Read High Midnight: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Six) for Free Online Page B

Cooper said he had dallied with and who had gone back to Lombardi. Things were already getting complicated. Lola’s address was the Big Bear Bar in Burbank. Name number three was none other than Tall Mickey Fargo, who was set to play the villain in High Midnight.
    A clipping from a shopping-center newsletter which Shelly had plucked had an interview with Fargo that mentioned his forthcoming co-starring role with Cooper. There was a photograph of Fargo in the clipping; and I recognized the thin, dark man with the pencil mustache and the almost-comical oversize cowboy hat. I’d seen him in movies when I was a kid. He had always been one of the gang who got killed in the first shootout with the hero. The last name on the list was Curtis Bowie, who had written the screenplay for High Midnight. It was certainly a quartet who needed Cooper for the project. The Los Angeles addresses for both Bowie and Fargo made it clear that they weren’t rolling in the wealth of Hollywood.
    I copied the addresses, took the clippings and shoved them in my pocket. Then I returned the one call that had come in my three-week absence. It was from a woman named Carol Slingo in San Pedro. Her parrot had been murdered by an intruder, stabbed with a scissors. There was an empty bottle of nassal spray near the cage, indicating that the murderer had first tried to spray the parrot to death. Mrs. Slingo was angry because the police had refused to pursue the matter with “sufficient concern.” Her theory was that the parrot had been killed to silence him, to keep him from identifying the intruder. I asked if the parrot could do such a thing and she admitted he couldn’t, but the intruder might not know that, especially when he heard the parrot talking. I told her I’d get back to her or have my assistant Mr. Minck look into it as soon as we had time.
    While I talked to Mrs. Slingo from San Pedro, I reexamined my office, especially the framed copy of my private investigator’s certificate on the wall next to the photograph. I don’t keep photographs except for this one. In it my older brother Phil has his arm around me, and I’m holding the collar of our dog Murphy. Murphy was a Beagle I renamed Kaiser Wilhelm when Phil returned wounded from his couple of months in World War I. Our old man is standing next to us, his eyes turned proudly on his sons. Both Phil at fourteen and my old man at fifty were tall and heavy, and I was a scrawny ten-year-old. The main puzzle of the photograph for me is whether my nose had already been broken once by then. I can’t tell. I’ve asked people, even my brother, who was the first to break the nose. Phil doesn’t care or remember. He has broken too many noses since then to recall the date of such a minor event.
    I left the office with a glance at Shelly’s back. He was hunched over Mr. Stange, cooing, “Just a little wider, a little wider, uh, hu, just a ….”
    The groaner was gone from the third floor, and the Farraday was coming to something resembling life. Life at the Farraday began sluggishly a little before noon and never got into high gear. In the lobby I encountered Jeremy Butler, massive hands on massive hips, looking critically at the dark tile floor.
    “Toby,” he said, “you think it needs a scrubbing today? I did it yesterday, but …”
    “It looks fine, Jeremy, fine. How’s the poetry business?”
    “It’s not a business. It’s an act of expression. North States Review is publishing my poem on the war. It’s a damn war, Toby.”
    “That it is,” I agreed.
    “U-boats near the Panama Canal,” he sighed, kneeling to examine a scuff mark. “You know they’re considering martial law in southern California to control enemy aliens and American-born Japanese? The Times says there are 100,000. You think they’ll put Hal Yamashura in jail? They might if this gets crazy enough.”
    “I don’t know, Jeremy,” I said.
    Jeremy raised his huge, well-balanced bulk and turned toward me. “Man