Tomorrow Is Another day

Chapter 10

The Melody Lounge on Main was almost empty when Phil and I got there. It was early afternoon. The drunks had mostly slid away for a few hours to try to give the impression that they had something to do besides drink in a dark bar where the ceiling fan whined like an engine trying to rev up. The soldiers, sailors, and marines hadn't started their evening yet and the businessmen and women from the neighborhood were still sitting in their offices, watching the clock and listening to Duke Ellington's version of "C Jam Blues."

I had been escorted to Phil's office by two silent cops, and Phil had listened quietly to my story.

"So," I had concluded, talking fast. "The way I see it, Spelling is out for revenge for something that happened to his father."

"And," Phil had said, touching his forehead to be sure it was still sweating, "you think his father may have been shish-kebabed with a sword while Atlanta burned?"

"Something like that," I said.

Phil had nodded.

"Security records were destroyed at Selznick," I said,

"but the security guy on duty that night was Wally Hospo-dar."

"Jolly Jowly Hospodar?" asked Phil. "Used to work prostitution on the beaches?"

"Same," I had said. "I'm planning to hit the bar where he hangs out and see what he remembers. You checked with Culver City Police about the guy who caught the sword in his stomach in "38?"

"John Doe," said Phil. "Suspicious accident. No witnesses. Short report. Busy season. Case closed."

"Let's go see Wally Hospodar and open it again," I said.

Phil had folded his hands and put his thick white knuckles to his lips. I sat quietly waiting, fighting the almost irresistible urge to prod him with the right word.

"Let's go," he finally said, standing up.

And we went.

Now we were in the Melody Lounge in search of what had once been Wally Hospodar. We found him on the last bar stool in the comer, biting his lower lip and looking off into mirrors inside of mirrors, trying to remember something or someone. Phil and I sat on either side of him. He looked at us in the mirror and we looked at him. He was ruddy-faced and long past jowly.

"That clarinet," Wally said. "Barney Bigard. Ellington's a goddamn genius. G-C, sol-do, variations. That trombone, right there? Tricky Sam Nanton. You missed Ray Nance's opening violin solo."

"You know a lot about music," I said.

"I know a lot about sitting here," Wally said, looking up at us in the mirror behind the bar.

"The brothers Pevsner," he went on, finishing a whiskey and reaching for a bottle of beer. "You each take a round if I perform magic and tell you why you're here?"

"I'll take two rounds, Wally," I said, waving to the bartender, who was rinsing out some mugs for me and Phil. We looked like the beer type.

"Fine," said Wally. "You want to know about the guy who died that night in '38 at Selznick."

"You got it," Phil said impatiently.

Wally smiled at his empty and sucked his teeth.

"Knew it. Angelina said some guy called, fishing around about me, the night the guy got killed."

"He say anything else to Angelina?" Phil asked, waving away the barkeep and refusing a drink after Wally had his refill.

"Not so's she'd tell me. I met Angelina in Fort Worth."

"That a fact?" Phil said.

"I'll have a beer, draft, whatever you've got," I said to the waiting bartender, who clopped away.

Wally was looking into an eternity of mirrors, moving away from the Melody Lounge, from here and now. He was well on his way to being lost in dreams of Fort Worth.

The song on the jukebox ended.

"Angelina says she loves you and doesn't want you to come home."

"I'll drink to that," he said, draining his glass and pointing to his empty as the bartender, a lanky cowboy in boots, clopped back in our direction. "And plenty more where that came from."

"Maybe not," the barkeep said, glumly picking up Wally's glass. "You know the War Production Board just made eighty alcohol plants switch from the drinking stuff to industrial?"

"I knew that," I said, turning to Wally, but the bartender, who needed some Sen-Sen, a shave, and a better sense of timing, went on.

"And the Woman's Christian Temperance Union met a month or so back in Birmingham, more than a thousand of them. And you know what they want?"

I could see Phil's fists clenching just below bar level.

"What?" I asked.

"Total prohibition again," the bartender said. "Through the war and after."

"Never happen," Wally said.

"Listen," the bartender said, pulling a folded newspaper clipping from the pocket of his plaid shirt.

"You," Phil said, putting his hands palm-down on the bar, a very, very bad sign.

"Just take a second," the bartender said, ignoring Phil and unfolding the clipping to read. "This was what the president of the W.C.T.U. said. Her name's Ida B. Wise Smith. Listen. 'There is hardly an activity of the home front of more importance to the American cause. Liquor is our most widespread and dangerous saboteur, and it is our patriotic duty to halt its ravaging of manpower, material, resources and physical stamina.'"

The bartender looked at us as he stuffed the clipping back in his pocket. "Nothing in there," he said, "about the time and work wasted, or the trains and buses and cars wasting gas and tires to get to Alabama."

"Trains don't have tires," Wally said.

"I was just lumping," the bartender said with a shrug. "It's the pouit, not the details, if you know what I mean."

"I know what you mean," I said.

"Get the man his drink," Phil said, doing his best to contain himself.

The bartender gave Phil a sneer, turned, and went for the bottle.

Music suddenly drummed through the floor. A woman of the afternoon in a red dress and a bad mood was giving us an I-dare-you look and swaying to the opening notes of "Tangerine."

"What was in the report, Wally?" I asked as the bartender came back with my beer.

"Turn off the jukebox," Phil said, rubbing his gray hair with the palm of his hand. A very bad sign.

"Lady's got a right," the bartender said with a shrug.

"Then turn it down," Phil said as the bartender turned away.

The bartender just walked and the music rose. It seemed to be pushing Wally into alcoholics' dreamland. Phil got off his stool and strode toward the lady in red, who gave him a knowing smile and held up her arms, waiting to dance. Phil walked past her and kicked the jukebox right in the speaker. It groaned and shut up.

"What the?…" the woman screamed.

"Hey, asshole," the lanky bartender shouted, coming over the bar with a sawed-off bat hi his hand.

"It was on fire," Phil said. "I just saved your bar. You owe me one."

The bartender was moving on Phil, who started back toward his stool next to us.

"Stop there," Phil said, holding up a hand. "I'm a police officer and I'm in one lousy mood. You want your nose smashed as flat as my brother's over there, just keep coming."

The bartender threw the bat in the general direction of my brother, but it was so wide and to the right that it had to be a pickoff play or a wild pitch to save face.

"He really a cop?" the woman in red screamed at me.

"Yep," I said.

"Let's get out of here," Phil said. "Before I do something I won't regret."

I dropped another one of Clark Gable's five-spots. When the bartender glared at me, I dropped another five to ease his pain.

"Get out of here," the bartender said softly through clenched teeth, in a not-bad Gary Cooper.

Normally, that would have been enough to insure Phil's staying around to do some real personal and property damage. But I was off the stool now and ushering Wally toward the door. The lady in red went into the sunlight just ahead of us as we passed in front of Phil, now glowering at the barkeep.

"I don't want him in here for a month," the bartender said, pointing at Wally. "A month. He's trouble and you're it."

Phil shook his head and joined me and Wally as we went through the Melody Lounge door and onto Main Street. A rain was coming and the lady in red was disappearing into a bar across the street. Nobody paid much attention to us, either because they had seen falling-down drunks before or they had enough instinct to recognize that the hefty guy with the marine haircut was waiting for an excuse.

"What was that?" I asked, leading Wally toward Phil's car.

"Soliciting to commit prostitution. Creating a public nuisance. Catching me when I'm in a bad mood. Hospodar," he said as I set Wally gently down on the fender, "what was in that damn report? Have we got conspiracy to cover a possible murder or what?"

Wally's clothes, now that I could see them in the sunlight, were clean and neat. He was shaved and his hair cut. He was holding onto something he had been, but his grip was loose.

"Made a mistake," Wally mumbled. "One day a decision had to be made and I'd long lost the ability or desire to decide. I didn't step in when two execs were fighting about something, and one of them broke the other guy's face when I was two feet away. Guy with the broken face was a cousin of Louis B.'s wife. End of career."

"I'm sorry," I said.

"And I'm running out of patience," Phil said.

Wally took a deep breath, let it out, and shook like a dog coming out of water.

"No cover-up," he said. "Went through Culver City Police. County attorney's office said it was probably an accident. Dead guy with the sword in his chest was one S. P. Ling…"

"Spelling," I said.

"… who had outstanding warrants in three states," Wally went on. "Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York. Two were felonies, one for attempted murder. He did time on an armed robbery when he was a kid. Got the acting bug in prison. S. P. Ling, Actor Ling. Aliases included Sid Spelling and… I forget."

Wally was reaching for something in his empty shirt pocket. He managed to get two fingers in the pocket and came up empty.

"And the records were burned?" I asked.

"Fried," said Wally. "Fire of suspicious origin. Lots of people out there with grudges."

"Maybe someone who wanted the Ling file burned," I said.

"What the hell for?" Phil came in impatiently.

"I had some thoughts on that one," said Wally. "Kept 'em to myself though."

"Get in the car," Phil said. "We'll sober you up and talk about it when you get out of the drunk tank tomorrow."

"He's doing fine, Phil," I said.

"I'm not doing fine," Phil said, thumbing himself on the chest. "Get him in the car. Now."

We were wedged against the curb, so we walked into the street and I opened the rear door as Phil climbed into the driver's seat. Cars were passing going both ways, so I didn't hold the door open all the way. I wouldn't have looked up at all if the car that was coming at us hadn't burned rubber with a screeching start, definitely an unpatriotic move during a rubber shortage. I still wouldn't have paid much attention if I hadn't looked up to see the car roaring toward us and Spelling, Jr., in the driver's seat. I pushed the dazed Wally into the back seat and tried to dive onto the top of Phil's car. I almost made it. Spelling missed me by a deep sigh and plowed into the open door. The door and Spelling exploded down Main Street. I turned my head and watched the car door spinning in the air. It missed the head of a mailman by about a foot and crashed through the window of a tailor shop, sending glass raining into the street, where people covered their heads and screamed.

"You all right?" Phil said as I slid back to the street on shaking legs.

"Yeah, I think so," I said.

"Then get your ass in here," shouted Phil. "I'm gonna catch that son of a bitch."

I threw myself into the car as Phil pulled onto Main, scraping the rear fender of the Ford sedan in front of us and almost hitting a green Tudor Chevy that hit its brakes just in time.

"Wally?" I said, but Wally had passed out.

We were going fast on a busy city street. I didn't want to know how fast. Phil wasn't talking. He turned on the radio and Claude Thornhill's record of "Where Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone?" blared out. Five minutes earlier, music had driven him over the edge. Now he was fueled by it. All bad signs. I shut up and sat on Wally Hospodar on the floor of the back seat.

"That was Spelling," I said over the music.

Phil didn't answer.

"I think he's the son of the guy who died," I went on. "I wonder why he wanted to kill Wally?"

Phil laughed.

"I saw him coming in the rearview," shouted Phil. "You dumb shit. He was after you."

"Right," I said. "Can't you go any faster?"

He tried. Through lights and past scurrying pedestrians. Across a sidewalk or two and through narrow alleys. Phil could have called for help on his radio, but he sang along with the music and hit the floorboard, which would have troubled me less if my brother hadn't been singing between his teeth in German.

"Zu Lauterbach hub ich mein Strump verloren," Phil sang. "That's the way the huns sang it."

Spelling went out of control near the park. His car went into a spin, bounced off a lamp post, and almost rolled over. Phil hit the brake and skidded to a stop next to a fire hydrant upon which a man in a Panama hat was tying his shoe. When we came out of the three-door car, the man in the Panama was shaking and Spelling was out of his car and on his way. He could run. I couldn't and neither could Phil. Not like that. Even when we were kids.

"Get back in the car," Phil shouted.

I got back in, knowing we weren't going to catch him now. We'd circle the park, but Spelling would go out wherever he wanted, maybe even double back. Phil knew it too, but he wouldn't admit it even to himself.

We went around the park, watching for a sign of Spelling. Nothing. We went around again and then tried streets off of the park. Some of them three times.

Suddenly, Phil turned off the radio and parked next to the Tail of the Pup hot-dog stand. Normally, Phil was a sucker for their kosher dogs. He pounded on the steering wheel with his fists for about a minute and then said, "You want a burger?"

"Hot dog, if it's a kosher," I said.

Nobody moved. Not Phil, who shut his eyes. Not me. Definitely not Wally Hospodar, who, for all I knew, was dead.

"What are we doing, Phil?" I finally asked.

"I'm meditating," he said calmly. "It doesn't do any goddamn good, but I'm meditating."

After three or four minutes, Phil took a deep breath, opened his eyes, and used his car radio to call for someone to come for Spelling's wrecked car.

"And I want Loring to go over it. No one else. Loring. You get that? Anyone touches anything on the car but Loring gets his lower lip ripped off."

Phil signed off, hung up the radio, and stared out of the front window.

I had some ideas, but I knew better than to say anything. A good sigh later, Phil said, "I'll put a man on Hospodar and one on Varaey," he said. "You?"

"Let's just catch him," I said.

"Just get me a double burger," Phil said, climbing out of the car.

"You want mustard, onion, and pickles?" I said, stepping out of the hole where there had recently been a door.

Phil nodded and reached for his wallet as we walked toward the Pup.

I stopped him with, "This one's on Clark Gable."

We had finished our sandwiches-mine was a Colossal dog with coleslaw instead of kraut-before we discovered that Wally Hospodar was dead.

Actually, I discovered that Wally was dead when I offered him the regular dog with chili and he fell on his face.

There was a hole in his back, a thin hole. My guess was that he was passed out when he died. Phil was sitting in the driver's seat when I told him Wally was dead. Phil snatched the chili dog out of my hand and downed it in three angry bites.

"How could Spelling get back to the car before us when we were on his damn ass?" Phil sputtered through a mouthful of mustard and bun.

"I don't know, Phil," I said, still standing outside the car next to him and watching the traffic flow by.

"And how the hell do I explain stopping for lunch with a corpse in the back seat, a dead man killed in my own car?"

"I don't know, Phil."

"Damn," Phil said, hitting the steering wheel. "Get hi."

"I think I'll…"

"Get the hell in the car," Phil said, tearing at his tie.

I got in.