The Man Who Shot Lewis Vance (14 page)

“That’s enough,” said Straight-Ahead. “The two of you up and out.”

The girl buttoned up and hurried past. The Marine put his head down and brushed past us, embarrassed.

“Can’t blame them,” said Straight-Ahead. “But can’t let them either. You can’t let social order break down or what are we fighting for?”

Straight-Ahead proceeded through the door and into the damp darkness of the basement. A generator pounded away like an earache, and a single bulb on a chain gave us a beacon but not enough light to see by. Straight-Ahead turned on the row of bulbs from a switch near the door and headed to the right. I followed him to the beat of the metal heart of the Alhambra.

“Back this way,” Straight-Ahead said. “Mind the walls.”

I minded the dirty walls and followed him down a narrow walkway. My hand touched the cool furnace and my eyes watched Beason, whose shadow danced black against gray.

“Here we are,” he said, stopping before a closed door. A thin bank of light crept under the door. I turned the handle and pushed the door open, stepping to the side in case Teddy had a gun and an itching finger or his pal Alex had set me up.

There was nothing to fear in the small room unless the sight of a corpse provokes frightening thoughts of mortality. The room was small: a single cot, a little lamp, a metal bar sticking out of the wall with empty hangers. Teddy Spaghetti was lying on the cot, his eyes open, his mouth open, his hands open. He looked as if he were about to sing an Al Jolson song to the waiting ceiling.

“Dead,” said Straight-Ahead, crouching near the cot and touching Teddy’s chest. “Two through the chest.”

He stood up, straight-backed and dignified. “Don’t suppose we’ll find the missing money here,” he said.

“No,” I agreed, but we knew we’d look. You had to look. We found the gun on the floor under the cot. Actually, I found it. There was no way Straight-Ahead could retain his dignity and balance when he looked under a bed. I left it there.

“At least it’s not mine,” I said.

“That’s something,” he said. “No cash here. No papers. No Alex.”

“I have a feeling the men in uniform will be coming down here any second,” I said.

“You’ve been set up. No doubt,” Merit agreed.

“And I know the folks who did it,” I said.

“Let’s just get you out of here,” came Merit’s answer.

I was almost at the door when Merit said, “Wait.”

Pinned to the back of the door where we wouldn’t have seen it without closing it behind us was a note. The note was typed and brief:

The Duke is next.

Straight-Ahead handed me the note and I folded it once and put it in my pocket.

We hurried down the walkway. I tried to think fast but the pounding noise of the generator cut through any ideas I might have had. We went through the door to the lobby and I spotted Cawelti and the two uniformed cops at the desk. If it weren’t for the crowd, I would have been spotted when the clerk pointed to the door to the basement and Cawelti looked over. I crouched behind Straight-Ahead.

“Back through the door, up the stairway,” Straight-Ahead whispered. I took my first good look at Straight-Ahead in the light. His face was white, his legs unsteady. He was sixty and should have been in a hospital bed instead of running around a cheap hotel finding bodies. I wanted to tell him, but I didn’t have time. Cawelti was moving toward us. I went back through the door and took the stairs two or three steps at a time. I was on the second floor when I heard the sound of a voice below me and Cawelti’s tenor cut through the general din with, “Downstairs, you moron. Basements are down.”

I pushed through the door and found myself in a hallway. The stairway was out. There might be a cop in the lobby, so the elevator was out. The fire escape was a possibility. I ran down the hall, had some trouble getting the window open, and carefully looked down into the alley. A black-and-white police car was down there, its lights on and fixed on the fire escape.

I closed the window and turned. A door opened and Olivia Fontaine stepped out. “What the hell are you doing?” she said.

“Looking for a friend,” I said.

She was wearing a tight red dress, not the one she had worn on Sunday. She looked pretty good to a trapped man.

“You’re the guy with Randolph Scott,” she said, remembering.

“John Wayne,” I corrected.

“Right,” she agreed. “Did Teddy shoot somebody else?”

“
No
,” I said, looking at the hall door. “Teddy’s dead. Somebody named Alex killed him. I’ve got a feeling the police think I did it.”

“You didn’t?”

“Do I look—” I stopped. Sure I looked like a murderer. “They’ll be up here looking for me in a few minutes.”

Something, a memory, crossed her face, softened it.

“What the hell,” she said with a big sigh that did nice things for her chest. “Come in.”

I moved past her into the room and she closed the door. She smelled sweet. I knew what I must have smelled like.

The room was a small one—a bed, two chairs, lamp, small dresser, and a view of Broadway through the window.

“I should be working,” she said.

“I’ll pay for your time,” I countered, reaching into my wallet and pulling out a John Wayne $10 bill.

“Well,” she began, “it’ll buy you time but nothing else.”

“That’s all I’m after,” I said.

We stood awkwardly for a few minutes and then she said, “I’ll go see what’s going on.” She picked up the ten, put it into her purse, and went out the door. There was no place for me to go so I opened the door to the bathroom. It was small, with one permanently closed window over the tub.

What the hell. I ran a tub full of hot water and took off my clothes. A hot bath would feel good, cleanse my troubled mind and dirty body. I hung my fragrant suit on the hook near the door, scratched myself where I itched, and climbed into the tub.

The worst that could happen would be for Cawelti and his troops to come back in with Olivia, who, I realized, might well be turning me in. I still didn’t have a decent lead on Alex. I didn’t know if he knew how to get to John Wayne.

I turned off the water and heard the outer door open. No voices, only one set of footsteps. Olivia crossed the room and turned on the radio and then she came over to the bathroom and opened the door.

“The place is full of cops,” she said, looking down at me. “You’re right. They’re looking for you. You sure you didn’t shoot Teddy?”

“I’m sure,” I said.

She didn’t leave. She stood with her hands on her hips and said, “That’s one hell of a body.”

“It’s been through a lot,” I admitted.

She stood thinking for a while.

“I’ve seen worse,” she said finally. “Scars aren’t bad. You want company?”

I looked up at her.

“I didn’t give you the ten to—”

“Hey,” she said angrily, “I’m talking about my own time. I’m a sucker for losers who don’t give up. You want company? You don’t want company?”

In the other room Fibber McGee said, “I thought it was provocative of mirth.”

“I would be honored to have your company,” I said, putting the soap aside.

A few seconds later she was out of her dress and in the bath with me. It didn’t do my back much good but it did a hell of a lot for my self-image. Olivia was good. No, Olivia was great. We moved from the bathroom to the bedroom and I turned McGee and Molly off.

Olivia didn’t lie. She didn’t push. She didn’t demand. She did talk a hell of a lot about movies, a future she probably didn’t have, and her mother back in Cleveland. No cops came into the room.

Just before ten, Olivia called a thousand-year-old bellhop named Stanley, who picked up my suit, which Olivia gave him while I hid in the bathroom. For ten bucks he found a way to get it cleaned and pressed by midnight.

“You want to sleep?” she said when the suit came back. “Or you want to go? Lobby’s probably clear now. I can check.”

“I’d like to stay,” I said.

She smiled. “I’d like you to stay.”

And I did. In the morning I tried to give her another ten. She wouldn’t take it.

“That was on my own, I told you.”

“Thanks,” I said. Strangely, without makeup she looked younger, not pretty but younger, softer. I kissed her. She kissed back and touched my cheek.

“Take care of yourself,” I said.

“You know it,” she said. “Stay in touch.”

Five minutes later I stepped into the parking lot, paid an extra $2 for parking overnight, and drove out down Broadway toward the rising sun.

10
      

M
rs. Plaut was out or finally sleeping when I got back to the boarding house on Heliotrope. I made it to my room; took off my neatly pressed jacket, counted my money, found I still had $168.43, and poured myself a bowl of Kix with milk and too much sugar. I was on my second bowl when Gunther knocked and I told him to come in. It was seven in the morning, according to my Beech-Nut clock, and Gunther was dressed in a gray three-piece suit complete with tie.

“I was concerned that you did not return during the night,” he said, coming across the room and hopping up to sit in the chair across from me.

“How about a bowl of Kix, Gunther?” I offered.

The look of distaste didn’t quite make it to the little man’s face, but I saw it approach and knew that it wasn’t far off.

“There really is no nutritional value in these cereals you consume,” Gunther explained. “If you did not add sugar and milk, they might even be of a negative value, though some of them are fibrous. I made some yogurt, which I would be happy to share.”

I shook my head. Gunther had introduced me to yogurt, an old family recipe he had brought from Switzerland. There was no future for the stuff in America but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings any more than he wanted to hurt mine.

“Are you an insomniac, Gunther? I mean, no matter what time I get up, you’re already awake and fully dressed and I get the feeling you’ve been working for hours.” I finished my second bowl of Kix and thought about a third while I poured Gunther a cup of coffee. He examined the cup carefully, trying not to let me see. Apparently it was just clean enough for him to take a sip.

“I need little sleep,” he said. “I sleep with depth, deeply. I accept my dreams.”

“To your health, Gunther,” I said, raising my coffee cup to him and holding back a belch.

I told Gunther about Jeremy and Alice’s wedding. He was happy to be invited and suggested that he buy a gift we could give together. I hadn’t thought about a gift. I fished out five bucks and gave it to him. He said he would think about it and make a suitable purchase. I suggested one. He told me about a government job he had, translating a nineteenth-century military strategy book from French to English. He could think of no reason why the American government would want such a book and I couldn’t help him.

“The idiomatic nature of the terminology makes it somewhat of interest,” he said, “but the content will not challenge the imagination. Military writers, I have discovered, often have an unfortunate inclination to attempt a poetic style.”

I sympathized with him and then brought him up to date on what had happened. I didn’t give it to him in order and probably left out something besides my night with Olivia Fontaine. Gunther took a little notebook from his inside jacket pocket and began writing. He asked me to repeat some details, fill in some blanks. Then he gently pushed away the coffee cup in front of him and placed the notebook down where he could examine it. I noticed that he had drunk no more than that first polite sip of coffee. I cleared the cup away and stacked it with the other dirty dishes in the sink.

“Two men are dead,” Gunther said. “Both shot. Both in the Alhambra Hotel. One with your gun. One with a gun of unknown source. In both cases, an attempt is made to suggest that you should be suspected of the murder.”

“Right,” I agreed, finishing my own coffee and pouring another, which went well with the Salerno butter cookies I had put out. I refrained from dipping them in the coffee because of Gunther.

“In both cases, and that of Mr. Beason, an Alex who apparently harbors a dislike for the actor John Wayne is involved.”

“Right,” I agreed, crunching on a cookie and watching Gunther’s intense little face.

“Apparently too, this Alex and his second victim …”

“Teddy Spaghetti,” I supplied.

“Colorful name,” Gunther said. “A
nom de plume.
”

“A moniker,” I agreed, “but not one of his own choice.”

“To resume,” said Gunther. “Alex and Noodles—”

“Spaghetti.”

“Yes, they removed cash and possibly some papers from the safe of the Alhambra, perhaps more than ten thousand dollars. And you have concluded that the cash and papers are related to certain illegal activities of a dubious couple named Larchmont who own the Alhambra Hotel.”

“So far, so good, Gunther,” I agreed.

“The Larchmonts, you believe, have sent two thugs—”

“Goons,” I corrected.

“Goons?” Gunther said, writing the word in his book. In a few days he would be back to tell me the origin of the word “goon.” “The goons wish to recover the stolen papers and money for the Larchmonts, to keep them from falling into the hands of the police,” added Gunther. “To this end they fear your interference. Hence, though they probably know full well that you have not killed Mr. Vance or the man with the name of an Italian pasta—”

“Let’s just call him Teddy,” I suggested.

“Yes, they know you have not killed them, but they wish you to cease the pursuit of the money and papers, so they are doing their best to make the police believe that you are indeed the murderer. Is this not the situation?”

“That’s the situation,” I agreed. “And I have to protect John Wayne from Alex, find Alex and pin the rap on him, keep clear of the goons and the Larchmonts, and, if I’m lucky, get Charlie Chaplin’s money back.”

Gunther hopped down from the chair and removed his jacket. He rolled up his sleeves and went to the sink to do the dishes.

“There are some enigmas present,” said Gunther, turning on the hot water and carefully rinsing my cereal bowl. “Why,” Gunther began, “did Mr. Teddy remain in the Alhambra Hotel instead of fleeing after he and Alex removed the contents of the safe? Surely, remaining in the hotel would be most dangerous?”