I walked right up to him, violating his space as much as I could without having to actually smell his hair tonic.
“We going to have a shootout in the hall?” I said.
He snickered, maybe on the verge of breaking.
“No one gets away with what you did to me, Peters,” he said through closed teeth. “Brother or no brother, I’m going to be on your back. You made yourself a bad enemy.”
“Are there good ones?” I asked.
“Some time. Some place,” he said, touching my chest with his finger, “you’re going to have to even up with me.”
“Look,” I said, pulling out my notebook, “just give me your name and address and I’ll put you on my mailing list. All my enemies are on it. I have a newsletter with the latest information about my injuries, personal life, the works.”
He knocked the notebook out of my hand, and I threw a right into his stomach as hard as I could. I could have delivered a harder blow if I were a foot farther back, but it did just fine. He went against the lobby wall.
I thought he might go for his gun, but he came up with a mad smile.
“Assaulting an officer,” he gasped.
I looked into a dark corner for my notebook and saw it coming at me in the hand of Jeremy Butler.
“No one hit you,” Butler said to Cawelti. “I’ve been standing there cleaning up. You fell.”
Cawelti faced us, his eyes darting from one to the other. “I…” he started, and then without another word he turned and went through the door.
“He has the persona of a victim,” Butler said, his hands on his massive hips, “and the ego of a spoiled child. A poor psychological combination.”
“He’s a cop,” I explained.
Butler nodded, turned, and disappeared into the gray of the building to continue his attack on decay and dirt. I, in turn, went out into the late afternoon, saw no Cawelti, and drove to Griffith Park to watch a couple of sailors who looked like they were twelve feeding a camel peanuts. For part of a second I considered the possibility of lining up behind Tony Zale, Hank Greenberg, and Tony Martin and joining the Army or Navy, but I was too old and too torn up and the feeling passed.
I found a theater in Hollywood that had The Maltese Falcon, which I had seen three times. I sat through it a fourth time, which made me feel better. By the time I got out, it was almost dark. I headed home to get some rest before I had to pick up Carmen.
Parking was bad. Someone was blaring a radio, and people were laughing. It was a party and I wasn’t invited. When I found a place in the alley where I stood a fifty-fifty chance of getting a ticket, I looked up at Mrs. Plaut’s boarding house. The light in my room was on. It could have been Gunther waiting for me over a cup of tea or Mrs. Plaut anxious for my literary comments on her massive tome. It could have been Cawelti bent on vengeance or my former wife Anne ready to give up her life of sanity. But it was none of the above. I leaned against my speckled fender and looked up at the window. A figure passed in front and out of sight and then it returned. It paused in the window, looking down. Our eyes met. It was Bedelia Sue Frye in her vampire character.
I considered the possibilities and options, weighed the rewards and pain, and waved up at her before climbing back into the car. She watched as I pulled out and drove away. I can take a lot of punishment, but the dark side of Bedelia Sue Frye was a consummation I could do without.
It wouldn’t be the first time I had spent a night in Shelly’s dental chair. It probably wouldn’t be the last either. If I could crank it back past the rusty point, it would go almost horizontal. Of course there was always the chance Carmen would let me stay with her, but it had never happened, and I didn’t expect it. I took off my jacket, brushed my teeth with the spare frayed brush in my drawer, and shaved, deciding to deal with the daytime Bedelia the next day.
The envelopes of junk mail tumbled from my pocket, and I picked them up. The flap on one of them came open, and I could see a handwritten note on it in Jeremy’s fine hand. I scratched my smooth face, let out a yawn loud enough to shake Hoover Avenue, and read the message. There was a phone number and the following:
“Call Gary Cooper. Urgent.”
I tucked the envelope back in my jacket, crawled into the dental chair, adjusted my back so I wouldn’t lie on the sore spot, and fell asleep to the lullaby of traffic, battles, and dead dreams that floated up from Hoover Street, penetrated the walls, and surrounded me with a familiar blanket.