Then I turned on the radio and listened to Fibber McGee and Molly for a while while Gunther volunteered to scramble a few eggs and make toast. Mayor LaTrivia tried to convince McGee to run for water commissioner against Gildersleeve, but McGee said he had his own fish to fry. I didn"t say anything through the meal, and Gunther didn"t ask me anything more. Things were coming together, and my mind was clearing. I poured some ketchup on the eggs and put them between two pieces of toast. "I think I"ve got it," I said, taking a bite that left me about half a sandwich.
"You know who your murderer is?"
Gunther asked politely, taking a small forkful of egg.
"Right," I said, chewing. "Now all I need is some evidence."
"Or a confession from the culprit? Is that an archaic word, "culprit"?"
"It isn"t used much in my circles," I said, finishing the sandwich. I borrowed a couple of nickels from Gunther, got dressed, and called the murderer.
CHAPTER NINE.
If you want to put things on an epic scale, fate intervened and stayed the course of the schedule I had set for the next few hours. If you want to put things in perspective, you simply say I had a flat tire, which is about ten minutes" work, since I had a spare. That is, it"s ten minutes" work if you have a tire iron, which I did not. Mine was in the kitchen of an apartment in Culver City.
Mrs. Plaut had a car, a 1927 Ford that had remained untouched in her garage since 1928, the year Mr. Plaut died. I knew she had some tools in the garage with the car, and I hurried to get the key.
"I wonder if I could borrow some tools,"
I said after Mrs. Plaut opened her door and blessed me with a smile.
"They are, they are," she said with a wise, sad shake of her head and started to close the door on me. I had to put out my hand to stop her.
"My car," I shouted. "I need a tire iron."
I mimed the changing of a tire and held her attention. "Tire iron. Tools."
"Fools?"
"Tools."
"Tools," she said finally in comprehension. "Out in the garage. I"ll get the key."
Five minutes later I was changing the tire and trying not to get dirty. Time was shuffling away, singing a crazy old tune while I tried to catch up. The sun was still around when I finished and hurried in to wash my hands.
When I returned the keys to Mrs. Plaut, she took my sleeve and dragged me into her living room.
"You must listen to this part," she said.
Mrs. Plaut had been writing her family history for the last ten years. It was over 1200 pages long, and whenever she could trap me or Gunther, she read it to us. She was under the impression that I was a part-time writer. I never found out where she got this impression.
"Mrs. Plaut," I said patiently, looking at my watch and getting pushed into her overstuffed chair. "I"ve got to go. It"s a matter of life and death."
"Of course," she said, finding the pages on her oak table. "Here it is."
She showed me a page with an oblong box that looked like a coffin drawn on it.
"That"s California," she explained.
"And those arrows pointing at it from each direction?" I asked.
"One on the left is England. Sir Francis Drake claimed California for Queen Elizabeth. One on top is Russia. They were after California. One on the right is France. They had the land the other side of the Rockies. The one below is Spain coming up from Mexico. Those poor d.a.m.ned Indians didn"t know what hit them."
"But if this is your family history," I asked reasonably, "why are you giving California"s . . ."
"Context," she said with satisfaction. "Got to know what we came to. History of turmoil."
"Terrific," I said, getting up with difficulty and barely escaping the plate of cookies she held waist-high. "Leave it in my room. I"ll look at it when I get back."
I went out the door and into the street without looking back. Seconds later, I was on my way to the St. Bartholomew Library. It was a few minutes after seven when I got there, and the same crust of a librarian watched my arrival with erect superiority. My footsteps echoed through St. Bart"s, and I wondered whether Clinton Hill was still burrowed below our feet in some dark clanking corner.
"Your name is not Chadwick," the librarian said with lofty superiority. "And I do not believe you have academic credentials."
"Right," I said. "But it doesn"t matter if I"m Albert Einstein or St. Bartholomew; you"ve got my gun and I want it. Now."
"I told you, we will not be . . ."
"I"ve got a flashlight," I said. "And I"ll look for it myself."
"As you wish," he said uncomfortably.
"You have twenty minutes and you must be quiet. And find it or not, I would like you to leave the library and never return.
You can leave your real name and address, and we will return your firearm to you if you do not locate it." "Fair is fair," I said, heading for the spiral staircase.
A girl with short hair and gla.s.ses at one of the tables looked up at me from a thick book as I pa.s.sed. Her hand was in her hair, and she looked as if the very binding of the book confused her.
On the second level down, I pulled the flashlight from my back pocket and found a ladder leading into the pitch blackness below. I started down and got about ten feet when I heard a sound above me and I looked up. I could make out an outline. Then the outline laughed, a laugh that shook the ladder.
"Hill?" I said.
"It"s not there," he said. "Your gun"s not there. I"ve got it. See?"
I turned the flashlight up and saw my gun staring down at me.
"Thanks," I said, climbing back upward and trying to ignore the fact that he wasn"t holding it in a way that looked like the offer of a friend.
"You almost got me fired," he said, still pointing the gun down at me.
"I didn"t tell that guy to jump me here," I said, taking another rung up. "Put the gun down. What are you going to do?
Shoot me for almost losing you your job?
You want to lose your job, just go around shooting people."
He backed away slightly, and I came up over the railing very slowly.
"You"ve told the Dark Knights about me, haven"t you?" he said, still pointing the gun in my direction.
"No, and I don"t plan to," I said. "The fastest way out of the Dark Knights is to shoot me."
"You"d tumble over the rail and go into the darkness," he mused. "I could hide you."
I counted on Wilson Wong"s a.s.sessment of Clinton Hill and took another step forward.
"Your hand is shaking, for Chrissake," I said. "Clinton, you aren"t going to shoot anyone but yourself. You"ll blast your foot off."
He handed me the gun meekly and laughed again.
"Would that I were made of sterner stuff," he sighed.
"Would that you were," I said, checking to be sure the gun was still loaded and working. As far as I could tell, it was.
"Why not get out in the sun for a while?"
"The sun," he said hoa.r.s.ely, "can kill you." "You"re not a vampire," I reminded him.
"I know," he said, "but I am human. The sun can give you cancer of the skin."
"You"re a h.e.l.l of a conversationalist, Clinton," I said, pocketing the gun.
"You"re really not going to tell them?"
he asked softly.
"Cross my heart and hope to die," I said and started upward.
The librarian with the tight collar was waiting for me at the top of the staircase.
"You made noise again," he observed.
"Right," I said. "I found the Frankenstein monster under all those papers and it gave me quite a start."
"I do not find your attempts at levity amusing," the librarian said, following me to the door and looking for bulges in case I had heisted a rare third edition of the Gutenberg Bible.
"Sorry," I said, "I do better when I"m not worried about getting killed."
The librarian could make nothing of me and went back to his counter, while I hurried to my car. The radio told me MacArthur was making a desperate stand on Bataan, Roosevelt was calling for a $59 billion war budget, and Mickey Rooney and Ava Gardner had been married. I turned off the news and listened to Eddie Cantor till I got to Levy"s restaurant on Sprina. Carmen was there behind the cash register, explaining a check to a couple. The man couldn"t understand why he was being charged for the barley soup, which he thought came with the meal. Carmen patiently explained that the soup was extra. He raved a while longer, and she gave me a resigned shrug and then repeated her explanation.
The guy turned to me. His face was red with rage. He was a little guy, a head shorter than his wife, but it was clear he was the boss. "Any other restaurant, the soup comes with the meal."
"It"s the war," I explained. "We all have to do our part."
"Maybe you"re right," the man said a bit sheepishly. What he should have said was, What the h.e.l.l has that got to do with anything, but patriotism was running high and with the j.a.panese bragging that they could invade California whenever they wanted, all it took was a hint that someone was less than patriotic and he"d be surrounded by uglies and acidic old ladies.
"I"ll pay for my soup and pay gladly," I said. The guy paid his bill and yanked his wife out of the restaurant.
"Well," said Carmen, looking at me for an explanation of what I wanted and where I had been. Widowhood stood well on Carmen. She could give Camile Shatzkin a few lessons.
"I"ve been working," I said. "Two cases.
Long hours, usual pay. How about that movie and dinner tomorrow?"
"No nightclub?" she said in mock disappointment.
"That was a combination of business and pleasure."
"The Chocolate Soldier with Nelson Eddy"s at the Chinese Loew"s State," she said, leaning toward me with a smile.
"Tomorrow," I said. "My corner of the world will be back in one piece by tomorrow." I could have added that it would either be in one piece, or I wouldn"t be part of it.
"Tomorrow," she agreed. "I"m off all afternoon and night."
I took her hand, gave it a loud kiss that caused heads to turn, and ordered a corned beef on rye with ketchup to go.
It"s hard to be romantic in a kosher restaurant. While I waited, I called Lugosi"s house. He was home. I told him I expected his problem to be over by morning and that I was going to see Billings.
I got the sandwich, chucked it under my arm, bid adieu to Carmen, and went out to meet my fate or my maker.
A second call to my murderer resulted in no answer, which concerned me. I had called a few hours earlier and said I was coming over to talk about something related to the Shatzkin murder. The murderer had promised to be home from ten o"clock on. I still had time to wrap up one of my cases before then, so I headed into Los Angeles to do it. By now I knew the way.
When I got where I was going, the sun was down, and the sky was rumbling with the threat of rain. What made it worse was the general blackout. There wasn"t much to see.
I parked next to the theater and walked up to the box office. It was closed and the theater was dark. I tried the doors.
None were open.
Moving around the side of the building just as the first few drops fell, I found a house behind the theater on top of a little hill. It was an old three-story frame house that had once been white, but time and inattention had turned it gray. There was no light, but I walked up the hill on my still aching leg and climbed the steps.
They creaked mightily and the sound mixed with the whirl of the rainy wind.
The porch held an old swing that rocked gently back and forth in the wind as if someone were sitting in it. I knocked. No one answered. I knocked again. Still no answer. My next step was to pull the flashlight out of my pocket and hit the windows with its beam. The place looked empty. I backed off the porch into the rain and shined the light on the second floor. I thought I caught one of the curtains fluttering, but I couldn"t be sure. Whistling an invented tune, I went back on the porch and tried the door. It opened with a perfect creak of hinges that would have sent the Three Stooges scrambling out into the downpour.
My flashlight beam hit a stairway and several rooms. From what I could see in the fading beam, it was decorated in early Lizzie Borden.
"Billings," I called. No answer. I thought I heard something above me.
"Come on, Sam," I called, pointing my beam up the stair. "Just take out your fangs and let"s talk. I"ve got a lot to do tonight." Again something creaked above. My yellow light went dim, and I turned what was left of it to the walls, in search of a light switch. I found it and flicked it, but nothing happened.
My flashlight decided it had done enough for one Eveready lifetime and closed its eye. Outside, the rain was coming down hard, heavy, and tired. A little lightning joined it, and I reached for my gun. My eyes began to adjust to the liquid gloom in a few seconds, during which I held my gun ready. When I could see a little, I put the gun back in the holster.
"Sam," I sighed falsely, "you are being difficult."