A Fatal Glass of Beer (3 page)

But now the comedian stood entranced by the sight of Shelly and his patient. I moved to his side and whispered, “Mr. Fields, I’m Toby Peters.”

“Fine, fine,” he said without looking away from Shelly and the struggling woman. “A confident sense of one’s identity is the cornerstone of sanity.”

Everyone from General Patton to Marlene Dietrich did an imitation of Fields. It was a mainstay impersonation, like doing Cagney or Walter Winchell. But they were all exaggerations. His voice was not as harsh as the mimics made it, his movements not as frantic. He moved with the grace of the great juggler he had been, the great comic juggler I had seen at the Grace Theater when I was a kid.

“Man’s a genius,” Fields whispered.

Violet shook her head and went through the door back to the reception room.

“And the secretary is as fine an example of youthful pulchritude as I’ve witnessed in a decade,” he added.

“Husband’s in the army. Ranked middleweight. I hear he has a temper.”

“Most of the husbands I have encountered would merit a similar description,” he said, his eyes still on Shelly, who shifted as the woman’s legs tightened around him.

“Had almost the exact scene in a short I did,
The Dentist
,” Fields confided, pointing at Shelly and his patient. “Studio cut it out. Censored. Said it looked like a sexual act with the woman’s legs around me and me astride her on the dental chair as she gurgled in pain. I never forgave the studio and I never forgot the woman.”

“There,” Shelly roared, with a yank of his right hand.

The woman released Shelly, her legs going limp in the chair. He stepped back and held up a small dental tong clinging to a small bloody tooth. He brandished the specimen at the woman in the chair in a show of triumph. Her eyes were closed and she was doing her best to breathe.

Shelly pushed his thick glasses back on his perspiring nose, placed tongs and tooth on his white table, and returned the cigar to his mouth. He was smiling broadly when he finally noticed me and my client.

“You look almost like W. C. Fields,” he said.

“I have the distinct though dubious honor of being William Claude Dukinfield, long known professionally as W. C. Fields,” said Fields, extending his hand as Shelly moved forward to shake.

“My patients say I do a perfect imitation of you,” said Shelly.

“Shel,” I warned, but the rotund dentist in the now-blood-stained smock ignored me.

“Sir,” said Fields, “I am not a friend of the dental profession. Too many times have its barbaric practitioners charged me outrageously for piddling procedures. Even took one to court. Lost the case, though I kept my dignity. But I have been watching you and admiring your dedication to the fine art of excruciating extraction.”

“Well,” said Shelly, going into his W. C. Fields imitation, which I had heard several times before, each time telling Shelly that it was terrible, “I may have received my lugubrious training in the fine art of oral hygiene in Philadelphia, but I have learned to overcome that obstacle and, with the help of candlelight as I read many a tome of dental history and care, became what I am today.”

Fields looked at Shelly, showing no expression.

“Pretty good, huh?” asked Shelly, returning to his own voice.

“Pretty good?” Fields said. “I thought I was listening to my own mirror.”

“We have to go to my office, Shel,” I said, touching Fields’s arm and motioning toward my door.

“Besides,” said Fields, “I fear the poor woman in your chair has passed out or is dead. If she’s dead, I know a good lawyer. Or, I should say, I know a skilled and crafty lawyer. There are no good lawyers, only evil ones, the more evil the better. That is what draws them to their profession.”

We moved toward my office and I heard Fields mutter to himself, “Just as the desire to inflict pain drew you to dentistry.”

When we squeezed into my office, I caught a glimpse of Shelly smiling and relighting his cigar. The woman in the chair made a convulsive twitch, opened her eyes in panic, and then lay back.

Fields looked around my office and took a seat across from me, glancing back over his shoulder at the photograph of me, my brother, my dad, and the German shepherd.

“Dogs are not partial to me,” he said. “They are ungrateful and stupid beasts who have never responded to my gestures of armistice.”

“His name was Kaiser Wilhelm,” I said. “He was really my brother’s dog.”

“Should have called him Bismarck,” Fields said, putting his hat and cane on the chair next to him. “I’m a great admirer of old Otto.”

“Aren’t we all,” I said.

“I have a series of questions to ask you,” he said, pulling a crumpled sheet of paper from his pocket and laying it flat on the desktop. I leaned back. “First,” he said, “are you a man who takes pleasure in the occasional or even frequent imbibing of alcohol?”

“I like a beer once in a while,” I said.

“What kind?” he shot back, leaning forward.

“Not particular,” I answered with a shrug. “Edelbrew.”

“What is your critical assessment of the martini?” he asked seriously.

“Sorry,” I said. “Just an occasional beer. Most of the time I’m fine with a cold Pepsi.”

Fields frowned and made a notation with a short yellow pencil.

“This is not going well,” he said softly.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Mae West recommended you,” he said. “Damned fine writer. Little thing. Only woman besides Fanny Brice who ever successfully upstaged me. Pretends she’s a man-eater. Probably still a virgin. I mean West. You agree?”

“I don’t list my clients and I don’t talk about them,” I said.

“Good answer,” he said, making another mark. “She says you’re an honest man?”

“Is this the office of a dishonest man?” I asked.

He looked around, his eyes pausing on the Dali, and turned back to me. “An unsuccessful dishonest man, mayhaps.”

“Mayhaps,” I agreed.

“What do you think about marriage?” he asked.

“I tried it once. My wife left me and married a rich man. He died and she’s about to marry another one.”

“Good,” he said, making a check mark. “I too was once married. Still am, though I haven’t seen her in years. I believe I drove the woman mad, though we managed to bear a son. Do you have children?”

“No,” I said.

“What are your fees?”

“Thirty dollars a day plus expenses,” I said.

“Expenses?”

“Food, water, gas, bribes, parking fees, travel, hotels or motels if necessary,” I said.

“You get paid twenty-five cash each day as a fee, and expense money as we go,” he said, pulling a handful of bills from his pocket. “Here is one day or more in advance.”

He handed me a fifty-dollar bill.

I thought I saw a bulge in his other pocket and the hint of the appearance of more bills. I didn’t argue. Twenty-five dollars a day was my bottom-line fee. And, besides, this was going to be in cash.

“The case?”

He reached into another pocket and pulled out a letter. He handed it to me. It was postmarked Philadelphia. No return address. I opened it and took out the single sheet. It was typed and read:

Dear Bulbnose:

Humiliation is one thing a man cannot endure and call himself a man. You have humiliated me. I have spent years considering some form of humiliation for you but have come to the conclusion that you are beyond humiliation. However, you are not beyond pain, especially the pain of monetary loss. It is I who have taken your bankbooks. It is I who will take back some of my pride by taking as much of your money as I can. You can try to stop me, you sick old sot, but I’ll prove the better man. The task begins in Philadelphia and will not end until I have at least a million dollars.

Lester O. Hipnoodle

“Who’s Hipnoodle?”

“Never heard of him,” said Fields.

“Sounds like a fake name.”

“I am a collector of the odd, unusual, and creative name,” said Fields. “No name surprises me. Many delight me. This nom de plume, if it is one, is not of the caliber that merits serious artistic consideration. Be that as it may, I have been, over the course of my long and honored career, stashing money in banks across the country, going back to the days when I joined the Keith circuit. I have kept the bankbooks on a table in my office at home. My secretary has of late attempted to put the books in order. In the midst of so doing, we both noted one morning that the stacks which overflowed elegantly like small works of art had significantly dwindled. There were only about half of them left. And then this letter.”

I looked at the letter again and reached for the phone.

“We’ll go to your house and take a look,” I said. “After a couple of calls.”

“Certainly,” he replied, turning his hat in his lap and reexamining the Dali painting.

While I was putting my call through, Fields outlined his plan, said I should find a driver to take his car to Philadelphia while he and I flew, and that he trusted none of his servants.

“At least three of them are Nazi spies,” he muttered. “And one is definitely a Jap, though he claims to be Chinese.”

“Operator,” I said into the phone. “I need a number in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.… Thanks.”

I held on while I waited.

“Why didn’t I think of that?” Fields said. “Too much time in the damned sanitarium. I’ve got a slight case of mogo-on-the-gogo.”

“Yes, operator. Do you have a listing for a Lester O. Hipnoodle?”

I waited while she checked and then I nodded to Fields. We had a bingo. I wrote down the phone number and then asked, “May I have the address?”

She gave it to me and I wrote it on the same envelope.

“Thanks,” I said and hung up. And then to Fields: “New number. New address.”

I told him the address and the number and, for one of the few times I was to know him over the next week, he sat completely silent and, for an instant, serious.

“That is precisely one block from the home I left when I was a boy,” he said. “Hipnoodle is a fiend. He’s not only going to get me back to Philadelphia but into the part of my life spent as a vagabond child, the most illustrious in that city since Benjamin Franklin, and the most unpleasant.”

“Sorry,” I said.

He sighed and said, “What now?”

“Hipnoodle is trying very hard to be found,” I said.

I picked up the phone again and once more called the operator in Philadelphia, asking for the police. She gave me the number which I wrote on my envelope, and I thanked her and called. A very bored-sounding man answered.

“I’m calling from Los Angeles,” I said. “I represent W. C. Fields. A man in Philadelphia just sent Mr. Fields a threatening letter claiming he has stolen Mr. Fields’s bankbooks.”

“W. C. Fields?” the bored man repeated as if this might be a rib.

“Yes,” I said. “He is sitting right here with me.”

“Give me the phone number at Fields’s house so we can check this out.”

I looked at Fields and mouthed, “Your phone number.” Fields gave me the number, which I gave to the Philadelphia cop, plus the address and phone number of the man who called himself Hipnoodle.

“I’ll turn this over to a detective,” the no-longer-so-bored cop said. “We’ll call you back at Mr. Fields’s number. Tell Fields that Sergeant Roy McFadden is a great fan of his.”

“I’ll tell him, Sergeant McFadden,” I said and hung up.

“We’d better get over to my place,” Fields said.

“You know there’s a good chance Hipnoodle has already skipped.”

“He’d be a moron if he hasn’t,” said Fields.

“Do you have the name of one bank he has the book for?” I asked. “A local bank would be easier.”

“First Federal of Lompoc,” he said. “Secretary made a list of the banks and the names under which I made my deposits.” He pulled out a sheet of paper. “Used the name Quigley E. Sneersight in Lompoc.”

I picked up the phone again and got the First Federal Bank of Lompoc. A woman answered.

“I’m a depositor with a problem,” I said. “My name is Sneersight, Quigley E. Someone has stolen my bankbook and I don’t want them to get into my account.”

“I see,” said the woman. “But how are we to know that you are the real Mr. Snoozeshot—”

“Sneersight,” I corrected.

“Sneersight,” she agreed. “If you come to the bank with sufficient identification, we might be able to do something. If, however, someone comes into the bank with your bankbook, presents proper identification, and has a signature that coincides with that on the account, we have no recourse but to honor the transaction.”

“Can I talk to the bank president?”

“I am the president,” she said.

“You think I’ll get the same answer at other banks?” I asked.

“I would assume so.”

“Thanks,” I said and hung up. I looked at Fields and said, “I suppose you don’t have identification as Sneersight?”

“None at all,” he confirmed.

“If the Philadelphia police don’t find Hipnoodle, we have to get to him before he gets all your money, or we can go to all the banks on your list and try to make the withdrawal, telling them you lost your bankbook. Without identification, that might cause some problems, but I guess we can try it.”

“We pursue the rascal,” Fields said, rising. “Even if it does mean going back to Philadelphia. If we don’t trap Hipnoodle in his opium den, we’ll try to get to the banks before him. Trap him or convince the banks to let me make withdrawals or close the accounts.”

“How many banks?” I asked.

Fields shrugged. “This is not a case of the potential loss of ill-gotten lucre,” he said, rising and patting his straw hat back on his head, “but of a man’s savings, earned by painful hours of learning to juggle in frozen lofts and worse hotel rooms. We’re talking about dozens of banks.”

I nodded.

“You have a weapon?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Bring it.”

I said I would. I didn’t add that I had been the worst shot in the Glendale Police Department and had gotten decidedly worse since.

“Well, enough of this shilly-shallying, let’s go to my house where I can pack and, if need be, be on our way to the scene of the crime before the day ends.”

He led the way back into Shelly’s office and looked over at the victim, who still sat in the chair. Her groans had turned to an eerie, distant low moan. Shelly was puffing away and washing his instruments in the sink.