I put the coffee pot back in the cardboard box under my desk, pulled the box out. and carried it into Shelly s office. He was settled in his chair, the LA. Times covering his face.
“Where the hell is Madagascar?” he said from behind the open paper. A puff of smoke popped over the back page.
“A French island, I think. Somewhere near Africa.” I said, walking toward him slowly.
“British occupied it over the weekend,” he said. “About time our side occupied something instead of moving out of somewhere.”
Shelly was still behind his newspaper as he flipped the pages.
“Mildred and I didn’t get away over the weekend,” he said. “We were in here cleaning up, but I think we’ll take in The Man Who Came to Dinner over at the Bliss-Hayden Theater. You know, a reward for passing the inspection. Right here Katherine Van Blau says Doris Day as Maggie the secretary ‘proved herself to be an actress of scope and fine sincerity.’ You think that’s the same Doris Day who stole Cal Applebaum’s mother’s candleholders? Couldn’t be. She wouldn’t come back here with the same-”
I dropped the carton on the floor and cut off Shelly’s babbling. The newspaper came down and Shelly’s eyes focused on the floor as an ash fell on his recently washed white jacket.
“What the hell?” he said. “Toby. I can’t have that stuff in here with the inspection.”
“Find another place for it Take it home. Put it in the trunk of your car. Put it out in the hall. Someone will steal it within five minutes. I don’t care where you put it, but not in my office.”
“You don’t plan on cooperating with me on this crisis, do you?” he said, nodding his head knowingly, a man who finally recognizes betrayal.
“You’re beginning to understand that, are you?”
“All right. All right. Just leave it there. I’ll take care of it,” he said, looking down at the carton. “Just go on with whatever you were doing. It doesn’t matter that I might lose my license, that I might not be able to help all those people out there who rely on me.”
“Like Steve Seidman,” I said. “You could at least go see him in the hospital or call.”
“Me?” Shelly said, putting his newspaper aside and pointing to his chest. “I didn’t do anything to him. If he has an infection or something, it’s because …”
“Good-bye Shel,” I said sweetly and left the office.
I had a hard time finding Jeremy. He wasn’t in his office. He wasn’t in the elevator recleaning the mirror. He wasn’t Lysoling the stairs or polishing the name plates in the lobby. I went back up to Alice Palice’s “suite” and found him there. Alice’s suite consisted of much the same space Shelly occupied two floors above. In the center of the main room was a large oak dining room table. On the table was Alice’s printing press. Surrounding the printing press were cans of ink, towels, and stacks of paper. In fact the room was a mess filled with paper and books. It looked like moving day on the Island of Yap just before the invasion. The smell of ink hit hard and not unpleasantly. Jeremy was standing and shaking his head over something he was reading, which had probably been printed on the press.
“Toby,” he said, “one should be careful about one’s promises. I told Alice I would keep an eye on things for her, she is expecting a delivery. She and Miss Poslik have gone downtown to a sale at Bullocks. They are getting along very well.” He put the printed material down and looked around the room. “I would be very willing to put all this in order, but Alice and I have an agreement.”
“Think you could close up shop and keep me company while I keep an eye on the guy who I think has the dog?” I said.
“You need company?”
“I may run into Bass,” I explained.
“Then it will be my pleasure to join you.”
We took my car, which proved to be a mistake. Since the passenger door wouldn’t open, Jeremy had to slide in on the driver’s side. It was a tight fit past the steering wheel and we almost had to give up. We didn’t think of what might happen getting out. Fifteen minutes later we were parked in front of Lyle’s building on Broadway. I left Jeremy and found by listening at the door that Lyle was still in his office. Then it was back downstairs and more waiting while Jeremy tried to educate me with poetry and a lecture on modern literature. At one point a guy who looked like an old George Brent came out of the shoe store we were parked in front of. He looked like he was going to tell us to move. Then he got close enough to see my face and Jeremy’s body and decided instead to pretend he was looking for stray customers.
Around noon, just when I was going to suggest that I pick up some sandwiches, Lyle came out of the front door of the building followed by Bass. I could feel Jeremy sitting up next to me. Lyle wore a thin coat, which he pulled around his neck. He looked up at the sky and saw a wave of clouds coming that I hadn’t paid attention to. Rain was on the way.
Lyle and Bass went down the street and I started the engine. They didn’t go far. They got in a big Chrysler parked near the corner. Lyle got in back. Bass drove. The New Whigs didn’t fool around with any of this equality stuff.
Following them was no problem. I was good at it and they didn’t know enough to even suspect that I might be there.
It was a long ride. We followed the Chrysler west to Sepulveda and then stayed safely behind as we took Sepulveda up through the hills into the valley past Tarzana. A turn on Reseda and in two more blocks, Bass and Lyle pulled into the small parking lot next to the Midlothian Theater, a small neighborhood cigar box.
I kept driving, made a turn in a driveway where a man in a baseball cap was watering his lawn, an effort that struck me as particularly dumb since Helen Keller could have told him that the rain would be coming down dark and heavy and not in minutes or hours. But the man didn’t seem to care. He nodded at us as I pulled out of his driveway, somewhat relieved, I think, that we weren’t coming to visit him, and went on with his watering.
We parked across from the Midlothian in front of a candy shop and watched Lyle and Bass as they were let into the theater. We already knew why we were there. The marquee read WHIG PARTY RALLY TODAY AT ONE. Then, below this sign in those little black letters was CELEBRITIES-CELEBRITIES-CELEBRITIES. The ts in the last two celebrities were red instead of black. Jeremy thought that was an interesting, eye-catching design concept that he might suggest to Alice for their book. I thought the kid who had put up the announcement had just run out of small black ts.
From where we sat we could see both the front entrance to the theater and Lyle’s car. For the next hour we talked about design graphics, oriental healing (which Jeremy was learning), and the people who straggled into the theater. We didn’t keep count but Jeremy, who was accustomed to gauging wrestling crowds, put the final total at forty-seven, mostly women. We also guessed that most of the crowd had been drawn by the promise of celebrities, none of whom I could identify going in. The most interesting attendee, as far as I was concerned, was Academy Dolmitz, who drove up a few minutes before one, parked in the gravel lot, and got into the theater as fast as he could, apparently hoping that no one would see him. Academy’s pride in his political party was touching. Then Jeremy thought he recognized Hugh Herbert. I said the guy didn’t look much like Herbert to me but maybe he was right.
At a minute or two after one, Lyle stuck his head out the door and looked both ways, either for the celebrities who hadn’t arrived or in the hope of grabbing unwary housewives from the street to fill a few seats. His scanning of the street brought him quickly to me. With Jeremy at my side there wasn’t any room to hide, so I threw a cool smile on my lips and looked straight back at the gleaming lenses of Lyle’s glassses. Lyle’s face went through a mess of emotions that would have been the envy of a starlet on her first screen test: surprise, curiosity, anger, mock confidence, smirk, shaken, superiority, and controlled but quivering anger. Then he pulled his head back in. It was replaced about a minute later by the bulk of Bass, who found us and began to cross the street, ignoring an Olds driven by a guy in overalls who almost ran him down.