High Midnight tp-6 Read online

  The soldier next to me looked in his wallet and hesitated. He looked at me, and I shook my head no.

  “I’ve got ten says Harkins goes for the knockout in the first. If he gets it, I win. If he misses, I’ll go with the sentiment and take Monroe. I’m a sucker too,” I said.

  The bulldog leaned over and whispered to me, “Go work another area, you clown. This is my section.”

  When the fighters touched gloves, I whispered to the soldier to watch for a cut under Harkins’s eye. If it opened a little, he should push for a bet and take Monroe. The soldier looked at my battered face, took me for an ex-pug and said thanks.

  “I gotta go,” I told Carmen. “Be right back.”

  “You have a kidney disease or something?” she said, still looking for another glimpse of Ann Sheridan but also taking some interest in the fight.

  Tall Mickey was waiting for me when I arrived at the stairwell. He was holding his coat open to reveal a jacket with buckskin trim, enough to suggest that he had something to do with horses. He looked even puffier than he had the day before, and he was worried.

  Jeremy Butler was engaged in conversation with the hot-dog man. His eyes kept darting to me and Fargo, but he put up a good act. He wasn’t as conspicuous as Gunther, but at six-four and almost three hundred pounds, he wasn’t quite invisible either.

  “Big bastard, isn’t he?” remarked Fargo, nodding at Jeremy as I approached.

  “Yeah,” I agreed casually, “I think he used to be a pro wrestler. Can’t remember his name.”

  “Talk,” said Fargo, smoothing his mustache with a careful finger.

  “You killed a man named Tom Tillman, a man you hired to force Cooper to make High Midnight,” I said smiling. “I’ve got proof.”

  “You got no proof,” said Fargo, shaking his head.

  “Then what are you doing here?” I said.

  “I know who killed the Tillman character-the one who was trying to put the pressure on Cooper,” said Fargo with an evil smile I recognized from moments on the screen just before Bob Steele wiped it from his face.

  “Okay, who?”

  “Gelhorn,” said Fargo. “Son of a bitch probably hired the guy and wanted him to ambush you because you were getting in the way. Tillman fella probably objected, so Max and his temper took over.”

  “Gelhorn tell you that?”

  “Max and I go way back,” said Fargo. “Way back. I know how his mind works when the screws aren’t too loose.”

  “And Cooper?” I said.

  “What about him?” Fargo said, glancing again at Jeremy.

  “Gelhorn’s planning to get rid of Cooper,” I said, looking directly into Fargo’s eyes.

  “What the hell for?” he said in surprise.

  “Cooper’s gone, and there’s a new ball game,” I said, taking Bowie’s idea. “Gelhorn is off the hook if Cooper meets an accident. You don’t have to deliver if your promised actor is dead.”

  Fargo touched his chin, and I realized that he looked a little like Pete, the fat evil wolf in Mickey Mouse cartoons. A thought had entered Fargo’s fat head, and I had put it there.

  “On the other hand …” I tried, but Fargo had had enough and pushed past me. He headed not for the stadium interior but for an exit. I nodded to Jeremy Butler, who returned the nod, disengaged himself from the hot-dog man and went after Fargo.

  The fight was in the third round when I got back, and the black fighter’s eye was pouring blood. He was trying to protect the eye, which reduced his offense to practically nothing. At the bell the referee called the doctor, and the doctor stopped the battle. A blood-spattered Monroe removed his mouthpiece to reveal a nearly toothless grin of triumph.

  Bulldog leaned over to me and told me to keep my mouth shut or else. I laughed in his face. This time I talked to Carmen while the crowds rushed out for refreshment and excretion. The lack of kidney retention of the adult fightgoer is a phenomenon worth some study. I got Carmen and the soldier a beer and told them the main fight was a toss-up. The bulldog man, however, was not making the money he expected, and he was hawking it even for Morelia. I didn’t stay while the ringside celebrities were introduced before the main event. This time Carmen grabbed my arm.

  “Are you sick or something?” she said.

  “Something,” I said. “I’ll explain later.”

  Shelly was at the hot-dog stand this time. He waved at me, and I pretended I hadn’t seen him. He was chomping on a hot dog and had his collar turned up like Peter Lorre in a spy movie.

  The corridor was empty this time. Everyone was inside for the main event.

  Gelhorn’s upper lip was pulled back as he advanced on me, showing even teeth that looked ready to bite. He wore a clean white shirt and carried his coat on his right arm. His right hand was covered and might be carrying something. I resisted the urge to move to the protection of the hot-dog stand. Not long ago on a case in Chicago, I had been shot while eating a hot dog.

  “Well?” demanded Gelhora. “What is this all about? And what is that fool doing over there looking at us?”

  He pointed at Shelly, who turned his back.

  “That is the man who said he was you,” he said.

  “Right,” I said. “Let’s get to it. You killed a man, maybe two.”

  “I direct scenes like this,” said Gelhorn, looking to heaven for deliverance, “I don’t fall for them. I didn’t kill anybody.” Gelhorn put his hands on his hips, cocked his head and looked at me with mock amusement.

  “You need some dialogue rewrite,” he said.

  “I’ll tell you,” I went on. “If you don’t deliver Cooper on High Midnight, some goons with guns are likely to come from the people who want the Cooper movie made and be really upset with you.”

  “Idiot,” sighed Gelhorn, looking at his watch impatiently, his yellow-gray hair bobbing.

  “Then what are you doing here?” I said.

  “I was coming to the fights anyway,” he said. “I like them.”

  “Sure,” I returned, “five will get you ten that you can’t tell me who won the first two on the card or who’s in the main event. Why did you kill Tillman?”

  Gelhorn took a step toward me. I didn’t like the hand under the coat. A heavy figure lumbered out of the main hall, but I didn’t look at him. My eyes were on Gelhorn’s face, which looked more than a touch wild. I took a step back and glanced at my backup man Shelly. His back was turned.

  “I met Mickey outside,” Gelhorn said.

  “Coincidence,” I commented.

  “Yes,” said Gelhorn, “and he told me about your crazy idea about getting rid of Cooper.”

  “That’s not my idea,” I said.

  “It’s crazy,” said Gelhorn, looking quite crazy enough to consider it.

  “It wouldn’t be much of an idea,” I said. “It wouldn’t work.”

  “No,” agreed Gelhorn, without convincing me, “it wouldn’t work.”

  I was sure I saw the glint of metal under the coat on Gelhorn’s arm. Maybe it told me he was a killer. Maybe it told me nothing more than that he had brought a gun. His eyes told me that he might be wild enough to use it.

  “You have any idea how much this picture means to me?” he said softly. “How long I’ve waited, planned? I’ve been this town twenty-five years and never been offered anything better than second unit on The Cowboy and The Lady. I’m not going to miss this chance. Not you, not Cooper, not anybody is going to take it from me.”

  “Why did you kill Tillman?” I asked at the wrong moment.

  “I didn’t,” he snarled, letting the gun come out a little further. He might have pulled the trigger. Maybe he was just putting on an act. I never found out. The burly figure that had come out of the stadium rammed into Gelhorn, sending coat and gun to the floor and Gelhorn staggering with his arms out to keep from falling.

  “Hey, sorry,” said Babe Ruth, clutching an armful of hot dogs and beer. Ruth winked at me and whispered, “Take care of yourself, Sherlock.” Then Ru
th rumbled off on his thin legs to find out what the crowd was roaring about. Gelhorn caught his balance and tried to regain his dignity. He moved for his coat, but I got to it before him and picked it and the gun up. It was a little gun. I quietly removed the bullets and handed it to him.

  “The next time you point a gun at me,” I said softly, “you eat it. Now I’m sorry if you don’t like the line, but it’s the best I can do.”

  Gelhorn turned and went. I looked at Shelly, whose back was still turned, and walked over to him. When I tapped his shoulder, he almost dropped his hot dog.

  “I think he spotted me,” Shelly said.

  “You’ve been a big help,” I said. “Do me a favor. Go to aisle 16 and find Carmen. Tell her my kidney gave out and drive her home.”

  “Mildred won’t like that,” he said.

  “We won’t tell Mildred,” I promised. Shelly agreed and went into the arena.

  Lombardi was scheduled to show in five minutes. He didn’t. I waited ten minutes. Still no sausage mogol. In twenty minutes I gave up. I knew what I had to do. I had to find Cooper and warn him that he might be worth more on the slab than on the hoof.

  I went for the exit, considering a call to my brother, but realizing that I’d have to do it on my own. At the gate a cop I knew spotted me and started to wave and smile. Then he remembered that there was a price on my head, and the smile faded. He started to stride toward me, with one hand going for his gun. I hurried through the turnstyle and ran down the street. I could hear his feet slapping after me.

  My wind was good and the cop was overweight. He could have stopped to take a shot at me, but I didn’t think he would. A lot of my survival lately was based on my judgment of human nature. If the past was any indication, I was living on borrowed time.

  CHAPTER NINE

  There was a character named Moneybags Farrell who ran a newsstand on Highland near Selma. He was called Moneybags not because he was rich but because he never handled his customers’ money. He collected it in a leather bag. You dropped your money into it and he gave you change. Moneybags filled up the bag and took it into the restaurant on the corner every few hours. There he went to the washroom and washed the money before he handled it Moneybags was convinced that money was the prime carrier of disease in the modern world. I told him once that others agreed with him, but he was the only one I knew who took it literally.

  Because of his nickname, he had been held up twice by punks who thought he had sacks of gold salted away under True Crime Tales. Both times Moneybags had taken a slight beating and lost a few bucks.

  I sat in my car with the motor running, listening to the Aldrich Family and reading the paper I had bought from Moneybags, who looked a little like my fantasy of Silas Marner from required grade-school reading.

  I wasn’t tired, and my mind was leaping with thoughts and fears. I considered heading for one of the hotels and checking in under a false name. I’d done it before and could probably get away with it again for one night, even though Phil would have guessed at the possibility. I didn’t think the cops had the manpower to follow up on me that quickly. But I had work to do. I went to a phone booth and tracked down Cooper’s mother. She answered after five rings. I reminded her that I had met her with her son at Don the Beachcomber’s.

  “I’ve got to reach him right away,” I said. “Urgent business.”

  She made it clear that he didn’t want to be found, that he wanted a few quiet days and needed the rest. I countered by saying I was sure he would want to hear what I had to say and that I’d take full responsibility. I wanted to add the words “life and death” but didn’t.

  Finally she agreed and gave me directions to an area on the coast in the hills just beyond Santa Barbara. It was clear that she was reading the directions.

  “I thought he was going to Utah,” I said.

  She had no reply other than to tell me that she hoped what I was doing was really important. I thanked her, hung up and found a broken pencil in my pocket. I chewed away enough so I could scratch out the directions she had given me in my small notebook.

  Ignoring the warning signs of my car, I got as far as Santa Barbara and decided to pull in at a rickety motel just outside of town. I’d stopped there before. They charged little, gave little and asked no questions. I told the scrawny guy at the desk to wake me at seven. He said they didn’t wake people. I gave him a buck and he said he’d have the cleaning girl wake me. I gave him another two bucks to buy one of his shirts. He brought one out from his room behind the office and gave it to me without a question. I had the feeling that I could have asked him for his left arm and he would have given it without a whimper if the price was right.

  There was no bath, just a shower stall, but the water was hot and the soap clean. The radio in the room didn’t work, which was just as well. I slept and dreamed of Sergeant York picking off Nazis and turkeys. With each shot Cooper as York moistened the front sight and squinted before he shot. The Nazis turned into familiar faces-Lombardi, Costello, Marco, Tillman, Gelhorn, Fargo, Bowie and finally Lola and me. I tried to shout to Cooper that I was on his side, but he just lined up his sights, gobbled like a turkey and fired.

  I woke up as the bullet sailed toward me in slow motion. I couldn’t move, and I was sweating even though the room was underheated. Someone was knocking on the door and wearily saying, “It’s seven. You in there?”

  “I’m here. I’m up,” I said, and up I got. The bed had been too soft, and my treacherous back ached slightly, but a second hot shower made it feel better. I overpaid the scrawny guy, who was still on duty but probably going off soon, for a razor and went back to my room, where I shaved while the maid began to clean up.

  She was an undersized woman who looked like a walnut and sang something unintelligible and irritating, which hurried me through my shave and out of the room. Breakfast at a nearby roadside drive-in was corn flakes, sliced banana and a cup of coffee. I was back on the road by 7:40.

  I felt a little sorry for the two figures in the blue Ford coupe who pulled onto the highway behind me. They had followed me from Los Angeles and probably slept in the car to be sure they didn’t miss me. Maybe they had actually grabbed something to eat during the night, but maybe they hadn’t taken a chance. In any case, I was in much better shape for losing them than they were for following me. Not only were they tired, I knew where I was going. At least I thought I did. I missed the turnoff a hundred yards beyond the Santa Fe Wines Billboard that Cooper’s mother had told me about. I wouldn’t have turned onto it anyway, but I would have liked the satisfaction of spotting it.

  About ten miles further I came to a small town overlooking the ocean. I went down the main street slowly, with the Ford cautiously behind me. When I found a corner, I turned right and as soon as I was out of sight stepped on the gas and took another right turn. When I was back on the main street going toward the highway, I could see the Ford just making the first right around which I had disappeared.

  Twenty minutes later I found the turnoff and drove down a narrow dirt road full of rocks. In about a mile the road gave out, and I pulled onto a grassy patch and parked. After locking the car and checking the directions in my notebook, I started up a narrow path through the trees. It was a great place to appreciate the outdoors, which I didn’t. I don’t like the rain. I don’t like the sky over my head when I sleep. A nice, safe, enclosed room with artificial light and a steady temperature beats communing with bugs any night or day.

  The shirt I bought from the motel clerk was a little tight, and by the time I wound my way up the hill, it was drenched with sweat. The cabin was right where Cooper’s mother said it would be, a small, brick house built in the woods. It looked as if someone had designed it for a movie, right down to the pile of wood outside with an ax ready in a tree stump.

  I went to the door and knocked. There was a shuffle inside and some voices before the question came, “Who is it?”

  “Toby Peters,” I said.

  The wooden door unl
atched and opened, and Cooper stood before me wearing a hunting jacket that looked like a cleaned-up version of the one Gable wore in Red Dust.

  “What are you doing here?” Cooper said, stepping back to let me in.

  “How about what are you doing here?” I countered. “You told me you were going to Utah.”

  Cooper shrugged and grinned sheepishly, “Just a little place I like to hide away in.”

  “If John Wilkes Booth had hidden here, he’d be alive today,” I said, realizing that we were not alone.

  The room was the room of men with furnishings most men couldn’t afford. It was big, with a double bunk in one corner and a single bunk across the room. An Indian rug lay on the floor, colorful and new, and the redwood furniture with brown corduroy pillows helped the hearty-men image. A new oven stood in the corner next to a shining sink and refrigerator. If this was roughing it, I could take it. So, apparently, could the other two men in the room.

  One of the men was a burly guy of about forty who stood over six feet and had the start of a gray-brown beard. He wore a lumberjack shirt and had a rifle cradled in his arms, aiming at the floor but ready to move on me. He stood next to the refrigerator as if guarding its contents from hungry intruders. The other guy in the room was dark and wiry, with a nasty scar that ran from the bridge of his nose, across his left eye and into his hairline. The scar was indented, and the man wearing it looked up without fear from the chair in which he sat.

  “It’s okay,” said Cooper to the two men. “Mr. Peters works for me. That business I was telling you about with the Western.”

  The man with the rifle pushed away from the refrigerator and lowered the weapon. His face still showed distrust. The dark guy in the chair didn’t move at all.

  “Toby Peters, Ernest Hemingway and Louis Castelli,” Cooper said by way of introduction.

  “Luis Felipe Castelli,” corrected the man in the chair.

  Hemingway stepped forward and offered his right hand as he examined my face. He was interested in something he saw. I didn’t outsqueeze him, but I held my own.