Some were sleeping. Some were reading. Most were looking at each other, or nowhere.

The two cops led me slowly around the benches toward a short order counter that jutted out on one side of the hall and sent out a smell of sweet grease. There were lots of stools open. The plainclothes cop pointed to the one I should take. It had a piece of yellow food on it. He swept it away and waited for me to sit. The cops sat on either side of me. A semicatatonic woman sat next to the plainclothes cop, drinking yellow coffee and silently gnawing a sodden sweetroll.

I put my suitcase by my feet and watched a lemon-shaped waitress bring yellow coffee for the three of us without being asked. The cops were waiting for me to say something. I was waiting for them. I’d been a cop once and I’d stepped into mistakes often enough to know that you kept your mouth shut with cops until you had to talk.

“My name’s Kleinhans,” said the red-nosed guy, “Sergeant Kleinhans. You can call me Chuck or Kleinhans, whatever suits you. The gentleman on your right is Officer Jackson. You can call him Officer Jackson. Officer Jackson is about to take his coffee to that seat over there where he can be alone with his thoughts.”

I shut up and drank my coffee from a thick, porcelin cup with a big handle. The coffee didn’t taste bad. It had no taste. My cup was more interesting. It had a branching crack in it. I followed the crack with my eyes and let the steam of the coffee hit my face. Kleinhans gripped his cup in two hands.

“Hot cup against your palm on a cold night feels good,” he said. I put on a wry grin and nodded my head knowingly. Kleinhans went on talking very softly into his cup without looking up at me.

“We got a call about you from Miami,” he said. “Well, anyway, my boss got a call. Seems you’re here to check up on something involving some of our good friends in the criminal world.”

I was ready to say something, but having started, Kleinhans wanted to finish his piece.

“I work out of the Maxwell Street Station not too far from here,” he went on, savoring the feel of hot porcelin in his hands. “I sort of specialize in gambling problems related to the citizens in question. Would you like a roll?”

I said no, but that I would like some cereal. The waitress brought him a cheese Danish and me a bowl of what looked like Rice Krispies. Crumbs fell from Kleinhans’ sugary Danish. He swept them off with the back of his arm. They snowed on the catatonic woman. She didn’t complain.

“Maybe we can be of service to each other,” Kleinhans went on. “I’ll tell you how to get in touch with certain people, and you keep me informed about what you find out. Now this isn’t exactly the way I’d play it with you if I had my way, but my boss says to treat you right. You’ve got connections. And who knows? You might come up with something I can use.”

“You mean you might be able to use me?” I said.

He nodded his head sagely and said “mmm” as he wiped sugar from his mouth with a napkin.

“We understand each other,” he beamed. “Here’s my office number and home number.” He pulled out a pencil and wrote two numbers on the napkin he had just used on his mouth. “Take it. Call me if and when, and at least “once a day.” He shrugged. “Trains and planes leave here every day for the bright sunshine of California. If I were you, Señor Peters, I’d get a ticket and head for the sun tonight. You’re not dressed for our weather.”

“I think I’ll stick around.”

“Figured you would,” he said, clapping my back with a broad right hand. “No trouble from you—” he pointed to me, “no trouble from me,” he pointed at himself. His pronoun references were unmistakable, but I wasn’t exactly sure of what his definition of trouble might be.

“It’s a deal,” I said.

“Nope. It’s the way I say things are going to be. We’re not partners, Mike Shayne. Now, we’ll drop you at a hotel where you can get some sleep, and you can give me call in the morning. You want to stay fancy or cheap?”

“It’s on MGM,” I said, “but I’m used to small rooms. Too much space makes me nervous.”

“We’ll compromise on the LaSalle.” He got up, threw some money on the counter, glanced at Officer Jackson, and turned away. Jackson wasn’t finished, but swallowed the rest of his donut and spilled some of his coffee on his uniform trying to get his money’s worth.

The unmarked cop car was right outside the door in a no-parking zone. Kleinhans and Jackson walked to it slowly. It was no more than a few feet, but pain shot through my head.

“How cold is it?” I asked, getting into the front seat as directed. Jackson drove. Kleinhans sat in back. I wasn’t a suspect, but one never knew.

“Eleven or twelve above,” said Jackson. “Not too bad.”

Kleinhans serenaded us with a whistled version of “San Antonio Rose.” He even
buh-buh-buhed
like Bing Crosby a few times. No one talked until Jackson pulled over five minutes later and stopped in front of the LaSalle Hotel.

I said thanks and got out for my dash to the lobby, but Kleinhans called for me to lean over.

“If the bad guys don’t already know you’re here, they will soon. May even have been somebody at the station watching for you. I didn’t spot anybody, but we’re probably not the only ones who got a call about you from Florida.”

Officer Jackson looked out the opposite window. I was no fun anymore.

“I got you,” I said. “Goodnight.”

“Comparatively,” said Kleinhans rolling up his window. I waited for the car to pull away. It didn’t. So I went up the stairs into the lobby. The doorman tried to take my case, but I wasn’t letting it out of my hands again.

It was eleven at night. There were lots of people in the lobby to watch me make my way to the desk in a stiff summer jacket and unmatched pants with a conspicuous crease at the knee. The suitcase didn’t help. It was a second-hand piece I got for three bucks from a pawnshop owner in L.A. named Gittleson. I had muscled a teenage Mexican kid for him when the kid tried to buy a gun and wouldn’t take no for an answer. I was a real class item for the LaSalle Hotel, yes I was.

The clerk on the desk gave me the electric smile with the eyebrows raised to ask what a creature like me wanted in a place like this. He looked like an unprissy version of Franklin Pangborn.

“I’d like a room,” I said, reaching for the desk pen and dipping it in the inkwell. I dripped ink on the blotter while I waited for him to produce the guest book.

“What kind of room?” he said.

“One with a bed and a bath,” I answered. “That’s what hotels usually have. It doesn’t have to be big, just warm.”

He tried to keep from nibbling his upper lip. I didn’t look enough like a bum or a nut to be thrown out, but I didn’t look quite respectable enough to stay. It was my running problem regardless of what clothes I wore, but it was more acute at the moment. People in the lobby were looking toward us, and both of us kept our voices down.

“I’ll pay two days in advance,” I said. “My name is Peters, Toby Peters of MGM.”

The clerk’s eyes opened in understanding and his head rose from despair.

“You’re a movie person?”

“Yes,” I said. “From Hollywood. I was there this morning.”

The clerk obviously believed movie people were exempt from decent dress. He turned the guest book toward me. I signed.

“Yes, Mr. Peters,” he beamed, “I’ve seen some of your work.”

“Good,” I said taking the key to 605 and shooing away the bellboy. I wondered which piece of work he had seen—the guy who fell out of my window in Los Angeles the year before when he tried to kill me, or maybe the flea bag desk clerk I had pushed around a few months ago.

A middle-aged couple got on the elevator with me. By middle age I mean they were a year or two older than me. The lower range of middle age went up miraculously each year, managing to stay just ahead of me. If I lived long enough, I might entirely eliminate middle age from my experience. Someday I’ll just wake up and admit that I’m old.

The thought depressed me almost as much as I depressed the couple on the elevator. I didn’t depress the elevator man. He just looked at his numbers and minded his own business. Up to now he was my favorite person in Chicago.