by Bill Crider
“I can’t help it, kid. It’s just the way that I am. There are damned few people I trust in this town.”
“And I’m not one of them.”
“Look, kid, it’s not that I don’t trust you. I do. But it’s hard for me to get used to the idea.”
“Why don’t you start by letting me in on your conversation with Congreve?”
Bogart let out a little smoke and then crushed his cigarette in an overflowing ashtray.
“All right,” he said. “I admitted to Congreve that we were at the studio when Dawson was killed.”
“Oh, swell. That’s just great.”
“It’s not as bad as it sounds since he knew it already. I was trying 161
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to get him to tell me something and at the same time get him pointed in some other direction.”
That sounded interesting, and I started to calm down a little.
“What did you want him to tell you?”
“I wanted to know who called him and told him we were at the studio.”
“The man on the gate,” I said. “The one I thought was reading the magazine.”
“It wasn’t him,” Bogart said. “He didn’t know who we were when we went in, and he didn’t notice us when we left. It was someone else.”
“Are you saying it was me? You could have listened in on that phone call I made if you didn’t trust me.”
“There’s that trust thing again. You’re too sensitive, kid. I know you didn’t call Congreve.”
“All right, then. Who was it?”
“I don’t know, and neither does Congreve.”
“He told you that?”
“Not in so many words, but he doesn’t know. You’re not the only one who can put a hankie over the telephone receiver.”
“Another anonymous caller,” I said.
“That’s it. Now doesn’t that make you wonder just how many anonymous calls the cops have gotten about you and me?”
It was something I should have thought about sooner. Well, I’d thought about it, but not enough. Now that I considered it, and it occurred to me that someone had told Congreve that Bogart had made to Burleson outside Romanoff’s.
Someone had also told them that Bogart had a pistol like the one that had killed Burleson.
And someone had told them that we’d been at Superior that evening. Maybe that same someone had told them that Bogart had a .45
automatic.
In other words, someone was keeping up with just about every move Bogart and I made. That brought up two questions: Who? And why?
Bogart said he thought that it was a plot from the beginning, but he didn’t know anyone who’d have it in for him.
“OK, maybe I do,” he said. “There’s Babson. But I can’t believe he 162
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hates me so much that he’d frame me for murder. It doesn’t make sense.”
It didn’t make sense to me, either. Too many complications, too easy to disprove. My theory was that someone was trying to draw attention away from himself by leaving the pistol behind.
Which brought us back to the big questions.
Who?
Why?
And neither of us had an answer.
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Are you sure you can’t use a drink?” Bogart asked after we’d discussed things for a while longer. “I’ve found that liquor lubricates the brain cells.”
“Not mine. And I thought liquor killed brain cells.”
“Who told you that? Somebody who never took a drink, I’ll bet.
What does a teetotaler know?”
I couldn’t answer that one for him, so he got up and poured himself some more Scotch while I tried to remember everything that had been said to me in the last couple of days. I had the feeling that there was something I’d missed, but I couldn’t come up with it.
The fact that it was now long past midnight might have had something to do with it, or maybe it was because Garton had pounded me so hard with his towel. Of course I’d lost a few brain cells back when I’d been drinking. That could have been the problem.
I told Bogart that I might as well go on home and try to get some rest. I was tired, and we could start again the next day.
Bogart, who didn’t seem tired at all, held his glass of Scotch up to the light and admired the color.
“Before you leave,” he said after he’d taken a drink, “we need to talk about one other thing.” “What’s that?”
“It all goes back to my pistol,” he said. “We know that someone 165
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took it, and whoever did it was almost certainly here the night before Burleson got killed.”
I didn’t agree. He might have told others about the pistol. Mayo knew about it, and I was sure Bacall did, too.
“But neither one of them killed Burleson,” he said. “Mayo was in no condition to kill anyone, and it couldn’t have been her driving that car tonight. She’s a lousy driver. And she doesn’t have a Packard.”
I pointed out that we didn’t know that car at Superior had been a Packard.
“Want to bet?” Bogart said. “I’ll give you good odds.”
I didn’t want to bet. I had a feeling the car had been a Packard, all right.
“Forget the Packard,” I said. I wasn’t feeling so tired now, but I was still feeling beaten up. “Who knew about the pistol. You keep dodging that one.”
Bogart went back to sit on the couch. He set his drink on the coffee table and leaned forward, his elbows on his thighs, his hands clasped under his chin.
“If it’s not Babson,” he said, “and believe me, I’d like it to be, it comes down to whoever’s got the most to lose. Who would that be?”
The only one I could think of was Robert Carroll. Bob. If we trusted Dawson’s dying message it had to be him or Babson, and we hadn’t found either of them that night.
“The way Stella talked,” Bogart said, “Bob has a lot to lose, all right.
Maybe he’s the one we need to talk to.”
I was willing, but I didn’t know where to look for him.
“You found Stella, didn’t you? Aren’t there places like that where Bob might go?”
I knew of a couple, but I wasn’t as friendly with the people who managed them as I was with Harry and Johnnie. Getting inside wouldn’t be quite as easy as it had been at the Club Sappho. And the places I knew weren’t as easy to find. One of them was out in the Hollywood hills.
“That’s just what we need,” Bogart said. “A drive in the hills would be invigorating.”
“You’ll just fill the car with smoke,” I said.
“You can roll down a window.” He stood up. “Let’s go.”
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I gave in. What else could I do?
We drove with the windows down in my old Chevy, and the night air did wake me up a little. Bogart had a cigarette going, but the wind carried the smoke away, and, if I wasn’t invigorated, at least I wasn’t entirely groggy.
It was a good thing I wasn’t drowsy because one of the places I knew about where Bob Carroll might be was the Michelangelo, out between Beverly Hills and Bel Air where the highway twisted and turned up into the hills. Driving there at night was always sort of an adventure even if you were completely alert.
Bogart found that the bottle he’d bought earlier—much earlier—was still in the car, so he had a little drink to keep his brain working, or maybe to keep himself awake.
It wasn’t until after we’d gotten out of Beverly and into the real hills that he had anything to say.
“You remember that Packard we’ve been talking about?”
“How could I forget,” I said.
“Well, it’s back.”
I looked into the rearview mirror and saw a pair of headlights, but I couldn’t tell what kind of car they belonged to.
“
Are you sure?”
“I might not have a copy of that Detective’s Handbook you’re always talking about, but I know a Packard when I see one.”
“How the hell can you see it well enough to tell what it is?”
“I got a pretty good look when we stopped at that stop sign at Beverly Drive, in front of the Beverly Hills Hotel.”
“Why didn’t you mention it to me?”
I don’t know why I was asking. What would I have done? I don’t usually get involved in cases that require me to take evasive action.
“I wanted to be sure it was the same car,” Bogart said. “I had another look when we passed under the last streetlight, and now I’m sure.” Last was the word when it came to streetlights, all right. We were out of the city and into the hills, and there weren’t any lights.
There weren’t many cars, either, not at that hour of the morning.
“Everywhere we go, there it is,” Bogart said, still talking about the Packard. “Why do you think that is?”
“Somebody wants to keep tabs on us,” I said.
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“Right. But why would anybody want to do that?”
“To find out what we know, or at least who we’re talking to.”
“Maybe it was that way at first,” Bogart said, his face illuminated only by the dim dashboard lights. “This time might be different.”
I didn’t like the way that sounded.
“Different how?” I said.
“They might have decided it’s time to get rid of us. This would be a good place.”
I couldn’t argue with that. Since there was no traffic, the driver could pull up beside my car and let a passenger riddle the body of the old Chevy with bullets. He could riddle our bodies with bullets, too, while he was at it, and there wasn’t much I could do to prevent it. There was no way I could outrun him all the way to Bel Air. The Chevy had trouble climbing the hills at all, much less making any speed.
While I was thinking about that, the Packard started gaining on me. I shoved the accelerator all the way to the floor, but we were going uphill, and there was no change in our speed. The Chevy was already giving all it could. I thought it might even have slowed down a little, but that was probably only my imagination, which was working overtime as I thought about my bullet-riddled corpse being pulled from the car the next day by some cops I didn’t know.
I thought of how much Garton would enjoy hearing about it.
I thought of how much money Mr. Warner would lose if Bogart were killed with me.
I thought about how there was no one who would really miss me.
Bogart didn’t seem at all concerned. We might have been out for a Sunday drive in the country for all the anxiety he exhibited. Either he was an even better actor than I thought he was, or he was a lot calmer under pressure than I could ever be.
He took a drag off his cigarette and said, “He’s going to try to run us off the road.”
“How do you know?” I asked, straining forward as if I could somehow will the Chevy to go faster. It wasn’t working.
“I’ve seen more movies than you have. Not to mention that the top of this hill would be a perfect place. There’s no shoulder to speak of, there’s no safety barrier, and it’s a hell of a long way down.”
“You don’t sound very worried.”
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We were reaching the top of the hill now, and I remembered that there was a sharp turn to the left right beyond the crest.
“I’m worried, all right, but I figure you’ll think of something,”
Bogart said, and flipped his cigarette out the window.
Without waiting for it to hit the ground, he lit another one. I don’t think his hands were shaking, but then I couldn’t see too well in the near darkness.
I looked into the rearview mirror again and saw the Packard. It was nearing my back bumper. If I was ever planning to do anything, I had to make my move.
So I swerved over into the left lane. The Chevy’s tires squealed, and the front end shuddered. The car made a couple of fast swerves and then settled down.
There was a hill on our left side now, and I could almost have reached out and touched the bushes that grew beside the road. It gave me a good feeling to think of the solidity of that hill.
“Good move,” Bogart said. “I’d like to see him push us off now.”
“I wouldn’t,” I said.
“That was irony, Junior. Very big in the Greek drama. You ever read any of those old plays?”
I didn’t think this was the right time for a discussion of Euripides or even Sophocles.
“Dramatic irony,” Bogart said, and then, just in case my education was lacking, he gave me the definition. “That’s when the audience knows something that the characters don’t know.”
“Swell,” I said, and that’s when the Packard rammed my bumper.
I jerked forward, but I didn’t lose my grip on the wheel. Bogart was able to get his hands on the dash before his head cracked the windshield.
“Well, he’s not going to try to run us off the road,” Bogart said.
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“He’s going to push us off instead.”
I wasn’t so glad to hear that, but I saw how it could be done. All the driver of the Packard had to do was keep pushing me in a straight line. If he could push hard enough, I wouldn’t be able to make the turn. We’d just go straight across the road and over the side.
When we came to the curve, I put on my brake and turned the 169
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wheel to the left as hard as I could. The Packard’s driver floored his accelerator. He had more power than I did, and we surged forward.
I took my foot off the break and pressed down on my own accelerator. For just a moment the two cars separated, and I thought I was going to break free and that we’d be headed down the road a little ahead of the Packard.
But the moment didn’t last long. The Packard hit me again, and this time it maintained contact. Before I could complete the turn, I felt the front wheels slide as they crunched on gravel, and I knew we were off the road.
We flew over the side of the hill, and for a second there was nothing in front of us but the black night sky speckled with stars.
Then the front of the car dipped, and we were falling.
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We didn’t fall far because the car hit the ground on all four wheels. We bounced up, hit the ground again, and bounced sideways. This happened over and over, and it was all I could do to hang onto the wheel. There was no question of steering or stopping. I was being shaken like a martini at Chasen’s, only more thoroughly.
Bogart didn’t have a wheel to grab, and he bounced around like a BB in a beer bottle. If I’d had time to think about it, I’d have worried about our heads banging together.
I didn’t, however, have time to think about it because I was much more worried about the car banging into one of the trees that we’d somehow avoided so far, though we’d run right through any number of small bushes.
I was also worried about the car suddenly flipping end over end and not coming to a stop until it crashed into a boulder at the bottom of the hill the way cars always did in a Republic Serials when they went over the side of a hill.
If that happened, I wouldn’t be worried about anything. Nobody ever got out of those cars. You couldn’t count the hero. It always turned out that he’d gotten out of the car before it went over the side.
Neither Bogart nor I had managed to do that. We hadn’t even had time to try.
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And so, trapped inside the Chevy, we bounced, skidded, and slid along, limbs slapping the sides of the car and reaching inside to swat me in the face now and then.
All this happened very fast, yet to me it seemed almost as if I were watching a s
lowed-down movie as we approached the big cedar tree that loomed right in front of us, the one we were going to smash into.
We hit it. I distinctly remember hearing the bumper crumple, the tree trunk crack, and the steam hissing and boiling out of the car’s wrecked radiator.
After that I didn’t hear anything for a while.
The next thing I knew, Bogart was shaking me.
“Wake up, Junior,” he said. “It’s time we got out of here.”
I wasn’t sure I could get out. I was wedged between the seat and the steering wheel, and it was a tight fit.
There was something odd about Bogart, too, but I couldn’t figure out at first what it was. Then I realized he was outside the car. He had reached in through the window to put a hand on my shoulder and give me a shake.
And there were a couple of other things. He wasn’t wearing his hat, and it looked as if there was blood on his forehead. He was pulling on the door handle, but it wasn’t doing much good. The door was crumpled and stuck shut.
I looked over at the passenger door. It was dangling open, hanging from one hinge.
“Can you hear me?” Bogart said.
“I can hear you. I just can’t do anything.”
“Try scooting over to the other side and getting out that door.”
I tried, but I couldn’t move. I was stuck firmly between the wheel and the seat. I told Bogart that I was pretty much trapped where I was.
“You’d better help me get this door open so I can give you a pull,”
he said. “I smell gasoline.”
Now that he’d mentioned it, I could smell it, too.
“Don’t light a cigarette,” I told him.
“I won’t. Now shove on the door a little.”
I leaned over and put my shoulder against the door, but I wasn’t 172
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able to do much shoving. Bogart kept working at it, and after a while metal squealed and the door moved a little.
“I’m not sure I can get out even if we get it open,” I said.
“You’re doing fine, Junior. Hit it again.”
I hadn’t hit it in the first place, but I put my shoulder on the door and gave a little push. There was a louder squeal, and the door moved another inch or two. If I dieted for about thirty years, I might be able to squeeze through the opening. That is, if I could get out from under the wheel.
