Buried Caesars (20 page)

“Here’s how it’s going to work,” Arnie said, while I listened to the siren pull farther and farther away. “An A book will have a year’s supply of coupons, giving 2,880 miles of driving on the basis of four gallons of gas to a coupon. You follow?”

“No.”

“Try,” he said. “That’s based on the government’s official estimate of 15 miles to the gallon. Of the total, 1,080 are supposed to be for family driving and 1,800 for the job.”

“Fascinating, Arnie,” I said.

“A B book,” he went on, “will be for drivers whose job requires more than 1,080 miles per year. Trouble is you gotta agree to share the car, but how’s the government to know?”

“They won’t,” I said.

“Right. Now, the C book,” he said, getting into it. “That’s for drivers who fall into fourteen classifications of essential occupations involving driving more than 470 miles a month. You get ninety-six coupons every three months, good for four gallons a coupon.”

“But you have to pay for the gas,” I said, trying to get into this because with a war on it paid to be nice to your mechanic.

“Sure, but what I’m talking here is you applying for an occupational allowance. You and Minck both. I’ll take the extra coupons off your hands for a fair price.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said, but I knew I wouldn’t think about it. I knew if I did it I’d have dreams of jeeps full of soldiers in some jungle running out of gas because I picked up a few bucks from No-Neck Arnie. “Arnie, my car’s a half block down from my house, front tires flat. Can you pick it up, fix it, and bring it to your place?”

“Sure,” he said. “Twenty bucks. Ten if you think seriously about applying for a C coupon.”

“I’ll pay the twenty,” I said.

“Suit yourself,” he said with a deep sigh to let me know what I’d be missing. “You can pick it up here after four.”

I hung up, gave a sigh of my own, and tried to figure out the least awkward way to walk down the street and hail a cab with a loaded oversized Luger in my pocket.

S
helly wouldn’t talk to me. He sat in his dental chair sulking behind the morning paper.

He had been choked, humiliated and kept in the dark. The patient he had started to clean up for, Dashiell Hammett, probably wasn’t coming. With good reason, Sheldon Minck assumed it was all my fault.

“They won’t come back, Shel,” I said. “They know I’ll get out of here. Besides, I’ll have them nailed by the end of the day if the cops don’t catch them now.”

A distant siren suggested that the cops hadn’t caught up with Wylie and Conrad, which didn’t say much for the Los Angeles Police Department since Conrad was driving with a concussion. But, then again, the police had lost most of their youngest and sharpest to the armed forces.

Shelly grunted and rustled his paper. A puff of angry cigar smoke curled over the top of the pages.

“I’ll check in later,” I said. “You’ll have to interview Louise-Mary without me.”

“Louise-Marie,” he corrected.

“Louise-Marie,” I amended. “Mildred will hate her.”

To this he did not even grunt. I went down to the sixth-floor landing of the Farraday. It was still early. Most of the tenants—baby photographers, pornographers, fortune tellers, correspondence-school operators, assorted quacks, hacks and shysters—wouldn’t be arriving for a while, but I could tell from the aroma of fresh Lysol that Jeremy or Alice or both were on the job. I followed the scent and found Jeremy on the fourth floor just outside the door of a small-time bookie named Desnos Lyme. The sign on the door read: L
YME AND
A
SSOCIATE
, I
NVESTMENTS.

Jeremy kneeled next to the door, bucket on one side of him, Lysol bottle on the other, chamois in hand. He wore a clean red-flannel shirt and dark slacks and, in the demi-darkness of the early-morning windowless interior of the Farraday core, enough light came from the bulbs to shine off Jeremy’s shaved head. He had worked his weight down to about 250 pounds, but he still looked like an intelligent mountain.

“Jeremy,” I said. “I need a favor.”

Jeremy paused. He took a beat to change roles from landlord to friend, but just a beat.

“Yes,” said Jeremy, eager to get back to his battle with the inevitable grime of the Farraday.

“A pair of minor-league menaces named Conrad and Wylie just broke into my office, pushed Shelly around a little and waved a gun. It’s part of a case I’m on. I don’t think they’ll come back but I’d like you to keep an eye on Shelly for the rest of the day just in case. You can’t miss these two; one has his arm in a sling, the other has a patched head. They always wear overalls. And they’re both big, not as big as you, but big.”

Jeremy didn’t answer. He simply nodded.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Toby,” he said, as I turned to leave. “The hourglass of life is dropping its silent sand. We must savor each grain and be careful not to crack the glass.”

“Comforting thought, Jeremy,” I said, taking a step toward the stairs. My footsteps echoed below.

“You miss my point,” said Jeremy. “I was not making an existential observation.”

“Sorry,” I said, not even worrying about what he meant.

“Whatever life is, and I am inclined at least poetically to consider it a continuum, a river of being in which the essence of energy—energy which includes you and me—must flow, will flow and has flown since the beginning of time.”

“Gotcha,” I said, taking another step.

“No,” he went on, “my point is that in this present existence in present time we should honor life and not insult it. Too often you insult it. It is time to consider reflection and contemplation, Toby. You are of an age.”

“I’ll think about it, Jeremy,” I said, finally getting to the stairs. “Meanwhile …”

“If those two show up and cause trouble,” Jeremy said, reaching down for his Lysol, “I’ll crush their heads like ripe pomegranates.”

“I’d appreciate that. How’s Alice?”

“Pregnant,” he said.

I stopped and turned around to face him. I’d never thought of the enormous Alice as a mother. In fact, I’d never thought about how old Alice Pallice Butler might be. I knew Jeremy had to be at least sixty.

“Congratulations,” I said.

“A new hourglass to be shined, protected and savored,” he said. His face was shadowed but I could see the small hint of what might have been a smile on his usually expressionless face. “To create a new life is poetry but too few of the poets recognize their aesthetic powers.”

“When’s the baby due?” I asked.

“May,” he said.

“These are hard times for having a baby,” I said.

“When were the easy times? When were the right times? When were the best times?” He was back to cleaning the walls, and a new wave of Lysol aroma wafted toward me from the open bottle. “You too are capable of poetry, Toby.”

“Not so’s you’d notice,” I said. “I’ll leave it to you and Alice. I really am happy for you, Jeremy.”

“I believe you are. Now if you and the world will survive long enough to meet my child, I will be very pleased.”

I left Jeremy to his endless chore and hurried down the polished stone steps and along the omate black-painted metal railing, remembering the time I had seen Jeremy calmly throw a crazed giant thirty years younger and thirty pounds heavier across the waiting room of a veterinarian’s office. There had been no joy in it for Jeremy, just something he could do and had to do to save my life. He had read me his poetry for years and never shown the slightest emotion other than a resigned melancholy. Even his marriage to Alice had been sober, but I had just seen the touch of a smile on that corded face and it made me feel vulnerable and just a little scared.

My plan was simple. Pintacki didn’t have the MacArthur papers. I had some idea of who might have them, but no idea of why. I needed a car.

There were probably ways to borrow a car and better places, but I caught a cab on Hoover and told him to drive me to Culver City. I watched the city wake up as we went west on Pico, cut down Hill and turned a few blocks short of the M.G.M. Studios to the street where Ann lived. I looked around for Ann’s car before paying the cabbie, got a receipt and let the cab go. Her shining little black Ford was parked on the street behind a not-so-bright Chrysler.

I didn’t bother to check my watch as I walked across the courtyard and past the pond. I figured it was still early. I knocked and waited. I knocked again and finally heard soft footsteps padding and a voice answer dreamily, “Who is it?”

“Toby,” I said.

The pause was half of forever, the time it would take for a butterfly’s wings to wear down a bowling ball. Then the chain inside clanked, the handle turned and the door opened a crack. Her thick hair was falling over her eyes and she was wearing a blue and white silk robe she had bought when we were still married. Her eyes were a bit puffy but she looked soft and warm.

“How did the interview go?” I asked.

The crack didn’t widen.

“Fine,” she said. “I got the job.”

“Great. Can I come in?”

“I … I’m sorry. I’ve got to get up and get to work.”

“Well, you can tell me about the job while you get dressed,” I said amiably.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “You should have called.”

“Too early in the morning. I didn’t want to wake you.”

“Toby, please …”

“Can I borrow your car for a few hours?” I asked.

“My … no … I need it to …” she stammered.

“I’m on this case,” I started to explain. “Vital to the war effort. Two guys …”

“I don’t want to hear, Toby,” she whispered. “I don’t want to know about your cases. We’re not married, remember? I don’t have to know. I don’t have to wonder. I don’t have to worry. I don’t have to be responsible for you. You are two husbands ago, Toby. I appreciate what you’ve done for me but let’s just stop it here.”

“Yesterday …” I began.

“… was yesterday,” she concluded. “Toby, I’ve got to get ready for work and you can’t come in.”

“Annie,” I said. “Just give me …”

And then I heard the cough inside her apartment, over her shoulder, back toward where I remembered the bedroom was. The cough was deep, confident, masculine. Ann heard it too. She chewed on her lower lip, brushed her hair back and looked in my eyes, without apology but with some embarrassment.

“Annie, Annie was the miller’s daughter,” I said, the song I used to sing to her in my comic voice when we were first married. “Far she wandered from the singing water. Idle, idle Annie went a-maying, uphill, downhill with her flock astraying.”

She closed the door quickly and I turned to leave. I didn’t really feel like finding murderers and MacArthur’s papers. I didn’t feel like saving the Western world from the postwar threat of communism. I felt like going to a hotel, getting in bed, pulling the covers over my head and sleeping for a month.

I told myself I didn’t care, shouldn’t care. After all, I’d spent some time in bed with J.V. in Angel Springs. I’d done it partly because she reminded me of Ann, but I’d also done it out of need, hers and mine. I shouldn’t judge Ann. I shouldn’t, but I knew I would. I gave up the idea of going for the hotel and decided instead to wait outside of Ann’s apartment to get a look at whoever it was in the bedroom. I wasn’t sure it would make things better but it would get rid of some of what I would soon start imagining. Before I could turn away, Ann’s door opened again, just a crack, and again slammed shut.

“Ann,” I called.

There was no answer this time.

“Phil was right again.” Seidman’s voice came from over my shoulder.

I turned around and found myself facing the pale and placid Lieutenant Steve Seidman.

“About what?” I asked, following him out from behind the palms and cactus.

“About where to find you,” he said. “When in doubt, go to your ex-wife’s. Let’s go.”

And we went. Seidman said nothing on the trip to the Wilshire Station. He drove and I looked out the window feeling sorry for myself and wondering if it was going to rain. He parked his unmarked Ford in the small lot and walked with me around the stone building to the front, up the steps and into the lobby.

“What kind of a morning is it?” I asked Seidman.

“Don’t know,” he said as we walked past the ancient sergeant on duty at the desk, whose face turned sour in greeting. “He called me at home and told me to have you here when he got in.”

“You were lucky to find me,” I said as we went up the dark, wooden steps toward the squad room.

“You left an easy trail,” he said. “Give me a minute with him.”

“Take your time,” I said, following Seidman through the squad room door. The grimy clock on the wall read almost nine, which meant a shift had changed within the hour. A pair of handcuffed Oriental boys sat on chairs in front of the desk of John Cawelti, a sergeant who didn’t love me. John wasn’t there. The Oriental boys were leaning against each other. One of them was sleeping. As we passed I could see that the wide awake and frightened boy was really a girl who looked at me as if I might have a reprieve for her, or at least some hope. I had neither.

Another cop, a horsey guy whose name I couldn’t remember, sat at his desk in the corner near the dirty window smoking a cigarette and staring at a sheet of paper in front of him. The rest of the squad room was empty, at least empty of humans. The trash cans were overflowing with last night’s reports and ordered-out sandwiches and the place smelled like the Griffith Park lion house.