“You know who your murderer is?” Gunther asked politely, taking a small forkful of egg.
“Right,” I said, chewing. “Now all I need is some evidence.”
“Or a confession from the culprit? Is that an archaic word, ‘culprit’?”
“It isn’t used much in my circles,” I said, finishing the sandwich.
I borrowed a couple of nickels from Gunther, got dressed, and called the murderer.
CHAPTER NINE
If you want to put things on an epic scale, fate intervened and stayed the course of the schedule I had set for the next few hours. If you want to put things in perspective, you simply say I had a flat tire, which is about ten minutes’ work, since I had a spare. That is, it’s ten minutes’ work if you have a tire iron, which I did not. Mine was in the kitchen of an apartment in Culver City.
Mrs. Plaut had a car, a 1927 Ford that had remained untouched in her garage since 1928, the year Mr. Plaut died. I knew she had some tools in the garage with the car, and I hurried to get the key.
“I wonder if I could borrow some tools,” I said after Mrs. Plaut opened her door and blessed me with a smile.
“They are, they are,” she said with a wise, sad shake of her head and started to close the door on me. I had to put out my hand to stop her.
“My car,” I shouted. “I need a tire iron.” I mimed the changing of a tire and held her attention. “Tire iron. Tools.”
“Fools?”
“Tools.”
“Tools,” she said finally in comprehension. “Out in the garage. I’ll get the key.”
Five minutes later I was changing the tire and trying not to get dirty. Time was shuffling away, singing a crazy old tune while I tried to catch up. The sun was still around when I finished and hurried in to wash my hands.
When I returned the keys to Mrs. Plaut, she took my sleeve and dragged me into her living room.
“You must listen to this part,” she said. Mrs. Plaut had been writing her family history for the last ten years. It was over 1200 pages long, and whenever she could trap me or Gunther, she read it to us. She was under the impression that I was a part-time writer. I never found out where she got this impression.
“Mrs. Plaut,” I said patiently, looking at my watch and getting pushed into her overstuffed chair. “I’ve got to go. It’s a matter of life and death.”
“Of course,” she said, finding the pages on her oak table. “Here it is.”
She showed me a page with an oblong box that looked like a coffin drawn on it.
“That’s California,” she explained.
“And those arrows pointing at it from each direction?” I asked.
“One on the left is England. Sir Francis Drake claimed California for Queen Elizabeth. One on top is Russia. They were after California. One on the right is France. They had the land the other side of the Rockies. The one below is Spain coming up from Mexico. Those poor damned Indians didn’t know what hit them.”
“But if this is your family history,” I asked reasonably, “why are you giving California’s…”
“Context,” she said with satisfaction. “Got to know what we came to. History of turmoil.”
“Terrific,” I said, getting up with difficulty and barely escaping the plate of cookies she held waist-high. “Leave it in my room. I’ll look at it when I get back.”
I went out the door and into the street without looking back. Seconds later, I was on my way to the St. Bartholomew Library. It was a few minutes after seven when I got there, and the same crust of a librarian watched my arrival with erect superiority. My footsteps echoed through St. Bart’s, and I wondered whether Clinton Hill was still burrowed below our feet in some dark clanking corner.
“Your name is not Chadwick,” the librarian said with lofty superiority. “And I do not believe you have academic credentials.”
“Right,” I said. “But it doesn’t matter if I’m Albert Einstein or St. Bartholomew; you’ve got my gun and I want it. Now.”
“I told you, we will not be…”
“I’ve got a flashlight,” I said. “And I’ll look for it myself.”
“As you wish,” he said uncomfortably. “You have twenty minutes and you must be quiet. And find it or not, I would like you to leave the library and never return. You can leave your real name and address, and we will return your firearm to you if you do not locate it.” “Fair is fair,” I said, heading for the spiral staircase.
A girl with short hair and glasses at one of the tables looked up at me from a thick book as I passed. Her hand was in her hair, and she looked as if the very binding of the book confused her.
On the second level down, I pulled the flashlight from my back pocket and found a ladder leading into the pitch blackness below. I started down and got about ten feet when I heard a sound above me and I looked up. I could make out an outline. Then the outline laughed, a laugh that shook the ladder.
“Hill?” I said.
“It’s not there,” he said. “Your gun’s not there. I’ve got it. See?”
I turned the flashlight up and saw my gun staring down at me.
“Thanks,” I said, climbing back upward and trying to ignore the fact that he wasn’t holding it in a way that looked like the offer of a friend.
“You almost got me fired,” he said, still pointing the gun down at me.
“I didn’t tell that guy to jump me here,” I said, taking another rung up. “Put the gun down. What are you going to do? Shoot me for almost losing you your job? You want to lose your job, just go around shooting people.”
He backed away slightly, and I came up over the railing very slowly.
“You’ve told the Dark Knights about me, haven’t you?” he said, still pointing the gun in my direction.
“No, and I don’t plan to,” I said. “The fastest way out of the Dark Knights is to shoot me.”
“You’d tumble over the rail and go into the darkness,” he mused. “I could hide you.”
I counted on Wilson Wong’s assessment of Clinton Hill and took another step forward.
“Your hand is shaking, for Chrissake,” I said. “Clinton, you aren’t going to shoot anyone but yourself. You’ll blast your foot off.”
He handed me the gun meekly and laughed again.
“Would that I were made of sterner stuff,” he sighed.
“Would that you were,” I said, checking to be sure the gun was still loaded and working. As far as I could tell, it was. “Why not get out in the sun for a while?”
“The sun,” he said hoarsely, “can kill you.”
“You’re not a vampire,” I reminded him. “I know,” he said, “but I am human. The sun can give you cancer of the skin.”
“You’re a hell of a conversationalist, Clinton,” I said, pocketing the gun.
“You’re really not going to tell them?” he asked softly.
“Cross my heart and hope to die,” I said and started upward.
The librarian with the tight collar was waiting for me at the top of the staircase.
“You made noise again,” he observed.
“Right,” I said. “I found the Frankenstein monster under all those papers and it gave me quite a start.”
“I do not find your attempts at levity amusing,” the librarian said, following me to the door and looking for bulges in case I had heisted a rare third edition of the Gutenberg Bible.
“Sorry,” I said, “I do better when I’m not worried about getting killed.”
The librarian could make nothing of me and went back to his counter, while I hurried to my car. The radio told me MacArthur was making a desperate stand on Bataan, Roosevelt was calling for a $59 billion war budget, and Mickey Rooney and Ava Gardner had been married. I turned off the news and listened to Eddie Cantor till I got to Levy’s restaurant on Sprina. Carmen was there behind the cash register, explaining a check to a couple. The man couldn’t understand why he was being charged for the barley soup, which he thought came with the meal. Carmen patiently explained that the soup was extra. He raved a while longer, and she gave me a resigned shrug and then repeated her explanation.