Stuart Kaminsky - High Midnight

Phil put his pistol away and strode back toward me.

“You bagged another bad guy,” I said, waving. Phil swayed before my eyes, moonlight behind him. My vision was hazy, and he seemed to rise slowly from the pier like Harry Blackstone’s assistant.

“All a joke to you,” he said, standing in front of me. I must have grinned because he put a broad hand on my neck to squeeze or shake a little brotherly sense into me, but his hand felt blood and came away quickly.

“You’re hurt,” he said, grabbing my arm.

“Hell,” I laughed, “it takes a silver bullet to kill me.”

When I woke up a few hours later with Koko the Clown urging me off the air mattress and into the ocean, a rush of white made me wince and I closed my eyes again. I opened them slowly and realized I was in a Los Angeles County hospital.

Phil was leaning against the wall with his arms folded. He ran his hand through his hair, sighed and shook his head. “At least this time, no one used your head for a coconut,” he said.

I sat up, feeling dizzy. My neck was stiff and I reached for it. A bandage held it in place.

“Keep your hands off,” Phil said, stepping forward to whack my hand away. I almost fell off the table.

“Marco?” I said.

“Still alive,” said Phil.

“And what happened to Fargo and Gelhorn?” I said, feeling sick to my stomach.

“Let them go,” he said.

“Let them go?”

“I can’t hold them if there are no charges. You want to place charges? You think charges from you will hold up?” Phil was getting angry again, and I was in no condition to deal with his fists.

“What about Cooper and Hemingway?” I tried. “They wouldn’t press charges?”

“No,” he said. “Cooper said as far as he was concerned, it was all over, and he didn’t want any publicity. Had to let them go, but I had a nice talk with Gelhorn before he saw the door.”

Phil’s eyes glinted with satisfaction, and I imagined Gelhorn’s little talk with him. It would be a talk that would have made Tony Galento want to stay away from further discussion.

“We’ve got no charges on you,” Phil said, keeping his hands folded as I stood on wobbly legs. “You can’t drive. Come back to my place. Ruth wants to be sure you’re all right.”

I didn’t argue. To argue meant I might win. Then I’d have to get a ride to Ocean Park, drive back to Hollywood and face the possibility of Mrs. Plaut before I could make it to bed. It was easier to nod and let Phil lead the way to his car.

We didn’t talk on the way through Laurel Canyon and into North Hollywood. I kept dozing and clutched the bottle of white pills the nurse had given me for pain. Phil had told me that my.38 would be returned after a full investigation. I was in no hurry to get it back.

When we got to his house, we woke up Ruth and my nephews Dave and Nate. They thanked me for Babe Ruth’s autograph and admired my wound. I almost told them their old man had drilled a bad guy, but I changed my mind. I had said too many wrong things in front of them in the past. The noise of a two A.M. family get-together woke the baby, Lucy, who wondered why I had a diaper on my neck.

“He peed on his neck,” said Dave, giggling. Nate hit him, and Phil rapped Nate on the head.

Ruth, looking thin, her hair in a puffy pink bag, hugged herself against the cold that wasn’t there and offered me something to drink. Before I could get the drink she went for, I was asleep in a chair.

On Sunday morning I woke up, unable to move my neck. Phil was gone, on duty. Ruth and the kids had waited around to be sure I was alive before they went to Ruth’s mother in Pasadena for the day.

“How come you always get blasted. Uncle Tobe?” asked Nate.

“You should see the other guy?” countered Dave.

I was glad they didn’t see the other guy. They might be able to sleep a few more nights without the things that had crept into my dreams.

We good-byed for about five minutes, and Lucy managed to sneak up behind me and wallop me with the padlock from Dave’s bike. She laughed. I declined breakfast from Ruth, waved them away, took a pain pill, called a Yellow Cab and sat rigid-necked all the way to Ocean Park.

Receipt in hand from the cab, I drove slowly to the Farraday Building, trying to ignore the parking ticket that clung to my windshield wiper. I hoped the wind would grab it and take it for a ride. I wanted to ignore it.

There wasn’t much traffic on Hoover. I parked near the office and went in.

Somewhere in the heights or depths of the building, someone was drunkenly singing “Side by Side.” By the time I got to my office, the double-echoed voice had gone through the song twice and was bellowing “Maybe we’re ragged and funny.”

The door was locked and I let myself in. Sunday or no, my case was closed, and I had a bill to make out. I sat in my office listening to a guy with a sugar voice read the funny papers on the radio while I transferred costs from my notebook to my bill. Should I charge Cooper for bullets? Yes. How about the cost of the High Midnight script? Why not? I pulled the script from my desk drawer and added the cost of hot dogs, a shin, tacos, gas, a motel bill, sundry items and emergency medical treatment.

I didn’t hear the door to the outer office open. I was having enough trouble juggling my accounts and trying to find out from the guy reading the funnies if Tiny Tim was going to get out of the bottle he was trapped in.

When my door opened, I was aware of two bodies standing in it but I couldn’t place the faces for an instant. That was because I had never seen them in suits before; only in white smocks at Lombardi’s.

“No office hours on Sunday,” I said, leaning back to look at them since I couldn’t lift my head. “Come back to-morrow.”

Steve didn’t answer and Al stepped to one side of the door. Their hands were in their pockets,

“You don’t know when to give up, do you?” Steve said.

“Come on,” I said wearily. “I didn’t kill Lombardi. Hanohyez did. He came here from Chicago to kill Lombardi. He was sent. If he hadn’t got nailed by the cops last night, he’d probably be out today mopping up loose ends, like you two.”

“It won’t do,” Steve said, hesitating.

“It won’t do what?” I said. “Be my guest.” I picked up the phone and handed it to him. “Call Chicago or New York or wherever you call and take a chance with your life. You can either say Lombardi’s dead and you’re going to find who did it and settle the score, or you can say Hanohyez got killed but you helped him dump Lombardi before he went. Try it. You tell the first tale and I give you a week to ten days. You tell the second tale and you inherit a sausage factory.”

I gave him the phone. “I’ll even give you the nickels,” I said.

Steve looked at Al, who looked at Steve, who looked at me.

“We’re going to think about it,” he said. “If you turned us wrong on this, we’ll be back.”

“Why not kill him just to be sure?” Al tried. I turned my body toward him so I could see him and show my annoyance.

“We’re not killing him if we don’t have to. The less killing you do, the fewer raps can come back to haunt you,” Steve said, waving Al out the door. Al gave me a sneer and went for the outer office.

Steve stayed behind for a few seconds to stare me down. It was hard to keep my eyes on him without hurting my neck, but it was his game. In thirty seconds he had had enough and went out, closing the door behind him. I popped a pain pill, touched my neck carefully and put my hand over my mouth. In a few minutes I was ready to get back to my bill. Twenty minutes later I had it finished and ready for delivery.

I called the number Cooper had given me, not expecting an answer. I imagined Hemingway and Cooper back in the hills firing madly at scampering, oinking wild pigs that Luis Felipe Castelli was flushing out with his ax. Between the shots the good old boys were swapping lies about women.