I came in and Shelly came hurtling at me from a corner, one hand holding his glasses on, the other out like a stiff-arming half-back. He missed me by a good two feet and tumbled into an open closet filled with Vera’s costumes.
Vera gasped.
“Shelly,” I said, helping him up. “What the hell are you doing?”
“We heard a voice,” Vera said. She was standing next to her dressing table.
“A voice,” Shelly agreed. “Man. Right out of the wall.”
“He said,” Vera began, and then shuddered. “He said, ‘She will die before she sings for the Lion. I will strike within the hour.’”
“I’ve been hiding behind the door,” said Shelly, on his feet now.
“He plans to kill me,” said Vera, her eyes wide.
I moved to comfort her. She felt warm and smelled great.
“I don’t think he meant you,” I said. “I think he meant Lorna. I think he meant he would get her before she sings to me.”
“You?” There was disbelief in her voice.
“You’re no lion,” said Shelly. “Besides, he’s nuts. Why would he tell us he was going to kill Lorna what’s-her-name? What lion?”
“My middle name is Leo,” I said.
“Pretty flimsy,” said Shelly, finding a piece of cigar in his pocket and lighting it.
I gave the note from Lorna to Vera.
“Call the police. Those two cops who were here, Preston and Nighttime …”
“… Sunset,” she corrected.
“Call them and send them to Lorna’s. I’ll meet them there.”
I didn’t think about it. I just gave Vera a kiss. It seemed the right thing to do and the right time to do it. She kissed back. Middle of Act Two. Knight off to war-Wish me luck, babe. And I was off.
Gunther wasn’t in the lobby. I ran out into the street, not knowing where I was going. The ancient pickets, about a dozen of them, were there, and in their midst, in a white suit that outdid the sunshine, was the Reverend Adam Souvaine. He looked up at me as I came down the steps and barely flinched. He kept talking. I skipped past a woman in overalls who was plastering a top step and went down two by two, heading for my Crosley.
Souvaine popped out of the crowd and beat me to my car.
“Did you see Deacon Ortiz within?” he asked softly.
“We had a nice chat,” I said. “Step out of the way.”
“We have decided to forgive you for your un-Christian behavior of last night” Souvaine said, brushing back his stately white mane and waving to his seniors a few dozen yards away.
“Deacon Ortiz was very forgiving,” I said, “but he was so elated at my sudden conversion that he fell over a lion.”
“Cryptic,” said Souvaine. “You have a gift for the parable.”
“Get your ass away from my car or you’re dog meat,” I snarled, reaching for the handle.
Souvaine smiled sweetly, put his hands up, and moved away from the Crosley.
“I’m sure that if you let yourself listen to us, you’d find our cause just,” he said. “Let me help you. Let us help you.”
“Okay,” I said, getting into the Crosley and opening the window. “How do I get to Las Lindas Road?”
“You are within a mile of it,” he said with a put-upon smile. “Back that way three blocks and then right for another four or five blocks.”
“Thanks,” I said, turning the ignition key. “You don’t seem particularly concerned about Deacon Ortiz and the lion.”
“The Lord will do what the Lord will do,” he said.
As I turned the car around, I heard the wail of an ambulance heading toward the Opera.
9
I picked up an armed forces relay of one of last summer’s Yankees-White Sox games on the radio. I didn’t remember the game. I urged the Crosley forward and tried not to think. DiMaggio hit a double to drive in two runs in the eighth, and the announcer was going wild.
I got lost, or the Reverend Souvaine had given me bum directions.
I drove through streets that smelled of bodies, gasoline, and Mexican food. If your nose was good, you could also smell the grease of frying kielbasa. The smell seemed right for the people of the street, mostly dark-skinned and Latin but with a few older, round pink-white faces and heavy bodies. I passed stores with signs in Polish, including Slotvony’s Meat Shop, which sported a white sign in crayon announcing that blood soup was on sale today.
Finally, I blundered onto Las Lindas, spotted the address, and was looking for a place to park when a figure staggered out in front of my Crosley. I was going slow, the car was small, and his brain was parked on another planet or he would have been dead when I hit him. I pulled in next to a fire plug, pulled my.38 out of the glove compartment, stuck it in my pocket, got out, and moved over to the guy I had hit.
“You okay?” I asked, helping him up.
He smelled fragrant, but he was thin and easy to lift.
“I’m disoriented,” the guy said.
“I know how you feel,” I said, fishing into my pocket, one-handing my wallet and pulling out a bill. It was a five. What the hell. I put it into his hand.
“Been disoriented since ’36,” the street guy said. “How long is that?”
“Six years,” I said.
The guy shook his head and reached down for a frayed blue shoulder bag.
“I’m straight on the time of day,” he said, his hands still trembling. “But damned if I can get the years straight. You gave me a bill?”
“A five,” I said.
“You don’t look so good yourself,” he said, trying to focus on me.
Somewhere down the alley some kids laughed, not at us but at some joke behind a fence.
“Deacon Ortiz tried to kill me,” I said.
“Never trust the church,” he said, sitting on the curb and looking at the five-dollar bill.
“Sure you’re okay?” I asked.
“I’m alive,” the guy said. “And I’ve got five bucks. Sometimes when you don’t expect it, life is good for a few hours.”
“Amen,” I said.
“Wait” he said as I turned to walk toward Lorna’s address. “I know you.”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“Your name’s Peters,” he said. “Before I lost touch, I worked at Santiago’s gas station in Encino.”
“Farkas?” I asked. “I was thinking about you the other day.”
“Small world,” he said, looking up at the sky. “Few minutes ago I see Samson and now you. Remember Santiago?”
I remembered him but I didn’t want to think about it now. I’d picked up a few dollars riding shotgun at Santiago’s Shell Station in Encino. Things were relatively quiet on the ten-to-midnight shift one night. A fat couple walking down the street pushing a grocery cart they’d stolen from Ralph’s started to fight about who-knows-what. I watched them as I sat sipping Pepsi on a rickety lawn chair in front of Santiago’s station, listening to “Amos ‘n’ Andy” on the radio while a wiry ex-con named Snick Farkas pumped gas. Farkas was the guy who loved classical music. Said he’d memorized twenty operas in prison. Volunteered to sing them to anyone who would listen. No one would listen.
Santiago, who was over seventy and had a bad leg, had once taken a few shots at a kid who had pulled the gas-stealing trick twice. The shots had taken out windows in the stores across the street and almost hit an alderman named Blankenship, who was walking down the street with a woman he later claimed was his cousin but who everyone knew was a prostitute from San Diego. Santiago decided to call it quits, but his brother, a junior partner in the station, had talked him into trying again. Santiago had grumbled but decided to make the final try.
But things got worse. There was an increase in hold-ups of the station by frustrated kids, pre-Zoot-suiters who counted on free gas from Santiago. There had been four hold-ups in one month, all on the night shift when Santiago wasn’t there. That was when I had been hired.
The first week I was on the job Santiago insisted on hiding inside the station with his shotgun. He looked like a grizzled Mexican Gabby Hayes, right down to the game leg. His greasy Shell baseball cap cut into the illusion but didn’t kill it. Farkas pumped gas, his hooded eyes revealing nothing. I sat in the lawn chair, wearing my.38 and a gray sweatshirt over my not-so-good jeans.