Murder Takes a Break Page 20

  There was a look akin to fear on his face. "Go out there with . . . them?"

  "Maybe you could walk over to the commissary, get a cup of coffee. Take an aspirin."

  "Aspirin. Yes. A fine idea." He practically jumped out of his chair. "I'll just go out the back way. You can call in whoever you want."

  He was out the door and gone before I had a chance to say anything else.

  I went out and called Lyman Birch. When he got there, I was behind the desk, so he had to sit in the chair. He ran nervous fingers through his thin brown hair and asked me what I wanted.

  "Just a little background. How much does the studio pay you for the use of your cat?"

  His mouth tightened. "Are you trying to insult me?"

  "Nope. Just asking."

  "All right." He attempted a smile and just missed. "I was just checking. They don't pay me a thing. I'm just glad Gus is able to help out."

  "And Voucher feels the same way about his bird?"

  "Naturally."

  Birch tried to relax, but it was impossible in that chair. He ran his fingers through his hair again. When he did, I saw something that looked like scratches just above his wrist. He saw me looking and put his hand down.

  "What about Cal Franks?" I asked.

  "I wouldn't want to say anything about Cal."

  "Sure you would. I hear that no one likes him."

  "Cal's all right. Not a bad guy at all if you get to know him."

  "And he's been trying to get his bird a job here. Why is that, if there's no pay?"

  "Cal just needs attention. He's always hanging around, or hadn't you noticed that?"

  I'd noticed. "So he thinks if his bird got famous, he'd get plenty of attention?"

  Birch shrugged. "Seems that way to me."

  "How far would he go? Would he do a bird-napping?"

  "Bird-napping? That's a pretty good one."

  I could almost see Birch's mind working on a cartoon script. Gus stealing Cap'n Bob off the perch and holding him for ransom, maybe. I tried to bring Birch back to the subject. I said, "Would he?"

  "Huh? Oh, maybe. You saw the things that go on out there. Anything could happen."

  Birch was right, and that was the trouble. How could anyone tell what that bunch might do?

  "Who was the last one to leave the building on Monday?" I asked.

  "What?" Birch snapped to attention. "Why do you want to know?"

  "I want to know who might have been alone with the bird, especially if it was Franks."

  "It wasn't Franks." There was a long pause, and then Birch said, "It was me."

  Well, that gave things a different slant.

  "I always hang around to spend a little time with Gus," Birch explained. "He lives here now, and I like to let him out of that cage every day for a while. He needs the exercise."

  That was true. If Gus were any bigger, they could use him as a stand-in for one of the tigers in Rick Torrance's next picture.

  "But there's a back door that goes to the parking lot," Birch went on. "It's supposed to be locked by whoever leaves last, but I may have forgotten on Monday. The watchman usually takes care of it later if we forget, but someone could probably have come in that way after I left. And I think one of the windows might have been open. It gets stuffy in here if you close all of them."

  Partin had mentioned the door but not the window. I wondered for a second or two how much he liked Cap'n Bob. Then I remembered that Partin was a producer. He liked anyone, or anything, that made money at the box office.

  "Was there anyone else who might have wanted to get rid of the parrot?" I asked.

  "No one," Birch said. "We all loved that bird. He was a gold mine."

  He didn't sound exactly sincere. "The bird didn't like Gus, though," I pointed out. "I hear that when the crew needed inspiration, all they had to do was open the doors to the cages."

  Birch nodded. "Gus was terrified of that bird. But he always calmed down after being attacked."

  We talked a while longer, but I didn't learn any more than I'd known before. The building was easy to get into, everyone loved Cap'n Bob, and Cal Franks had ambitions for his cockatoo. I sent Birch out and asked him to invite Herm Voucher in to see me.

  While I was waiting for Voucher, I telephoned Gober's secretary and told her to have the watchman get in touch with me. She complained that she'd have to wake him, but I told her it was an emergency.

  Then Voucher showed up. He practically had to duck to get through the doorway. He was even more uncomfortable in the chair than Birch had been. His eyes teared up when we talked about Cap'n Bob. Or Percy, as Voucher insisted on calling him.

  Voucher had thought at first that the parrot might have gotten out accidentally. "One of the windows was open. He could have gotten out of the building, but he would have come back when he was hungry."

  "But he didn't," I pointed out.

  "No," Voucher said. "And he was such a gentle bird, a real treasure. There was never another one like him. And to think that idiot Cal Franks thinks Percy can be replaced by a cockatoo!"

  "No cockatoos!" reverberated in my head, but the ringing of the phone cleared them out. I talked to the watchman, thanked him for his time, and turned back to Voucher.

  "Do you think Franks had something to do with Cap'n, uh, Percy's disappearance?" I asked.

  "I wouldn't want to say anything bad about Cal," Voucher confided, "but the truth is that he's just like a lot of stage mothers I've seen. He knows he'll never be famous, so he wants to make his bird famous instead."

  "And what about Lyman Birch?"

  "What about him?"

  "He loved Cap'n, uh, Percy just like everyone else?"

  "Why of course he did." Voucher's Adam's apple bobbed. "How could he not?"

  Good question. I dismissed Voucher and asked him to send in Cal Franks.

  Franks sat in the chair, and his toes dangled a few inches above the threadbare carpet. I'd been thinking about things, and I already knew what I was going to ask him.

  "How did you know the parrot wasn't coming back?"

  He was so startled that he almost fell out of the chair.

  "What?" His face grew even redder than was usual with him. "What do you mean? I didn't . . . I mean, how could I have known? I don't know what you're talking about!"

  He did, though, and I told him so.

  "Sure you knew. Otherwise, you wouldn't have moved that cockatoo into the cage so soon. Gober waited a day to call me about getting the parrot back, so he must have thought there was still a chance of that happening. Voucher thought so, too. But not you. You moved your bird right on in."

  "I . . . I knew could move him back out if Cap'n Bob came back."

  "But you aren't planning to move him, are you? You might as well tell me about it, Franks. I think I know what happened. What did you do, come in by the back way to pick up something you'd left behind and see the whole thing?"

  Franks' shoulders slumped, and he leaned back in the chair. His toes were farther from the carpet than ever.

  "Yes," he said. "That's what happened. How did you know?"

  "Never mind that. Just tell me your side of it."

  He didn't want to, but he was going to. He couldn't hold it back any longer.

  "You're right," he said. "Cap'n Bob won't be back. I saw it all. My car was parked around back on Monday. When I got in, I remembered that I'd left a book at my desk. I came back to get it, and that's when it happened."

  "Birch killed the bird?"

  "What? No, of course not. He wouldn't do that."

  "Wait a minute," I said.

  Obviously I didn't have it figured quite as well as I'd thought. I'd seen something green -- a feather? -- In the cat's cage. There weren't any other feathers around anywhere, so it wasn't molting season. Birch, by his own admission, was the last one to leave the building, and according to the watchman, the door had been locked. Nobody else could have come in.

  So I figured that Birch had finally gotten ti
red of the humiliation dealt out to his cat and decided to do away with the humiliator. The scratches on his arm would have come from the parrot's claws. Maybe Birch had even let the cat play with the carcass a little after it was all over. Birch was also the only one supporting Franks' plea to let the cockatoo take the parrot's place, and since no one liked Franks, I inferred that Franks had something on Birch.

  It seemed that I was right about the last part, but not about the first.

  "The cat killed the bird?" I said.

  Franks dug around inside his jacket and came out with a handkerchief. He wiped his face, but it stayed red. He wadded the hanky and replaced it.

  "That wasn't the way it happened at all," he said.

  Well, nobody's right all the time. But I was doing even worse than usual.

  "Why don't you tell me what happened, then." I was tired of guessing.

  "Like I said, I came back inside. I guess Birch didn't hear me. He was down on the floor, playing with his cat. I must have scared him, and he jumped back and hit Cap'n Bob's cage. The cage fell over, and --- "

  He stopped and went for the hanky again, but I thought I could get the rest of it.

  "The parrot got out," I said. "And flew out the window."

  "He got out, all right," Franks told me after he'd rubbed his face. "But he didn't go for the window."

  Damn. I was going to have to turn in my P.I. license if I didn't improve.

  "Where did he go, then?"

  Franks put the hanky away. "He went for Gus."

  "So?"

  Franks shuddered. "So Gus jumped him."

  "I thought the cat was scared to death of him."

  "He was. But Cap'n Bob was a little addled. The fall, I guess. He miscalculated and went by Gus and hit the cage, got a claw hooked in the wire and couldn't get loose. It was what Gus had been waiting for."

  "But he didn't kill him?"

  "No. But it was awful. Cap'n Bob was squawking, and Gus was yowling and scratching. The feathers were flying, and the fur, too, let me tell you. Lyman was trying to get them apart, but he couldn't."

  So that's where the scratches came from.

  "Something must have separated them," I said.

  Franks nodded. "Finally the Cap'n got loose somehow, and started flying around the room. It didn't take him long to find the window. And then he was gone."

  "Didn't you go after him?"

  "Sure we went after him. He flew over the fence and landed on a palm tree."

  "Did you try to get him down?"

  "The tree was on a delivery truck with two or three others. It was gone before we could do a thing. God knows where it is now."

  "But nobody killed the bird."

  "No. But we couldn't very well tell anyone what had happened. They would have blamed us. Gober might even have fired us. So we decided just not to say a thing."

  "And you brought in your cockatoo. Whose idea was that?"

  Franks gave me an indignant look. "Well, it wasn't mine. Lyman thought maybe we could get by with it, substitute one for the other, but you saw how they were acting out there."

  No cockatoos! I thought.

  And then I thought, But why not? This bunch was just goofy enough to go for it.

  The whole maniacal assembly was looking at me expectantly as I stood in the doorway between the cages of Gus and General Joe, which was the cockatoo's stage name.

  "I've cracked the case," I said.

  No one looked more surprised than Birch. "You have?"

  "That's right."

  "Where's my parrot, then?" Voucher asked.

  "Right there," I said, pointing to the cockatoo.

  "Huh?" I think all of them said it at once. And then someone said "No cocka-- "

  "Hold it!" They held it. "This is not a cockatoo. This is Cap'n Bob in disguise."

  "Huh?"

  Birch caught on fast. "I thought that bird looked familiar," he said.

  "Are you sure?" Voucher asked.

  "Let the cat out," I said. "And we'll see."

  Birch had to wake Gus first, but he finally managed to drag him out of the cage. There was a feather in there, all right. Birch and Franks had cleaned up, but they hadn't gotten that one.

  Gus stretched out his front legs and spread his toes while his rear end went up high. He swished his tail a time or two.

  "Now, Cal," I said, and Franks let the cockatoo out.

  It was hate at first sight this time, too, and General Joe shot off the perch like a V-2. Gus sprang to a drawing board and then to the head of the guy wearing the aviator's cap. He hit a hanging light fixture as he jumped to another guy's head, and then he was back on the floor, scuttling under tables and upsetting everything while General Joe patrolled the airspace and waited for a chance to dive bomb him.

  By that time people were cheering and whistling and clapping, and even Voucher believed that his parrot was back.

  In disguise, of course.

  When Gus cleared the tables and the cockatoo dived, I snatched up a drawing board and got it in his way just in time. He thudded into it and dropped to the floor. Franks grabbed him and stuck him in the cage. I didn't see where Gus had gone. Probably to the supply room.

  Birch saw me to the door amid a general atmosphere of hilarity and relief. "The Maltese Parrot" would be finished on schedule, Franks' cockatoo would be a star (in disguise, since he'd be drawn as Cap'n Bob), Voucher had his bird back (also in disguise), and all was right with the world.

  Birch thanked me and clapped me on the back as he wished me well.

  When I got to the Chevy, I took the "KICK ME" sign off and threw it in the back seat before I went to tell Gober the good news.

  Shadder

  By Tom Piccirilli

  Parks got off the bus at the stop around back of Louie's Suds'n'Slop, where the whores and the moonshine runners rattled the trailers on the other side of the parking lot. Louie's jukebox twanged and mewled about motherless kids, dying dogs, and broken hearts. The yeehaws, boot-stompin', and the sharp crack of the cue ball busting up the rack made Parks' teeth ache.

  So, after a pretty wild run of luck, he was already burned up. You could swear ten thousand times that you'd never return to where you'd come from, but when you had no place else to go, you went right back. Jesus, look at the place--he thought he'd never even come within a thousand miles of the whole damn state, and now he was home again.

  The edges of his vision had been lit with swirling streaks of red over the last fifty miles of state highway, and now his hands were cold and aching. For the last three days, it had felt as if a steel band had been tightening around his chest, another around his head.

  Parks had been gone six years, married and divorced, and had written and directed two films. The first had been a sleeper hit which garnered feel-good reviews and a fair amount of cash. There'd been talk of an Academy Award nod. Though it hadn't happened, the very buzz about the possibility was nearly as good as if it had short-listed. He'd been prepped as a director to keep an eye on, and the studio had shined his ass and given in on some pretty stupid demands on his part. When you can get away with it, you push. So he did.

  The second film had gotten him kicked completely out of the biz. His wife had taken half of what he'd owned and the lawyers had chopped the rest down to a hole in the ground. He learned quickly who his real friends were. He didn't have any.

  Now Parks was twenty-seven, bankrupt, and on his way back to see his older brother Floyd, who hated him, just so he could steal Floyd's land.

  The ride wasn't over yet, and in some ways it was only starting. It'd make a good story for cable three-four years down the line. Rebuilding a career from the rubble, tragic figure rises to face new challenges. He could sell it down on Wilshire Boulevard so long as it had the right packaging. He could play himself once he got back into the game, so long as he had enough for the ante.

  The farm was just under five miles from the Suds'n'Slop but Parks walked it. He had no luggage besides a small satchel
with a change of clothes and his latest script. He didn't intend to stay long. He already had a new attorney going through the paperwork back in Beverly Hills, but he owed it to Floyd to put in a visit face to face. It was going to be hell.

  Already Parks had lost all the calm and slickness he'd nurtured in L.A., and could feel it bleeding out from him as he moved from the highway onto the dark dirt roads. There was enough moonlight that he could still see, but he didn't even need it. He knew the way home and could find it blind.

  It took about an hour. By the time he saw the broad expanse of the farmhouse opening up through the starlit stalks, he was covered in sweat and smelled like his brother, his grandfather and father and all his many cousins who worked the earth. He trudged up the trail of flattened grass past the rusted hulks of pickup trucks and tractors that spotted the terrain like lost battlements of the ancients.

  Parks had just hit the first stair of the porch when Floyd flung open the broken screen door, said, "Come on in, if you must," and receded into the house. The mousetrap hinges on the screen had squealed their last, with the screws pulled completely free from the rotting wood.

  Parks stepped inside, feeling his mother somewhere behind him, out in the dark fields. It got to him so much that he actually turned around and had to take a quick look.

  Floyd was across the room drinking a can of beer, foam flecking his chin and collar. He had a farmer's muscular arms and a trucker's gut. His wife, Myrtle, had paled and softened into a doughy plumpness, and she now wore only a vacuous bovine expression of complacency. Her vacant eyes skittered over Parks' face but she couldn't seem to place him.

  They'd had four kids when Parks left for the west coast, but he didn't remember any of their names. Now six children were spread out on the first floor, and there was all kinds of thumping going on upstairs. Sounded like at least three more. They looked so similar–-shaggy blonde heads, sexless placid faces, plain overalls–that he thought of them almost as a single child. Seeing only the one kid at various stages of life rather than several running around. Somebody dropped a plate of cinnamon rolls on the floor and called out, "Broom!"

  Père Hull sat in a wheelchair in the middle of the room with a little TV tray in front of him, facing away from the television, which had a truck show on, guys screaming and engines roaring, crashing into shit. The old man was crocheting a teal scarf that looked about twenty feet long already. Even though the knuckles of his huge fists bulged with arthritis, the needles quietly clicked together at an incredible speed. Parks was impressed. His grandfather gave a grin and said, "You must be hungry. Long trip you've been on. Go eat something. Come talk later, if you got a mind to."