I stopped, waiting for Phil to rush at me and lay me out with a right to whatever part of my body least expected it. He did move toward me quickly, but there was no punch. I must have looked great.
“What the hell happened to you?” he hissed between his teeth.
“I got fresh with Joan Crawford,” I said, and fell forward in his arms.
I didn’t quite go all the way out this time. Events took place over and around me in a kind of soup as the sun rose. Officer Rashkow appeared from nowhere, and Phil told him to get an ambulance. Seidman was told to try to figure out where I had come from. Phil picked me up and brought me somewhere, but I couldn’t make it out. Then Judy Garland’s face appeared above me.
“Mr. Peters? Oh, Mr. Peters, are you all right? Will he be all right?” She sounded scared and concerned and I wanted to reassure her, but I couldn’t talk.
Then I felt myself lifted and traveling. There were sirens, and I wished they would shut up so I could rest.
When I opened my eyes again, the sun was bright above me, but it wasn’t the sun, it was the ceiling light in an emergency room. The face above me was familiar. It belonged to a kid named Dr. Parry who had fished that bullet out of me not long ago. He was dressed in white and had blonde hair and glasses. He was sewing my scalp.
“You are a stupid man, Peters,” he said, sewing away. “Your head is a battleground of contusions and fractures. The human body is not built to take this abuse. That head’s going to come open like an egg one of these times.”
“How bad is it?” I asked.
Neither he nor I could make out what I said. I tried again slowly. “How bad?”
“Concussion, hairline fracture, fifteen stitches,” he said. “Maybe sixteen.”
A nurse stood next to him and said nothing. She reminded me of my father’s favorite reading lamp-tall, thin, and white.
When he’d finished, they helped me up. My jacket was gone, and my shirt was bloody.
“You’ll live again,” said Parry, cleaning his hands in a sink. “You think you can tolerate our company long enough to spend a day here while we watch you for any little problems like brain damage?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. I was placed in a wheelchair, and the nurse built like a lamp wheeled me into the hall. Phil was standing there with his arms folded and displeasure on his face. I closed my eyes in agony.
A guy with a Southern accent x-rayed my head none-too-gently while chewing gum. The nurse wheeled me back down the hall past Phil. Doc Parry checked me out and asked me to do some tough things like following his finger with my eyes and telling him my name and address. I passed the test.
“You are a mass of scar tissue shaped like a man,” he said, “but you’re probably all right.” He nodded and the frail nurse wheeled me back in the hall. Phil followed us down a corridor and into an elevator. No one spoke. We went up to a room and the nurse helped me into a gown. Her touch did nothing for me, and I apparently did nothing for her.
“You want these kept?” she said, holding my bloody clothes up for me to see.
I said no and laid back on the bed. As soon as my stitched head hit the pillow I shot up in pain. Phil was leaning against the window.
“We found Grundy,” he said. I turned on my stomach and groaned. “You’re doing great, Toby. We’ve got you for two murders, Peese and Grundy. Your prints are on the knife, aren’t they?”
“You tell me,” I said.
“I’m telling you. You’ve done some stupid things in your life, but yesterday may mark your all-time high. I told you to come to my office, and you went after Grundy. What happened? He push you around, and you stabbed him in self-defense?”
“No,” I said. “I went out when he cracked my head. When I woke up, he was sitting in front of me with a knife in him, just like Cash, the one on the Yellow Brick Road. That suggest anything to you, like the same murderer?”
“I thought you said Grundy threw Peese out the window?”
“Right,” I said. “It had something to do with pornographic movies Grundy was making with midgets. He was stealing footage from M.G.M. and… Did you find that roll of film?”
“Toby, Toby,” he said moving toward me, “there was no roll of film. The main witness we had against the little Nazi…”
“He’s Swiss…”
“… is dead,” continued Phil. “The best alternate suspect, Peese, is dead. You were with both of them before they died. You argued with both of them. You are up to your ass in trouble.”
“Search Grundy’s place,” I said. “Maybe you’ll find some names, numbers.”
“Anything worth getting, you’ve got,” said Phil. “You went over that place fast and messy.”
“You mean someone went through Grundy’s things?”
“You know it, Toby.”
Phil put his hand on my leg and started to squeeze. The nurse came in.
“I’d like some rest now,” I said.
“I’ll see you a little later, Toby,” Phil said, pushing past the nurse.
“That’s my brother,” I told her. She didn’t look impressed.
In the hall I could hear Phil asking the nurse when she came out how long I’d be laid up. She said I wouldn’t be able to move for a day at least.
There was a phone next to the bed. I called Shelly Minck, told him to get to my place, get my last suit, put it in a bag, and come to the hospital. I also told him to pick up a clean white smock, and come up to my room. If anyone asked him, I said, he should identify himself as Dr. Minck.
“That’s who I am,” he said.
“Then you won’t be lying,” I answered and hung up.
The nurse came in with a pill and a newspaper for me. I pretended to take the pill, and I took the paper. It told me that 50,000,000 people were expected to vote today. It told me that the first election results were from Sharon, New Hampshire, where Willkie had taken the lead 24-7. On the next page, a Japanese Ambassador named Yoshiaki Muira from Japan said the United States and his country would not fight over China.
It took Shelly over two hours to get to the hospital. He hadn’t changed into a clean smock, and he came in waving his cigar. The important thing was that he came in and he had a small black suitcase with him.
The room bounced me around while I dressed, and Shelly kept talking about root canals. I almost threw up, but managed to keep it down.
“See if you can get a wheelchair,” I said.
I sat on the edge of the bed waiting for the nausea to pass while Shelly was gone. He came back with a chair, and I climbed in. He pushed me into the hall and down the corridor, talking all the time about tooth decay. I hoped no one stopped to listen to him. We made it out of the hospital with no problems, and Shelly helped me to his car. I didn’t know where mine was. My gun was either in the trunk or Phil had it, unless the killer had gone through the trouble of getting my keys when I was out, then getting the gun and putting the keys back. I doubted it, but what the hell did I know.
Shelly drove around, squinting through his glasses, while I tried to think. His driving was a series of near misses which he didn’t seem to notice. It was hard to think.
Somewhere about 8000 on Sunset he pulled to the curb. His Ford was a ’37 in only slightly better shape than my Buick. I took one of the pain pills Shelly gave me and watched while he bought a map to the stars’ homes. The seller was a guy sitting under a big umbrella. He rocked back and forth on a wicker rocker and had his feet up on a chair whose back had been sawed off. He was in no hurry. He might not be making much money, but no one was trying to kill him. I thought about asking him for a job. I’d take the chair without a back.
Shelly drove on looking for Jack Benny’s house. Somewhere beneath the stitches my brain was working. An idea was coming.