The Man Who Shot Lewis Vance (19 page)

“No,” he said. “You can spend the damned night in the lockup. You can stay off the streets so if another body turns up no one can drop it in your lap.”

“What’s the charge?”

Phil burped and let his belt out another notch.

“Suspicion of murder, obstructing justice, fleeing the scene of a crime, resisting arrest …”

“I didn’t resist arrest,” I said.

“If you don’t shut up, you will be,” Phil explained.

Then the phone rang. Phil picked it up and kept his eyes on me as he talked and listened.

“Okay … Spell it … Take the rubber ball out of your mouth and speak clearly … Then what … You sure? No. I said no.”

He hung up and looked at me.

“Your killer Alex Tuster is on his way home to Meridian, Mississippi. He is a salesman. He has no record. He is thirty-seven, has flat feet and a punctured eardrum. Four-F.”

“You got the right guy,” I said.

“He was at the Alhambra,” Phil sard. “Business trip. Sales. The right guy.”

“He did it,” I insisted.

“Little salesman down in Mississippi suddenly goes nuts, gets a bug up his ass about John Wayne, teams up with Teddy, shoots Straight-Ahead Beason, cleans out the Alhambra safe, blasts Teddy, and—”

“Revenge,” I said. “We’re missing a link.”

“You’re missing a link, Toby.” He picked up the phone and called for someone to come for me.

About five seconds later, a uniformed guy about a thousand years old came in. The retread said, “Yes, sir,” to Phil, and Phil told him to take me to lockup for the night.

“You got it, Captain,” the old guy said, motioning for me to rise.

“Phil,” I tried.

“Out,” said Phil, returning to the list of names from the Alhambra safe.

We got out.

“You’re lucky,” the retread cop said, keeping a few feet behind me. “He was in a good mood.”

“I know,” I agreed, leading the way down the corridor, looking forward to a few hours of sleep.

“Don’t think of trying anything,” he said behind me. “I’ll blow your head off.”

“I’m in on a drunk driving,” I said.

“Makes no never mind to me,” he said. “You try something and I turn you into shashlik. I got nothing to lose. My pension’s safe and I’m collecting. I didn’t ask to come back. It’s the damn war. We all have to do our part.”

I was hoping to be alone in the lockup but I was hoping in vain. There were two bunks in the cell. The old cop let me in, locked the door, and shuffled off. I went to the empty bunk and sat on it. The guy on the other bunk was overweight and maybe thirty. It was dark in the cell but I could see his wide eyes. He was sitting and holding on to the blanket with tightly clenched hands.

“I didn’t do it,” he said.

“I did,” I said. “And I need some sleep.”

“Listen to me,” the fat guy cried. “They won’t listen.”

“I need some sleep,” I said with a yawn, and lay back on the bunk.

“They say I smashed my father’s face while he was sleeping,” the fat guy said. “Said I hit him with a wrench. Said I did it to my brother Byron, too.”

“While he was sleeping?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, his wild eyes opening even wider.

“I think I’d like to hear your side of it,” I said, sitting up to face him.

“God, thanks,” the fat guy said, wiping away a line of grit from his neck. “It all started when I was about seven. No, I better go back to when I was four. Yes, four is the place to start …”

When the first light of dawn came through the window, my roomie was up to his fourteenth birthday. In the process of getting up to the point where he didn’t use his father and brother for batting practice, he had thrown in offhand confessions to a few dozen atrocities on which the statute of limitations had probably run out, but he was just warming to his subject. I stayed awake by encouraging him, trying to listen and imagining myself looking like a lump of ground beef.

My nose was mildly sore. I needed a shave and I had to make a decision about whether or not to go to Meridian, Mississippi. I decided that Alex had not taken off for the South. Somewhere in his past he had met John Wayne, and he was prepared to do him ill before he took off with the money from the Larchmonts’ safe and the files that were probably worth their weight in real rubber.

A tired-looking guy in uniform whom I knew by name—Warnek—brought us coffee and a jelly roll for breakfast.

“Long night,” I said.

“I just came on duty,” said Warnek.

The fat guy finished his doughnut in one gulp and eyed mine with murderous longing. Sugar sprinkled his face and I didn’t feel like finishing. I handed him what was left of my doughnut and watched him gulp it.

He started talking the second it was gone, but I was rescued by Warnek, who let me out.

“You’ll help me?” the fat guy said, still sitting on the bunk.

“As much as I can,” I said with an encouraging yawn.

I left without ever knowing his name or wanting to. I could only handle one case at a time.

Warnek gave me the things—wallet, keys, belt—that had been taken from me the night before by the old guy. I thanked him and made my way through the stale morning darkness of the station. Somebody hacked the cough of the tubercular or the working cop. I didn’t look around. Outside I found a restaurant, a small place where cops went. I’d been there before. I finished off a few bowls of Wheaties with cream and the one spoon of sugar I was allotted by the waitress, put down two cups of coffee to wake me up, and was hit by an idea. I didn’t like the idea, but it wouldn’t go away. Everything didn’t fit but it told me where the killer was and why a gun was being aimed at John Wayne. It made some sense. I didn’t like it, but it made sense.

I paid my bill, caught a cab to Arnie’s, retrieved my Crosley, and listened to Arnie apologize for letting Vance’s frigid body fall into the hands of the cops.

I didn’t care. I had things to do, a head to clear, a life to save.

It took me ten minutes to get back to Heliotrope. Five more minutes to get past Mrs. Plaut after again promising her all of my Saturday morning. Gunther was in and agreed to talk to me while I ran a hot bath and shaved. I went over things with him again and told him my theory as I sat waiting for the trickling water to get up to a respectable level. I lay back with a towel over my sore nose.

“It responds to many problems and answers many questions,” he said. “But, if it is indeed true, why are we sitting here? Why are we not in motion?”

“You’ve got a point, Gunther,” I said wearily. “But I’ve been punched and chased and forced to sit up all night listening to true horror confessions from Fatty Arbuckle’s ghost. My body is bruised and the hair on my chest is, as you may have noticed, mostly gray. But what the hell.”

I forced myself up, touched my clean-shaven face, got out of the tub, pulled the plug, dried myself, and put on my underwear. With Gunther right behind I went to my room, leapt over a basket of photographs, and got dressed. It was time to catch a killer.

13
      

T
he Crosley had one good point: it didn’t eat much gas. With gas rationed, that made a difference. The major bad point was that the Crosley wasn’t built for the hills of Hollywood. It panted, grunted, strained, and pleaded as I forced it up and around the streets of Coldwater Canyon looking for the place where John Wayne was setting up locations for his new movie. I knew one possible place, near the old reservoir, but no one was there except two teenage kids doing some illegal hunting.

Gunther sat quietly, hands folded in his lap, neck straining to see out the window.

“It is almost ten,” he said finally, looking at his well-polished pocket watch. I didn’t bother to look at my watch.

For the first forty minutes I had been going on energy fueled by insight, but now the lack of sleep was getting to me. I could have used one of the unnamed pills Shelly kept in his bottle-ladened desk drawer. He had pills for sleeping, staying awake, causing insanity, clearing up an itchy scalp. The problem was that he threw all the pharmaceutical company samples into the same drawer and usually lost the information on each one. It wasn’t unusual for Shelly to give a little orange pill to a suffering patient resulting not in the loss of pain but in distraction from pain by the temporary onslaught of double vision. Still, I would have tried for a pill if one were available.

“Shall I drive a while?” Gunther asked, looking at my drooping eyes.

Even with the cut-down size of the Crosley, there was no way short of a big pillow and blocks on the pedals that Gunther could have safely driven the car. I could imagine some guy watering his lawn and looking up to see this little yellow driverless car coming down the street.

“No thanks, Gunther,” I said, yawning. “It keeps me awake. If I stop driving I’ll fall asleep and we’ve got a life to save.”

“As you think best,” Gunther said with dignity, adjusting his little vest. “It is possible, of course, that your killer will not actually attempt to shoot Mr. Wayne. It may be sufficient to simply make another attempt which—”

I had turned a corner down a dirt road that seemed familiar to me from some past life or dream. My reflexes were dead. I took the corner on two wheels and Gunther was thrown against the door.

Pretending that things were in control, I said, as I straightened the swerving car and managed to avoid a lone telephone pole, “We can’t take a chance on that, Gunther.”

“I would truly enjoy to drive,” Gunther repeated once again, putting himself in order.

What the hell? I pulled over, got out, and let Gunther slide behind the wheel. I got in the other side and closed the door.

“Just keep looking,” I said, seeing that Gunther’s eye level wasn’t too bad. He might be able to make something out through the steering wheel and maybe he could see over the dashboard. I opened the window to let the breeze hit my face, unzipped my windbreaker, and started to look for some telltale sign of a movie company as Gunther pulled into the road. Within two minutes I was asleep.

Koko the Clown jumped out of the inkwell, winked at me, touched my sore nose, and danced through the corridors of the Alhambra. I went after him, but someone had tied Charlie Chaplin’s telescope to my leg. I dragged after Koko, who seemed to have something important he wanted me to see. I lost him down a long corridor and then he popped his head out of a door. I took a step toward the door and Koko popped out of another door. I took another step and Charlie Chaplin in his tramp suit kicked me in the can. I turned around just in time to see him leap up, click his heels, twirl his cane, return to the ground, and disappear around a corner. Koko whistled at me and I turned to follow him again. Mack Swain and Ward Bond both stepped into the hall and blocked my way. By now I was desperate to find Koko. He had something important to tell me. Bond and Swain picked me up by the shoulders; the telescope tied to my leg clanked and clanged as they pulled me into a room where the bodies of Lewis Vance and Teddy Spaghetti were seated watching the Larchmonts and Straight-Ahead planting a Victory Garden.

“Have to use every inch possible,” Straight-Ahead said. He was holding an extra-long-handled rake because he couldn’t bend. The Larchmonts were on their hands and knees plunking seeds into little holes in the dirt they were making with their fingers.

“Seeds of doubt,” said Sydney Larchmont, who wore farmer overalls and a straw hat.

Adrienne Larchmont, similarly clad, said, “Tell me about Alex.”

“I was about to,” replied Sydney. “Give me some credit, Adrienne.”

“Let’s plant these two,” said Straight-Ahead, pointing at Vance and Teddy, who were playing gin rummy on the bed. I turned to Bond and Mack Swain but they were now Lyle and Sutker dressed as pineapples.

“We’re gonna plant you too,” said Adrienne, pointing a soiled finger at me. “Call Alex.”

“Alex,” called Sydney. “I was about to do that without prompting, Adrienne. Alex.”

A door behind the garden started to open and everyone looked toward it: the two corpses, the two Larchmonts, the two pineapples, Straight-Ahead, and me, but before the door opened all the way, something scuttled behind us and Koko and Charlie Chaplin grabbed me and pulled me into the corridor, where John Wayne was standing. He was wearing a Marine sergeant’s uniform with a cowboy hat.

“I’ll just take a look-see in there and hold them off while you get away,” he said.

“But Alex,” I said “I have to see Alex.”

“Never you mind,” said the Duke evenly, pulling out a .45 automatic and a Smith and Wesson revolver. “This is just a dream.”

“There they are,” came a voice at my side. I tried to pull loose from Koko and Chaplin, who were grinning at me.

“Toby, there they are,” came the voice again.

Koko let go and dived into a keyhole. Chaplin let go, doffed his little hat, and waddled down the hall as John Wayne hitched up his gun belt and walked into the room to face the Larchmonts, corpses, and assorted fruit.

I opened my eyes and tried to say something.

“Down there,” said Gunther.

He was standing and pointing. I followed his finger and found myself looking down a hill at a group of men and a woman.

“Time,” I grunted, dry-mouthed.

“Almost eleven,” Gunther said. “You have been sleeping an hour. I did not wish to wake you until and unless we achieved some success.”

“Straight-Ahead,” I said, sitting up and blowing out some air. “He should be around someplace. He’s supposed to be keeping an eye on—”

A shot echoed through the small valley. It could have been a hunter. The group of people in the little valley looked up. Then another shot. A puff of dirt exploded about ten feet from the little group and they ran for cover.

“Uncanny timing,” Gunther said.

“No,” I groaned as I opened the door. “Our friend Alex was waiting for us to arrive before he played out the scene. Where the hell is Straight-Ahead?”

I had groaned because my back was sore. I took my newly purchased pawn shop beauty and scanned the ridge. Something glinted. Straight-Ahead appeared through the brush and pointed with his pistol at a spot about thirty yards to his left. Something glinted there, too. I nodded. Straight-Ahead motioned that he was going to circle behind the spot and I nodded in agreement.