High Midnight: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Six) by Stuart M. Kaminsky Read Free Book Online Page A

puzzled. He was wearing a coat over his heavy woolen sweater. His yellow-gray hair was massive and blowing wild. “I checked with Mr. Payson and he said—”
    “Payson?” I said suspiciously. “There is no Mr. Payson.”
    “Maybe I got the name wrong,” Gelhorn mused, glancing over his shoulder to see how quickly things were being set up.
    “You don’t have permission to shoot here, do you?” I said through clenched teeth.
    “Well, not exactly,” said Gelhorn, “but well be out of here in an hour at the most and…. Say, how would you like to be in this picture? You’d be perfect Not much, just a small part in this shot holding a horse. Doris,” he shouted, and the girl in the sweater came running. She was a pale, panting, pinched creature with rimless glasses and pigtails. Her age was something between eighteen and thirty. “Doris,” Gelhorn repeated with mock enthusiasm, “I think this gentleman would be perfect as the bandit holding the horses. What do you think?”
    “Perfect,” agreed Doris, picking up her cue.
    “Well, Mr….” Gelhorn began.
    “Peters,” I said. The name killed a birdie in his head but he chalked it up to minor coincidence. I forced the issue. “Toby Peters,” I said.
    “Who are you?” Gelhorn demanded, dropping the hand-wringing act and taking on steam without heat.
    “Toby Peters, private investigator.”
    “You’ve changed in a week,” sneered Gelhorn. “You used to be short, fat, obnoxious and stupid. You are no longer fat.”
    “That was my junior partner, using my name while I was on vacation,” I explained. “I’d be careful how you talk about him in his presence. He’s a jujitsu expert.”
    “Really,” said Gelhorn. “Well, it has been unpleasant talking to you, but I’ve got to get back to my film.” He turned, and Doris followed, looking back at me with curiosity.
    “I had a talk with Mr. Lombardi yesterday,” I said. That stopped Gelhorn so dead in his tracks that he almost toppled over. He turned to me with a quizzical look. “Lombardi? I don’t know any—”
    “Of course not,” I said. “You want to talk before I report back to Mr. Cooper that I found you most uncooperative? You don’t want to kill your chances of getting Cooper for High Midnight. ”
    Gelhorn hurried back to me and panted, “Then he is considering the offer?”
    I shrugged. “Depends on what I tell him.”
    “I made a straight offer,” said Gelhorn as blandly as he could.
    “What made you think the highest-salaried actor in Hollywood, the actor who is probably going to win his second Academy Award, is going to make a low-budget Western with you? What’s in it for him?”
    “That,” said Gelhorn, “is between Mr. Cooper and me.”
    “It can’t be that you got the idea of putting pressure on Cooper to come into this?”
    From a hot-dog stand on the corner, the sound of music cut through the wind.
    “I don’t need Gary Cooper,” Max Gelhorn said, plunging his hands into his pockets.
    “Of course not,” I agreed. “I can see that. I’ve seen that plush office of yours, and I can see the epic you’re shooting in an empty lot.”
    A whistle blew behind us and drowned out his answer. Seconds later workers from the factory were streaming out and heading for the hot-dog stand for lunch. Some of them glanced at the movie crew and hurried to get their sandwiches so they could spend their break watching.
    “Perhaps we could talk after I get this scene,” Gelhorn said, looking anxiously at the workers and probably fearing that a factory foreman would appear to boot him off the vacant lot.
    “Okay,” I said.
    “We’ll have a cup of coffee,” he said amiably, backing away. “Uh, and how about holding the horse in this shot. We’re a bit short-handed, and you look perfect.”
    “Why not,” I said with a grin that never looked like a grin.
    Doris fished out a cowboy hat and vest and took my coat and jacket Gelhorn told me to stand on the far side of the