There are four things I can do when my back goes out. Any one of them has a fifty-fifty chance of helping. I can take a handful of pills Shelly supplied me with about a year ago. But that makes me sleep. I can have Jeremy put his knee in my back. But that hurts. I can sit on the floor, close my eyes, and visualize my pain floating away. Gunther's contribution. But that takes too long. Or I can go see Doc Hodgdon, the orthopedic surgeon who beat me almost every time we played handball at the Y on Hope Street. Doc is pushing seventy and he favors heat, massage, concentration, and pain pills. But Doc Hodgdon was visiting one of his sons back east.
One of the great and terrible things about living alone is that you can groan as much as you want in the shower without worrying about who it might worry. I tried to let that thought carry me past a sudden wave of Anne-itis, a wave that included a glimpse of Attorney Martin Lieb, who deserved to be disbarred for alienation of something.
After ten minutes, I turned off the shower and found that I could walk, not the way I had the night before, but movement was possible. I was struggling into my shorts when the doorbell rang. I considered ignoring it. It rang. And it kept ringing. I ached my way back to the bedroom, forced my legs into my wrinkled pants, and headed for the door, which was four or five miles away.
The doorbell stopped ringing, but I kept moving.
To the extent that I figured at all, I figured that it was Jeremy coming to show the apartment but unable to get hi because I had the key. Or it was a would-be renter. Or it was a plumber, painter, steam fitter, carpet cleaner, carpenter, or lost woodpecker. I opened the door. Spelling was standing there in a blue mechanic's uniform carrying a large gun in his right hand.
"I'm not dressed yet," I said. "If you can come back hi about ten minutes…"
Spelling looked over his shoulder into the courtyard. There was no one in sight. He motioned me back with his gun and I stepped back as he came in and kicked the door shut.
"How long have you been at this?" he asked. — "This?"
"The detective business," he said. "Twenty years? More? And you can't tell when someone is following you? You're in the wrong career."
"A little late for me to change," I said. "Mind if I put my shirt on."
"Go ahead," he said, looking around the room.
I put on my shirt and considered my options. There weren't many. My back was bad. My gun was in the glove compartment of the Crosley. I had to resort to persuasion.
"Have you figured anything out yet?" he asked, sitting on the edge of the bed. "My clues weren't very subtle."
"We've got some ideas," I said.
"You picked up three tuxedos at some place called Hy's for Him. And you went to see a lady who didn't want to see you. I'll give you one thing. You didn't look sorry for yourself."
My shirt was a little fragrant from a day of wear and a night draped over a chair, but I didn't think it mattered.
"It gets worse," I said. "My back went out this morning."
"Lower, upper?" Spelling asked.
"Lower."
"Turn around. I know a way to end your pain."
"I can live with it," I said.
"Turn," he ordered.
I turned.
"Take it easy," he said softly. "Easy."
I felt the steel of the gun against my shoulder and two hands digging into my shoulders. Then something drove into my lower back and I thought I'd been done in by a silencer. I doubled forward on the floor, feeling sick to my stomach.
"Don't go into a ball," Spelling ordered. "Stay loose.
"I'm loose," I groaned. "I'm loose."
"You and your friends are going formal tonight, right? Any place I might know?"
"No," I said. "Birthday. My brother's."
"In soup and fish?"
"His fiftieth," I said. "Big cele…"
"Shut up."
I shut up and rolled to a semisitting position with my elbows on the floor.
"You can't stop me, Peters," he said, pointing the gun at my face. "They killed my father and then they went on with their lives, just did what they wanted. Until I showed up and killed them."
"Not all of them," I said.
"Not yet," he said. "Stand up."
I stood, using the bed for support.
"Now twist around on your waist. Don't turn the shoulders."
I did it.
"How's it feel?" he asked.
"Not bad," I said.
"Good," said Spelling. "I want you alive and well when I kill you."
"I appreciate that," I said.
"I'm going now," he said. "I just wanted you to know that you can't hide from me. And I wanted you…"
"Hold it," I said, reasonably sure that Spelling was not going to kill me now. "How much longer is this going to go on? You fixed my back, maybe. But you are one pompous son of a bastard, and gratitude will only go so far. So, hostage crisis or not, either shoot me or get the hell out of here."
"You're pretty goddamn impatient to die, Peters. I'm going to leave," he said, backing through the bedroom to the front door.
I took a step toward him, half expecting him to begin firing. But he didn't. When he cleared the door I hurried to the window. My back was pretty good, not a hundred percent, but good. I could get my.38 from the glove compartment and run after him, but I knew I couldn't run and I knew I couldn't shoot straight at more than ten feet. The time to use a gun is when you're sure the other guy doesn't have one.
I found my shoes and socks and put them on with new problems to think about. Why had Spelling come here? Why did he want me to figure out his poetic clues? And, most important, why the hell hadn't he shot me?
I needed a bowl of Wheaties fast.
I had a day to kill or be killed in. I went back to Phil's house. This time he was home. He opened the door, not happy to see me, and stepped back so I could enter. He looked awful. Red eyes, scrub forest of hair on his face. Walking around in his stocking feet.
I went in and I followed him through the small living room complete with photographs of his family on the fake fireplace, and matching sofa and chairs worn thin from jumping kids.
"Coffee?" he asked, sitting down at the kitchen table.
I nodded. Phil poured. Ruth was a good cook. Brisket Pot roast. Turkey. Kreplach. Matzo-ball soup. Spaghetti and mean meatballs, but there was no heart in her coffee. But Phil was a quantity man; he was content if there was plenty of Maxwell House and it was hot and black.
We drank.
"Got any Wheaties?" I asked.
Phil didn't answer. He simply rose, went to a cabinet, produced an orange Wheaties box, and went for a couple of bowls and the milk bottle.
We drank and ate for a while without talking. Then, "Spelling followed me to an apartment I was staying in," I said. "Came to the door with a gun."
"That a fact?" said Phil, without bothering to look at me.
"A fact. Don't you want to know why I'm not dead?"
"Why aren't you dead?" Phil asked indifferently, and took a sip of coffee.
"I don't know," I said. "I think he wants me at the Academy Awards dinner tonight. I think he plans to kill Varney in front of the stars and cameras. I think he wants the newspapers, Look, Life, and N.B.C. to cover it so he can tell the world how his father was destroyed by Hollywood."
Phil was eating his Wheaties and shaking his head no.
"What do you mean, no? He could walk in there tonight with a Thompson and mow down Bob Hope, Rosalind Russell, Ronald Colman, Irving Berlin, and… and Turhan Bey."