High Midnight

CHAPTER TEN

What the hell are you doing this for?” I asked myself as I slid down the last few feet of hill drenched in sweat. I’m not sure I asked the question to myself. Hysteria was a real possibility, and I may have been talking aloud in spite of the potential danger, but it was a good question and one I couldn’t answer.

I sat in a hole at the edge of the woods, panting. Nature had etched on me, using twigs, branches and rocks. A shot from the woods tore into the hills a few feet below the pit where Cooper and Hemingway were holding fort. One of them responded with a shot that came closer to hitting me than any enemy in the woods.

When I could breathe without making as much noise as the MGM lion, I ambled forward through the trees and bushes in a crouch with my trusty.38 in hand. When I hit a small murky clearing, a rifle bullet spat into a tree nearby and a voice shouted, “Stop there.”

Part of the mystery was now settled. It wasn’t a team of Fascists after Castelli. It was Max Gelhorn.

“Gelhorn,” I shouted, “what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“You know damn well what we’re doing,” he answered. “We’re going to shoot Gary Cooper.”

“And me too?”

“Yes,” shouted Gelhorn.

“And the two others with us?” I went on, trying to see where his voice was coming from.

Apparently he didn’t know that there were four of us. I could hear him conferring with someone before he answered, “Yes. It’s too late for anything else.”

“I see,” I said, moving behind a large rock and resting my pistol on it for support. “Since you’ve already killed, it doesn’t matter how many more you do in.”

“We haven’t killed anybody,” came Mickey Fargo’s voice.

I could make out the two figures now behind a clump of bushes no more than forty yards away.

“It’s kill or be killed,” shouted Gelhorn. “Since I can’t deliver Cooper and Lombardi insists on him, it’s all I can do. You pointed that out.”

I hoped our voices weren’t carrying up the hill. My best tactic in case they were was to change the subject.

“Maybe we can nail Lombardi for the murders and get him off your back?” I said.

“No,” cried Gelhorn, taking a shot in my general direction that came no closer to me than twenty yards. “Don’t try to reason with me,” Gelhorn screamed in anger. “This isn’t a reasonable situation. This is a desperate situation.”

To prove it a few more shots whistled in my general direction. Realizing that time was surely no longer on their side, Gelhorn and Fargo began to move forward in the bizarre belief that they were being hidden by shadows or trees or magic.

“Why not,” I told myself and stepped out from behind the rock. Fargo was the first to spot me. He fired. The bullet hit about midway between us in the clearing.

“That’s enough,” I shouted with as much authority as I could muster. I raised my.38, aimed at Gelhorn’s chest, knowing I’d be sick if I hit him, and fired. There was a scream and Tall Mickey Fargo, who had been standing five yards to Gelhorn’s side, went down.

“I’m shot,” he yelled. “Oooch. My leg. You crazy bastard. You shot me.”

“You’re lucky I decided not to shoot to kill,” I lied. “The next one goes between your eyes, Gelhorn.”

The two had obviously thought that their rifles were at a distinct advantage over my.38, but my fortunate shot had given them pause. The trick now was to keep from shooting again and let them know what a rotten shot I really was.

Gelhorn dived behind a tree, and Mickey hobbled to another one, still screaming ouch and calling me a crazy bastard.

“You’re trying to kill me, and I’m a crazy bastard,” I laughed.

“I’m shot,” Fargo called back.

“That was the general idea,” I said.

Gelhorn unleashed four shots, none of which put me in any danger. Mickey regained enough courage in spite of his knee to take a shot up the hill and one at me. His wound had improved his aim but not enough to make anyone worry. It would probably have been safe to charge right at them, but I wasn’t prepared to take the chance, and I wasn’t sure what I’d do when I got there. Would I really be able to shoot them if they didn’t give up?

As the sun dropped over the hill, the problem was settled for me. At first I thought a wild pig had wandered into the battle. There was a sound like a squeal from the hilltop. My second thought was that we had awakened some historical ghost who was going berserk over our inept battle. A figure came over the hill a few yards from where Cooper and Hemingway were holed up. The figure came shouting down the hill with the sun blazing at its back. Held high in its right hand was the ax that had been imbedded in the log outside of the cabin.

“What the hell is that?” shrieked Gelhorn.

The madly charging figure was now close enough for me to see that it was Luis Felipe Castelli. He was shouting in rage as he charged toward the woods where Gelhorn was standing and Fargo kneeling, transfixed. Castelli was shouting in rapid semi-hysterical Spanish, and I could catch only a few words, one of which was certainly “Fascisti.”

Gelhorn and Fargo both took shots at Castelli but probably came closer to shooting themselves than him. Gelhorn turned to run from this lunatic attack and almost dropped his rifle. Fargo yelped like a stepped-on dog and tried to hobble away as Castelli came crashing through the bushes and trees, swinging the ax.

I holstered my gun and tried to run to beat Castelli to the two terrified would-be killers, but my legs were heavy and tired.

“Luis,” I shouted, “don’t. They are not Fascists.” But I might as well have been talking to a movie. Castelli continued the charge. I got to him as he leaped over a bush, landed in front of Mickey Fargo and raised the ax with a look of glee, ready to split the fat former cowboy into shank steaks. Fargo covered his head with his arms and moaned, “No.” I caught Castelli around the waist and went down with him, rolling over.

“Luis,” I said, trying to keep him from chopping my head off. “It’s me, Toby Peters. Cuidado. Basta. Por favor. No estan Fascisti.” He was a hell of a lot stronger than he looked, and if I didn’t get through to him, I was sure he’d break away and start swinging, but apparently something I said or the sight of Tall Mickey convinced him.

“Esta bien,” he said softly. “It’s okay.”

I patted him on the shoulder and rolled away. Hemingway and Cooper were making their way down the hill, weapons at the ready. I lay there for about twenty seconds, catching my breath, while Luis rose and walked over to Fargo, who had thrown his gun away.

When Cooper and Hemingway stumbled into the clearing, I got to my knees.

“Mickey,” said Cooper, recognizing the fallen figure clutching the wounded leg.

“Get him back to Los Angeles,” I ordered, getting to my feet. “Call Lieutenant Pevsner in Homicide at the Wilshire district. Give him to Pevsner and Pevsner only, and tell Pevsner I’ll bring in Tillman’s killer by tomorrow.”

“Who is it?” Cooper asked.

“Damned if I know,” I said, slouching after Gelhorn.

“Always carry a lantern in the dark,” Hemingway called cryptically.

Now what the hell is that supposed to mean? I asked myself without looking around as I stumbled into the darkness. At this point my clothes were so tattered that I must have looked like Rip Van Winkle, but I was unbowed. I could have stayed and tried to get some information out of Fargo, but he was more interested in his own pain than conversation, and it was likely he didn’t know what I needed to find out.

I was weary, but Gelhorn was lost. Now I was lost, too, but I wasn’t frightened and he was. A frightened man will make mistakes that can cost him his life. I lumbered after Gelhorn and in about five minutes heard him breathing hard ahead of me. Darkness had just about taken over, and I could have used a real flashlight instead of Hemingway’s pithy metaphor.

“Be careful of the snakes,” I called out. “Rattlesnakes.”

“Snakes?” screeched Gelhorn and fired a shot in what he must have thought was the general direction of my voice. I plunged on, knowing that he was moving more cautiously now, watching the ground, which is probably what I should have been doing.

I almost tripped over Gelhorn when I found him leaning back against a tree, panting and looking downward, with his gun searching out rattlers in the dark. His curly hair was dangling in his eyes, and he seemed terrified.

“Give me the rifle,” I said, leveling my pistol at him.

“Get me out of here,” he pleaded, handing me the weapon. I took it and waved for him to follow me. I don’t know what made him think I was any better at saving us from snakes than he was, but I figured I was no worse.

“First,” I said, “you tell me everything about the High Midnight project.”

“He’d kill me,” said Gelhorn.

“I suppose that’s possible,” I agreed. “I’m not sure what I’d do in your place. Remember there’s a lunatic behind us with an ax, and we’re in a woods full of rattlesnakes. I’d say you have a more immediate problem than Lombardi. You’re headed for a nice safe jail cell.”

I couldn’t see Gelhorn’s face, but I could hear him trying to catch his breath. “Lombardi,” he said. “Told me his part in it had to be kept quiet. He had two conditions. I had to get Cooper, and Lola Fanner had to be in the picture. It seemed like such a great idea. It was my chance. I took some of his money and developed the script, started seeing people, worked on publicity …”

“You spent a pile of Lombardi’s money, and you found that you couldn’t deliver Cooper and you couldn’t give back the cash,” I said.

Gelhorn brushed a bush of hair from his face and agreed.

“What else?” I urged him on.

“They told him to drop the idea,” said Gelhorn.

“They?” I said, trying to locate Gelhorn’s face.

“The mob, the mafia, whatever it is,” squealed Gelhorn. “They didn’t want the movie made, didn’t want the publicity. They wanted Lombardi to keep a low profile. That was one of the conditions of letting him semi-retire to Los Angeles.”

An animal moved in the trees nearby, and Gelhorn sobbed.

“Then why did he …”

“He told them it would be all right. I heard him on the phone. He told them not to worry, that he would keep his name out of it, that they should trust him.”

“He wants to make movies and corned beef,” I said.

“That’s about it,” said Gelhorn. “Now will you get me out of here?”

“Who killed Larry the Hood?”

“I don’t know.”

“And Tillman?”

“Tillman?”

“The guy who was hired to pressure Cooper, to blackmail Cooper, threaten Cooper into making High Midnight,” I explained, trying to ignore the animal sounds that were scaring me almost as much as they were Gelhorn.

“I hired him, but I didn’t kill him.”

I grabbed Gelhorn’s arm and started to walk him in a direction I thought would get us out of the woods. I believed him, and that left me nowhere. When we got out of the real woods twenty minutes later, I was still in the woods about the two murders. We groped our way to my car and got in.

“My car’s over there somewhere,” Gelhorn said.

I threw his rifle in the back seat and told him he could send for it or pick it up when he got out of jail for attempted murder. Maybe pigs would wedge open the door and live in the car. Maybe birds would nest in it and rattlesnakes wend their way through the exhaust system. I didn’t much care.

I put the Buick in gear, got stuck backing out, tried again and finally got the car turned around. We made it to the main road in twenty minutes, and I turned toward Los Angeles.

“I’ve never had a break,” whimpered Gelhorn, pushing his bush of hair from his face. I glanced at him and saw that his cheek was splotched with dirt. He looked like a sulking kid whose mother wouldn’t give him a dime for the Saturday matinee all the kids were going to.

“You don’t just have breaks,” I said. “You make them. Some people can make them. Others spend their lives sitting around waiting for them.”

We didn’t stop to sleep, though I did go to an all-night diner where they thought Gelhorn and I were escaped lunatics. We both looked it. I got down two egg sandwiches with mayonnaise in six bites. Gelhorn had a chocolate donut and a cup of coffee. He ate only half the donut. I ate the rest.

From that point on we said nothing. I didn’t listen to the radio, and I didn’t hum, whistle or sing. I tried to think, but I was down on my list of suspects. Lombardi was the logical choice at this point … or maybe Lola … or Bowie or-who the hell knew?

It was a little after three in the morning on Saturday when we pulled up to the Wilshire District Station and got out.

“Holy crap,” bellowed the old desk sergeant, “what have you been wrestling, mountain lions?”

I didn’t answer but pushed Gelhorn ahead of me toward the stairs. The old desk sergeant shouted at us to stop, but I kept on pushing, and Gelhorn stumbled forward up the stairs. The squad room was almost empty. The cleaning lady from a few days earlier was at it again, or still at it. She looked at us as if we were more garbage she had to take care of.

At his desk in the corner, Seidman was asleep with his feet up. I prodded Gelhorn toward him as the desk sergeant came running in, gun in hand.

“Hey you,” he yelled, waking Seidman.

“I didn’t think you ever slept,” I said.

Seidman’s eyes cleared immediately, and he put his legs on the floor as he waved for the desk sergeant to be quiet. “It’s all right, Bert,” he said. “I’ll take it.”

Bert the desk sergeant put his gun away and went out, muttering and complaining about the lack of respect of the public for the police, though I could see no connection between the subject and what had happened.

“You’re under arrest,” Seidman said to me, rubbing his mouth and searching his drawers. He found what he was looking for: a toothbrush and a bottle of Teel tooth liquid.

“I’ve got answers coming,” I said. “Soon.”

Gelhorn found a desk and sat against it with his eyes down.

“When?” said Seidman quietly.

“Tomorrow; no later. Then I’ll come in whether I’ve got something or not. You want me to promise on my mother’s honor?”

Seidman smiled a terrible gaunt smile. “Who’s that?” he asked.

“Name is Gelhorn, a movie director. He and an actor named Mickey Fargo just tried to kill Gary Cooper. Cooper is bringing Fargo in. I think,” I said in a whisper, “you might want to ask them some questions about a hood named Lombardi.”

Seidman was writing notes without haste.

“Cooper’ll press charges against him and the other guy?” asked Seidman, getting up. His voice was down too to keep Gelhorn from hearing.

“I don’t know. He’ll probably bring Fargo in, but I don’t know if he’ll go for charges. Gelhorn and Fargo aren’t going to try it again, not when you and the police department know about them. Besides, they were so bad at it that I’m not sure what they did would constitute a serious attempt. They’re the ones who almost got killed.”

“Tomorrow?” asked Seidman.

“Cross my heart and spit three times,” I said.

“There’s a coat on the rack near the door left by an unknown client,” said Seidman. “Why don’t you take it and disappear? I’ll wait till morning to tell Phil.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“You can get the gas chamber in this state for attempted murder,” I said to Gelhom as I passed him. “I’d tell them what they want to know about Lombardi.”

The desk sergeant looked over at me as I came down the stairs in the coat several sizes too large for me. It did cover my ragged clothes. His face indicated a clear distaste for me and the direction of crime I probably represented.

I went home and to my room, checking to be sure that no prowl car was hovering in wait. And then I slept and it was the sleep of the just-deep, weary and undisturbed by dreams. My morning task would be simple: Find, confront and accuse Lombardi. If that didn’t work, I could throw myself on the mercy of my brother and the district attorney, neither of whom was known to be particularly merciful.

Both the sun and Mrs. Plaut were in my room when I woke up. The sun was full of energy and pride, having broken through a week of stubborn, cold clouds. Mrs. Plaut’s energy was no less determined. She stood on a wooden chair and was either adjusting or removing the portrait of Abraham Lincoln from my wall.

“What are you doing?” I asked. Fortunately she didn’t hear me. As it was, she nearly toppled from the chair.

“What are you doing?” I shouted when she made it safely to the floor, portrait in hand. She heard that and turned to me with her lips in a straight, resolute line.

“I am removing the portrait of Uncle Ripley,” she said. “I am also removing the bedspread and the doilies from the sofa. These are precious items for me, and it is not safe for them in this room, especially if you plan to continue to stab people and do who knows what else.”

She scooped up the doilies and the bedspread. I was happy to see them go.

“And another thing,” she said, marching to the door. “You will have to buy your own knives. Mr. Gunder,” she said, using the name she had settled on for Gunther, “explained to me about those men being spies and you being a government exterminator. Frankly, as you know, I have always been a Republican.”

With that statement of purpose Mrs. Plaut left the room with her recovered treasures, and I stood up to trudge to the bathroom, which was unoccupied, examine my scratches, take a shower and shave.

When I got back to my room, I made some five-minute Cream of Wheat and sat eating it with milk in the same chair recently occupied by two burly corpses.

I was pouring my second bowl when a knock came at the door. If it was the cops, I had nowhere to go in my underwear so I simply said “Come in” and went on eating. It was Gunther. The temperature was going up slowly, but Gunther was a cautious type. He entered wearing a suit, tie and vest, which probably meant he was going nowhere but had dressed for work.

“Toby, you are all right?” he said with real concern, eyeing the contusions.

“I’m fine, Gunther, just some scratches from a romp in the woods,” I said and offered him some Cream of Wheat. He said it was after noon and he had already eaten lunch.

“I spent much of yesterday watching the man Bowie, whom I followed surreptitiously from the boxing arena,” said Gunther. “He went to his home and remained there. I returned here last night.”

“Thanks, Gunther,” I said, tilting the bowl to get the last of the Cream of Wheat. “Anything else new?”

I got up and went to my closet. The remaining urban combat dress was sparse. I put on a pair of dingy dark trousers, a relatively clean white shirt I had been saving for an emergency, my shoulder holster and gun, a dark tie and a jacket I’d had since before my marriage to Ann. The jacket always made me think about Ann. She never wanted me to wear it, thought it was too long, out of style and ugly. It had been ripped up the back and sewn with the wrong color thread, which any human with reasonable interest could see.

“There is something else you should be informed of, Toby,” added Gunther, sitting in the single soft chair. “Two policemen were here much of yesterday, according to the other residents. Mrs. Plaut welcomed them but seemed to have driven them to despair. They departed but said they would return this day.”

“Thanks, Gunther,” I said, adjusting my tie and turning around. “How do I look?”

Gunther was a good friend. He lied. “Quite passable,” he smiled. “Another pair of pants might …”

“All I’ve got,” I said.

“Quite passable,” Gunther repeated.

Below us the doorbell rang.

“Maybe the two police officers,” said Gunther, rising and hurrying to the door to open it. I stepped after him quickly.

The ringing went on, and that was followed by pounding at the door. The residents of Mrs. Plaut’s knew better than to try to break through the sound barrier to her. We simply used our keys or gave up if the door was locked, which it seldom was.

“Anybody in there?” came a voice from below.

“That, I believe, is one of the police officers,” said Gunther.

I recognized Cawelti’s voice and nodded to Gunther as I stepped past him into the hall. We both heard the front door open. Cawelti whispered to someone with him. “If his car is here, maybe he was dumb enough to come back. Get up the stairs. I’ll cover the back door.”

I went to the bathroom in four soft steps and closed the door most of the way so I could watch my room and the stairway. A burly cop I recognized trudged up the stairs, with his gun drawn, as quietly as he could. Gunther stepped back into my room. The cop didn’t see him, but he moved cautiously to my door and stepped in. I got out of the bathroom and tiptoed to my room when I heard Gunther’s voice.

“I simply have not seen him,” said Gunther, spotting me over the shoulder of the cop as I waved and sidled past the open door.

“Are you some kind of German?” asked the policeman suspiciously.

“I am Swiss,” said Gunther with real indignation.

Cawelti wasn’t in sight when I got to the bottom of the stairs. He was probably waiting at the kitchen door to block my exit. I went through the front door and ran the half-block to my Buick. I was just pulling down the street when Cawelti came rushing around Mrs. Plaut’s with gun in hand to see me. I made a quick turn over someone’s lawn and sped down the street till I hit Fountain Avenue. I turned left, slowed down and then made a left on Western and drove to Melrose, where I made a left again and headed for downtown and my office.

I parked in back of a cleaning store on Ninth. The spot was reserved for the owner, but I knew the owner didn’t have a car to drive. His name was Schoenberg, and I brought him what little cleaning I had. He had complained about being unable to get tires for his car and how he had to take the bus to work.

The rear fire door of the Farraday had no outside handle, but I knew Jeremy Butler kept it open when he worked, and since he worked almost every day, I assumed it would be open. Saturday was no day of rest for either the neighborhood bums or Jeremy Butler. I was right. On the way up the stairs, I spotted Jeremy on his knees, scrubbing away.

“I think it’s tar or gum or some substance from hell,” he said, sitting and looking at me. He hesitated, put his brush down and looked at me from his scar-lidded eyes. “I lost that man Fargo Thursday. I’m sorry, Toby.”

“It’s all right, Jeremy,” I said. “I found him. Any police around here?”

“That Cawelti, the one with the temper, was here,” Jeremy said, looking at the spot on the stairs. “We didn’t exchange conversation.”

Jeremy and Cawelti had had a run-in a few months earlier when Cawelti had confronted me in the lobby of the Farraday. It was my considered opinion that Cawelti’s life was a series of run-ins punctuated by violence.

“I’m going up to the office for a minute,” I said. “If Cawelti shows up, try to let me know. If not, let’s take a walk when I come down. I think I need more of your help.”

Jeremy nodded and went back to the stair, his massive right arm bearing down with soap and suds.

My visit to the office was practical. I needed more bullets for my.38, and I had some in my desk drawer. I had used the gunful I had in my duel with Fargo and Gelhorn.

Shelly was working on a patient when I went through the door. He glanced over his shoulder at me, frowned and went back to the woman in the chair.

“I haven’t been here, Shel,” I said, stepping quickly to my office.

Shelly grunted, and the woman in the chair tapped her foot on the footrest in impatience or pain. I voted for pain.

“Mildred’s angry,” he said, and then he mumbled something like, “Where is that damned frubble-squeezer?”

“Sorry,” I said, stepping back to the doorway.

“Mildred found out I drove Carmen home from the fights,” he said, attacking the mouth of the woman in the chair with the frubble-squeezer. “She’s jealous.”

“I’ll call her as soon as I’ve got things settled on the Cooper business,” I said, reassuringly.

“She won’t believe you,” said Sheldon Minck, angrily attacking his patient s mouth. The wretched woman whimpered.

“I know how to handle Mildred,” I said, loading the gun. The patient in the chair was watching me through her suffering, and I couldn’t tell if the fear in her eyes was resulting from seeing me load a gun or pain from Shelly’s attack.

“You can’t handle Mildred,” he said. “She doesn’t like you, doesn’t believe a thing you say. She says you’re a bad influence on me.”

“She wants you to play with the other kids,” I sympathized. “The ones from the right side of Figueroa.”

“Something like that,” Shelly said, going at the woman again, who groaned.

“What are you doing to her?” I asked with mild interest.

“Cleaning her teeth,” said Shelly, pausing to wipe his sweating forehead and relight his dead cigar.

“How dirty are they?” I said.

“So-so,” he countered, tossing the frubble-squeezer in the general direction of the sink and missing. The frubble-squeezer bounced onto the floor, and Shelly ignored it.

“We’ll talk about it later, Shel,” I said.

“Sure,” said Shelly sullenly. I left and went down the stairs two or three at a time. Alice Palice of Artistic Books, Inc., was in the hall on the third floor, arguing with a couple of men in the shadows. They seemed angry. I hoped for their sakes they didn’t get too angry.

Jeremy stood when I got to the step he was working on.

“These are good steps,” he said, “but no creation of man can withstand man’s own determination to destroy the artifacts of his culture. In Europe people still live in adequate houses built five hundred years ago. Here we marvel if a building stands seventy years. We are a wasteful society.”

He gathered his pail and brush and walked with me down the stairs. We deposited the cleaning things in a janitor’s closet and started out the front door. The street was crowded with Saturday-morning shoppers. Pulling into a space half a block away was a police car. Cawelti jumped out. Jeremy and I backed into the Farraday lobby before he could spot us. I nodded toward the rear and Jeremy followed me, moving more quickly and quietly than I did, though he outweighed me by almost a hundred pounds.

We went out the back door and through the alley. At the corner we turned right on Wilshire while I told Jeremy my plan and asked him to stay near his office phone. I might need some reliable help with little notice. He agreed, and I told him what I knew as we walked through Westlake Park. We sat for a few minutes under the eight-foot nude black-cement Prometheus, who held out his torch and globe.

“That was erected by Nina Saemundsson for the Federal Art Project in 1935,” Jeremy said, looking up at the statue with admiration. “An underappreciated work. There is also a magnificent mural of Prometheus by Jose Orozco in Fray Hall at Pomona College in Claremont. It shows a huge Prometheus holding up the sky with small, gaunt people encouraging him.”

I looked at the statue, pretending to share his admiration for Prometheus. My mind was on real bodies, not myths.

“The cost of bringing truth to men is often pain and eternal suffering,” said Jeremy the poet, looking toward the playground in the distance. “I have a poem that might help you,” he said, turning to me and putting a hand on my shoulder. “You want to hear it?”

I said sure. What else do you tell a 270-pound former wrestler with hairy arms thicker than radiators? He recited quietly:

There is no end but death.

We look for start, middles and end

to give our lives a diameter

controllable limits that send

us a feeling of security,

suggest an order

that is not there.

If there is a border,

we create it; and sense

is just a matter

of whose story sings

and whose song

you remember the melody of.

“Nice,” I said, having, as always, understood none of it.

“It will be published in the Gregory Press 1943 edition of new poets,” he said proudly.

“I’ll look forward to it.” I shook his hand and remembered when I did that in spite of his strength, his shake was firm and gentle. When you have the touch and are really confident of it, you don’t have to prove it. I would have liked Hemingway to shake Jeremy’s hand.

I stayed away from Hoover to be sure I didn’t accidentally run into Cawelti on the prowl. Schoenberg let me use his phone to call Carmen at Levy’s.

“Levy’s,” she answered.

“Carmen,” I said weakly, “is that you, Carmen?”

“Toby,” she said with anger touched with concern. “What’s wrong?”

“Police after me,” I panted. Schoenberg, who was a sagging man in his sixties with a sagging tailor’s lip, stared at me over the pair of pants he was sewing. “Thursday at the fight I was kidnapped by Fascist spies. I’m working on a secret case. If I had gone back in the stadium for you, it might have involved you, and I couldn’t do that.”

“I thought you …” she began.

“No, never,” I said. “I’ll explain when I get this case wrapped up. Trust me. Got to hang up now. I hear them coming.” I hung up.

“Take off that coat,” said Schoenberg, “and I’ll sew it good like new.”

“No time,” I said.

“It offends me esthetically as a tailor,” he said with a heavy Yiddish accent. “I’ll do it for free.”

Five minutes later I was back in my Buick and headed for Santa Monica. The day was warmer, and the radio told me my time was running out. I’d promised Seidman that I’d turn myself in, killer or no killer, sometime today. Officially, today ran till midnight. I took Santa Monica Boulevard, Route 66, and tried to think out my dialogue with Lombardi.

Ann, the former Mrs. Toby Peters, had once said that my greatest drawback was my inability to plan ahead, even when not doing so might be dangerous to life and limb. While I had to agree with Ann that it was a shortcoming, I couldn’t rank it at the top. To give her credit, she was constantly changing the item to top the list of the major drawbacks of life with Toby Peters. Just before she walked out for the first, last and only time, we agreed that the list of my faults, if published, would rival the Greater Los Angeles telephone directory in volume.

So I headed for a confrontation with Lombardi in the hope that the right words would come when the time came. It was my style, and I accepted it. It was a simple plan which had seen me through life but done my body no great good. Step one, plunge yourself in and make your opponent angry. Step two, provoke him or her a little more. Step three, hope they respond to prove you were right. (Parenthetical remark to step three: hope you survive the attack.) Step four, set up a trap so you nail them. I knew there were smarter ways to work, but a man gets into habits and learns to live with them and even savor them. This was the patented Toby Peters method. I could open a school and teach it: a half-day course in being a private detective.

I remembered a line from Jeremy’s poem and asked myself, “Whose song do you remember the melody of?” The music to “Over There” popped into my head. It was my father’s favorite song, along with “The Bird in the Gilded Cage.” I sang them both on the way to Lombardi’s and finished when I pulled into the now-familiar parking lot.