Murder on the Yellow Brick Road Read Online Free PDF Page A

phone, “he doesn’t want to talk to you and if you’re smart, you won’t want to talk to him. We’ve had a tough week.”
    â€œSergeant, I’m reporting a murder. Someone’s murdered a Munchkin at M.G.M.”
    There was silence at the other end except for the background sounds of typewriters and cops talking.
    â€œYou want me to tell your brother that?” he said calmly.
    â€œIt’s true. Why don’t the two of you come.…”
    There was a crackling sound at the other end and the clunk of the phone, then my brother’s rumbling voice.
    â€œToby, you fuck-up. If this is one of your stupid jokes, you’ll do hospital time.”
    He meant it and I knew it, but I couldn’t resist. Maybe it was a death wish or something.
    â€œHow are Ruth and the kids?” I asked. For some reason, maybe the fact that I never visited him and his family, this always drove Phil up the wall and the walls of the L. A. police department are no fun running up. Besides, with the gut he was developing, a run up the wall was out of the question. He hung up.
    â€œWill he come?” Hoff asked finishing his drink.
    â€œHe’ll come,” I said leaning back and putting my feet up on the desk. I picked up his newspaper and began to read, trying to look as confident as I was not.
    It took fifteen minutes for Phil and Seidman to get to M.G.M. In that time I discovered through my reading that the Greeks had hurled back an Italian invasion, that the Japanese were charging, that Americans were assembling arms at Manila, that the A&P was celebrating its 81st anniversary, that I could get a suit from Brooks on South Broadway for $25 and take three payments, and that a bottle of FF California port could be had for 37 cents.
    The call came to Hoff’s office from cowboy Buck McCarthy at the gate. Hoff told Buck to take the police to the Munchkin City set, and then he hurried to the door. I slowed him down and told him it would be a good idea to let the police get to the scene first. I folded the newspaper neatly, placed it on Hoff’s desk and got up. I was in no hurry to see Phil Pevsner. The only one who had ever successfully stood between us in battle was my dad, a Glendale grocer, who had died a long time ago. There were a couple of times even when he was alive that Phil almost lost control and went for me right over our father. Dad would have been flattened like a beer can in the Rose Bowl parade if Phil hadn’t gotten himself under control. It had been something I had said, but I couldn’t remember what it was.
    When Hoff and I got to the Oz set we walked in slowly like a camera dollying in to the center of a Busby Berkeley musical number. Three people stood looking down at the dead Munchkin, who had not moved nor been moved. Two of them, Seidman and my brother, wore badly rumpled suits. The third guy was a big, bald uniformed cop I recognized as Rashkow. Rashkow was only in his twenties, but heredity and my brother had robbed him of most of his hair. Seidman turned to me and Hoff with a sour look I recognized. Seidman was thin and white faced. He hated the sunlight. Phil just looked at the corpse with anger as if the little man had purposely conspired to ruin his day. For Phil, Los Angeles was strewn with corpses whose sole job was to complicate his life and make it miserable. He hated corpses. He’d even kicked one in anger once, according to Seidman. He hated murderers even more. The only thing he hated more than corpses and murderers was me.
    Phil was a little taller than me, broader, older with close-cut steely hair and a hard cop’s gut. His tie always dangled loosely around his neck, and his face frequently turned red with contained rage, especially when I was present. M.G.M. had certainly picked the right guy to calm him down. By the time Hoff and I were within five feet, Phil’s lower lip was out and his head was gently shaking up and down like a bull