by Bill Crider
“Just a little more,” Bogart said. “We’ve almost got it.”
This time the squeal sounded like a demon screaming, and the door came open almost all the way. Bogart took my arm and started yanking on it. Pain went all through my body, or so it seemed. I’d hit the steering wheel hard, and I knew there would be a bruise that covered my chest.
“You’re not helping,” Bogart said.
I twisted around as much as I could, which wasn’t much at all, but with Bogart pulling and me twisting, I started to move a little.
“That’s the idea. Here we go now.”
Bogart put one foot on the side of the car. He pushed with his leg and pulled with his arms, and I popped out of the car and fell onto the hillside. I felt grit and gravel under my cheek and smelled gasoline.
I lay there for a while looking at nothing much.
“How badly are you hurt?” Bogart asked from somewhere up above me.
I couldn’t tell him because I didn’t know. Judging by how I felt, I figured every bone in my body was broken. I’d only thought I’d been hurt when Garton pummeled me with the towel earlier that evening.
That had been nothing more than a warm-up for the real thing.
“You’re going to have to try to stand up,” Bogart said. “I’m afraid the car is going to blow up. Any little spark could set it off.”
That reminded me of the gasoline smell again, and it was even stronger now. My face was turned toward the car, and I imagined I could see a pool of gasoline forming on the ground in the darkness beneath it. I heard hissing and popping and creaking sounds, all of them coming from my car.
“I hope my auto insurance is paid up,” I said, thinking that it probably wasn’t. Dust puffed out in front of my mouth.
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“Don’t worry about the car,” Bogart said. “It’s your life insurance you should be thinking about.”
Somehow that didn’t cheer me up.
Bogart got his hands under my arms and tried to lift me. He didn’t have much success.
“You have to help me a little,” he said, so I tried.
After about a year, I managed to get up on my knees. Bogart kept tugging and talking, and eventually I was standing, more or less. I was slumped forward and a little to the side, but I was on my feet, and that was what counted.
“Very good, kid,” Bogart said. “I knew you could do it.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Me, too. Never any doubt. Now what?”
“I almost hate to tell you.”
“Let me guess, then. We walk back up to the road.”
“That’s exactly right. Nothing wrong with your brain, kid.”
“That’s what you think,” I said. Now that I was upright, I could feel even more pains, and one of them was right behind my eyes. “What happened to your head?”
Bogart wiped his hand across his forehead and looked at his fingers.
Then he wiped his fingers on his pants leg.
“I don’t remember exactly,” he said. “Is the windshield broken?”
I had no idea, and I wasn’t going to look. It would have taken too much effort.
“Doesn’t matter,” Bogart said. “I hit something when we hit the tree. Might have been the windshield, might not. I was out for a second, but not as long as you. Are you ready?”
“For what?”
“Climbing the hill.”
I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t ever going to be ready. Not only had I been in a severe car accident, but the leg with the shrapnel in it hadn’t been in very good shape to begin with. But I didn’t see that I had much choice.
So I said, “Sure,” and started walking. If you could call it walking.
“Wait a minute,” Bogart said. “I forgot about my hat. I want to see if I can find it. That’s an expensive hat.”
I hadn’t walked very far, anyway, about six inches. Maybe seven.
“Take your time,” I told him.
He went around to the passenger side of the car and leaned inside.
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After a second or two, he leaned back out and held up the Scotch bottle, which was unbroken and still held quite a lot of liquor. He never drank as much as he appeared to be drinking.
He set the bottle down and turned back into the car. When it came to hats and liquor, he wasn’t so worried about getting blown to smithereens.
He found the hat and tried to pat it back into shape. He wasn’t a hundred percent successful, but he stuck the hat on his head anyhow.
Then he picked up the Scotch bottle.
“Now I’m ready,” he said.
He looked better with the hat on, and I figured he wanted it as much for vanity as for the cost, since he wasn’t wearing his hairpiece.
My own hat, unaccountably, had stayed on in spite of everything.
It didn’t take Bogart long to get ahead of me. When you’re taking six-inch steps, or maybe seven-inch steps, you’re not going to win a lot of races.
Bogart looked back at me.
“You look like Boris Karloff in one of those Frankenstein movies,”
he said after having a slug of Scotch. “But without the elevator shoes.”
“It’s not how a man looks that matters. It’s how he conducts himself with others.”
Bogart gave me a hard look.
“Maybe I was wrong. Maybe there i s something wrong with your head.”
I shuffled along for six or seven more inches and said, “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”
Bogart didn’t respond to that. He just turned around and started walking up the hill.
I don’t know how long it took us to get to the top. I stumbled a lot, but I didn’t fall. Some of the time I was able to help myself along by pulling on tree branches. I thought that if Bogart were any kind of friend at all, he’d get behind me and push, or maybe take one of my hands and pull, but he was probably in nearly as bad a shape as I was.
When we finally got to the top of the hill and found ourselves at the roadside, I felt as if I’d circumnavigated the globe. On foot. I thought my leg might fall off if I took another step. I started to ask 175
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Bogart what we did next, but I was afraid he’d tell me we were going to walk back to Beverly Hills.
“I think it’s safe to smoke now,” he said after taking a look around.
He stuck the Scotch bottle under one arm and got out a crumpled pack of Chesterfields. He looked at it and shook his head. He straightened the pack as best he could and shook out a cigarette. It was too dark for me to see it very well, but it looked crooked and maybe ben broken to me. Bogart didn’t care. He stuck it in his mouth and lit it anyway.
“Too bad we can’t call a cab,” I said.
“Someone will come along eventually. I don’t feel like walking much farther.”
I was glad to hear him say that. I didn’t feel like walking any farther at all. Then I had a disturbing thought. I said, “What if the Packard comes back?”
Bogart blew out a plume of gray smoke. It hung in front of him in the still air and then drifted away.
“That guy won’t be back. He thinks we’re dead. And God knows we should be. If that tree hadn’t stopped us halfway down, we’d be packed inside what’s left of that car like a couple of sardines.”
He’d hardly finished reassuring me when I heard a car coming from the direction of Bel Air. I looked and saw the glow of its headlights around the curve.
“Speak of the devil,” I said.
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CHAPTER
29
That’s not a Packard,” Bogart said, puffing casually on the cigarette. “Hear how the motor’s lugging? Sounds a little like your car.”
My car would never sound that way again. It wouldn’t sound any way at all. I was going to miss it.
“Maybe we can get a ride,” Bogart said. “You’d better do something about that gun.”<
br />
I’d forgotten about the pistol, which was causing one side of my jacket to sag badly. I took it out of the pocket and stuck it in my belt at the small of my back.
Bogart stood at the side of the road, and when the car rounded the curve, he waved his arm.
The car, a Ford of about the same age as my Chevy, chugged right on by us, but after it had gone about fifty yards, it stopped and started backing up.
The car came to a stop beside Bogart, and the driver leaned out the window.
“I think you were right, Bernie,” he said. “He does look a lot like Humphrey Bogart.”
“I am Humphrey Bogart,” Bogart said. “That’s why I look like him.”
He tossed his cigarette to the ground and stepped on it.
The driver opened the door of the Ford and got out. He was a nice-177
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looking gent in a short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt covered with pineapples of various sizes. His upper arms bulged with muscle and the sleeves fit tightly around them.
His passenger, Bernie, got out as well. He was smaller than the driver, and he was wearing a suit and a tie painted with what must have been a tropical sunset. His hands fluttered when he talked.
“Oh, Mr. Bogart,” he said, “I’m such a fan of your movies. You were absolutely wonderful in The Big Sleep. Wasn’t he, Evan? Wasn’t he absolutely wonderful? And your wife, Miss Bacall, is simply gorgeous.
Isn’t she gorgeous, Evan?”
“As gorgeous as anyone ever was,” Evan said. “What happened here, Mr. Bogart?”
“We had an accident.” Bogart gestured over his shoulder with his thumb.
“The car’s down there somewhere.”
“You could have been killed,” Bernie said. “I’m just so happy you weren’t.”
“I’m awfully happy about that, myself,” Bogart said. “By the way, this is my friend Scotty. We’re both feeling pretty rocky right now.”
Scotty? I thought. What the hell? Then I realized it was just the needle again. Bogart couldn’t resist.
“Hi, Bernie,” I said. “Pleased to meet you.”
“It’s such a privilege to meet both of you,” Bernie said, but he was looking at Bogart and not me. “What can we do to help?”
“You could give us a ride back to L.A. if you don’t mind,” Bogart said.
“The Garden of Allah, if you know where that is.”
“We certainly do, and we don’t mind at all, do we, Evan. We know where everything is in L.A., and it would be a privilege to drive you home. You just get in the car, and we’ll take you there right now.”
“You two look like you need a doctor,” Evan said.
“We’ll be fine,” Bogart said. “A drink and a bath will take care of us.”
Bernie looked pretty excited at the idea of the bath, but Evan said,
“They won’t need any help with that, Bernie. And they already have something to drink.”
He looked pointedly at the bottle under Bogart’s arm.
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“Don’t worry,” Bogart said. “Scotty was driving, and he’s a teetotaler. Can I offer you gentlemen a swallow of Scotch?”
They turned him down, an we got into the car, Bogart and I in the back seat. Evan started the motor.
“You know what I liked about The Big Sleep?” Bernie said as we drove off. He was turned in the seat so he could look at us. “I simply loved the part where you went into the bookstore to ask for the copy of Ben Hur.”
Bogart pushed up the brim of his hat.
“The Ben Hur 1860?” Bogart said in the same milquetoast voice he’d used in the movie, and I thought Bernie was going to swoon.
“The one with the erratum on page one-sixteen?”
Bernie wriggled with delight. When he’d recovered he said, “If you don’t mind my asking, where were you and…Scotty going when you had the accident?”
“We were going to the Michelangelo,” Bogart said, still in the same voice. He was amazing. For the gangsters, he was a tough guy. For Bernie and Evan, he was something else entirely. “You know it?”
Bernie sneaked a look at Evan, who kept his eyes straight ahead as if concentrating on the road. Maybe he was. It was tricky even when a Packard wasn’t pursuing you.
“We know the Michelangelo,” Bernie said after a slight pause. “Don’t we, Evan.”
I had a feeling they knew it, all right. I had a feeling they were coming from there when they stopped for us.
Evan didn’t say anything, but he inclined his head a little as if nodding assent. If Bogart played this right, he might find out something that would help us.
He played it right.
“Then you might know a friend of ours,” he said. “Bob Carroll. He’s in the movies, too. We were on our way to see him when our car went off the road.”
Bernie looked at Evan again. This time Evan didn’t give him a cue.
“How well do you know Bob?” Bernie said.
“He was at my house a couple of nights ago. We’re old friends.”
“Oh. Well, then I suppose you know all about him.”
“Not all,” Bogart said. “I know a lot, though. I know where he likes to go to have a good time.”
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“He was there tonight,” Bernie said. “You would have missed him, though. He left about at least two hours ago. Evan and I closed the place down. We’re a couple of real night owls. Isn’t that right, Evan?”
Evan inclined his head slightly, and Bernie rattled on.
“Bob was there with his special friend. Do you know him, too?”
I couldn’t speak for Bogart, but I didn’t have a clue as to who Bob’s friend was. I had a feeling I was about to find out, however.
“I thought Bob played the field,” Bogart said.
“Oh, no. Not Bob. You don’t know him at all if you think that. He’s very faithful to Carl.”
Bernie made an O with his mouth and put a hand over it, as if he’d blurted out the plans for making an A-bomb.
I tried not to show how surprised I was. Bogart, of course, being an actor had no trouble at all. He said, “He and Carl have been an item for a while. They were together at my house, but I wasn’t sure they went other places.”
“Well, they don’t. Not the kind of places where they can be seen by just anyone. Bob has a reputation to keep up, you know, and you’ve probably met his wife, Stella. She’s gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous. Not as gorgeous as Miss Bacall, of course, hardly anyone is, but still a very lovely woman. Anyway, she’s the one he goes out with when he’s in public.”
“I know Stella,” Bogart said. “We saw her earlier at the Sappho Club.”
“My, my, you do get around, don’t you. I wouldn’t have guessed it in a million years.”
“It’s all Scotty’s fault. He likes adventure.”
Bernie really looked at me for the first time. He didn’t appear to be in the least impressed.
“I suppose you never can tell about people,” he said, and turned his attention back to Bogart. “At least by looking at them.”
I wondered what Bernie would say about me if he knew that a pistol was digging into my backbone at that very moment.
“No, you certainly can’t tell by looking,” Bogart said. “Scotty here is a real wild man. Isn’t that right, Scotty?”
“Never a dull moment when I’m around,” I said. “One adventure after another. Dead bodies piling up all over the place.”
“Oh, my,” Bernie said, shrinking down in the seat a little. But he 180
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popped right back up. “You’re such a kidder, Mr. Scott. You had me going for a second there, with those dead bodies.”
“Call me Scotty,” I said.
“And you can call me Bogie,” Bogart said, sending Bernie into another near swoon.
It was going to be a long ride back to L.A.
By the time we arrived at the Garden of Allah, it was almost three o’clock. I was feeling worse than I had since my little sojourn on Saipan. It was almost enough to make me want to start drinking again.
Adding to my misery, Bernie had spent the whole trip talking to
“Bogie” about the movies, about his leading ladies, about the sexual habits of some famous leading men.
I could have told him a thing or two about Buck Sterling, but I restrained myself. I never talked about my work for Mr. Warner to anyone except Mr. Warner. Bernie probably wouldn’t have cared about Buck Sterling, anyway. He was too wrapped up in the fact that he was actually having a conversation with “Bogie” to listen to anything I might have to say.
But when I got out of the car, even Bernie seemed a little concerned about me.
“You don’t look very good, Scotty,” he said.
“He’s fine,” Bogart said. “Isn’t that right, Scotty.”
I was wobbling a little as I stood on the walk.
“Absolutely fine,” I said. “Fine as wine. Ready for another adventure.”
Bernie gave me a skeptical look, cocking one eyebrow, something I could never do.
“I still think you should go to a hospital,” Evan said. “And maybe call the police about that accident.”
“Believe me, they wouldn’t do a thing,” Bogart said.
Except throw us in jail, I thought. Or shoot me if Garton got his way.
“We’ll send a wrecker for the car tomorrow,” I said, trying to sound chipper. “A good night’s sleep, and I’ll be as good as new.”
Bernie looked at his watch and laughed.
“I think a good night’s sleep is out of the question,” he said.
“I meant a good day’s sleep,” I told him.
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Evan gunned the motor of the car just a little and Bernie took the hint.
“It was wonderful to meet you,” he said, “even though the circum-stances could have been better. I do hope we’ll meet again.”
“You can be sure of it,” Bogart said, and when Evan drove away, Bernie was wearing a grin that you couldn’t have removed with a case of steel wool.
“You’re such a tease,” I told Bogart.
“I wasn’t teasing.” He was using his normal voice again. “I’m sure I’ll see Bernie again. I’ll send him tickets to a premiere. He’d enjoy that.”