Clandestine

23

Three days later at seven in the morning I was stationed on Windward Avenue in front of a liquor store that afforded me a view of both the Venice Post Office and Larry's Little Log Cabin.

I waited nervously for the post office to open its doors at seven-thirty, fully aware that my plan would work to psychological perfection only if the postal messenger roused Brubaker early enough so that he was alone at his bar. His joint was no longer open the maximum hours—the current hours posted on the door were a more demure 10:00 A.M. to midnight. It could work only to my benefit—I would come down on Brubaker under any conditions, but I wanted him and his Little Log Cabin to myself if possible. So I lounged in front of the liquor store, knowing I might be in for a long day.

I thought mostly of Lorna. I hadn't phoned her when I returned to Los Angeles. I wanted to recapture a parity I thought I had lost on the night I called her, sobbing. The two days I had spent at my apartment trying not to think about her had been days of complete defeat; I thought of little else, and pictured every possible resolution between us in the light of what I knew had to happen before we could be together again. I had to will myself, there on seedy "Wineward" Avenue, wearing a seedy windbreaker to cover my gun, not to think about what I wanted most, and not to think about dead women, dead unborn children and my own past that wouldn't die.

My trying not to think was interrupted at eight-twenty, when a postal clerk in uniform trotted across the street toward Larry's Little Log Cabin. I watched as the man consulted a slip of paper in his hand and knocked loudly on the front door. A moment later the door opened and a pale-skinned Negro in a silk robe was standing there, blinking against the brightness of the day. Brubaker and the postman talked, and from half a block away I could tell that old Larry's curiosity was whetted.

Brubaker came back out the door five minutes later, dressed in slacks and a sport shirt. He jaywalked directly across the street to the post office while my body started to go alternately hot and cold all over.

I figured on another five minutes. I was wrong: three minutes later Brubaker was running back across the street, my carton in his arms, his face the picture of absolute panic. He didn't run for his front door—he bypassed it and ran for the parking lot adjacent to his building. I was right behind him, and as he plopped the carton down on the trunk of a Pontiac roadster and groped in his pocket for the keys, I came up behind him and jammed my gun into his spine.

"No, Larry," I said as he cut loose with a sound that was half wail and half shriek, "not now. You understand?" I cocked the hammer and dug the barrel into the fleshy part of his back. Brubaker nodded his head very slightly.

"Good," I said. "Eddie is in hell, but I'm not, and if you play your cards right you won't be either. Do you dig me, Larry?" Brubaker nodded again. "Good. Do you know who I am?"

Brubaker twisted slightly to see my face. When recognition flashed into his pale blue eyes he whimpered, then covered his mouth with his hands and bit at his knuckles.

I motioned him toward the back door of his cocktail lounge. "Pick up the box, Larry. We have some reading and talking to do."

Brubaker complied, and in a few moments we were seated in his modest living quarters at the rear of the bar. Brubaker was quivering, but holding onto his dignity, much as he had on the day Smith and I had questioned him. I pointed with my gun barrel to the carton that lay between us.

"Open it up and read the first ten pages or so," I said.

Brubaker hesitated, then tore into it, obviously anxious to get it over with. I watched as he hurriedly read through the sheets I had annotated, setting each one aside with trembling hands as he continued reading. After ten minutes or so he had gotten the picture and started to laugh hysterically, but with what seemed like an underlying sense of irony.

"Baby, baby, baby, baby," he said. "Baby, baby, baby."

"You ever kill anyone, Larry?" I asked.

"No," Brubaker said.

"Do you have any idea how many people Doc Harris has killed?"

"Lots and lots," Brubaker said.

"You're a sarcastic bastard. You feel like surviving this thing, or going down with Doc?"

"I went down on Doc in 1944, baby. So did Eddie, so did Johnny DeVries. Just to seal our pact, you understand. I didn't mind: Doc was a gorgeous hunk. Eddie didn't mind, he was a switch-hitter. But it ate Johnny up, no pun intended. He liked it, and he hated himself for it till the day he died."

"Who killed him?"

"Doc. Doc loved him, too. But Johnny was talking too much. He never turned his share of the stuff over. He was giving it away to all the hopheads on Milwaukee skid. Then he started talking about kicking. We were friends. He called me and told me he wanted me to hold his stuff until he got out of the hospital. He wanted to kick, but he didn't want to lose the money he could get by pushing the stuff, you dig?"

"I dig. So you were afraid that if he got clean he'd blab and implicate you, and you told Doc."

"That's right, I told Big Daddy, and Big Daddy took care of it."

Brubaker managed to keep his pride, though he was clearly accepting of his subservience and self-hatred. I honestly didn't know if he wanted to go on living or die with his past. All I could do was go on asking my questions and hope that his detachment held.

"What happened to the rest of the dope, Larry?"

"Doc and I are turning it over, a little at a time. Have been, for years."

"He's blackmailing you?"

"He's got pictures of me and a city councilman in what you might call a compromising position," Brubaker laughed. "I fixed the councilman up with Eddie. Eddie was a status fiend, the guy was in love with status and horses, and that councilman had both. Doc took some pictures of them, too, but the councilman never knew it. Eddie did, though—that's how Doc got him to take the fall for Maggie."

I started to tremble. "Doc killed Maggie?"

"Yes, baby, he did. You got the wrong man when you popped Eddie. But you paid, baby. It's funny, baby, you don't look like a Commie." Brubaker laughed, this time directly at me.

"Why?" I asked. "Why did he do it?"

"Why? Well, Maggie was living here in L.A., unknown to all us sailor-boys. Her mother wrote to her about Johnny being sliced in Milwaukee. She ran into Eddie, accidentally someplace, and started shooting off her mouth. Eddie told Doc, and Doc told him to sweet-talk her and fuck her and keep an eye on her. Then Doc started getting nervous. He borrowed Eddie's car one night and went to Maggie's apartment and choked her. It was a setup—Doc knew he could always trust me, but he wasn't sure about Eddie. He knew Eddie was insane about anyone knowing he was gay; that he'd rather die than have his family find out, so he showed Eddie the pictures of him and the councilman and that sealed it. Either the cops would never find out who choked Maggie, which would be hunky-dory, or Eddie would buy the ticket. Which he did, baby, and you were the ticket taker." I was jolted back to that night in '51 when I had first tailed Engels—he had had a violent confrontation with an older man in a homosexual bar in West Hollywood. My faulty memory sprang back to life—that man had been Doc Harris. Feeling self-revulsion start to creep in like a cancer, I changed the subject. "Did Marcella Harris know Maggie? Know that Doc was going to kill her?"

"I think she knew. I think she guessed. She had always liked Maggie—and she knew that Maggie was really Michael's mother. Doc told Marcella to stay away from Maggie. Doc and Marcella were divorced, but still friendly. Marcella took off on a trip somewhere; she left Michael with some boyfriends of hers. See, baby, she always knew Doc was a little cold. When she found out Maggie was dead, she knew how cold, but it wasn't until later that year that she found out Doc was the night train to Cold City."

"What are you talking about? Didn't she know Doc killed Johnny?"

Brubaker shook his head and gave me an ironic hipster's smile. "Negative, baby. If she'd known, she would have killed him or herself. That woman loved that crazy brother of hers, and did she have a will! I was Doc's alibi, baby. He was with me on a three-day poker-drunk when he was really in Milwaukee slicing Big John."

I shuddered because I already had an idea about the answer to my next question. "Then what did Marcella find out later that year?"

"Well, baby, to give old iceberg Doc his due, he does love his 'moral heir,' as he calls him. When Marcella went gallivanting all over hell in '51 and left Michael with her partying pals, Doc was frantic, not knowing where his boy was. When he and Michael got together, and Michael told him he was with some nice fellas in Hollywood, Doc got real upset. He went up there with a butcher knife and did some cutting. He got three of them. It was in all the papers, but you probably didn't read about it—you was recently on the headlines yourself and probably hiding out. What's the matter, baby? You're a little bit pale."

Brubaker went to the sink and drew me a glass of water. He handed it to me and I sipped, then realized what I was doing and hurled it at the wall.

"Easy, baby," Brubaker said. "You're learning things you don't want to?"

I almost choked on the words, but I got them out, in part: "Why did Doc . . ."

"Kill Marcella? For the boy, baby. He knew Marcella knew of all the shit that had hit the fan; maybe she even suspected he killed Johnny. But if she ever went to the cops she knew she'd never see her little boy. That ate at her. She started hitting the juice and popping pills harder than ever. She started sleeping around harder than ever. Doc had this sleazy private detective checking her out. He told Doc that Marcella had more rubber burned in her than the Pomona Freeway. That private eye disappeared shortly thereafter, baby. So did Marcella."

Brubaker drew a silent finger across his throat, indicating the end of Marcella's potentially splendid life. I was outraged beyond outrage, but not at Brubaker.

"But Michael was with Doc when Marcella was strangled," I said calmly.

"That's correct," Brubaker said, equally calmly. "He was. Doc drove out to El Monte. He knew that Marcella usually stumbled home from Hank's Hot Spot down Peck Road by the high school. He knew she never took her car. He was parked by the school. He picked her up and talked to her for a couple of hours, then strangled her. Michael was asleep in the backseat. Doc had fed him three Seconals. When he woke up at home the next day he never knew where he spent the night. Ain't parental love a kick, baby?"

I jumped up, and with a trembling hand held my gun inches from Brubaker's smiling face, the hammer cocked, my finger on the trigger.

"Shoot me, man," Brubaker said. "I don't care, it ain't gonna hurt for long. Shoot me."

I held my ground.

"Shoot me, goddamnit! Ain't you got the guts? You afraid of a nigger queer? Shoot me!"

I raised the gun barrel into the air and brought it down full force onto Brubaker's head. He screamed, and blood burst from a vein over his nose. I raised my gun again, then screamed myself and threw it against the wall. I stared at Brubaker, who wiped his bloody face with his sleeve and returned my stare.

"Are you with me or with Doc?" I said finally.

"I'm with you, baby," Brubaker said. "You've got all the aces in this hand. In fact, you're the only game in town."

24

It was the only game in town, I knew that, but I didn't feel I'd been dealt aces. I felt like I was holding a dead man's hand, and that even after it was over Doc Harris would be laughing at me from wherever he went, secure in the knowledge that I could never again lead a normal life, if indeed I ever had.

Larry Brubaker and I drove north, toward the farm country east of Ventura. I was armed with a 10-gauge shotgun, a .38, and a hypodermic syringe; Brubaker with a masochistic delight at the predicament he was in. He knew I was armed for bear—he had supplied me with the syringe and he knew what I had to do. Brubaker was driving, but he knew only the barest outline of my plan; he knew only the territory where the game was to be played.

I stared at him out of the corner of my eye. He was a skillful driver, deftly weaving through traffic like a rider jockeying for post position, and even with his head bandaged from the result of my outrage he maintained an icy calm.

He had supplied the details, and he had agreed to sign a confession to all his knowledge of Doc Harris's malfeasance and his own part in the drug robbery. He was an accessory to murder and much more. That confession was now, four days later, lying in my Bank of America safe-deposit box. After signing his name with a flourish to the twenty-three-page indictment I had drawn up in his cluttered back room, Brubaker had said: "There's only one way to play this game and win. Doc owns a plot of land east of Ventura. Just a nasty little good-for-nothing pile of dirt. It's his tax sting; he's got no visible means of support, being a respectable middle-class dope pusher like he is. So he writes off his rockpile and pays a C-note a year in income tax. That's where he hides his stuff. He gives it to me and I turn it over for him. We meet there once a month, on the fifteenth, to make the trade: I give Doc the month's take, he gives me the stuff. That's the place to take him. You dig, baby?"

I dug, and I wanted to make sure Brubaker reciprocated. "Yeah, I dig. You dig that if this thing doesn't come off, I'm going to kill you right there?"

"Of course, baby. It's the only game in town."

I saw a clock as we passed Oxnard—8:42 A.M., and I noted the time and place—Saturday, July 15, 1955, and I thought of what I wanted from Doc Harris on the biggest day of my life and the last day of his: I wanted a dialogue before the strychnine-laced morphine entered his veins. Remorse was beyond his capability, but I wanted a crumbling, or at least an expression of grief, as my personal revenge. And more importantly, I wanted information on the state of mind of his "moral heir." How far had he gone in perverting Michael's mind? How conscious and subtle were his methods of brainwashing? And I wanted him to die knowing that Michael would live free and sane because of his death.

We passed the Ventura County line and headed east. I felt like I was going to vomit, and reflexively looked at the cold mien of Larry Brubaker for signs of stress. I was rewarded: he had tightened his hands on the steering wheel until his pale brown knuckles had turned a throbbing white.

"You want to hear a joke, Larry?" I said.

"Sure, baby."

"It's my definition of a sadist. Are you ready? Someone who's kind to a masochist."

Brubaker laughed, first uproariously, then obscenely. "That's the story of my life, baby! Only I was playing both parts. It's too bad you ain't gonna get the chance to know Doc. He would have dug your act."

"Tell me about the setup. How do you and Doc work it?"

"He drives up alone; I do likewise. He's got the stuff buried in a watertight chest in this little grove of trees next to this little shed. We make the trade and we have a drink or two and talk politics or sports or old times, and that's it."

"Would Doc's car fit in this shed?"

"Probably. How do you expect to get Doc to sit still while you hot-shot him? That's what you're planning to do, ain't it, baby?"

"Don't you worry about it. And your meeting time is always ten, and Doc is never early?"

"Right, baby. Now you don't worry. You can see Doc coming from half a mile away. I always come early, to observe nature. You dig?"

"I dig."

Ten minutes later we were there.

We turned off the shoulder and drove for a quarter mile over a dusty road. When we came up to the site it was just as Brubaker described it: soft brown dirt strewn with rocks, dust, and a white clapboard shack on the edge of an expanse of dead-looking eucalyptus trees.

We parked next to the shack. Brubaker set the brake and smiled at me. I didn't know what the smile meant, and suddenly I was terrified.

Brubaker looked at his watch. "It's nine-fifteen," he said. "We've got forty-five minutes, but you better get out of sight to be safe. I'll stand outside my car like I usually do. Hot, ain't it? But pretty. God, do I love the country!"

I got my shotgun out of the backseat, wishing it were an automatic, and walked into the grove of trees. I placed it at the back of the tree closest to Brubaker's car, where it could be grabbed quickly when Doc Harris arrived. I got out my .38 and checked the safety, then stuck it back in my waistband and walked toward a dark patch of shade at the middle of the little forest.

"I'll whistle once when he shows," Brubaker called to me. For the first time I noticed tension in his voice.

"Right," I called back, noting my own voice was stretched thin.

I leaned up against a tree trunk that afforded me a view of Brubaker and his car as well as the road. I was so light-headed from nervous tension that it was easy not to think. My mind was totally blank, and I caught myself slipping into a state of complete nervous exhaustion. I cleared my throat repeatedly and started to scratch and pick at myself, almost as if to prove that I was still there.

I heard a rustle of dried leaves in back of me, and whirled around, my hand on the butt of my gun. It was nothing—probably just a scurrying rodent. I heard the rustle again and didn't turn around, and then suddenly I heard the ka-raack! of a shot and the tree trunk splintered above my head. I pitched to the ground and rolled in the direction of a large mound of fallen branches. I pulled my .38 from my waistband and flipped off the safety and held my breath. I dug in behind the branches, burrowing through dried leaves for a place to aim. Finding a small spot of daylight that provided aiming room and protection, I dug deeper and scanned the direction from which the shot had come.

There was nothing: no movement of any kind, no noise but the frantic slamming of my own heart and the sharp wheeze of my breath. I risked sticking my head above the mound of branches and quickly scanned the grove of trees. Still nothing. Was the sniper Brubaker?

"Brubaker," I called. There was no response.

I glanced over to my left. The shotgun was still resting against the tree trunk. I crawled over to where I could see Brubaker's car and the little shack. No Brubaker and no movement. I was starting to calm down a little, and starting to get angry. As I crawled back toward my hiding place I caught a glimpse of trouser legs off to my left near the far edge of my vision. Three shots rang out, and the dirt in front of me blew up in my face. I started rolling toward the shotgun when I saw a man charging me. Dimly I knew it was Doc Harris. I was within inches of my shotgun and still rolling when he fired two shots at me from within ten yards. The first shot narrowly missed; the second grazed the side of my head. I flailed my .38 in front of me, wasting precious seconds. Doc Harris saw what I was doing and aimed dead at me. He pulled the trigger, and got an empty click. Livid, he was on top of me, and he kicked me in the face just as I got my gun free, causing me to fire three quick shots in the wrong direction.

He flung himself on my gun arm and grabbed my wrist with both hands. As a precaution I fired the remaining three rounds into the dirt. This infuriated him and he brought his knee into my groin. I screamed, and vomited onto his shirt front. He reached up reflexively to fend it off, thereby easing some of the pressure on my chest. I squirmed partially free and twisted myself in the direction of the shotgun. Just as I got my hands on the butt, Harris renewed his attack. I feebly swiped at him with the gun butt, grazing him in the chin. He grabbed for the trigger, hoping to force a shot in my direction, but my right hand was securely clamped around the trigger guard. We rolled into a tree trunk, and I tried to squash Harris into it, banging him at chest level with the gun barrel that was between us like a wedge. It was no use; he was too strong. I wrapped my middle finger around the trigger and squeezed. The shotgun exploded and the barrel buckled, hitting Harris in the face. He panicked for just an instant, withdrawing his hand slightly and looking startled.

We both drew ourselves to our feet. Harris had retightened his grip on the gun, then realized it was useless and let go, causing me to fall to the ground. He smiled down at me through clenched teeth and pulled a switchblade knife from his back pocket. He pressed a button on the handle and a gleaming, razor-sharp blade popped out. He advanced toward me. I was trying to get to my feet when I saw Larry Brubaker inching up in back of him, wielding a tire iron. Harris was within three feet of me when Brubaker brought it down with a roundhouse swing onto his shoulders. Harris collapsed to the ground at my feet and was silent.

Brubaker helped me up. I checked Harris's pulse, which was normal, then rounded up the two handguns from their resting place. Harris had a .32 Colt revolver. I put it in my back pocket, and reloaded my own .38 and placed it in my waistband. Brubaker was kneeling over Harris, gently stroking his thick gray hair and staring at him with a look that was equal parts longing and amazement.

I walked up to him. "Get the syringe from the glove compartment, Larry. There's a paper bag on the front seat with a bottle of water, a spoon, some matches and a little vial. Bring it to me."

Brubaker nodded and went to the car.

I dragged Doc Harris over to a large tree and propped his back up against it. I could barely manage the pulling: my arms were numb from tension and exertion, and my head slammed from the shot that had grazed me. Brubaker returned with the paper bag.

"You know where the stuff is buried," I said.

Brubaker said, "Yes, baby," very softly.

"Go get a handful of it. A big handful. Then come back here. I want you to cook Doc up a little cocktail."

Harris came awake a moment after Brubaker departed. When his eyelids started to flutter, I reached for my .38 and trained it on him. "Hello, Doc," I said.

Harris smiled. "Hello, Underhill. Where's Larry?"

"He went to fetch you a little surprise."

"Poor Larry. What will he do now? Who will he follow? He's never had anyone else."

"He'll survive. So will Michael."

"Michael likes you, Underhill."

"I like Michael."

"Like attracts like. You and I are Renaissance men. Michael is attracted to Renaissance men."

"What have you done to him?"

"I've told him stories. I taught him to read at three. He's got an amazing I.Q. and an astounding sense of narrative, so I've been giving him parables since he was old enough to listen. I was going to write my memoirs for him, when he was a few years older and capable of understanding them. Of course, now that will never be. But he has had enough of me to form his character, I think."

"You lost, Harris. Your life, your moral heir, your 'philosophy,' all of it. How does that feel?"

"Sad. But I've been to mountaintops that you and the rest of the world don't know exist. There's a certain solace in that."

"How did you know I'd be here?"

"I didn't, But I knew you knew about me. I've had a feeling since I read about you and poor Eddie in the papers back in '51 that you'd be coming for me someday. When you showed up at my door I wasn't surprised. I figured you might use Larry as a wedge, so I showed up here early without my car as a precaution."

Brubaker returned with both hands overflowing with white powder. I tasted the most minute amount I could put on a finger. It was very, very pure.

"I was going to shoot you up, Doc," I said. "But I haven't got the heart for it."

Still holding my gun, I scooped a handful of morphine from Brubaker's outstretched palms and dug the water bottle out of the paper bag. I uncapped it, and walked up to Harris.

"Eat it," I said, shoving the morphine at his mouth.

Harris opened his mouth and stoically took death's communion. I tilted the water bottle to his lips as one last act of mercy. Doc shuddered and smiled. "I don't want to die like this, Underhill."

"Tough shit. You've got five minutes or so until your heart bursts and you suffocate. Any last words? Any last requests?"

"Just one." Harris pointed to the ground in back of me. "Will you hand me my knife?" he asked.

I nodded and Brubaker got the knife and handed it to him.

Harris smiled at us. "Goodbye, Larry. Be gracious in victory, Underhill. It's not your style, but do it anyway. Be as gracious in victory as I am in defeat."

Harris unbuttoned his shirt and slowly removed it, then took the knife in both hands and slammed it into his abdomen and yanked it upward to his rib cage. He shuddered as blood spurted from his stomach and burst forth from his mouth and nostrils. Then he pitched forward onto the ground, his hands still gripping the knife handle.

We buried him in the spot where he had stored his morphine, jamming him into the deep narrow space he had originally created to hold a huge steamer trunk full of death. We covered him over with rock-strewn dirt and covered the dirt with a spray of dried leaves.

I hauled the trunk over to Brubaker's car, siphoned gas from his tank, and drove the car off to a safe distance. Then I lit a match and set the trunk on fire. Brubaker, who had remained silent since the moment of Doc's death, stared at the flames musingly.

"Have you got a valedictory, Larry?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said, and quoted Cole Porter: "'Goodbye now and amen, here's hoping we meet now and then, it was great fun, but it was just one of those things!' You like that, baby?"

"No, you're too hep for me, Larry," I said, throwing dirt on the charred remains of the trunk. "Let's get out of here. I'll drive."

I took Pacific Coast Highway back. Brubaker was silent, and it troubled me.

"You saved my life," I said. "Thanks."

"He was going to kill me, baby. I knew it. He swooped down on me and took me aside and told me you were dead meat, and then things would be copacetic. But I knew he was going to kill me." Brubaker turned in his seat to face me. "I would have let you die otherwise," he said.

"I know. You were in love with him, weren't you?"

"From the moment I met him, baby. From that very moment." Brubaker started to sob quietly, sticking his head out the window to avoid my watching him. Finally he turned to face me. "But I cared, too, baby. When you and that big Irish cop rousted me years ago I knew you were an okay guy. You just didn't have too good an idea about what was going on. You dig?"

"I guess so. If it's any consolation, I used to have a friend, a drunk who was sort of way ahead of his time, who used to say there was a city of the dead, existing right here where we are, but invisible to us. He said that when people go there they carry on exactly the way they did on earth. That's not much consolation to me, but I think it may be true."

Brubaker didn't answer. He just sobbed out the window, his head wedged tightly against the doorjamb. He was still sobbing when I left him at his bar in Venice.

25

I staked out the apartment building on Beverly Boulevard for three days. Huddled low in the seat of my car, I watched Michael read comic books on his front lawn, noting that he wore thick glasses to read. I watched him throw a tennis ball against the wall of the building and usually blow the catch when it returned to him. I watched him pick at his acne, and I watched him thrash at the tennis ball with an old rusted putter. I watched him lie on the dead grass and dream. I noted that the other kids in the neighborhood avoided him like the plague. I noted that by the time he was twelve he would be far taller than I am.

At the end of those three days I knew that I loved him.

He just stared at me when he flung the door open in answer to my knock. I stared back for a moment, then broke the silence.

"Hi, Mike. May I come in?"

"Sure."

I moved my way through the modest little apartment, looking for something to give me something to say. "Where's your puppy?" I asked finally.

"She ran away," Michael said.

It was obviously my cue. "Your father is dead, Mike."

Michael said, "I figured he was," then looked out the window to the stream of cars moving along Beverly Boulevard. "I knew he had to die—because of the stories. He thought I was a smart kid, but he didn't know how smart. He used to think he was fooling me. He used to think I didn't know that the stories were real."

"What stories, Mike?"

Michael turned his gaze from the street to me. "I won't tell you. Not ever. Okay?"

"Okay. Do you miss your dog?"

"Yes, she was my friend."

"I've got a dog. A hell of a good dog."

"What kind?"

"A big black Labrador. He loves people, but he hates cats."

"I don't like cats either. They're slimy. What's going to happen, Fred?"

"You're going to come and live with me. Do you want to?"

"Are you married?"

"I don't know. I think so."

"What's your wife like?"

"She's very smart and strong and very beautiful."

"Will the Lab be my dog, too?"

"Yes."

"Then okay."

"Pack your stuff. Leave your father's things, I'll get rid of them later."

Ten minutes later the backseat of my car was packed with a meager collection of clothes and assorted other stuff—and a huge collection of books. I drove to a pay phone and called Big Sid at home and told him I had a guest for him to look after for a few days. The monster mogul was bewildered, but ecstatic when I told him it was a bright young boy who loved horror movies.

Sid was there on the front lawn of the huge house on Canon Drive waiting for us when we pulled up. I introduced Michael to him, and Sid double-taked on the huge youngster and offered him a cigar. Michael fell on the lawn in his laughter, then got up and hugged me before running off in the direction of the house.

From a pay phone I called Lorna's office. Her secretary told me she was down in San Diego for a convention. She was staying at the El Cortez Hotel and would be returning in two or three days. I couldn't wait. I got a tank of gas and highballed it south on the San Diego Freeway.

It was turning dusk when I got to Dago. A drunken sailor gave me directions to the El Cortez, a pink Spanish-style building with an outside elevator enclosed in glass.

I ditched my car in the parking lot and tore through the lobby to the front desk. The clerk told me that the guests who were here for the American Bar Association convention were at the banquet in the Galleon Room. He pointed to a large banquet hall off to his left. I ran in, catching glimpses of a stern-looking man at the podium, who was speaking ambiguously about something called justice.

I walked quietly along four walls, scanning every rapt and bored face at every table. There was no Lorna. There was an exit at the rear of the room, and I went for it, hoping it would provide access to an elevator to the hotel proper.

I opened the door into a hallway just as Lorna limped out of the ladies' room, talking to another woman. "I only come for the food, Helen," she was saying. Helen noticed me first, and must have known something was up, because she nudged Lorna, who turned around and saw me and dropped her purse and cane and said, "Freddy, what—"

Helen said, "Excuse me, Lorna," and darted out of sight.

I smiled and said, "I never liked phones, Lor."

"You lunatic. What's happened to you? You look different."

"I think I am different."

I bent down and handed Lorna her cane and purse. Impulsively I threw my arms around her and said, "It's over, Lor. It's over." I grabbed her waist and lifted her off the floor and held her way over my head until she shrieked, "Freddy, goddamnit, put me down!"

I held her higher still, tossing her up to where her head almost banged the ceiling.

"Freddy, goddamnit, please!"

I lowered my wife to the lushly carpeted floor, She retained her hold around my neck and looked into my eyes sternly and said, "So it's over. And now?"

"There's us, Lor. There's a great big little boy who needs us. He's with your father now."

"What great big—"

"He's Maggie Cadwallader's son. That's all I'll tell you. I want you back, but it's no good without him."

"Oh, Jesus, Freddy."

"You can teach him justice, and I can teach him whatever I know."

"He's an orphan?"

"Yes."

"There are legalities, Freddy."

"Fuck the legalities; he needs us."

"I don't know."

"I do. I want you back."

"Why? You think it will be different this time?"

"I know it will be."

"Oh, God, Freddy!"

"We'll never know unless we try."

"That's true, but I just don't know! Besides, I've got two more days down here at the convention."

"We'll never know unless we try."

"It's a standoff, Freddy."

"It always has been, Lor."

Lorna dug into her purse and pulled out her keys. She detached the ones for the house in Laurel Canyon and handed them to me. She smiled, and brushed tears out of her eyes. "We'll never know unless we try," she said.

We held each other tightly for several minutes, until we heard applause coming from the banquet room.

"I have to go now," Lorna said. "I'm on in a few minutes."

"I'll see you at home."

"Yes."

We kissed, and Lorna composed herself, opened the door and moved into the banquet room to the sound of dying applause for the last speaker.

As she limped to the dais, I thought of Wacky Walker and wonder and the constituency of the dead and mad Dudley Smith and poor Larry Brubaker and orphanhood and the strictures of my once inviolate heart. Then I thought of redemption, and got my car and caught the freeway back to L.A.