High Midnight

CHAPTER NINE

There was a character named Moneybags Farrell who ran a newsstand on Highland near Selma. He was called Moneybags not because he was rich but because he never handled his customers’ money. He collected it in a leather bag. You dropped your money into it and he gave you change. Moneybags filled up the bag and took it into the restaurant on the corner every few hours. There he went to the washroom and washed the money before he handled it Moneybags was convinced that money was the prime carrier of disease in the modern world. I told him once that others agreed with him, but he was the only one I knew who took it literally.

Because of his nickname, he had been held up twice by punks who thought he had sacks of gold salted away under True Crime Tales. Both times Moneybags had taken a slight beating and lost a few bucks.

I sat in my car with the motor running, listening to the Aldrich Family and reading the paper I had bought from Moneybags, who looked a little like my fantasy of Silas Marner from required grade-school reading.

I wasn’t tired, and my mind was leaping with thoughts and fears. I considered heading for one of the hotels and checking in under a false name. I’d done it before and could probably get away with it again for one night, even though Phil would have guessed at the possibility. I didn’t think the cops had the manpower to follow up on me that quickly. But I had work to do. I went to a phone booth and tracked down Cooper’s mother. She answered after five rings. I reminded her that I had met her with her son at Don the Beachcomber’s.

“I’ve got to reach him right away,” I said. “Urgent business.”

She made it clear that he didn’t want to be found, that he wanted a few quiet days and needed the rest. I countered by saying I was sure he would want to hear what I had to say and that I’d take full responsibility. I wanted to add the words “life and death” but didn’t.

Finally she agreed and gave me directions to an area on the coast in the hills just beyond Santa Barbara. It was clear that she was reading the directions.

“I thought he was going to Utah,” I said.

She had no reply other than to tell me that she hoped what I was doing was really important. I thanked her, hung up and found a broken pencil in my pocket. I chewed away enough so I could scratch out the directions she had given me in my small notebook.

Ignoring the warning signs of my car, I got as far as Santa Barbara and decided to pull in at a rickety motel just outside of town. I’d stopped there before. They charged little, gave little and asked no questions. I told the scrawny guy at the desk to wake me at seven. He said they didn’t wake people. I gave him a buck and he said he’d have the cleaning girl wake me. I gave him another two bucks to buy one of his shirts. He brought one out from his room behind the office and gave it to me without a question. I had the feeling that I could have asked him for his left arm and he would have given it without a whimper if the price was right.

There was no bath, just a shower stall, but the water was hot and the soap clean. The radio in the room didn’t work, which was just as well. I slept and dreamed of Sergeant York picking off Nazis and turkeys. With each shot Cooper as York moistened the front sight and squinted before he shot. The Nazis turned into familiar faces-Lombardi, Costello, Marco, Tillman, Gelhorn, Fargo, Bowie and finally Lola and me. I tried to shout to Cooper that I was on his side, but he just lined up his sights, gobbled like a turkey and fired.

I woke up as the bullet sailed toward me in slow motion. I couldn’t move, and I was sweating even though the room was underheated. Someone was knocking on the door and wearily saying, “It’s seven. You in there?”

“I’m here. I’m up,” I said, and up I got. The bed had been too soft, and my treacherous back ached slightly, but a second hot shower made it feel better. I overpaid the scrawny guy, who was still on duty but probably going off soon, for a razor and went back to my room, where I shaved while the maid began to clean up.

She was an undersized woman who looked like a walnut and sang something unintelligible and irritating, which hurried me through my shave and out of the room. Breakfast at a nearby roadside drive-in was corn flakes, sliced banana and a cup of coffee. I was back on the road by 7:40.

I felt a little sorry for the two figures in the blue Ford coupe who pulled onto the highway behind me. They had followed me from Los Angeles and probably slept in the car to be sure they didn’t miss me. Maybe they had actually grabbed something to eat during the night, but maybe they hadn’t taken a chance. In any case, I was in much better shape for losing them than they were for following me. Not only were they tired, I knew where I was going. At least I thought I did. I missed the turnoff a hundred yards beyond the Santa Fe Wines Billboard that Cooper’s mother had told me about. I wouldn’t have turned onto it anyway, but I would have liked the satisfaction of spotting it.

About ten miles further I came to a small town overlooking the ocean. I went down the main street slowly, with the Ford cautiously behind me. When I found a corner, I turned right and as soon as I was out of sight stepped on the gas and took another right turn. When I was back on the main street going toward the highway, I could see the Ford just making the first right around which I had disappeared.

Twenty minutes later I found the turnoff and drove down a narrow dirt road full of rocks. In about a mile the road gave out, and I pulled onto a grassy patch and parked. After locking the car and checking the directions in my notebook, I started up a narrow path through the trees. It was a great place to appreciate the outdoors, which I didn’t. I don’t like the rain. I don’t like the sky over my head when I sleep. A nice, safe, enclosed room with artificial light and a steady temperature beats communing with bugs any night or day.

The shirt I bought from the motel clerk was a little tight, and by the time I wound my way up the hill, it was drenched with sweat. The cabin was right where Cooper’s mother said it would be, a small, brick house built in the woods. It looked as if someone had designed it for a movie, right down to the pile of wood outside with an ax ready in a tree stump.

I went to the door and knocked. There was a shuffle inside and some voices before the question came, “Who is it?”

“Toby Peters,” I said.

The wooden door unlatched and opened, and Cooper stood before me wearing a hunting jacket that looked like a cleaned-up version of the one Gable wore in Red Dust.

“What are you doing here?” Cooper said, stepping back to let me in.

“How about what are you doing here?” I countered. “You told me you were going to Utah.”

Cooper shrugged and grinned sheepishly, “Just a little place I like to hide away in.”

“If John Wilkes Booth had hidden here, he’d be alive today,” I said, realizing that we were not alone.

The room was the room of men with furnishings most men couldn’t afford. It was big, with a double bunk in one corner and a single bunk across the room. An Indian rug lay on the floor, colorful and new, and the redwood furniture with brown corduroy pillows helped the hearty-men image. A new oven stood in the corner next to a shining sink and refrigerator. If this was roughing it, I could take it. So, apparently, could the other two men in the room.

One of the men was a burly guy of about forty who stood over six feet and had the start of a gray-brown beard. He wore a lumberjack shirt and had a rifle cradled in his arms, aiming at the floor but ready to move on me. He stood next to the refrigerator as if guarding its contents from hungry intruders. The other guy in the room was dark and wiry, with a nasty scar that ran from the bridge of his nose, across his left eye and into his hairline. The scar was indented, and the man wearing it looked up without fear from the chair in which he sat.

“It’s okay,” said Cooper to the two men. “Mr. Peters works for me. That business I was telling you about with the Western.”

The man with the rifle pushed away from the refrigerator and lowered the weapon. His face still showed distrust. The dark guy in the chair didn’t move at all.

“Toby Peters, Ernest Hemingway and Louis Castelli,” Cooper said by way of introduction.

“Luis Felipe Castelli,” corrected the man in the chair.

Hemingway stepped forward and offered his right hand as he examined my face. He was interested in something he saw. I didn’t outsqueeze him, but I held my own.

“Did some fighting, didn’t you?” Hemingway said with interest.

“Not with gloves on,” I said.

“I think I like him,” Hemingway said with a friendly smile to Cooper.

I was hot and getting irritable and I didn’t give a turkey’s tassel what Hemingway thought of me. No one had asked me what I thought of Hemingway.

Cooper looked out the window and moved to one of the chairs, which he sat in slowly, cocking his head with his good ear in my direction.

“Hemingstein here,” he said pointing a finger at Hemingway, “wanted to get away quietly. Buddy Da Silva is trying to get him to look over the screenplay of For Whom the Bell Tolls, and the Great White Hunter is not ready to make any decisions.”

“So it’s better to hide here than in Cuba?” I said, letting everyone know that I too knew who Hemingway was.

Cooper shrugged.

“Good hunting around here,” he said. “Wild pigs. Some deer, even a cougar or two.”

“Snakes,” said Castelli with a distinct Spanish accent. “Rattlesnakes. Lots of them.”

“Right,” said Cooper, unperturbed.

“I’ve got reason to believe that one or more of the people on the High Midnight project might want to do you in,” I said.

“Do me …” began Cooper.

“In,” I repeated. “Shoot you, push you over a mountain or put one of my kitchen knives in your back.”

He asked why and I explained; at least I explained everything but the possibility that I might be the one who planted the idea in the not terribly fertile minds of Fargo and Gelhorn. I also told him about the Ford coupe I had lost on the road.

Castelli leaped from his chair and went to the window with clenched teeth.

“The Fascisti,” he said.

Hemingway went to the window and put his hand on Castelli’s shoulder. “No, why would they follow Mr. Peepers?” he said.

“No, Mr. Heminghill,” I said, looking around the room casually, “they just want to kill Gary Cooper.”

Hemingway turned from the window, unsure of whether to smile or tear me off at the neck. “Your friend has a sense of humor,” Hemingway said to Cooper.

“Every crowd should have at least one person with a sense of humor,” I said over my shoulder.

“Meaning I don’t,” Hemingway said, moving toward me with clenched fists.

“I wouldn’t know,” I said. “I don’t know you well enough, and I haven’t read much of your work, but I’ve seen the movies.”

“The movies of my work are crap,” he growled.

“I like them,” I said, “but what do I know?”

“Hold on,” said Cooper, stepping between us. “Let’s just figure out what to do while we have some lunch.” Everyone agreed to that, and Castelli and Hemingway brought out bread, sliced chicken and beer.

“I think a man needs good hot mustard to tell him he’s alive,” said Hemingway, passing the mustard to me.

I turned it down. “Do you think you might tell me what’s going on now?” I said to Cooper between bites and gulps.

“I’ve got to tell him,” Cooper said to Hemingway. Both men had downed three sandwiches to my one. Castelli had been at about my pace. Hemingway agreed reluctantly.

“Luis here is in the country illegally,” said Cooper. “He was a Loyalist, even though his family was nobility.”

“I am a Loyalist,” Castelli corrected. “The battle is not over. It is only delayed.”

“Which,” jumped in Hemingway, “may be why the Spanish Fascists have tracked him across Europe and up South America. I got him out of Mexico one fart ahead of a trio of killers.”

“They tried to split my head,” Castelli said with a wild grin, “but they cannot kill me so easily.”

“Glad to hear it,” I said, to stay on his good side.

“The American government isn’t exactly looking for Luis,” Cooper explained, “but they aren’t exactly welcoming him either. Franco says he’s an international criminal and demands that he be found and sent back. Just to make sure, he’s sent some people to try to get rid of him.”

“And Tillman threatened to expose your part in this?” I said.

“Tillman?” asked Cooper, pausing in his consumption of sandwich to look puzzled.

“The number-two corpse in my room. The guy who looked like a brick.”

“Right,” Cooper said. “That, the business with Lola Farmer and a few other things that would not only embarrass me but my friends, particularly Hemingstein over here, who has committed a few indiscretions in his day.”

Hemingway laughed, and the laugh made it clear that he and pal Coop were talking about wild sex and uncontrolled orgies, or at least hinting at them.

“The guy accused Coop of being a homosexual,” Hemingway chuckled.

Cooper grinned and looked sheepish again.

I had fallen in with a den of boy scouts tittering about girls and bodily functions on their annual outing. I didn’t laugh. Hemingway didn’t seem to like the fact that I didn’t laugh. He didn’t mind that Castelli didn’t laugh, but then again it was clear to all of us that the whack in the face that Castelli had sustained had done his brain no great good.

I finished my beer, and Hemingway finished his second or third. His hands were flat on the table, and he was considering something.

“What do you propose I do, Peters?” Cooper said, pursing his lips.

“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “Probably stay here for a while, while I try to defuse the whole thing and find the killer. The police think I did it. I don’t think you can stay here long, though. They might not be able to get the location from your mother, but one of you hunters must have left a trail here through a friend or a note or something. I’ll stick around for a while to be sure the guys on the road don’t double back and figure out where we are. I doubt it, but it might happen.”

“Fair enough,” agreed Cooper.

“How many of them are there?” Hemingway asked, touching his beard.

“Two,” I said.

“There are four of us,” he said. “Are we four grown men hiding from two guys?”

“I think it would be a good idea,” I said. “They’re after Coop, not the other way around.”

“In the jungles of Africa, the countryside of Spain and China, I learned the hard way that the best way to keep from getting killed is to attack the animal, not give him a chance to go for you,” Hemingway challenged.

“In the neighborhoods of Los Angeles, I learned that people with guns and knives and cars can hide anywhere and come at you when you least expect them,” I answered. “It’s the trouble with city living; the animals don’t know the rules.”

“Ever been in a war, Peters?” Hemingway said evenly.

“No, not the kind where they choose up sides,” I said just as evenly.

“I almost lost a leg in Italy,” said Hemingway. “Torn to pieces. I carried a man a mile with my leg mangled.”

“I understand,” I said. “You don’t like to talk about it.”

In a minute we would be one-upping each other with bullet wounds. I probably had Hemingway beat, but from the look of Castelli, he was the all-around winner. The man’s face showed more defeat and dignity then any I’d ever seen. It was also touched with madness.

Castelli and I cleaned off the table while Cooper watched the windows, at my suggestion.

“How about a little exercise to get rid of some of this beer?” Hemingway said playfully.

“I can do without exercise today,” I said.

“I’ve got a couple of pair of gloves with me,” Hemingway said, looking at me with a clear challenge. “Luis doesn’t fight, can’t because of his head, and Coop can’t throw a punch.”

“Never had a fight in my life,” Cooper admitted from the window. “Never learned to throw a punch. Still have trouble faking a reasonable-looking punch for a picture.”

“My friend can’t fight or play baseball,” Hemingway said with mock pity. “But he can sure act What do you say, Peepers? Just a little limbering up, no one gets hurt?”

I declined a few more times, and Hemingway upped the ante. In a few minutes he might actually slap me in the face with one of the gloves and give me his Authors’ Guild card, if he had one. Hemingway was younger than I, heavier than I and probably a better boxer than I. He fished out some gloves and took his shirt off before putting on his pair. His chest was hairy and his shoulders broad. His stomach was a little fuller than he might have liked. Castelli pushed back the furniture and the rug and helped me put on the gloves. Hemingway got his on quickly and easily. Beware a man who carries his own boxing gloves and can put them on alone.

“That’s a bullet wound,” Hemingway said, staring at the scar on my stomach.

“One of those nonwars I was in,” I said.

Cooper looked over at us and shrugged hopelessly in my direction to make it clear he didn’t condone his buddy’s idea of fun, but what could you do when an acknowledged genius wanted to play games. I marveled that Cooper could get all that into a little shrug, but that was his trade. Mine was staying alive.

Hemingway’s arms were longer than mine, and he tapped me gently a few times. I pawed his hands away. Neither of us danced. Castelli stood to the side, leaning against the wall and watching silently. We went on doing nothing for a few minutes until I thought Hemingway had had enough.

“Let’s call it a workout,” I said, dropping my hands. Hemingway popped me in the face, not too hard, but not too friendly. If it was going to be the end, he was going to have the last whack, just as he probably insisted on having the last word. I threw a hard right at his stomach and came back with a left to his mouth. Blood welled around one of his upper teeth.

“That’s enough,” said Cooper, but Hemingway was happy now. This was real. This was earnest for Ernest. I let him hit me with a solid right to the side of the head, hoping it would satisfy him, but it didn’t. He followed with a pair to my chest and a left to my head. The gloves were light and the punches hurt. I felt like reminding Hemingway that we were on the same side.

Hemingway had everything on his side, but I had a singular advantage. It was the one thing that probably made me a reasonable detective and a pain in the ass to have around. I just didn’t give up. Hemingway continued to pop at my head, sending me back over the chair. I came up and went for him. For every five punches he gave me, I gave him one, but I was sure mine hurt. I went for the kidneys and the stomach. I got in a good rabbit punch when he ducked down.

“You crazy bastard,” he said, unsure of whether to laugh or get angry. “There are rules to this game.”

“This isn’t a game,” I said and went for him again. I thought I was Henry Armstrong. I probably looked like a bad imitation of an irate Donald Duck, but it was wearing Hemingway down. I doubted if he had ever been in a real use-what-you-can battle. Hell, I had been in one the day before. Pain was part of the job. For Hemingway, pain was something you learned to endure. You even enjoyed it. At least that’s what he said in his books. I’d lied. I’d read more than one of them.

Hemingway began to pant and lower his guard.

“We’ll call it a draw,” he said.

“You call it what you like,” I answered, putting the right glove between my legs to pull it off. “I call it a bunch of horseshit.”

The rest of the afternoon was spent in silence, with each of us taking turns at the window. Eventually Hemingway began to ask me questions about being a private detective and a cop. He listened like no one I had ever met. His eyes told me that his mind was registering everything, and I had the uncomfortable feeling that I was being converted into a character for future use.

By dinner time we were so bored that we said the hell with watching the window for a few minutes and all pitched in to cook the roast Cooper had brought with him. Dinner was better than lunch, and Hemingway was mellow. We shared sad stories about former wives who misunderstood us, and were on the way to being besieged buddies. After dinner Cooper took apart and reassembled his rifle.

“Knows a hell of a lot about guns,” Hemingway said, nodding at Cooper, “but not about how to shoot them.”

“Maybe so,” agreed Cooper, “but I’ll outshoot you blindfolded.”

Since I knew I couldn’t shoot at all and had proven it as a cop and a detective, I let them rattle on and turned them off. They decided to test their abilities in an evening hunt. I suggested that they put it off till the morning to be sure I wasn’t followed, but they would have no part of such cowardice. Out they went, rifles in hand. Castelli stayed behind, and I followed the pair further up the hill. The sun was setting but still had maybe an hour to go.

“Watch for rattlers,” Cooper warned, taking long strides with his eyes on the ground.

I watched and followed them to the top of the hill, where they or someone had dug out a little pit to sit in. On the other side of the pit was a clearing for about seventy yards, and then woods.

Cooper settled in and pointed to the clearing.

“Water hole just beyond the trees,” he whispered. “Pigs sometimes stick their snouts into the clearing.”

“One hundred a pig,” said Hemingway. Cooper agreed, and I checked my holster and.38, which could surely not kill a pig at fifty yards. We sat waiting with the mosquitoes and the calls of birds. Something that might have been a grunt sounded in the trees, and both Hemingway and Cooper sat up.

“How’ll you know which one killed the pig?” I said.

“Dig out the bullet,” Hemingway whispered. “Quiet.”

Both men raised their rifles, and a miracle happened. The pigs shot first. A bullet dug up ground in front of the pit and a second one buzzed over our heads.

“Get down,” I said, and both men ducked into the pit.

“They found us,” said Cooper.

“Who?” said Hemingway. “The ones after you or the ones after Luis?”

“Got us nailed down,” said Cooper through clenched teeth.

“We have the high ground,” said Hemingway. “We can wait till dark and …”

“We have to get the hell out of here,” I said. “It’s as simple as that. We’ve got to get behind them, or they’re going to keep us on this hill till they kill us. Do you have a phone in that cabin?”

“No,” said Cooper.

“Is there some nice safe way down where someone can’t hide and wait for us?” I asked.

“No,” said Cooper.

“See my point?” I said. “One of you can stay up here and keep them busy. The other one can come with me and go around behind them.”

“Right,” agreed Cooper. “I couldn’t make it down behind them without making a lot of noise, not with my back and hearing. I’ll stay up here and keep them busy.”

“I think I’d better stay here,” said Hemingway. “My leg would slow you up.”

I looked at both of them, and they looked back at me. Good-bye was in their eyes. It was my job and welcome to it, but there weren’t going to be any words.

“Hell,” said Cooper after a long pause and another bullet from the woods. “I’ll go with you.”

“No,” I said, rolling over the side of the hill, away from the woods. Hasn’t every private detective stalked killers in woods infested with wild pigs and rattlesnakes? This wasn’t my jungle, but I was stuck with it.

The sun went down on one side of the hill and I went down the other. I got to the bottom before the sun. My feet had picked up about twenty pounds each and were taking on ounces fast as I made my way around the hill, trying to look for snakes and at the same time not be killed by hidden Fascists or some combination of Fargo, Gelhorn, Bowie and Lombardi, a firm with which I wanted no further business.