Shoot It Again, Sam

by Michael Avallone

  "Sam," Gary Cooper said, "the idea is still good. It's the whole thing. Do it. And then maybe some of us will get out of this mess alive. Do you understand that?"

  "I'll do it," I said. "You can bank on it."

  A low murmur ran around the room, out there in the darkness. The strobe light seemed to heighten in intensity. I blinked. The famous voices raised in pitch, in volume, and now from all sides, came a humming, chanting chorus of some kind.

  I nodded my head, up and down. I distinctly heard Cary Grant say, "You can do it, Bugler—" I kept on nodding my head.

  And then the room, the movie stars, the darkness, all of that, rolled up and gathered together and retreated back into the night. And into the memory. Like a parade of marching men. Retreating. Moving on, going to a temporary graveyard of things-not-what-they-seem-to-be. Somehow, it was all very nice and peaceful.

  I didn't mind at all.

  "I've good news for you, Sam," Dr. Hilton said from his chair at my bedside. "You'll be leaving us tomorrow."

  "That's a relief. Then I'm cured?"

  "You're cured. No more skopophobia. No more fear of spies. In fact, in a day or two, you'll have no memory whatsoever of ever being sick. How's that?"

  "Hard to believe. If you can swing that, I'll recommend Richmond to everyone I know."

  The Lorre face smiled through a veil of sadness.

  "What's the matter?" I asked. "You going to miss me or is it just something you ate?"

  His grin was still somehow tragic.

  "Of course I'll miss you. Who else will there be around here for me to discuss old movies with?"

  I shrugged. I was feeling too good.

  There wasn't a thing in the world bothering me. And I had no fears or qualms or second thoughts about what I might find out there in that mysterious world beyond this windowless sick room.

  "C'est la guerre, Doc," I laughed.

  "Don't say that," he begged. "All it does is remind me of Morocco. And all the good times we had discussing the merits of it."

  "Okay I won't."

  "Thank you. By the way, Sam—"

  "Yeah?"

  "There was a phone call for you this morning while you were sleeping. I didn't want to disturb you. Somebody named Monks. Michael Monks. A police captain from New York. Said he was an old friend of yours—"

  "Never heard of him," I said. "What did he want?"

  "Just to say hello. See how you were doing. You say you don't know him—?"

  I shook my head. "Me get palsy-walsy with a bull? Don't be silly. Well, if he calls again, just ignore him. I've got enough headaches without talking to coppers. Especially ones I don't know."

  "All right," Dr. Hilton said, smiling. "I rather thought there was some mistake."

  "There was," I said, closing the subject. I stared at his eyes which looked like soft-boiled eggs behind the pince-nez. "I guess I'll miss you too, Doc. It's been."

  We both laughed.

  He in his complete happiness with my progress, obviously.

  I in my blissful ignorance as to just what they had done and accomplished with me in fourteen very interesting and complex days and nights.

  I had been on a long, dark train ride into that eerie and incredible territory of the human mind. What Shakespeare called the undiscovered country.

  And the awful part of it was I didn't know where I had been, how far I had traveled or just how many miles I had come back.

  It had been a journey into the absurd.

  The absurd—and the purely terrifying.

  A trip into Darkness.

  And maybe a one-way ticket into Hell.

  And whatever lays beyond that.

  Dr. Hilton rose from his chair, glided to the door of the room and put his hand on the knob. He turned, only for a second, to smile back at me on the bed. The pince-nez twinkled again.

  "See you later, Sam. I'm wanted in the administration office. Later, I'll come back and we'll talk some more."

  "Sure, Doc. Anytime."

  The door opened and closed and he was gone again.

  I stared up at the ceiling, not knowing how far I had gone over the lost horizon of the mind.

  Dr. Hilton, indeed.

  ". . . you're good, Angel. You really are good."

  Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade in

  The Maltese Falcon. (1941)

  CITY

  □ "My name is Ed Noon," I told the desk clerk at the Arva Motel in Virginia. It was a stylish place, complete with water fountain in the front, two stories high with porticoed rooms overlooking the descending lane of highway that took you into Washington, D.C. across the river. It was nearly walking distance from the Iwo Jima Memorial and the Arlington National Cemetery. Neither of them interested me at that time. I had some other fish to fry. It was all part of my instructions. Virginia was dull and colorless in a drizzling rain. Everything looked stale and homely. Not even the green shades of summer could get up enough color to fight off an aspect of gloominess all around.

  I felt, oddly enough, fine. This, with very little recall of how I had come to the Arva Motel, which seemed a million miles from where I ought to be. But I had been trained to ask no questions—simply to do the job. They wouldn't have liked me to ask any questions. I somehow knew that without even knowing who They were. It was all part of the plan, I knew.

  Something I had no quarrel with.

  The desk clerk, bland, mid-Western sounding and totally indifferent to me on all counts, allowed me to sign the register, handed me one of those keys with a plastic tag attached and told me where my room was. It was on the second floor and the stairs were just above the lobby. I had only an attache case, black and brand new and I was wearing a tropical worsted suit of good cut and awfully gaudy color. It didn't seem to me that I would have picked a plum-colored material like that. Also, I was wearing Oxfords, black-and-whites. And a Panama hat, of all things. Still, I felt just fine. Everything was going off without a hitch.

  There was no one in the upstairs hall as I entered the room. I closed the door, flicked on a wall switch and moved to the writing desk in one corner of the room. It was a small, blonde pine job with a chair to match. The walls were subdued cocoa hue with some good prints neatly framed on each side. The blinds were down and the bed was freshly made and there were fresh towels in the small tiled bathroom. A neat pad, if you're talking about motel accommodations. Anyhow, it was where I was supposed to be.

  I dropped the attache case on the bed and gave my attention to the blonde pine desk. It was a dropped-panel affair. I opened it and saw the long white envelope lying there in plain view ready for me. The outside of the envelope was blank. That didn't matter.

  I flipped it open because it wasn't sealed and withdrew a rectangular slip of blue paper.

  I held it up to the light.

  Neatly typed, in upper and lower case letters, was the message I had been expecting. Had been instructed to expect.

  Today. Five o'clock. Washington Monument.

  Tall Chinese. Right ear missing.

  Further orders from him.

  I cursed, dropped the blue streamer as if it was a hot potato and stepped back. It was. Right before my eyes, it was curling up in flame, burning down to a crisp on the nice blonde pine of the desk. Before I could wonder about it, there wasn't anything but a small pile of paper ash, as minute as a speck of cinder, lying before me. It hadn't even disturbed the surface of the wood.

  There wasn't anything to wonder about. My employers, whoever they were, were playing it safe. The chemically-treated message had self-destructed somehow on contact with the open air of the room.

  My wrist watch, a Timex on my left wrist, indicated a quarter to one. I had plenty of time. I stripped out of my plum-colored suit coat and dug out the billfold tucked in the side shoulder pocket. I emptied it on the made bed and studied what I found. I wasn't surprised to note I was wearing a leather shoulder harness with a Colt .45 resting nicely in the holster. I was a little surprised at the thoroughnes
s of my friends. They had worked like beavers, whoever they were. I was impressed with the amount of trouble they had taken with my alias. And my new identity.

  The billfold, besides containing a stack of green bills amounting to nearly a thousand dollars, had held a flock of cards, permits and licenses. All of these, driver's license, Diners Club membership card, Shell credit card, private investigator license, gun permit and army discharge certificate, all established me as a character named Edward Noon of Manhattan, New York. I was a bachelor with brown hair and brown eyes and pinned to an ID card was a photo of myself looking as foursquare and American as the day is long.

  Noon. I tested the name on my lips in the quiet of the room. I shrugged. Easy enough name to remember. You spelled it the same way backwards and forwards. At the time it seemed just as workable a name tag as Sam Spade. I had very little to go by, as it was. I was operating in a mental vacuum that had very little past and future in it. Only the present seemed to have any importance.

  That—and the assignment.

  The Job.

  A very big one. A lulu. A showstopper.

  I rubbed my aching eyes and yawned, ignoring the pile of personals on the bed for awhile. Now, a shower and maybe a shave seemed in order. And maybe a little shuteye before I took a cab to the Washington Memorial to meet the tall Chinaman. I had the time and I was tired. Also, I had almost no recollection at all of how I had managed to turn up in Virginia on a rainy day in June. Also, and this was the most peculiar part of all of it, it just didn't seem to be important whether I remembered or not. I was feeling too good. Like a party was going on. I was lightheaded, airy and completely free of all aches and pains.

  When I had my shirt and shoes off and was down to stepping out of my trousers, there was a knock on the door. Blithely and unthinkingly, I went to the barrier and opened it halfway, peering out. I wasn't worried or concerned, at all. The stuff on the bed, my harness and gun included, could have belonged to somebody else.

  "Let me in," the woman behind the door slit whispered in a low, intimate voice. "We have time."

  I opened the door and she swept in. I closed the door and watched her glide past me. All tall, all sleek like some jungle cat, all ultramod in mini, long black untidy hair and jangling, jouncing curves and love beads. It was as if I had been expecting her, too. When she turned in the center of the room, close to the bed, she stared across the intervening distance at me. Her eyes were big and dark, the flesh of her face incomparably white by contrast. The red gash of her mouth moved in a sigh and she shook her head so that the long, black hair danced in falling waterfalls down past her erect shoulders. She was a knockout, from head to foot.

  "Sam, Sam," she breathed, coming toward me with her arms out, like a woman asking for bread for her starving children. "You haven't changed a bit in all these years."

  I let her come, hugging her to me, feeling her urgent chest pushing at me through the thin material of a rayonish blouse of some kind. A scented smell of jasmine or clover or just pure peppermint wafted from her, closing all around me. She felt warm and good in my arms. Something surged to life inside me.

  "Baby," I said, "how the hell are you? Long time no see . . ."

  She didn't answer that but led me directly to the bed where we fell down together and immediately began to make love to each other. Without preamble, further words or explanations.

  And why not?

  It had been a long time between drinks, indeed.

  For me and Brigid O'Shaughnessy.

  ". . . oh, there are two of us, you know.

  Don The Writer and Don the Drunk. . . ."

  Ray Milland as Don Birnam in

  The Lost Weekend. (1945)

  FLAME

  □ She was as good as she had ever been in bed. The years away from me had only made her more intense, more anxious to please me. I didn't care. It was good to have her back. I didn't stop to think about Joel Cairo or Gutman or the Falcon. Or Miles Archer and what she had done to him. That was lousy water under a bridge that had fallen down a long, long time ago. A century gone by, almost.

  We shared a cigarette in the dim light of the room, listening to the pitter-patter of the falling rain on the top and sides of the Arva Motel. I still felt that strange exhilaration which came from somewhere I didn't know. Of course, making love to Brigid O'Shaugh-nessy helped. It always had, even in the old days.

  "When did your hair stop being red?" I asked.

  "I got tired of the color, Sam. Let it grow long, too. You like it this way?"

  "Uh huh. You're an angel, Angel."

  She laughed. Her little-girl laugh, the one she had used when she was turning me on to let her go. Which I hadn't. I'd had a crazy kind of integrity in the old days.

  "I'm working for them too, Sam. I want you to know that. That's why I'm here. They got me out of prison to help you."

  "Sure. It figures. How else would you know where to find me?"

  She nodded, her loose hair brushing against my naked chest as she squirmed away to stub her cigarette out in the glass ash tray on the night table. Her aroma of peppermint, jasmine and clover just wouldn't go away. It hung in my nostrils like a sweet drug.

  "When you meet the Chinaman, he'll give you the rest of your instructions. His name is Charles Too. T-O-O."

  "Sure," I said.

  "It must be done right away, Sam. Your assignment. They can't wait. Two days from now it will be too late. You understand me, Sam?"

  I poked a forefinger at the tip of her snub of a nose. She drew back, startled. Her dark blue eyes widened and a question formed on her awfully red mouth.

  "You've got brains, yes you have," I said. "Always in the middle, always working an angle. It's okay by me. I'm glad we had this chance to tango again."

  "You are, Sam? Really?"

  She was pushing her softness against me, urgently. Her firmly-fleshed body was pressing into mine. The heat of her was scalding.

  "Really," I agreed. "But what's in it for you? Besides getting out of prison and seeing old Sam again?"

  "That's enough for me, those two things. Getting out, being with you like this once more. You should know that, Sam. You should feel it as I do . . ."

  Her voice trailed off on that husky little trick she had of always sounding so feminine and helpless. And just plain sexy. Damn sexy.

  I guess I laughed again and while I was laughing, I got a real hold on her waist, mashing my mouth down on hers and hanging on until her whole body shuddered and then sagged in my arms, mutely telling me to go ahead and do anything I damn well pleased with her. Which I did. Like I was making up for lost time.

  I loved hell out of her some more while the rain continued to beat down on the motel.

  The stuff that dreams were made of.

  And assignments.

  At four thirty, I climbed out of a cab on Constitution Avenue. The rain had slackened off so that my Panama hat and plum-colored suit and Oxfords didn't seem so silly anymore. The rising green mound of the mall, pierced in the center by the towering white shaft of marble called the Washington Monument poked like a mammoth, sharpened pencil into the overcast skies hanging over D.C. South of the avenue and west of 15th Street, George's obelisk dominated the landscape. It was always a Mecca for tourists and rubberneckers. And spies too, I supposed.

  Even at five o'clock or close to it, small knots of people and what-have-you, were straggling up the paved pathway to the base of the tallest masonry structure in all of the Howard Roark world. The guide book back at the Arva, which I had pored over with Brigid before leaving her to wait for me in the bed until I got back, said there was an observation platform at the 500-foot level which an elevator took you to in about 70 seconds if you wanted the ride. Otherwise, there was a stairway of 898 steps to navigate. You could see the entire District of Columbia, monuments and all, and parts of Virginia and Maryland from those observation platform windows. Again, only if you cared to.

  I hoped the tall Chinaman named Charles Too wasn't
a nut for sightseeing and twenty cent tours. I was just as happy to terminate any business he had with me on good old terra firma. The quicker the better. I wanted to complete my assignment and get back to Brigid O'Shaughnessy. The reunion had been beyond my wildest dreams.

  The avenue and the winding lanes converging on the Mall from all sides were like a Times Square madhouse. Traffic jams, slow-moving vehicles, a nightmare of noise and confusion. I blocked it all out and moved methodically up the paved pathway. Even as I approached the rise of ground, I could see the domed grandeur of the Jefferson Memorial across the Tidal Basin. The Oriental Cherry Trees that ring the monument looked pretty and almost artificial in the grey weather. But more than that, the circle of American flags forming an outer perimeter of gay reds, whites and blues, literally emblazoned the towering shaft of white marble dedicated to General George.

  All of it was impressive and humbling. From the standpoints of size, color and history. No golf course was ever greener than the large wide lawn that surrounded the Washington obelisk.

  Tourists and visitors lolled up the pathway. Cameras dangled from their necks, the children with them scurried and pointed, yelling the things all the small fry yell at such times. I kept on moving, eyes peeled. I saw a black man, an East Indian in a robe of some kind, some obvious Japanese people but no tall Chinaman with a right ear missing. But I was early and I knew it. So I dawdled along, taking out my Camels and lighting one. A cooling wind was fanning over the scenery, and the last drop of moisture had dried away.

  My mind was still a careful vacuum, with hardly a thought in it save the immediate present. I had even forgotten about the dimpled beauty in a bed at the Arva. That weightlessness, insouciance and exhilarating sensation of well-being still dominated my soul. I might have been sailing down that concrete pathway, above the heads of the crowd. The John and Jane Does, the hoi polloi, the rabble. The Mob.

  Somewhere in that mental state of euphoria, I saw him.

  The tall Chinaman of the burned-out message.