“O.K.,” Phil sighed. “Woman named Delores Grayson says you drove out to Plaza Del Lago yesterday looking for her father. She tried to keep you from seeing him, but you got away from her in her kitchen and went looking for him. She was scared but followed up a few seconds later. She found you in the old man’s bedroom. The guy was dead and you were ready to clobber her with a radio. You forced her into the living room, made her sit, and you ran for the door and beat it. How does that sound to you?”
“Like Hansel and Gretel,” I said. “Her name isn’t Grayson. It’s Ressner. I was looking for her father, her real father, Jeffrey Ressner, the guy I think tried to put the hand on our friend Mae West. He was in the house. She tried to keep me from seeing him. When I got to the bedroom, Grayson was already skewered. I told Delores to call the cops, and I went for Ressner, who pulled out in a Packard, California 1942 license plate thirty-four fifty-seven. I went after him till my car died. Hell, it committed suicide. Delores Ressner is trying to protect her nut father.”
“You didn’t see Ressner kill Grayson?” Phil said, reaching up to his neck to loosen his tie, but it was already loose and hanging around his shoulders.
“I didn’t even see Ressner clearly when he took off in the Packard,” I said.
“The Packard belongs to the Graysons,” he said. “It’s missing. I’ll get the state police to talk to Delores. This isn’t my case, Toby. It’s the state police. I’ll put them off a day or two if they can’t break Delores, but then you’ll have to talk to them. You think he’ll go for Mae?”
“He’s a wacko, Phil. I don’t know what he’ll do, but I’ll get on it. Can you put anyone on her to be sure?”
“Out of my district if she stays at the ranch. And I just don’t have the reasons.”
“Maybe I can get Jeremy to be a houseguest at the ranch till I track Ressner down,” I said.
Phil looked down and nodded.
“Hell, Phil, this is damned depressing. It’s like Thanksgiving when we were kids and you and I would declare a truce long enough to go for the turkey wishbone. I’d wish for a Tris Speaker glove or a million bucks.”
“And I’d wish to be a cop,” he said.
We sat silently in the room for about two minutes listening to the chicken yard outside the thin wooden partition. I was trying to think of an insult to get Phil going again when Seidman pushed open the door without knocking.
“Veldu’s prisoner just had an accident,” he said evenly. “Fell down in the interrogation room. He’s out. Doesn’t look so good.”
“Coming,” said Phil, pushing back from the desk. “Call the hospital. Have them send an ambulance just in case.”
“Already did,” Seidman said, closing the door.
Phil eased his cop’s gut around the desk and took one lumbering step to the door. I got up behind him.
“Phil,” I whispered. “Face it. You’re getting too old for this stuff.”
His elbow shot back and caught me in the stomach, taking my wind with a gasp. He grabbed me by the neck before I sunk to the floor and pulled our faces even closer together than Veldu and the kid had been.
“Listen, brother of mine,” he hissed. I could smell the morning coffee on his breath, see life coming to his eyes. “There’s a line you don’t go over. Never. You just put your foot on it. Now back away.” He shook me a little and stood me up. “You’ve got two days. That’s all I can hold the state cops for. Then they get your hind end.”
He let me go and I took one step backward, pulling in air and holding the wall to keep from falling. Seidman stepped back in and looked at me.
“You all right?” he said.
“Couldn’t be better,” I gasped.
“You woke him up,” Seidman said, nodding his head toward where my brother had departed.
“It’s surprising what you can accomplish with a little brotherly love and battery acid on your tongue,” I sputtered, holding my stomach.
Seidman hurried off, and I staggered to the door and out. The walk through the squad room was long. I didn’t want to hold my stomach, and I didn’t feel like getting into a conversation about sugar rationing.
I put one hand on a desk to steady myself before making the last half-dozen steps to the door. It turned out to be Cawelti’s always neat and polished desk, and his thin voice whispered in my ear, “Get your fingers off my desk or you’re going to be a one-handed typist.”
I got my fingers off, looked at him, crossed my eyes, and gave him a Harpo Marx gookie face. Cawelti’s face turned bright red, the red in a ripe sugar beet or a Walt Disney cartoon. His holster bounced with the rapid beating of his heart as he stood up.
The two women, one with the black eye and the other with the ear bandage, paused with the wino to look at us. I turned my back and walked to the door, expecting a bullet, another dent in my skull, or teeth in my neck.
“It’s coming to you soon, Peters,” Cawelti said.
“I understand your draft notice is in the mail, John,” I said, opening the door. “We’ll all miss you.” And out I went.
It had, so far, been one beautiful morning and the day had just begun. When I got down to the desk, Coronet was talking to the sailor, who was now awake.
“I ought to know Jean Harlow when I see her,” the kid said. “I seen all her pictures.”
“Dead is dead,” said Coronet reasonably between chews of his gum. “I tell you the whole ambience is out of touch, son.”
I handed the kid the stick of Dentyne that Coronet had given me earlier. He looked at me suspiciously, took the gum, and said thanks.
The rain had stopped but it was coming back soon. I found a nearby drugstore open, sat at the counter, and had spaghetti Milanese and a Spur cola for twenty cents. It was early for lunch, but my stomach needed settling and my mind needed stimulation.
The waitress, who was listening to Walter Winchell on the radio, paused long enough to give me change for some phone calls and I went to work.
The first call was to Mae West.
Dizzy or Daffy answered the phone and got Mae West on a few seconds later. She breathed deeply two or three times before panting “Hel-lo Peters. What can I do for you or vice versa?”
“You can stay home for a few days and let that friend of mine, Jeremy, keep you company till we track down this Ressner. He’s getting a bit unruly.”
“Jeremy that big, big fella?” she asked.
“The same.”
“I’d love to spend a day or two discussing the finer things in life with him. Send him down with a change of pajamas and a bad book. I’m going through a bit of divorce and can use the company of an intellec-tual.”
“I’ll tell him.”
“Be careful.”
“I try to be,” I said, fidgeting for coins for my next call.
“I doubt it,” she said and hung up.
I reached Jeremy in his apartment, the only apartment in the Farraday Building. He didn’t like to leave the place even on Sunday. He had been working on some poems for his forthcoming anthology, an anthology that he decided to publish himself using Alice Palice’s portable printing press, for which Alice would receive a month’s free rent. He quickly agreed to spend a few days guarding Mae West, however.
“I think Alice has a yen for you, Jeremy,” I said, counting my remaining coins.
“She is not without charm,” he said. “That is a woman who never dissembles.”
“And Mae West?”
“There is an art to dissembling that she has mastered,” he said seriously. “I’ve just reworked one of the last poems for the collection. Would you like to hear it?”
“Sure,” I said, standing in a Rexall drugstore, my sore stomach full of spaghetti Milanese and worrying about an escaped lunatic. I really did want to hear it, though I never understood Jeremy’s poems. There was something soothing in them, like a lullaby.
“When the red slayer coughed,
I laughed
and warned him that the night air
was not his lair.
His yellow fire eyes met mine
and gave a sign
that told me I knew not what subtle ways