My stomach grumbled with hunger. I told my stomach it was just doing that because I was confused and scared. It always tries to distract me when things go wrong, but there is no reasoning with an insistent stomach. I fed it some burgers and a Pepsi and then cursed it for its impatience when I spotted a taco stand a block further on. I stopped for the taco anyway, and my stomach got quiet. Then the Buick began to complain and with good reason. It was out of gas. I coasted for half a block to a Texaco station and pushed the car the rest of the way to the pump.
Next stop: the Big Bear Bar in Burbank. The front door was open, but there was no sound from inside. This time I just stood inside the door while my eyes adjusted. Nothing stirred. In a few seconds I could see Lola across the room sitting at the piano, staring at nothing and not playing. For a second she looked like the girl in White Zombie, but the smell of death wasn’t in the room.
“Lola,” I said quietly.
She turned around and looked at me. Something like a smile touched the corner of her mouth. She automatically reached for a drink on the piano, but it wasn’t there, so she shrugged instead and started playing “In the Good Old Summertime.”
“Lola,” I said again, and she stopped.
“You have bad news,” she said. “I can spot the bringer of bad news two blocks away. I know a guy who has been known to knock off bringers of bad news.”
“Just like the Greeks I remember reading about in high school,” I said.
“He is no Greek,” said Lola with a small, sad laugh.
“You talking about Lombardi?” I said, walking through the tables.
“None but,” she said, fingers poised over the keys.
I sat down and put my arm around her. She sagged next to me.
“Lombardi is dead,” I said. I could feel her shudder, and I didn’t like myself. I hadn’t told myself what I was doing, but I knew. I had been testing Lola, had held her to see her reaction, to judge if she might have punctured Lombardi or if she knew about it. I would have bet she didn’t, but then again she was an actress.
“Dead?”
“Dead,” I repeated.
“That’s the end of Lola’s comeback,” she said, hitting one key and sending the echo of its music through the darkness. “That was a selfish thing to say, but it’s what I was thinking.”
“Then you might as well say it,” I said, cradling her head. “Can you answer some questions for me?”
She didn’t speak, just leaned against me, dreaming of the movies that would never be.
“Lombardi put up the money for High Midnight,” I said. “Why?”
“He said he owed it to me,” she answered dreamily. “But you know what I think? I think he just wanted an excuse to put the screws on Cooper to even things up. Lombardi and I were through a long time ago, but he hated Cooper for the few days I spent with him almost, hell, eight or nine years ago. He didn’t forget all that time. Lombardi is … was … the kind that wanted the score at least even, even if the game didn’t matter anymore. He thought it was a sign of weakness if you left a situation with the other guy up on you.
“The boys back East told him to forget it,” she went on. “They said it nice at first and then they said ‘or else,’ but old Chuckles Lombardi wouldn’t let go.”
“So you think somebody back East ordered Lombardi killed?”
“Who knows?” she said, pulling away from me and heading for the bar. “I’d say our dear departed Mr. Lombardi left a trail of enemies from Naples to Frisco.”
Lola went behind the bar and mixed herself something while I sat in silence, and the minutes ticked away. I started to play chopsticks, and Lola, drink in hand behind the bar, laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant laugh. She hustled back to the piano, sat at my side and joined me. We played seriously, sour, missing notes, and sat still when we finished the only piece I knew.
“And now?” I said.
She was wearing a yellow dress made of some silky material. The dress matched the color of her hair, at least in the darkness.
“The Big Bear Bar in Burbank,” she said, taking a drink. “That’s the end of the road for Lola Farmer. Can I confess something to you?”
“My pleasure,” I said.
“My name is not really Lola Farmer,” she said in a confidential whisper. “I used the name Farmer because my father was a farmer. My name is Betty Davis. I swear, Betty Davis. Now there just isn’t room in Hollywood for two Betty Davises, so I decided nobly when I was a kid to back away and choose another name. You know who picked the name Lola Farmer? Lombardi.”
“Lola, I’ll be back when I get some things settled,” I said, getting up and touching her shoulder. She shrugged, and I went on, “I’ve got to turn myself in to the cops. Maybe they’ll figure out who carved up Santucci, Tillman and Lombardi. I sure as hell can’t.”
She waved at me without looking up and started to play and sing the saddest version of “Happy Days Are Here Again” that a human could create. Off-key and all, I liked it.
On Buena Vista I found a phone booth and gave the operator the number while I watched the sun start to go down. It was still afternoon and there was still time for a miracle, but I wasn’t counting on one. I called my office and let the phone ring about fourteen times before Shelly answered.
“Sheldon Minck, oral surgeon,” he said.
“You are not an oral surgeon,” I said. “You are a dentist. You can go to jail twenty years for saying you’re an oral surgeon. How the hell do you know who’s going to call you and hear you say that?”
“I don’t tell you how to be a detective so you …” then he remembered the masquerade of his which had started the whole thing. “Maybe you’re right,” he said sullenly.
“Any calls, Shel?” I asked.
“Maybe I could become a real surgeon,” he said. “I know a place in Ventura that will give me a degree for $40. That’s pretty steep, but …”
“Shelly, any calls?”
“Yeah, just a minute.” He dropped the phone and wandered off in search of the message. I could hear cups, metal and paper being moved in a search for the message. In about three minutes he came back and said, “Here it is. A number. You’re supposed to call right away. Urgent.”
“Who is it?” I said, taking the number he gave me.
“Hayena, or something like that,” said Shelly. “Say, will you call Mildred tonight and explain to her about Carmen? I don’t think I can go home and face that”
“I’ll probably be in jail tonight, charged with murder,” I said. “Three murders.”
“They let you have a phone call,” Shelly said. “You can call Mildred.”
“I’ll think about it, Sheldon,” I said, hanging up. I answered the urgent message from the man named Hayena.
This time the phone was picked up after one ring. “Yeah?” came the voice.
“Toby Peters,” I said. “I’m returning your call.”
“I gotta talk to you, Peters,” he said. I recognized the voice. It was Marco.
“Your name is Hayena?” I asked.
“Hanohyez,” he said impatiently, “Marco Hanohyez.”
“I never knew your last name,” I said quietly.
“Well, now we been introduced formally,” he said. “Let’s get together.”
“I didn’t ice Lombardi,” I said.
“I know,” he answered. “I think I know who did. Can you rendezvous with me? I want to get this over with and get back to Chicago. I think I felt an earth tremor today.”
“Why don’t you just tell the cops who killed Lombardi?” I said suspiciously.
“Sure,” he said with reasonable sarcasm. “The cops’ll listen to me.”
“How do I know you’re not setting me up because you think I knifed Lombardi?”
“Suit yourself,” he said.
What did I have to lose besides my carcass?
“Where do you want to meet?” I said.
“That Coney Island place,” he said. “I don’t know my way arou
nd, but I am capable of getting there from here.”
“Ocean Park,” I said. “I’ll meet you on the walk outside the entrance of the Dome Pier. In an hour.”
“Hell, no,” said Hanohyez. I preferred him as Massive Marco, but truth has a way of shoving itself in your face and making your life more difficult. “I can’t get away from these guys now. Lombardi’s crew is having a council. They’re all discombobulated. I just … they’re calling me back. Midnight at that Dome Pier place.”
“Wait …” I said but he had hung up.
Midnight was my deadline for turning myself in to Seidman. If I had anything to sell in my profession it was my silence and my word, but I knew I would have to meet Hanohyez. I knew it was the one thing that might end this whole case.
I called Jeremy Butler with a message and got in my car. I had some time to kill, so I drove to Griffith Park and looked at the chimps. Looking at the chimps always calmed me down. I needed calming down. Then, suddenly, everything made sense. It was a wacky kind of sense, but it was sense. I was listening to my own song. The chimp laughed at me, and I grinned back at him. My grin frightened him and he rolled back into a corner to suck his thumb.
CHAPTER TWELVE
In 1892 the Santa Fe and Santa Monica Railroad finished a line from Los Angeles to Ocean Park, which was then known as South Santa Monica. The railroad built a station, an amusement pavilion and cement walkways along the beach. Excursions were advertised to the “Coney Island of the Pacific.” It worked, and golf courses and racetracks followed. Between 1909 and 1916, Santa Monica was regularly drawing thousands for the Santa Monica automobile road races.
In the 1920s, lured by sea breezes and commuter trains, movie stars, writers, directors and moguls built summer houses on the beach. The resort image faded a little in the 1930s and 1940s and moved to Venice, Redondo and down the coast, but Santa Monica wouldn’t give up its nickel-and-dime weekend trade. The big industry, however, was the Douglas Aircraft Company, which got to be an even bigger industry when the war began.
In 1942 Ocean Park couldn’t make up its mind what to be or do. The war and invasion fear, which led to blackouts, kept the place operating mostly during the days. Decay threatened to set in, but the arcade and ride owners still found it profitable to keep up with repairs and wait for the next boom.
It was a little before midnight when I turned right off of Fourth and went down Ashland Avenue toward the ocean. I parked in front of the Municipal Auditorium and got out. A night gull soared over the concrete plaza and dive-bombed the bandshell. I didn’t see anybody. I headed toward the walkway, running along the Dome Pier, but I didn’t get more than a dozen feet when the voice came out of the darkness near a stucco-covered pillar.
“Peters, here.”
I looked “here” and saw Hanohyez step out of the shadow. At least it was the shape of Hanohyez. It was difficult to think of him as anything but Massive Marco, but my mind was working hard at it and other things.
“I thought we were supposed to meet on the edge of the pier?” I said aloud.
He stepped toward me, motioning me to be quiet. When he got to my side, he looked around and whispered, “Let’s keep this quiet” He hunched his shoulders up like James Cagney and looked around. “I don’t know if them guys followed me. I don’t think so, but I reconnoitered. Why chance it, you know?”
He guided me into the shadows and toward the shoreline, walking away from the pier.
“I want to show you something,” he said, leading the way. We moved quickly past a hot-dog stand and some game stands, all closed, that urged people to knock Negroes off perches, slam baseballs into dolls that looked Oriental and throw darts at cartoons of Hitler.
“Will you look at that?” Hanohyez marveled, pointing at his discovery. “A little tiny golf course.”
We were standing in front of a pee-wee golf course, and Hanohyez was displaying it to me proudly. “I never played the game,” he said, “but I accompanied the big guy once when he played.”
“Big guy?” I said.
“Capone,” he answered, looking over the course and looking back at me.
“It’s nice,” I said.
“The things they think of,” Hanohyez said, walking reluctantly from the little golf course.
“There’s a fun house over there,” I said, trying to lead him in the opposite direction.
“Let’s talk,” he said, pausing on the cement promenade and looking out at the ocean for incoming enemy subs. Far down the walk a figure moved slowly. We both kept our eyes on it till it turned inland and disappeared.
“Okay,” I said. “You think you know who killed Lombardi, Tillman and your brother-in-law Larry.”
“I know,” he said, taking a deep breath of air. All I could smell was the dead fish. “That was a sharp trick this afternoon, smart trick. Real prestidigitation. Had those guys fooled. You really did an act, like … like Bogart or one of those guys.”
“Thanks,” I said. “The killer?”
But Hanohyez wanted to engage in a little more admiration of my masquerade. “I coulda swore Lombardi was extent in there,” he said. “Steve did swear it, but I knew he wasn’t.” A cool breeze brought a fresh burst of fish odor.
“You knew he wasn’t alive?” I said with interest.
“Sure, I’d killed him more than an hour before,” he said, without turning to me. “You think that roller coaster is bigger than the Bobs at Riverview?”
“Riverview?” I said, looking for the closest building and wondering if I could get to my gun.
“In Chicago,” Hanohyez said.
“I wouldn’t know,” I replied, trying to inch my hand up to my chest and making it look like a casual gesture.
“You helped me,” he said. “I mean you facilitated things for me. Thanks.”
“Glad to do you a favor,” I said.
My hand was almost at the Napoleon position when Hanohyez withdrew his right mitt filled with a.45. He pointed at my chest. I took my hand out of my coat, and he reached in carefully and took my.38.
As he put it in his pocket, he looked around to be sure we had no company. The mad gull or his cousin came screaming over us.
“We got no birds like that in Chicago,” he said. “It is not an aviarian city.” And then back to business. “Steve and Al and me all found Lombardi together when you went out. Since he was living when you walked in, or so they thought, and dead when you went out …”
“I must have killed him,” I concluded. Hanohyez nodded.
“That won’t hold up,” I said.
“Maybe, maybe not,” he shrugged. “It’ll be good enough with Lombardi’s boys, specially if you ain’t around to contradict any other way. Then I can get out of here before the Jap attack. Hell, they’ll even thank me for doing you.”
“You’ll get the pickled tongue of honor,” I said.
“I never thought you was risible,” he said, holding the gun up to my chest.
“You came to Los Angeles to kill Lombardi,” I said.
“Right, me and Larry came because some guys thought Lombardi was making embarrassing noises about making movies and being a big man, and he wouldn’t listen rational. Some guys in New York asked some guys in Chicago to send someone who knew his stuff to Los Angeles to zip Lombardi’s mouth.”
“And he thought you came out to help him start his deli supply boom?”
“On the nose. You got two more queries and quick ones before you expire.”
“You killed Tillman?”
“Tillman?”
“The guy in my room.” I explained.
Hanohyez looked over his shoulder to check again on possible company. He wasn’t going to let this go on long, and I couldn’t see a hopeful direction to jump.
“He killed Larry,” Hanohyez explained. “I was surveillancing your place for you to come back when I saw him going in. I think he was going to work you over or rub you out. My killing him saved you from something.”
“Thanks,” I
said.
He nodded. “He turned on Larry outside that bar in Burbank where we tailed you. When I came out that night, I found Larry stabbed leaning on the Packard. I got him in the car, but I could see he was expiring. He was dead in three, maybe four blocks. So I got an idea.”
“You decided to dump his corpse on me and get me off the case, tied up with cops or too busy to be in your way,” I helped.
“Something like that. I lugged Larry’s body to your place. Had a hell of a time conveying him up to your room without getting spotted,” he said proudly.
“You did a fine job, but Larry wasn’t dead.”
Hanohyez looked into my eyes, which were probably in shadow. “I know when a guy is dead,” he said dangerously.
“You put my knife into your brother-in-law, right back in the messy hole Tillman had made but he wasn’t dead when you did it. When I got to my room, he was alive. He told me you killed him.”
“That’s enough horse crap, Peters,” he squealed.
“No horse crap. I thought he was saying no. Yes. I figured he was trying to say Noyes. Hell, I was making it harder than it was. He was just trying to say your name, Hanohyez. He thought you murdered him, and he may have been right.”
“Maybe I made a faux pas,” he said.
“Maybe your last big faux pas,” I answered, watching the barrel of the.45 rise from my chest to my face. My.38 was already in his pocket, and my heart was trying to find a way out of my chest. I sighed, sagging my shoulders, trying to look resigned, smiled and went to one knee, throwing a right at Hanohyez’s stomach. The bullet went where my head had been and a lot of air plushed out of Hanohyez, but he held onto the gun as he went back into the promenade railing and tried to level it at me as he gurgled for air.
I hesitated, unsure of whether to make a try for him or run like hell for the nearest cover. Cover promised the most hope. I got to my feet and ran. The second bullet cried past my head. When Hanohyez caught his breath, he would be shooting straight and painfully.
A third shot chucked splinters out of the cotton-candy stand I had ducked around. He had started stumbling after me, and he’d soon be running. His legs were big and heavy, but he had a lot of need and a gun on his side. I wondered how long it would take for someone to call the cops when they heard the gunshots. I wondered if anyone actually heard the shots. I wondered if the photograph on my office wall would go to my brother or my ex-wife if Hanohyez put a good one through my spine.
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