The Howard Hughes Affair

CHAPTER SEVEN

I was driving slowly down Hollywood Boulevard with an hour to kill when the hour decided it might prefer to kill me. The black Caddy showed up three cars back in the bright sunlight, sending a mirror of buildings and trees back at me and hiding the faces of the two guys in the front seat.

Instead of turning on Sunset I went down Santa Monica Boulevard, picking up Sunset in Beverly Hills and going south toward U.C.L.A. I had an idea of going to Rathbone’s house in Bel Air, but changed my mind. I didn’t know who the guys behind me were, and I didn’t want to lead them to Rathbone. He could think a good case, but I don’t know how he’d handle the pair behind me.

I had a few thoughts about who they might be. They might be cops, but I knew enough about cops to know they didn’t drive Caddys and they didn’t assign two men to tail a private detective about a simple-well, not so simple-murder. They could have been the murderers, which was a more likely possibility since Frye had already tried to kill me. Maybe he had friends who were taking up his unfinished job. It would have been nice to have a little talk with them, if that were the case, and find out what they thought I knew, but I didn’t think friends of Frye would be the talking kind.

There was another possibility. They might have been a pair of Bugsy Siegel’s boys. Norma Forney could have told him about me. He knew I was coming to see him. Maybe he had something to hide about that night at Howard Hughes’; in which case, the gentlemen in the car behind could still want to act more than talk.

Whoever they were, I decided to try to lose them. We had a merry chase. At first I tried to make it look as if I were simply driving around randomly, but my pair of circles around the block at Levy’s Restaurant must have given them the idea that I was on to them.

They stayed close, so I headed for an area I knew-or thought I knew. I went south on Sepulveda past the university, trying to put a little distance between my ’34 Buick and their ’4 °Cadillac by going twelve miles an hour over the speed limit for a residential area. It was almost hopeless. When I got within two blocks of my old habitat, now a recently demolished motel-like bungalow, I hit the floorboard and darted past a cement truck that let a blast out of its horn. With the truck between me and the Caddy and a half block between us, I made a blind turn over the curb and into the lot where I had once lived. It was a mess of rubble and rain puddles. The Buick landed hard and something clanked in the trunk. I remembered the groceries and hoped the milk bottle would hold up under the punishment.

With a sharp right and squealing tires, I spun in back truck on the lot. It was full of what looked like my old house, which surprised me because I didn’t think my old house had enough material to fill a bicycle basket.

A couple of gloved workmen heaving debris into the truck stopped to glare at me. I willed them to look somewhere else, but it didn’t matter. The guys in the Caddy must have seen me. They came flying over the same curb I had hit and came down even harder. I put my car in gear with my foot on the brake and gave it a little gas. The Caddy stormed toward the truck, almost hitting one of the workmen, who jumped for his life, abandoning a window frame which came down on top of the Caddy with a thud.

As the Caddy rounded the dump truck, I went to the other side, tearing my Buick for all it was worth, which was probably about fifty bucks, toward Sepulveda. I hit a rain-filled rut, knocked a sink into the sky and barely missed the cement truck that was turning into the lot I was leaving. I headed back north.

The Caddy driver had trouble turning. I could see him in my rear view mirror, trying to make up the ground he had lost. I was well up the street, pounding the steering wheel with the palms of my hands to urge it on to greater effort.

I caught a yellow light at Wilshire with a Red Top Cab between me and the Caddy. I went through the yellow. The cabbie decided to stop. The Caddy plowed into him and I slowed down to turn right at the next corner and lose myself in side streets.

In spite of the car chase, I got to the Sunset address about ten minutes early. Instead of going right in, I found a sandwich joint with a telephone and called Sergeant Steve Seidman.

“Seidman,” I said, hearing someone in the background screaming: “It ain’t fair, it ain’t fair.”

“Speak up,” he said loudly. “We have a customer here who feels he isn’t being given proper treatment.”

“O.K.,” I said. “What can you give me on Bugsy Siegel?”

The pause was long and “It-ain’t-fair” kept on until there was a sharp crack and then it was quiet.

“Siegel got something to do with the guy we found in your office this morning?” Seidman asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe. Maybe not. Can you give me something on him to work with?”

“I’m going to have to tell him,” said Seidman. “He’s off for the night, but I’ll have to give it to him in the morning.”

“Fair enough,” I said. I held on while Seidman left the phone and turned to find a young woman in a thin coat waiting impatiently for the telephone. She shifted her legs and her coat opened, revealing a tight green sequined gown that caught the light from a Falstaff beer sign. I figured she was a show girl from one of the places on the Strip. She figured I should mind my own business and gave me a look that said so.

Seidman returned to the phone. “I’ll give you the highlights,” he said. “The file’s a few inches thick. Let’s see … born Williamsburg district of Brooklyn, February 28, 1906. Moved from small stuff to heading an east side gang, combination of Italians and Jews, stuck mostly with the Jews. Arrested in 1928 for carrying a concealed weapon. Married to Esta Krakower…let’s see.… He and Meyer Lansky headed a gang that gave Bugs his name because he wasn’t afraid of anything and the other gangs thought he was a little crazy. By the way, he doesn’t like to be called Bugs, which is why we continue to call him Bugs.”

Miss Show Business of 1939 tapped her foot impatiently behind me as if she were about to go into a routine. I imagined her breaking into song, throwing off her coat, leaping on the counter and stepping into the soup of a customer. Seidman went on.

“Feud with the Irving ‘Waxey’ Gordon mob. Lots of shooting. Siegel was almost killed a few times. One time a bomb was dropped on a meeting, and Bugsy got hit in the head by the roof, which contributed further to his ‘Bugsy’ image. Chief triggerman was a nutty little monkey named Abe ‘Twist’ Reles.”

“I’ve heard the name,” I said. Miss Show Business showed me her wrist watch. I admired it and smiled.

“Siegel came to Los Angeles five years ago. New York cops thought he had been sent here by the mob as a West Coast agent. We think he did it on his own. Likes to be seen with celebrities, good friend of George Raft. He lives at 250 Delfern. Classy neighborhood. Has the homes of Sonia Henie, Bonita Granville, Anita Louise and Norman Taurog. Siegel’s house is full of secret panels and rooms. Built them with the place, probably to dive if anyone takes another shot at him. He has unlisted phone numbers which I can’t give you.”

“I’ve already got them,” I said.

“I won’t ask how,” sighed Seidman. “It-ain’t-fair” had started up again slow, but was rising to the challenge. Seidman turned away from the phone and shouted, “Keep that guy quiet” He continued, “Siegel’s a health nut-boxing, running. Thinks he’s a real beauty. Even talks about going into the movies, but he has a big problem. He was indicted almost a year ago for the murder of Harry ‘Big Greenie’ Greenberg, a former friend who he and we thought was going to put the finger on Siegel. Case was so-so. Siegel didn’t pull the trigger himself, but we had enough to lock him up in October last year. He got out in December when the new DA, Dockweiler, decided there wasn’t a case against him.”

“Will you get your ass off that phone?” squealed Miss Show Business in my ear, breaking the illusion of culture and charm she had worked so hard to build up.

“Sure,” I said to her. “Where would you like me to put it?”

“Hey,” grunted Seidman, “I’ve got other things to do.”

“Go on,” I said, turning my back on Show Business, who kicked me in the calf and stamped out of the place. I held back a groan and listened to Seidman.

“Well, a few months ago, the New York D.A. got his triggerman Reles in a corner and he was ready to turn states and pin the Greenie murder on Siegel. Then.…”

“Reles took a dive,” I said, remembering the story.

“Right,” said Seidman, “Shortly after seven in the morning on the 12th of last month, Reles, who had been guarded around the clock by eighteen cops in the Half Moon Hotel at Coney Island, was found dead on a roof extension six floors below his room. The window of the room was open, and from it dangled a makeshift escape line made from knotted sheets and wire long enough to reach the room on the floor below.”

“But.…”

“But,” Seidman continued, “the body was so far from the makeshift line that it had clearly been thrown and had not fallen. Reles had no reason to run. He was supposedly in the safest place in the world for him.”

“You mean the cops killed him?” I said.

“I didn’t say that,” Seidman added quickly. “Someone killed him. They’ve got another guy in the hole who says he worked with Siegel on the Greenie killing, name’s Allie Tannenbaum. Case comes up in a few months, but Tannenbaum won’t be enough to convict Siegel. That’s all I can give you without an hour or two of reading, and I have a disgruntled taxpayer behind me who needs my attention. Take care, Peters. Siegel isn’t a good guy to play games with.”

I said I’d take care and hung up. Outside, the strip wasn’t really crowded yet. It was still too early for that.

The Hollywood Lounge had both an awning and a doorman, which was what you needed to be a recognized joint on the strip. The doorman looked at me lazily and polished a button on his grey uniform. Inside the door was darkness and music from a juke box. Harry James was blowing “You Made Me Love You.” I listened for a few seconds while my eyes adjusted to the interior browns. I started to make out shapes and tables. There was a small platform for a floor show, a bar with a bartender and a dozen or so tables. A man and a woman were drinking and smoking at the bar. Four men were sitting at one of the tables, talking in low tones. At a table near the stage a woman sat alone. It was Miss Show Business with the sharp shoes. She saw me across the empty room and it was hostility at second sight. I put my hands up in a sign of peace and moved to the bar. The barkeep, a wheelbarrow of a man with enormous bags under his eyes, moved to take my order.

“Mr. Siegel’s expecting me,” I said softly. “Name’s Peters.”

The barkeep grunted and waddled to the end of the bar where he picked up a phone, said something into it and nodded at the response. Miss Show Business looked darts at me. I smiled back. Her darts softened and in another few seconds they might have turned to smiles, but I didn’t get the few seconds.

The barkeep nodded at a door a few feet away from me. I said thanks, wondering what his voice was like, and went through the door. I found myself in a small hallway facing a narrow flight of stairs. As I started up, I became aware of someone standing at the top and it was a big someone. I was constantly running into big someones.

This big someone waited till I got to the top step and then made a sign with his hands that it would be nice if I raised my arms. I raised my arms and he searched me. Our eyes met and I didn’t like what I saw in his. He nodded me through a door and closed it behind me.

The room was a large office with the desk off in the corner as if space had been cleared in the middle for something. Next to the desk stood an ape of a man in a light grey suit with big lapels. Behind the desk sat a guy with even white teeth and a false smile.

The smiler, I decided, was Bugsy Siegel. He was a well-built man with a prominent nose which had taken a break and veered to the left. His dark hair was parted evenly on the left and was receding slightly. His suit was dark and his tie blue. He had a neat handkerchief in his pocket. I suddenly recognized his face.

“You Peters?” said Siegel, getting up and letting the smile drop slightly. The touch of Brooklyn was still in his voice.

“Yeah,” I said.

“I know you from somewhere,” he said suspiciously.

“The YMCA,” I said.

He snapped his fingers and looked at the ape next to him. The ape was sweating and didn’t respond.

“Right,” Siegel said easing up, “you work out there too. We never really met.”

“Right,” I said with a smile at my fellow Y member. I had seen him working out occasionally at the Y for the last few years. We never talked and I hadn’t known who he was-the two guys who watched him while he worked out didn’t promote friendliness. The guy I recognized as Siegel did a lot of running and swimming, and I had seen him boxing a few times.

“You’re not here to challenge me to four or five rounds, are you?” he said amiably, looking at the ape to appeciate his joke. The ape did so with a small smile. I appreciated his joke too.

“No challenge of any kind,” I said. “I need some help. I told you on the phone I’m working for Howard Hughes. On the night of the party you went to at his house in Mirador, someone tried to steal Hughes’ plans for some important military weapons.”

Siegel got up quickly from behind his desk. Ape didn’t move. Siegel’s smile was gone.

“Wait,” I said quickly. “I came here for your help. I’m not accusing you of anything.”

Siegel nodded cautiously for me to continue.

“At first I wasn’t sure if someone had actually tried to steal anything that night,” I said, looking at him and trying not to blink and look nervous. “But last night a guy named Frye tried to kill me to stop the investigation and got himself strangled. And this afternoon Major Barton, who was at the party, caught two bullets in his heart before he could tell me anything.”

“I didn’t like Barton,” said Siegel. “You know why I didn’t like him?” I said I didn’t know and Siegel went on, “Because he knew who I was and said something that didn’t please me. He had a few too many belts, of booze in him and said things people shouldn’t say.”

“That won’t do you any good if the cops start putting things together and find out you knew him,” I said, to keep Siegel talking. “They’ve got reasons for trying to nail you, and you’ve got one indictment on your head now.”

“You know a lot about my business,” Siegel said suspiciously, coming around the desk and stepping toward me. The ape didn’t move a muscle, just stood there, sweating.

“Not enough to get me in trouble,” I said quickly. “My only interest is in finding out who tried to get those plans and, maybe, who put away two people in the last eighteen hours. They’re probably the same person and they’re probably up to something that won’t be good for this country.”

I hoped patriotism would move Siegel or at least back him away from suspicion toward me. It did.

This country has given me some rough times,” he said. “But it’s given me a lot too.”

You mean you’ve taken a lot, I thought to myself, resisting the almost overwhelming urge to say it aloud. I was proud of my restraint.

“You know what that Hitler bastard is doing to Jews?” he said.

I said I had some idea, and he said I didn’t.

“If there’s a war,” he said earnestly, “I’m going to do what I can to help beat Hitler. I was going to tell Hughes that, but his party broke up early and I never got the chance. You can tell him for me.”

“I will,” I said. “Now about Major Barton.…”

“If the cops try to hang that on me, they’ll be wasting their time. I didn’t do it. In my business, we only kill each other.”

Siegel calmed himself by taking a deep breath and looking at his well-scrubbed hands. Then he answered the phone that was ringing on his desk. He listened for a few seconds. “Carbo? All right,” he turned to me. “I’ve got to go downstairs for a few minutes. Talk to Jerry and make yourself a drink if you want.” Siegel went out the same door I had come through. I looked at the ape named Jerry and he looked at me. I moved to a chair in the corner and sat down.

“Worked for Mr. Siegel long?” I tried.

“A month,” Jerry said in a surprisingly high voice. “And I don’t work for him the way you think. I’m a teacher, ballroom dancing.”

I started to smile at Jerry’s joke and held back the smile because he wasn’t smiling back. I also realized that the reason the furniture was in a corner and Jerry was sweating might give some support to his crazy tale.

“No kidding?” I said.

“I like dancing,” Jerry said defiantly, taking a step toward me.

“So do I,” I said, hoping he wasn’t going to ask me to dance.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Jerry said. “You’re thinking a guy that spends most of his time fox trotting, waltzing, rhumbaing must be some kind of a fairy, right?”

“No, never entered my mind.”

Jerry’s move toward me wasn’t exactly ungraceful.

“I can clean and jerk two fifty,” he said. “I’m in a baseball league that plays two nights a week, year around.”

I wondered what position he played but didn’t have time to ask.

“You think you can do that?” he said. “You think a fairy can lift two fifty and play baseball?”

I couldn’t see any reason why not, but I said I saw his point.

“People think a dance teacher walks around on his tiptoes and has a limp wrist,” he went on. “Nobody thinks Fred Astaire is a fairy.”

I didn’t know and didn’t care, but I told him he was right. At that point Siegel returned with Miss Show Business behind him. Her coat was gone, and she spangled and glittered like a dime store.

“Peters, this is Verna,” Siegel said. “She’s in the lounge show. I’m taking a few dance lessons, advanced stuff from Jerry, and Verna’s helping out.”

“Pleased to meet you, Verna,” I said, wondering what I had wandered into.

“Listen,” Siegel said, coming over to me, “I’ve got big friends in this town. I know a Countess, a real one, society people, show business, you know. If I can help, let me know. Anything I can do. I didn’t see anything at Hughes’ that night. I don’t know anything. If you want me to, I’ll ask some questions, but I don’t think this is exactly the kind of thing my people would know about. Know what I mean?”

I said I knew, and he put a hand on my shoulder to guide me out. He stopped at the office door, looked back at Verna and Jerry at the other side of the room. Jerry was demonstrating a step to Verna, who was having trouble understanding.

“You look like an honest guy, Peters,” Siegel whispered. “Tell me. You think I’m losing my hair?”

I looked at his hair, and he looked like he was losing it. I said no he wasn’t losing it and I wished I had as fine a crop as he. Siegel patted my shoulder, smiled and opened the door. I walked out and shared the small hallway with the guy who had gone over me for the gun.

“Remember,” said Siegel. “You need help-you know where to come.”

“Right,” I said. “Thanks.”

The door closed, and I eased my way past the muscle and went down the stairs, feeling his eyes on me.

My father’s watch told me it was two-forty-five. My body told me time was running out, and the doorman of the Hollywood Lounge told me it was almost 7:30. I decided to believe the doorman. I had four and a half hours till my meeting with Hughes, and I decided to spend a few of those hours at the Y, urging my body toward a few more years of abuse. The sky rumbled a rain warning.

I drove to the Y on Hope Street, showed my card to the night man, and went down the stairs to the locker room.

The locker door bounced, banged and vibrated, adding a familiar sound to the equally familiar smell of sweat, chlorine and urine and the sight of peeling walls, narrow wooden benches and bare 40-watt bulbs. It was a comforting jazz of light and sound for a confused Toby Peters. I absorbed it with all of my still intact senses as I hung my jacket on the hook and began to take off my shirt.

The sound of running shower water off in the shower room echoed with indistinguishable voices as I slowly undressed and changed into shorts, T-shirt, jock, socks and shoes. A dozen lockers down, a tall kid with sloping shoulders sat in a wringing wet T-shirt and panted heavily. The kid pushed his moist hair back but seemed too tired to reach up and open his locker. I adjusted my soiled supporter, frayed from overwashing in the sink. My shorts were slightly torn at the crotch, my T-shirt was crumpled, sweat-dry and a little stiff, and my gym shoes were worn tennis-flat and giving away at the seams. I savored my socks. They were new, soft and absorbant.

I took a last look at the tall kid and moved down the row of lockers toward the stairs leading to the gym. I was aware of moving, shuffling bodies even before I got to the gym floor. When I came up from the stairway darkness, I faced a volleyball game with five people on each side, all men. The server was a stocky young guy with a white shirt. I turned away from them and headed far the light bag in the corner. I banged away on it for about ten minutes with my handball gloves, softening the gloves and working up a slight sweat. Leaving the plop of the volleyball behind me, I went up the stairs and did a mile on the track.

I was feeling good and not thinking. I made my way to the handball courts and struck it lucky. Dana Hodgdon, a proctologist who was about sixty, was alone on a court. He was a thin guy with white hair which he kept out of his eyes by wearing a sweat band on his forehead.

He was already dripping with sweat when I knocked at the door and asked if he wanted a game. He said sure and after I got a few whacks at the ball, he served. My palms started to swell as they always did. I was feeling great and only lost the first game 21–14. My legs felt good, and my hands were in control of the ball. Some days everything felt right, and I could put the ball where I wanted it. Other days, I could strain and concentrate, relax and forget, change my style and still blow easy shots. In four years of playing, I had only beaten Doc Hodgdon twice. Both games were on the same day and I just barely won. Then he disappeared for a month. When he came back he explained that he had played that day with double pneumonia and a temperature of 102.

Hodgdon played the angles and never moved more than he had to. He played it smart. I played it frenzied and ran myself into exhaustion. I sometimes wondered what was in it for him to play against me, since I was the only one who got a lot of exercise and had anything to gain from a victory.

With my mind pleasantly blank, I went for a low shot and hit the wall head on. It had happened before, but that didn’t make it any better.

Flat on my back on the cool wooden floor, my eyes looked up at the open space high on the rear wall of the court, where people could watch the game or wait their turn. The face of a skeleton looked down at me, attached to a lean, powerful, dark-suited body. I tried to sit up but fell back, dazed.

“How you feeling?” Doc Hodgdon asked, helping me up. I had trouble standing, and Doc helped me off the court and down to the locker room, where I surveyed the damage to my forehead in a shower room mirror. It was slightly swollen, matching the lump on the back of my head. My eyes looked bewildered. Reflected in the mirror, I could see Doc Hodgdon bouncing his handball.

“It feels all right,” I said, running cold water into my cupped hands. I brought my face down to the hands.

“Sure you’re O.K.?” asked Doc.

“Fine. All right. Go on back, I think I’ll call it a night, Doc. Thanks for the game,”

Doc turned, and as I examined myself in the mirror again, I saw him pull off his sweat-stained shirt and watched the crescent-shaped scar low on his back disappear as he left the shower room. The rushing sound of water soothed my eyes, and the smell of sweat satisfied my senses-the compensations of a wounded athlete.

I took my T-shirt off carefully to avoid the sudden dizziness that might drop me to the floor, and was about to move to the showers when I decided to take a last look at my head. The mirror had clouded with steam, and as I wiped it clean I saw the image of the cadaverous man who had been in the gallery over the handball court. His arms were folded and he stared at me with a slight smile.

I tried to ignore him, but a shudder ran through me as if an ice cream cone had touched my bare flesh. I hurried to the shower, where I stood slump-shouldered, letting warm soothing water hit my many scars. More alert, but still heavy-legged, I picked up my shoes, jock, socks and shoes and returned to my locker, where I pulled out my towel and began to dry myself. I dressed slowly, and as I finished I sensed someone behind me. Before I turned, I knew it was the cadaverous man with the deep, dark eyes. He was about five feet away, and I glanced at him. He was wearing a dark suit with no tie. He was over six feet tall. He was nearly bald, and the cadaverous impression of his face was partly a result of this and partly his sunken eyes and a nose smashed almost as. flat as my own. The man leaned against a locker, his arms folded, and spoke in a whisper. I didn’t like the German accent.

“Please come with me quietly.”

It was more than a request and I tried to figure the man. Maybe he didn’t have anything to do with the Hughes case and the two bodies. Maybe he was a determined homosexual, a strong-arm thief, or simply a lunatic who liked scaring people. The neighborhood around the Y was a grab bag of slums and wealth, sanity and insanity. My eyes took in the locker room. It was empty. I turned to stand face to face with the man. A bench stood between us.

“What’s up?” I said, stalling until I could think of something to do.

“Nothing,” said the man. “We simply want to talk to you quietly about the events of the last day or so.” I looked around for the rest of the “we” and saw no one till the man in black allowed his jacket to open enough to show an equally black holster with a large gun.

I devised a brilliant plan on the spot and threw my gym clothes in the guy’s face. Shoes, shorts, handball gloves, a lock and a roll of tape hit him, and I turned and ran along the edge of the lockers down two rows. I stopped, looking and listening for possible help. My heart was doing a rhumba that Jerry the dancer would have been proud of.

I could hear the cadaverous man coming down the other aisle. One of the tall lockers near me was partly open. It was narrow, but by ducking slightly and pulling my shoulders together, I squeezed in and pulled the door closed. The metal locker floor gave slightly under my weight.

My pursuer stopped and listened. Footsteps raced around the row of lockers, and I knew the man had heard the locker close. I held my breath as I listened to him make his way down, opening lockers one at a time. Through the slit in the locker door, I watched the man work his way toward me. I had no more than a few seconds before the skeleton with the gun would open the door.

I waited till he was outside my locker and then pushed on the door as hard as I could. Both the door and my body hit the man, sending him backwards over the wooden bench. I was definitely not working myself into his good graces.

I scrambled up and ran through a fire exit in the corner. No one was outside as I headed for the mesh fence that surrounded the tennis courts behind the gym. A drizzle had started. The courts were empty and still wet from yesterday’s rain. I leaped for the fence, clinging as my feet missed the links and dropped to the asphalt court surface just as the man arrived behind me. Instead of following over the fence, he raced for the entrance to the courts about thirty yards away. It was the only way out, and I was too tired to beat him to it. I thought of going back over the fence and turned to give it a hell of a try, but going over the first time on top of my workout had taken too much out of me. Ten years earlier, I would have made it. I was almost to the top on pure stubbornness when I felt the pull at my leg. I looked around in the drizzle for someone to call, but there was no one in sight.

I tumbled back into the court and fell into a shallow puddle. The man hovered over me looking casually toward the Y and the street, as if he were enjoying an outing on a clear day. He was smiling a friendly smile as he helped me up and brushed water from my clothes. He kept one hand on his gun under his jacket and I was convinced he could get it out quickly. I didn’t like his smile.

“Very quietly,” he whispered. “Move very slowly and ask no questions.”

There was no point in fighting. The man put an arm around my shoulder and led me slowly back toward and around to the front of the Y. We passed a girl with a book over her head to keep off the rain, but I didn’t say anything. There was nothing she could do to help.

He led me to the big black Caddy that had chased me earlier. The front grill was bent from where it had hit the cab. He opened the back door and motioned me in. I went and he slid next to me. A thick-necked gorilla in the front seat drove off.

I thought I might catch my breath, regain some strength and go out the door at the first traffic light if there were enough people around. We turned down Pico and came to a red light in about three minutes. I tried to pull the lock button up, but it didn’t move. The man with the skeleton face didn’t even turn his head.

For a few seconds, I considered that I might be dreaming, that I had suffered a concussion and passed out on the gym floor or in the locker room. Young Doctor Parry had warned me about further blows to the head, and I was already two above the limit. Maybe I was back in Cincinnati and these were friends of Koko the Clown.

A solid gun in my side convinced me that I wasn’t dreaming and the skeleton man said softly, “Don’t try anything more. And be very quiet.”

We drove out of the drizzle and through Topanga Canyon. In about fifteen minutes we were in Ventura County, and after another twenty minutes we turned into a driveway in Calabasas. I didn’t like it, especially the fact that I hadn’t been blindfolded. These gentlemen weren’t worried about my seeing where I was being taken, which led me to the conclusion that I might not be coming back from this trip.