Ellen, my lovely, was a working-girl now, thus leaving Vicki’s class. Nick, like John, just watched his investments. Nick had been calm enough, standing next to my car when he’d brought Ellen home. But Nick had been a club fighter and they have to be calm. It’s not the title, each weekly fight, but only another fifty or a hundred bucks in front of the jeering yuks. Nick would be calm as he snapped your neck, violence without animosity.
To hell with all of them. Except Chris and Martha and Angela and Lily and maybe Sergeant Hovde. To hell with all the rest. I slept.
Dreamed of nothing and woke to a bright room. Another clear day after yesterday’s dullness. The Times grave and fat outside my door. The radio working in the next apartment. I didn’t need a radio with those neighbors. Were they afraid of silence, afraid of their thoughts?
I showered and shaved and dressed with casual care in the fashion of my town. I didn’t look at the paper, but went out to the Merc. Hunger growled in me, but I didn’t go to Westwood. I ate breakfast in a white-tile spot on Pico, and headed over toward National Boulevard.
In an area north of National and to the east of the Santa Monica Airport, some tract homes had been built for GI’s. Two bedrooms and with dining-areas. No fire-places, but showers in the tubs, and a bit of lawn and a pride of ownership. Nothing down, and not too much a month on a GI Loan. All sold, but I wanted to get the details.
Sam Riemenschneider had one of them. Sam had been an instrument corporal in a mortar platoon, but I’d known him before that. I’d known him when he’d played left end at Santa Monica High. And I’d known his wife when she’d been junior prom queen. Sam had been her king even then.
I parked in front, and he was watering the lawn. Wearing pants of summer khaki and a sweat shirt, staring at my car.
“Pete,” he said. “Hey, you old son-of-a-bitch. Hey, Sally, Pete Worden’s here.”
He went over to turn off the water as she came out on the small porch, a baby in her arms. “It’s about time,” she said, smiling.
Sam was wringing my hand. “Oh, he’s been busy, Sal, making the headlines. You’ve sure been going to hell in a hand basket. I thought you were in the clink.”
Lanky, he was, and his grip bony and powerful.
“How do you like our addition?” Sally asked.
The baby stared at me without interest, a fat baby, sufficient unto itself.
“Sam Junior,” Sam said. “A brat. Only cries at night.” He rubbed his hands on the GI pants. “I’ll get us some beer.”
“Come and look at the back yard,” Sally said. “We’ve got it fenced now and seeded.”
I went out to the back yard with the former prom queen while Sam went into the kitchen for the beer. A high redwood fence enclosed this yard, and the grass was high enough to cut. A clothesline, an incinerator, and a partially constructed barbecue pit.
Sally looked as lovely as ever there in her back yard. She didn’t look a day past the junior prom, a dark girl, alive and complete.
“On a California Vets’ Loan,” she said, “you only have to pay three per cent. And you’re a California vet, Pete.”
I stared at her curiously. “What gave you the idea I was interested?”
“You look a little haggard,” she said. “You can’t chase blondes forever.”
The baby said, “Urk.”
Then Sam was coming from the house with three cans of beer. “You’ll stay for dinner, huh?”
I took the beer and started to answer.
“He’ll stay for dinner,” Sally said. “He’d better stay for dinner, the way he’s been neglecting us.”
I stayed for dinner, a blade roast. With carrots and browned potatoes and Waldorf salad and rolls and ice-cream cake roll. And more beer.
Overhead the planes kept coming in to the Santa Monica Municipal Airport, and out on National the Sunday traffic zoomed and squealed.
After dinner Sam and I did the dishes while Sally put the baby to bed. It wasn’t until he snapped on the radio that I remembered. The Rams were playing the Bears today, and I’d promised to go with Chris and Paul.
It was too late now.
The Browns had won their play-off with the Giants, 8 to 3, with the help of Lou Groza’s toe. The winner of this one would meet the Browns for the title.
It was 92 degrees at the Coliseum and over eighty-three thousand fans were in the stands. Bob Waterfield had been laid low with a virus infection. His temperature, Friday, had been 104°, the announcer announced. He undoubtedly would not play.
Van Brocklin threw eight incomplete passes in a row. The league’s leading passer, but this was definitely not one of his good days.
Thunder from the stands, and Bob Waterfield was coming out to replace Van Brocklin. Woozy, and wouldn’t the Bears take care of him? On a statue of liberty, Glenn Davis took the ball from Bob’s hand and went sixty-three yards to pay dirt. The first play with Waterfield in there.
It was called back and the Rams penalized.
Natch. Of course.
Sam was hunched forward in his chair. “Those Bears, those damned Bears—”
Sally said, “Relax, my high-school hero, it’s only a football game.”
He smiled at her and glared at the radio. “Let’s get hot, Waterfield. Run ‘em out of the park. Chase ‘em back to Chicago.”
Mr. Waterfield, beloved of Jane Russell, up out of his bed of pain, ran them out of the park. Ably assisted by the greatest array of football talent ever assembled on one club. Mr. Waterfield threw three touchdown passes to Tom Fears and kicked a field goal. A total of twenty-four points for the sick, sad lad.
Mr. Hoerner, Ram fullback, leaving the field on the wrong side was accosted by Coach Halas of the Bears. Mr. Hoerner pulled Mr. Halas’s hat down over his ears.
It was a great game. Tempers flared and fists swung and the big, bad Bears were walloped 24 to 14. It’s a great game. More people should play it and there wouldn’t be so much frustrated animosity in the world. These thoughts I had, full of Sam’s beer.
Supper was cold cuts and rye bread and potato salad and cheese and coffee. Some talk after that about escrow and interest and what kind of salary a man needs to qualify for a GI Loan.
Then we were on the porch and saying good night, and I told them quite honestly it had been one of the happiest Sundays I’d ever spent. And they said to make it again, and soon. But I seemed to know even then that I wouldn’t.
Driving home in the dark, clear night, thinking of Ellen, and wondering if she’d help me with the back yard, if we got a place like that.
Driving home, and here was the Lincoln in front, waiting.
Somebody was behind the wheel waiting. Somebody who didn’t look tall, but looked stocky. Mike Kersh and more trouble?
I parked and went over, and the face turned up to mine, and the voice said, “Hello, Pete. What happened to you?”
Chris Arnold.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“I’M SORRY, CHRIS,” I said. “So damned many things have happened. I forgot all about it until it was too late.”
“Hot at me, too, Pete?”
“No. What do you mean?”
“You fought with Mike, and Pop says you’re angry with him. What the hell’s going on, Pete?”
“I don’t know. We’re friends, Chris. No matter what, we’ll always be friends.”
“I sure hope so, Pete. You know what’s going on, don’t you? Am I too damned young to know, or something?” His voice bitter.
“Could be,” I said. “Some game, huh?”
“Terrific. That Waterfield—Looked like you against Notre Dame.”
I rubbed his crew cut. “I’ll bet you say that to all the boys. Go on home and hit the sack, rough guy. You didn’t make this world.”
“Pop did. I don’t want to be ashamed of him, Pete.” Was the voice breaking? “Pop helped make this world.”
“Just a small part of it. And not even the worst part. Chris, get to bed. Be what you’re going to be. You should
be the most important thing in the world to yourself. And don’t feel sorry for yourself. Oh, hell, I don’t know what I’m saying.”
“Pete, we’ll play some golf. This week. Right?”
“Hell, yes. At a buck a hole. I’ll whip your ass.”
“Yes?” Looking up at me, grinning, the eyes misty. “We’ll see. You wait.”
We’ll wait, Chris. Until you come back from the wars. If you come back from the wars. We’ll wait. We’ll play. The Lincoln went away, and I went to bed, the end of my Sunday. The Sunday before the Sunday before Christmas. In the year of Our Lord, 1950.
Slept without dreams and wakened to the clamor of the phone, that symbol of our universal communication.
Jake’s voice was hoarse. “What the hell’s going on, Worden? Hovde’s got Vicki in the clink. Where were you yesterday?”
“In Guatemala. What makes it your business?”
“Don’t get tough with me, Worden. This is all your damned monkey business.”
“Come on up here and I’ll get tough with you,” I told him. “You ought to be glad she is in the clink. She’ll stay alive there.”
“That isn’t why. Is that why, Pete?”
“I don’t work for the police department,” I said. “Why don’t you ask them?”
A pause, and then his voice more nearly normal. “Would you go down with me to see Hovde?”
“If you want. I’ll phone him. Call me back in ten minutes.”
He said he would, and the line went dead. I called the west side station, and Hovde was there and I told him about Jake Schuster’s call.
He chuckled. “Got him sweating, haven’t we? He loves the girl, the way it looks.”
“Must.”
“Bring him down about one-thirty,” he said. “I’ve some things to set up. Those Rams dood it, eh?”
“Sure did. Are you getting out on a limb, Sergeant, or is this L.A.P.D.S.O.P.?”
“How’s that?”
“Standard operating procedure. Aren’t you getting awful cute on a layman’s hunch?”
“Doesn’t it add up like it should? But a conviction, even though we know we’re right? Jaekels would scream like a banshee. And besides, you’re a collitch man, you’re bright.”
“I’ll be there at one-thirty. With my bookie. Button your pockets.”
He told me what to button and hung up. I called Jake, and he said one-thirty would be all right with him. I made some coffee and listened to the radio next door. Music, for a change.
Shaved, dressed, went to a drugstore for breakfast. Tried to tell myself I wasn’t crazy; it all added up and added up right. Would Hovde share my insanity? So we had a killer, but only in our minds. In court, there would need to be more than we had.
Building a case for Jaekels, that jackal. Where does Jaekels hide? Not funny. No puns are ever funny, to me. Too many tricks are done with words, too much blood is spilled.
Shadow hadn’t dropped in lately. Maybe he was back to work, back to the pounding typewriter, fashioning Western dreams for bookies and bankers and waiters and wrestlers. And cowboys. Cowboys, a survey showed, were the biggest reader audience Western stories had. Identification with a less humdrum past.
At noon I met Jake, and we drove to the station in the Caddy. Jake said, “I thought you knew more than you’d admit the other day.”
“I don’t know anything. Have you talked to Hovde since this business started?”
“Twice. You know what I think he wants?”
I nodded.
“All right, then, you tell me.”
I rubbed my eyes, which ached. “He wants to stake her out, like a woolly white lamb, and hope the wolf will call.”
Jake swore.
“Bait,” I went on. “Bait for a killer. All she has to say is no. And then wonder when the wolf will call.”
“Of all the damned fool ideas. Of all the crazy cop schemes I ever heard—”
“Wait’ll you hear him,” I said. “It isn’t my idea, Jake.”
Hovde was in the same room I’d always found him in. But Vicki was with him this time. She was sitting in a chair facing the door, and she stood up as soon as she saw Jake. Her face had never been whiter.
Then she was in Jake’s arms and sobbing. Hovde looked at me and I looked at him, and neither of us shrugged. Hovde went to the window, and I sat in a chair near the end of the desk and lighted a cigarette.
Then we all sat down, and Hovde started his spiel. He made a pretty good speech for a cop. And then, as though on signal, the door opened and Jaekels came in.
I hadn’t seen him since that day in the cell, but that was once too often. He shook hands all around, like Santa Claus, and added his bit to the afternoon’s festivities.
He made it sound legal. He added the whisper of a threat and the hint of a reward and managed, in a multitude of well-chosen words to annoy all of us, even Hovde.
When he was through, Vicki looked at Jake.
Jake said, “No.”
It was refreshing to hear such a simple statement, after all the wordage.
Hovde said, “You don’t give a damn about her neck, do you? You talk big, that’s all.”
Jake didn’t answer.
Jaekels said, “Well then, there’s nothing more to say. I’m sure I can get Miss Lincoln committed to a sanitarium again, or maybe a few months or years in jail. It depends on the judge.”
“You couldn’t get her a demerit from her Sunday-school teacher,” Jake said. “Now who’s talking big?”
Jaekels flushed, and Hovde looked menacing. I smiled.
“Something funny?” Jaekels asked me.
“I was thinking of a gag I heard on the radio this morning,” I said.
Jaekels said, “Is it necessary for this man to be present, Sergeant?”
Hovde said, “No, I just keep him around for laughs. You can go home, Worden.”
“Thanks,” I said, and stood up. “If you get any more tough ones, don’t be ashamed to call me in.”
Hovde’s face was blank as Molotov’s. He nodded, and I went out. Into a day of mist and dull sounds, of hurrying people and speeding cars. Hovde probably wanted me to hang around, but he wasn’t my boss, and he hadn’t said so.
I drove out to Bullock’s, Westwood branch. I came into the first floor, but the joint was jumping, and Ellen was being besieged. I went out, again, without her seeing me.
From Bullock’s to the Ridge Club. Mary wasn’t there, but Manny was. Sitting at a table, reading a copy of Time.
“Let me buy you a drink, sucker,” he said, and I sat down across from him.
The bartender brought me a beer, and Manny some kind of cordial in a shot glass, about the only kind of glass approximating the one that fit the drink. He lifted it in a silent toast.
He sipped it and said, “You’re getting a lot of ink.”
“Not this week. Why did you and Nick break up, Manny?”
“Nick Arnold?” He shrugged. “Nick’s no partner. He’s a one-man show.”
“Tough, too, isn’t he?”
“He likes to think. Who is? I knew a deep sea diver once who was scared of dentists. Read about a lion tamer who was afraid of the dark. Everybody’s got some soft spot. Most people are scared to death of a fact.”
“What are you afraid of, Manny?”
“Boat races.” He lifted the glass again and grinned at me. “I hear you and Mike Kersh mixed it.”
Word does get around. I nodded.
“He’s awful close to Nick, Mike is. That was dumb of you, Peter.”
“I’m not the brightest guy in the world,” I said. “Jake Schuster ever work with you, Manny?”
“No, but I guess he’s going to. We talked about it. Nick out to get him?”
“Why should he?”
Manny looked at his glass. “I don’t know. I get a word here and there.”
I said, “Everybody but the solid citizens knows everything that’s going on in town, don’t they?”
“I’m
a solid citizen,” Manny said. “I’m in the same business the state is. Only I pay taxes on my take.”
There was a phone booth in the corner here, and I went into it and phoned the station. Hovde was still there.
His voice was flat. “They saw the light. We convinced them. You made a hit with Jaekels.”
“I worry about that. When’s the big scheme going into operation?”
“As of now. It’s going to be a long day again, I’m afraid.”
“Luck,” I said. “You’re all right, Sergeant. I here and now apologize for all the lip I’ve given you.”
“Good night,” he said. “Stay sober.”
It was dusk out, and the traffic was going by. I didn’t want to tangle with that today; I ate at the Ridge Club with Manny. After a while Mary came in with Art Shadow, and we had some more to drink, and a few laughs. And then I felt uncomfortable for some reason, and left. I guess it was Art, and the way he’d stare at times.
Dark, misty night, and I was tension-tired, dead, and without spirit. I went home, full of beer and whisky.
Turned on the light and tried to read the paper, but my eyes wouldn’t focus. Turned off the light and lay on the studio couch, and I could see the outline of the upholstered chair. Turned my back to it, but that didn’t work.
Lay on my back, staring at the unseen ceiling, and the pictures came to me, all the way back to that night in Tony’s. From the spaghetti to tonight’s chili, all the scenes ran through my mind. I fell asleep.
And sleeping, dreamed. I dreamed of the killer. He sat in the upholstered chair and said quietly, “You were the one who guessed, weren’t you?”
I admitted I was.
“How?” he asked. “What made you think of me?” Tall he was, and slim, in the upholstered chair.
“Everything,” I said, “but mostly when you turned friendly, when you let down your hair. You overdid it.”
“How?”
“Just by doing it. It was out of character. A snob will never admit he’s a snob, never, drunk or sober. And you had to tell me you missed some classes; you had to overplay it. You missed some classes, classes you had to miss if you were going to kill Tommy and Al. You said you couldn’t do anything athletic, even swim. You had to make it stink; you didn’t know how to underplay it. And what would scare Nick, what one thing but a threat to his kids? Calvano was no friend of Nick’s, but he was at the party to get money. Nobody would go to Nick’s house to get money, not from Nick. Was he blackmailing you?”
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