“The Carpenter murder,” he said suddenly, turning to me, “the robbery story is bunk, right?”
“Right.”
“I knew it. The day I read the story in the Times I told Betty it was a load of shit.”
“His murder is connected to Adrian’s murder, I’ll tell you that much.”
Bogart rubbed that chin.
“So those stories were true,” he said slowly. “Walter didn’t kill himself.”
“He had no reason to.”
“No?” The actor stared at me, his eyes curious and his hand slack on the wheel as we whipped up San Vincente at eighty miles an hour. I reflexively pointed in the direction of the windshield.
“Don’t worry,” he said placidly, ignoring the road, “I’ve done a hundred and ten with my head in an ice bucket.”
“Why did you believe Walter was a suicide?” I asked him.
Bogart shrugged.
“The trouble he was having with Warners, the probability that the House Committee would be after him.”
“But he’s not the only one.”
Bogart nodded, cigarette smoke streaming from his nostrils.
“Very true, Jack. They’ll nail anyone who ever scratched his ass during the National Anthem. But some people just get worried; others might string themselves up.”
“You worried?”
He fiddled with his bow tie.
“Anybody with half a brain is worried.”
He hit the brake and we went off San Vincente at a modest sixty, running a stop sign, cutting a swath through a service station, and ending up on Route 1, the Palisades Beach Road.
“You said Pacific Way?” the actor asked.
“Check. I’m looking for a place on the beach.”
“All right. That’s about ten miles north of here.” He smiled and stomped on the gas pedal. “Here we go.”
Route 1 is a two-lane highway that runs alongside the sea. I’ve been told that it’s quite scenic by day and positively dazzling the farther north you travel. But Route 1 twists and turns above that vast and turbulent ocean, and a person would not ordinarily think of doing one hundred miles per hour on it. But Bogart pushed the Caddy with quiet relish and made it seem unthinkable, unmanly, not to risk one’s neck on this stretch of highway.
We began passing trailer trucks on the two-lane road, moving past them so quickly they seemed part of the landscape, like the houses and mountains and trees. It was a period of time, of motion, in which Bogart’s life and my life were uninsurable, marked, doomed. And I enjoyed it, savored it even. The pursuit of a beautiful and good woman held captive by a two-time killer was the cleanest and simplest thing I had done in a long time.
And it crystallized to pure hunt, pure good and evil, when I saw the blue Nash proceeding at a modest pace about a hundred yards away.
“That’s him,” I told Bogart. “Slow down and put your brights on.”
The actor effortlessly slowed us down to forty. While it felt as though we had stopped dead, we actually closed the gap between the two cars to maybe seventy-five feet. We were near enough to observe that only the driver was visible, his chunky figure planted solidly behind the steering wheel. My heart sank.
“Where’s Mrs. Adrian?” asked Bogart. “And who’s that driving?”
“We have to pass him,” I said urgently. “I’ve got to see if she’s in there.”
“He’ll notice us.”
“He’s going to notice us sooner or later anyhow. Let’s move.”
“You’re the doctor.” Bogart rubbed his jaw again and brought us up to a cruising speed of seventy. White checked his rear view mirror and noticed us closing in, but, the brights blinding him, had to turn away.
Bogart pulled out to pass the Nash. At that precise moment, a trailer truck no bigger than the U.S.S. Missouri came whining around a curve and loomed massively before us. Bogart floored the brake pedal and we went into a skid. Time stopped as the actor wrestled with the wheel, bringing the Caddy onto the road shoulder, spraying pebbles and whirling toward that dark and indifferent ocean. I watched the whitecaps as we spun closer to the edge, thought about my swimming. The spinning slowed and Bogart somehow brought us to a stop as the truck rumbled past, yellow lights blinking.
Time in.
“Very nice,” I told Bogart. “Very, very nice.”
He hitched his shoulders and tossed another butt out the window, then eased us back onto the road.
“We’re going to pass this son of a bitch,” he said briskly, “if it takes all night.”
White was a few hundred yards away again, and picking up speed.
“I think he knows now,” I said.
“That we’re tailing him?”
“Yeah.”
“Then I’d say we better catch him.”
Within ten seconds, Bogart had stoked the Caddy up to ninety.
“This is some machine,” I told him.
The actor merely nodded as we gained on the Nash. White had opened up to perhaps eighty. Bogart continued to accelerate and we hit a century.
“You can’t do a hundred in a fucking Nash,” he growled.
White tried, though. A race had developed, but the FBI man was outclassed. We hit a straight expanse of road and there was nothing but night on the southbound lane. Bogart pulled out to pass and drew to ten yards of the Nash. To five yards. We drew up to the rear of the car, which is when I saw the pair of trim legs horizontal on the back seat.
“That’s Henry Perillo!” Bogart shouted.
At that moment Clarence White turned his head and faced us, his eyes peering myopically into the high beams. He shouted something, but I couldn’t understand a word. Then he faced front. A second later, he whirled back and extended a revolver out his window.
“Down!” I screamed at Bogart. The actor ducked and braked the Caddy, but too late; the FBI man aimed carefully and sank one bullet into our right front tire. He fired at the left front, but he had lost his angle and missed. The Caddy rocked a bit but didn’t skid. Limping like a great steel cripple, it came to an uneventful but frustrating stop at the side of the road.
“Goddamn it to hell!” I roared, banging my fist on the dash. Bogart was already out of the car and opening the trunk.
“C’mon, Jack!” he shouted. “Stop pissing and moaning; the son of a bitch could have shot out the radiator. Help me get this spare on.”
It took no more than ten minutes to change the tire, but ten minutes can be an awfully long time. Bogart and I, stripped to our shirtsleeves, labored wordlessly in the cool, wet seaside air, communicating through grunts and pointed fingers. I hoisted the flat and dropped it into the trunk.
“A tough break,” I said. “Maybe a fatal one.”
“You pays your money and you takes your choice,” the actor said, climbing into the driver’s seat and starting the engine. “I’m telling you we’ll catch him.”
As fast as we drove, and the speedometer read 120 on one straightaway, we couldn’t find the blue Nash.
“You still want Pacific Way?” Bogart asked.
“Yeah.”
“Henry Perillo,” he said contemplatively. “This is unbelievable. What’s with him?”
“A lot. His real name is Clarence White and he’s an FBI man, undercover variety, who lost his cover and had to kill Adrian and Carpenter in order to regain it. The catch is that he’s the one who’s investigating the two murders—for the FBI. Pretty ingenious.”
The actor turned to me and now there were tears in his eyes.
“Outrageous,” he said softly and with difficulty. “It’s horrible.”
It was horrible all right. Unthinkable, bizarre, a bad dream. But here it was and here we were, pulling onto Pacific Way.
“I’ll kill the lights,” said Bogart.
At the end of the street I could see the three-story salt-box home, dark and desolate against a child’s dream of a starry sky. The Nash was in the driveway.
“I’ll get out here,” I said. “Thanks
for everything.”
“Don’t give me that crap,” Bogart said, stopping the car and opening his door. “You’re going to need help.”
“You could get hurt. I only have one gun.”
“Stop being a sap. Let’s get going.”
I got out of the car.
“All right,” I told him. “But stay behind me and stay low.”
“Don’t worry.” The actor grinned, suddenly filled with the giddy daring of the moment. “I’ve played this scene a hundred times.”
We started up the road, jogging in a crouch, and we had gone maybe ten feet when we noticed the boat.
It was a cabin cruiser, about fifty feet long and anchored a few hundred yards out on the gently rolling ocean. At least two men were aboard making preparations for what appeared to be the start of a considerable journey. Barrels of gasoline were arranged in rows of three on the rear deck of the boat.
“That’s an awful lot of gas,” I said. “They’re not just making a run up the coast.”
“Looks like a couple of thousand miles worth,” Bogart said quietly. “What do you think?”
“I think they’re going to take Helen for a long ride.”
“And Perillo—White you say his name is?—he stays here?”
“Yeah.”
The actor ran his hand through his sparse hair and stared at the ground, then turned to me, pale and worried.
“You think she’s alive?”
“White is very careful. I can’t imagine he’d drive through Los Angeles with a dead woman in the back seat.”
“Then how do we get her out of here?”
A very apt question. I folded my arms and looked up at the stars.
“Well,” I began, “we obviously have to intercept him before he gets to the boat and we have to do it in such a way that those bozos out on the cruiser don’t notice.”
“He’s bound to take her out in a launch, but there’s none on the beach.”
“So it’s in the back of the house.”
We looked at each other and nodded.
“I get into the boat,” I told him. “Definitely.”
The two of us continued loping up Pacific Way, hunched like marines about to hit a beachhead. I removed my Colt and held it tightly in my right hand. We reached the saltbox house and ducked down by the grill of the Nash.
“There he is,” whispered the actor.
The bulky figure of White suddenly emerged from the rear of the house. He was carrying Helen in his arms and heading for the water. Her arms dangled loosely down to the sand and I detected—maybe wished into fact—an involuntary movement of her head.
“She’s alive, Jack,” Bogart said happily. “No doubt about it.”
I simply nodded, watching in fascination as White awkwardly placed Helen down on the moonlit sand. He stared at her for a moment, as if suddenly struck by the fact of her beauty, then turned and walked back toward the house and out of view.
“The boat,” I said. “He’s getting the boat.”
A minute later, White reappeared on the sand. He walked heavily and a rope was draped tautly over his shoulder. At the end of the rope was a small motorized boat, gliding smoothly over the sand.
“We have to act now, Jack,” Bogart said, rising.
I held him down by the shoulder and got up myself, moving around to the door of the Nash and peering in through the window. The God in whom I believe at such moments had left the keys in the ignition. I scurried back to Bogart.
“We’re in luck,” I told him. “He left the keys in the buggy. If you get in and drive away, we might pull him off the beach. At the very least, it’ll distract him.”
“He’ll shoot,” the actor said. “Don’t you think I need a gun?”
“No. Other people live on this beach. If White starts shooting, they’d come running out to see what’s going on. That’s the last thing he wants. He’d rather lose the car.”
“Mebbe, mebbe not,” said Bogart. “I’ll give it a try.”
The actor got up and slipped into the driver’s seat of the Nash, bending down low over the wheel. I heard him feeling around. Suddenly he stuck his head out the window, delighted. He was holding a gun.
“Jack, look!” he whispered. “In the glove compartment.”
“Take off!” I told him.
Bogart started the engine and turned on the headlights. He backed out of the driveway, honked, and started tearing down Pacific Way.
Clarence White, at that very moment lowering Helen’s boneless form into the motorboat, looked up and gaped at the departing car. As he did so, I began running toward the right side of the house, stooped way down and heading away from his line of vision.
Things fell neatly into place, way too neatly. The FBI man, startled, dropped Helen into the boat and hurriedly left the beach. Bogart suddenly stopped the car. It was a shrewd move, serving to draw White on; he began racing toward Pacific Way. The actor fired a shot into the air, causing White to fling himself upon the ground. I saw him reach into his jacket pocket, at which point he realized that his gun was in the car.
While Bogart was toying with the undercover man, I made my way down to the beach, alternately watching White and the gentlemen on the cruiser. They were on the deck; one of them, I believe, was holding binoculars to his eyes.
Crab-like, I crawled along the sand and approached the boat, pulling myself over its side. I fell immediately to the wooden floor, belly down, and faced the beach with my gun drawn. Helen was curled on the floor against the stern of the boat, facing me, breathing with the measured heaviness of someone under ether. I made my way over to where she lay and examined her arm: there was a small puncture mark near the left elbow. I rolled her eyelids up; it was not pleasant to see those green and luminous eyes as dull and expressionless as those of a Boston scrod.
The taillights of the Nash shrank to red pinpoints down the road. White was running back from the road, looking concerned but unshaken. He entered the rear apartment of the saltbox house, turned on a light and walked around the kitchen. He moved out of range, into range, then out again. When he reappeared, he was holding a rifle. He pulled a short metal chain and extinguished the bare bulb. I ducked my head and listened as the door shut.
Helen groaned softly, her mind a drug-lit pinball machine. She had the sweats now; the lovely face and smoothly muscled arms were slick and wet, the red hair was turning to damp ringlets. It was chilly by the water and the lady could get a bad cold, but I resisted the impulse to drape my jacket across her body. Resisted it because White was walking quickly through the high grass around the house and was just now stepping onto the beach.
He was fifty yards from the boat.
I attempted to cover the situation. He had a rifle. That was to my advantage. While the rifle could easily blow the Holland Tunnel through my kishkas, it was clumsy to operate in a quick-draw, Wild-West situation. And this was the Wild West. You couldn’t go farther west without getting wet.
Thirty-five yards.
I wanted to look up and get an exact reading on my angle to White, but couldn’t do it, not even for a blurred instant, without revealing myself. If we started opening up at this distance, he had the goods on me. So I remained flat on my belly and waited.
Twenty-five yards.
I pulled my knees up a bit, gaining leverage and support. My nervous system, ganglia, pulse, and brain cells began to concentrate on that single connection between mind and right index finger. The waves pounded close behind and a spray of salty drops pelted my neck. Helen opened her eyes and although they appeared blank and uncomprehending, they saw something that made her scream.
It was a deafening, air-raid siren of a scream, a horrific noise at the worst possible moment. I heard White stop dead in his tracks and cock his rifle.
Helen screamed again, then abruptly closed her eyes and sailed back to her silent nightmare. Mine was just beginning. Between the Nash vanishing and the lady’s howl, White had figured things out to the dime and demonst
rated so by taking aim into the boat and missing my head by approximately one-quarter of an inch.
I stood up and fired at his approaching form, missing terribly. White quickly ripped off another salvo. It bit into ray left shoulder and I tumbled over into the sand as two more shots, aimed from the cruiser, blew a hole into the motorboat.
I completed a somersault and came up to see White advancing on me, setting up a guaranteed jackpot at my skull. He was smiling. I took another tumble, straightening up and firing as I reached my feet. My potshot caught White in the wrist, opening a red geyser out of an artery and forcing his volley to fly in the general direction of the moon.
“Communist bastard!” White yelled at me. The arterial flow on his wrist continued unabated, but he quickly loosed a waist-high blast, Pretty Boy Floyd-style, that blew past my ear and out to sea. He was about to fire again when I killed him.
I don’t enjoy killing people, but this was not a situation in which ethics were up for debate. It was caveman time and I got Clarence White with what was actually a bad shot. I wanted the heart, but the stinging pain in my shoulder was throwing off my balance, so the shot flew upwards and caught White below the Adam’s apple, cutting his windpipe. He tossed his gun away and clutched at his throat, as if to repair the damage with his hands. Death broadcast a hoarse and ruined melody. It was no fun to hear.
I watched him die and almost got killed in the process. White’s comrades on the boat started opening up and yet another bullet entered my left shoulder. Furiously, I grabbed at it, as if going after a wasp, and stumbled over to where White lay dead.
I took his rifle, then ran to the motorboat and pulled Helen out. She was unconscious but untouched by the gunfire. I turned the boat over and lay down on the sand beside it. My shoulder was bleeding badly and I could feel my head grow light. Four more shots flew past us. I set the rifle on the upturned bottom of the boat and fired out to sea, once, then again, but at best I might have wounded a careless squid.
A honking commenced to the rear. Bogart had returned in the Cadillac.
“Can you drive down here?” I shouted.
“Not in that sand,” he hollered back. “We’ll never get back out.”
Hollywood and Levine Page 19