Read Online A Fatal Glass of Beer by Stuart M. Kaminsky - Free Book Online Page B

canary? Hanging around Altoona, driven mad by the blow of my Indian club, waiting to extract revenge should ever I chance to return?”
    “I doubt it,” I said. “I’ve had two telephone warnings now for us to stay out of this pursuit of Hipnoodle. I think this was warning number three.”
    “Number four,” said Fields. “While you were packing and picking up our diminutive Barney Oldfield, a call came to me promising my demise if we should pursue this adventure.”
    “You could have told me sooner,” I said, looking back to be sure the Ford wasn’t gaining.
    “Didn’t know he’d called you,” said Fields, his voice going low, speaking almost to himself. “Cured myself of tuberculosis. Carried on long persuasive conversations with my liver, but it was made of greater resolve than my lungs. Next time I go to that sanitarium, or the time after, will be my last. This, Peters, will probably be my last adventure. Besides, no son of a bitch is going to steal the money I’ve worked my ass off for all these years. What I can’t figure out is why Hipnoodle leaves us clues so we can keep following him while at the same time warning us not to follow him or he’ll cause our immediate departure from this vale of tears.”
    “I don’t know,” I said.
    “I think, if I may say so,” said Gunther, loud enough to be heard over the engine, which didn’t require too much of a shout since the car was finely tuned, “I think we may be dealing with two criminals. One we are pursuing and one who is pursuing us so that he or they can procure Mr. Fields’s fortune from Hipnoodle when he has amassed it, a task which will be much easier if we give up or are dead.”
    “Makes sense to me,” I said.
    “Hipnoodles, unknown pursuers with guns,” Fields said. “There’s a movie in this somewhere. I’ll call La Cava when we get back to Los Angeles.”
    Gunther and I wanted lunch but Fields didn’t want to stop on the road. He wasn’t hungry. I discovered he was never hungry. Neither did he want our pursuer to catch up with us and shoot us to death as we emerged from Ma’s Eats. He had a good point.
    So we went into Altoona. There was no problem finding rooms for the night at the Altoona Majestic Hotel downtown, the war boom had not really caught up with the town. Its chief contribution, the ancient and philosophical desk clerk told us, was to supply cannon fodder, including two of his grandsons. Its chief import was the return of the dead young men.
    The lobby was small and empty, with pots of flowers and straight-back chairs and a couple of octagonal-shaped wooden tables.
    “Now,” said the clerk as I signed us all in, “they’re raising the draft age to forty-five, or at least talking about it. My son would go. They say the war’s almost over. We’ll see.”
    “Rest assured, old fellow,” said Fields. “I have followed this conflagration closely, charted its course and lack of discourse, and come to the conclusion that it will end soon.”
    “Soon?” said the thin old man, fingering his blue-knit cardigan.
    “No more than a year,” said Fields with confidence.
    “Lot of people could die in a year,” said the old man, brushing back wisps of white hair and revealing a forehead freckled with age and experience.
    “You’ve done an admirable job of containing your curiosity about our little trio,” Fields said.
    “Not often a prizefighter, a dwarf, and W. C. Fields come into the Altoona,” he said. “Time was, during vaudeville, we had lots of stars. You stayed here more than once. Fanny Brice. Burns and Allen. The Byrne Brothers.”
    “The Byrne Brothers?” Fields said with sudden energy. “They were my inspiration to become a juggler.”
    “Lots of stars,” said the old man. “Almost all polite and quiet. Too tired from running across the country and working to cause a ruckus. Wife handled show people mostly. She’s gone now.”
    Gunther had brought in all the luggage: my suitcase, his, and