Herbie's Diner

by L. Joseph Shosty

  Muncey finally got smart and got the kid around the throat. The kid’s eyes went wide immediately, and it was clear Muncey had enough gas left in the tank to finish the job. I picked myself up and grabbed the bat off the ground. The meat cleaver lay nearby, but I preferred the bat. I walked up behind Muncey, not caring if he heard me coming or not. He was dying; he knew it. There wasn’t going to be any getting out of this. He just wanted to finish one of us before his time came. I wasn’t going to let that happen. I hit him across the back of the head, and he snapped forward. He released the kid, who dropped to the ground much as I had a few moments before. I stood over Muncey and watched him breathe.

  “Finish it,” the kid said through a series of gasps.

  I did what I was told. I hit Muncey four more times across the head until I was sure he would never get up again.

  The kid struggled to his feet. He nodded his thanks at me.

  “Arthur Hands, I presume?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Johnny Hardwood.”

  “So you said.”

  “Your employer is dead.”

  “Yeah. I figured as much.”

  “I thought I told you to wait.”

  He grinned at me. “Maybe I didn’t read that part of your book.”

  “Maybe you should’ve. We could have taken Muncey at the same time.”

  Arthur Hands shook his head. “It’s like you said: Mr. Peters is dead. This guy had it coming to him. Coming from me.”

  I gestured to the wound at his side. “How’s that?”

  He was woozy as he said, “I, uh, I need to get somewhere.”

  I helped him stay on his feet. We left by the back door. The crowd was still around the front, so no one saw us take the path from the diner to the small trailer in the woods behind it. I got the door open and Hands inside, where I laid him on Muncey and Arlene’s bed. I found a clean towel in the bathroom and used it to put pressure on the wound, hoping to stop the bleeding before he got too far gone. Sacramento was too far away, and anyway I had no idea where my keys or Mort’s might be. Hands probably wouldn’t survive the search, so I had to make sure he was stabilized before I could proceed.

  The irony of that moment was not lost on me. Here was a guy who was no doubt coming to kill me, as well as Arlene and Muncey, who I had made before he could start any trouble. I knew he’d be coming first, and so I’d circled words in the dimestore novel explaining my plan. Where I had no words for things like “Mort” I’d circled individual letters in words to spell it out. I’d also explained what I planned to do, which was create a diversion so we could get out of there, call the cops before either Muncey or Arlene knew what was going on, and have them arrested for extortion and murder. The extortion charge wouldn’t stick because it had been my plan, but it sounded so good on paper I was sure Hands would fall for it. But did I think for a moment it was going down like that? No. Never. Hands was never letting me get away. I knew too much about the scam he and the Peters were playing with All-American’s money. The switch knife he’d used on Muncey had probably had my name on it first. I knew also that if he lived, Hands was going to find a way to get even with me, eventually. Guys like him didn’t like loose ends, and they didn’t like getting beaten, either. But I couldn’t just sit by and let him buy it, not if I could make a difference.

  He was still conscious, at least for the time being, so I decided to find out what I could while I still had him lucid.

  “So where’s Mrs. Peters?”

  He smiled. “Which one?”

  “The one you don’t want the cops to know about.”

  “Somewhere no one can get her.”

  Good. That meant she wasn’t here, with him. That told me exactly what I needed to know. There was never going to be an exchange. They were going for the home run, getting Mort back, and keeping the loot. That had probably been Hands’ idea, unless I had completely misread Mrs. Peters.

  “How did Mort go?” he asked me.

  “The big guy. Muncey. I imagine he was beaten to death. I never saw it. They had me trussed up elsewhere.”

  “Terrible way to go.”

  “You don’t sound too broke up over it.”

  Hands said nothing. I’d put two and two together by then, anyway, at least where his loyalty lay. If so, I’d misread him as well.

  “So who was the guy in Mort’s car, the one the cops fished out of the lake?”

  “Why do you want to know?”

  “So I can send his family an anonymous letter. Let them know not to expect him home anytime soon.”

  Hands nodded. “I thought about doing that.”

  “Why? That would blow your boss’ cover and put you in line for a murder charge if you were found out.”

  Hands said nothing, just stared at me from his good eye. Now I did have the whole picture.

  “Does she know anything about your big plan?”

  “No. And please don’t tell her, neither.”

  “It’s not my story to tell. If she wants to pay my salary, I’ll give it to her, all wrapped up in a bow, but I doubt I’m ever going to see the faux Mrs. Peters in the flesh.”

  “Nah. She’s a pretty smart girl, Hardwood. You wouldn’t know it to talk to her, but she’s got smarts, that kid.”

  “I’m sure she does,” I said, but Hands had already lost consciousness.

  The bleeding eventually stopped, and I washed my hands in the sink and got cleaned up. I was in rough shape, but I’d live. It took twenty minutes of primping like some schoolgirl ballerina before I looked human enough to go see what was happening at the diner. By then the uproar was in full swing. The threat of the fire had died down, and the customers must have returned to the diner to resume their meals. Somewhere along the way someone must have discovered Arlene, for the children of the indigent family were in tears when I arrived, and their mother, also weeping, was consoling them. The men were standing around, looking hostile, as men often did to appear useful. The truck driver, upon seeing me in my ragged state, pointed a finger at me.

  “There he is!” The hostile eyes turned in my direction.

  “What do you know about all this? You were the last one out of there.” This was the salesman. All of a sudden he’d turned from clown to inquisitor.

  “Yeah, I know a thing or two about it,” I replied.

  He didn’t seem too happy with me. “You got some big idea about smashing women?”

  I’d found my ID in the trailer, along with my car keys, and I pulled the wallet out to show them. “Have the police been called?” I asked.

  “Yeah, they’re on their way,” the truck driver said. “You got some explaining to do when they get here.”

  “And I will,” I said. “What I won’t do is answer to you. You’re all witnesses. No one leaves until they get here.”

  “I got to be in Salem by tonight,” he said.

  “That’s between you and the cops,” I said. “But unless you want trouble the next time you’re through, I’d suggest you play ball.”

  No one was happy with me, but I didn’t care. I went outside to smoke a cigarette and wait for the cops. The truck driver glared at me through the window until he realized he wasn’t going to get a rise out of me. A couple of patrol units pulled into the diner parking lot a few minutes later. A meat wagon came soon after. I was soon introduced to Officer Kerns, who was not happy with me, either. You could tell he had taken respite a time or two at Herbie’s Diner, as he was disinclined to believe me about Arlene or Muncey’s guilt. I gave him a full rundown of the past two days: shadowing Mort Peters, the abduction, the plan to lure my suspects into the plot and play them off Arlene and Muncey, the case for All-American, and the subsequent fights. I held nothing back, regardless of how it might make me look. I didn’t want anyone to get an idea I was holding back something, not when it had been me who had proposed the extortion plot to begin with. I think what saved me there was that I had never intended for the plot to go through, and there was no way they could
prove otherwise. Kerns wasn’t impressed and was obviously going to try and pin the whole thing on me if he could. He especially didn’t like what I had done in convincing my captors not to kill me. I’d put other people in danger, he said, and that was irresponsible, reckless, but what he was really telling me was that he was angry at me for living when I should have let his buddies field-dress me in some hidden grove. The two poor, innocent folk I had endangered were involved in embezzlement, money laundering, insurance fraud, tax evasion, and murder, but I had the handlebar mustache and black cloak.

  His associate, a fat Pollack named Gorka, was a little more sympathetic. He made a few phone calls from the diner and established my bona fides with Detective O’Quinn, an officer in L.A. who had worked with me a time or two. Kerns grimaced at this and demanded evidence. I showed them to the beat-up blue Ford registered under the last name Carter. They popped the trunk and found the remains of Mort Peters, now in a progressive state of decay from being locked in a trunk in the middle of a California summer. Kerns called this circumstantial, and by now was sizing me up for a double, maybe triple, homicide. I mentioned Arlene’s connection with the theatre scene. Gorka went to check on that, too, and came back with more good news. Roderick “Muncey” Carter was currently wanted for questioning in two unsolved homicides in Los Angeles. Senior detective in charge of the case: Detective Allan O’Quinn. My luck couldn’t have been any better than if I had written it myself. That was a nice change after the time I’d had.

  Kerns couldn’t hold me, not even for questioning since I had come clean about my involvement. He did threaten to start proceedings to have my license revoked in California, but I wasn’t worried. If it came to pass, it came to pass. There was nothing I could do about it. Gorka offered his hand to shake. He considered what I’d done to be gutsy, and I’d nabbed a whole slew of bad guys in the process.

  “They should do a movie about you, kid,” he said to me.

  The irony of that wasn’t lost on me.

  Muncey was dead when the boys in white found him. He’d bled out from multiple lacerations to his kidney. The subsequent autopsy would reveal bleeding into his brain as well, which would also have caused him to expire, probably before help could arrive. Arlene was alive, with five missing teeth, a broken jaw, and a massive concussion. They rushed her to Sacramento, and Kerns followed them, leaving Gorka to clean up.

  I showed Gorka to the trailer behind the diner, but there was no sign of Hands, just blood stains on the mattress and a roll of used duct tape covered in red fingerprints. There was a blood trail that went off into the woods. Gorka promised they would get dogs on the trail before long, but I had a pretty good idea they wouldn’t find any sign of him. That made things difficult for me. My face was all over. The rent on the billboard was paid through the middle of next year, courtesy of the smash-and-grab crew from which it had originated. What was free publicity for me was also an invitation for Hands to try and punch my ticket at his leisure, assuming he lived. I resolved to consider my options on that once I’d wrapped up this case. I certainly couldn’t spend the next two to five years looking over my shoulder all the time, and guys like Hands, as I’ve said, are patient. He may not have shown it where Muncey was concerned, but that was because a woman was involved. Women were always good for taking a man out of character.

  By sundown the police no longer had any use for me. They had questioned all the witnesses, one by one, and let them go. Apart from the truck driver making half-attempts at a claim that Arlene had begged him to save her from me, there were no real surprises. Gorka pressed the guy on the matter, and he backed down quickly enough.

  All the long drive back to Los Angeles I thought about how I planned to find the studio’s money. There was still that to consider. Forty grand of it at least was out of my reach, short of calling in a solid from a swami with a yin for telelocating blondes with eiderdown for brains. The rest may or may not have been invested in any number of films, from one to a hundred. Following that paper trail, assuming there was one, could take months or days, depending how sly the cover-up. Then there would be the matter of litigating the return of the money, which could take forever. My part in it was about to end, whether I found it or not, so I wasn’t all that concerned, but like anyone, I liked a nice, tight ending to a story. It’s just that, in this business, it rarely works out that way.

  Back in the city I found a phone directory and looked up Malibu-69755. The address listed it off Paseo Canyon Drive. Being tired and beat up didn’t matter to me. I stopped at a place on a cross-street just off Rodeo, an all-night diner of all places, and got a cup of coffee to keep me awake. Afterward I made the rest of the journey.

  The home was modest given the obvious tastes of its owners. I found a key under the doormat and let myself inside. The interior had a nice but sparse décor, a lot of whites and creams except the bathroom, which was a jarring scarlet. It was neat but lived-in, and very quiet. I didn’t expect to find anyone home and was not surprised to find only a few lady’s garments left hanging askew in the master bedroom’s closet. The remains of dinner were lying unwashed in the kitchen sink. That told me the faux Mrs. Peters had probably left just after my phone call. Wherever she was now, I hoped she was enjoying her money.

  Off a hallway that ran the length of the place, I found a small office with a masculine décor. Here no doubt was Peters’ sanctum on what I could only assume were his rare visits home. There was a heavy oak desk standing by the window with its chair knocked over. Beneath the desk I found a floor safe that had been left open. Whatever had once been inside was now gone. I rifled through the drawers and found nothing, no notes, stationery, or anything that might tell me where Peters had put his money. A small metal filing cabinet yielded nothing as well. They’d even been so careful as to clean out the wastebasket before fleeing.

  Having nowhere better to look I tried the backyard. I found nothing but an old garage that was filled with junk I imagined belonged to whoever had owned the place before the Peters. I just couldn’t see Mort Peters in a dirty, dusty place like that, dressed in a cardigan and smoking a pipe as he scraped rust off his tools with a wire brush. Maybe I’d had him wrong, too. I’d certainly misread Hands’ motivations, and apparently the guile of Mrs. Peters as well. It would not have surprised me at all to find there were pieces of Mort Peters that didn’t fit my preconceived notions, either.

  I left the garage feeling more than a bit crestfallen for having come up empty-handed. I decided maybe I would go home, grab a few hours’ sleep, and then come back later, when I caught sight of a couple of trashcans overstuffed with trash near the back door. Having nothing better to do I grabbed a couple of the bags off the top and took them inside, where I upended them on the kitchen floor for a better look. If I’d been looking for keepsakes and memories, I would have hit the jackpot, as I found photos of the Peters, ornate picture frames, a baseball signed by someone with an illegible autograph, and a framed high school diploma of Deborah McGonickle, dated five years ago. I checked the photos and found a beautiful blonde girl who fit the age.

  “So, Mrs. Peters, we meet at last,” I said. I decided to keep one photo and the diploma. If All-American wanted to track her down, they could use this. If they offered me the job, I would even take it, but as far as I was concerned, that was outside the current scope of my investigations.

  Four bags upended yielded next to nothing but a pile of filthy trash on the kitchen floor. I had one left and was tempted to leave it, but for the sake of thoroughness I pulled it from the can and tossed it on the floor. It was heavier and its contents more solid. I opened this one and removed a box. It was the correct size for a standard eight-and-a-half-by-eleven letter page. The box was blue and black with stately gold letters that read BurnsFolio in swirling calligraphy. The box yielded stationery for a company called Abramowitz & Englehart. It was good, heavy stock, official-looking and professional. Beneath the masthead was an address in tiny, cerulean blue script that listed offices in Holl
ywood. If the address actually existed I would be shocked beyond reason. I took one of the pieces of stationery, folded it in eighths, and stuck it in my pants pocket, next to the .45, which I’d never gotten around to firing, even when my life had been in danger. Some days, I didn’t feel like I was very good at my job and would one day wind up on a slab somewhere, dead from a very stupid wound to a part of my anatomy that would only get me laughed at by the coroner.

  I drove home and got five hours of sleep before dragging myself to a telephone to call my contact at All-American, a gee named Levine. His secretary told me he was out, and I left a message. My call was returned within five minutes.

  “Hardwood.” Levine had a nervous, very schmoozy Jewish voice. I pictured a guy who bathed in Brylcreem, and I probably wasn’t far off the mark. “What have you got for me?”

  I told him about Peters and the setup. He never made a squeak about any of it, good or bad. For a guy like Levine, Peters was always a dead or alive scenario, and he didn’t care how the guy came home, just as long as he came home. The money was what he cared about. He asked about it as soon as he could manage a respectable murmur of empathy for the deceased.

  “I can’t be for sure on this,” I said, “but your people can check up on it easily enough. I found reams of stationery in Peters’ home office for a dummy firm called Abramowitz & Engelhart. Check your records first, but if it doesn’t pan out, put the word out with the other studios to check their ledgers. His accomplice, a girl named Deborah McGonickle, told me Peters had invested the stolen money in one or several films hoping for a bigger windfall. The idea then was that they would take the money and disappear.”