An overnight rain had turned the parking lot into Mudville. I walked carefully around piles of bricks and puddles. There were no construction workers hammering or mortaring merrily away. It was Saturday. It was also possible that my number-one suspect, Lombardi, might not be at the factory, but I had no place else to try, and time was running out.
The rear door was open, and I stepped into darkness.
“Hey,” I called, not wanting to get an accidental blast in the stomach from a jumpy watchman. “Anybody here?”
My eyes got used to the darkness, and I sidestepped machinery and boxes and found my way forward by the scent of garlic.
“Anybody here?” I tried again, running my hand along the wall I had found and going for the door I remembered. I found it and opened it to find myself facing the two sausage workers in white. The kosher one, Steve, was pointing a gun at my chest.
“You are trespassing,” he said evenly. The other guy kept his hands in his pockets. “I wonder what Mr. Lombardi will want us to do with this trespasser?”
“Mr. Lombardi will want to talk to this trespasser,” I said. “I’ve got information for him that he wants. He’s expecting me. Just tell him it’s what I was going to give him on Thursday.”
Steve looked at his co-worker, chewed on the inside of his right cheek pensively and nodded toward a door in the far corner of the storefront. This was a room bright with light from the windows. Outside, a passerby looked through the window, curious about the new store in the neighborhood.
“Thanks,” I said.
“We’ll be waiting right here,” Steve said. “We’ll see what Mr. Lombardi decides to do with you.”
The threat of my own kosher future hovered in the air with the smell of garlic and spices as I walked to the door and reached for the handle.
“Hold it,” shouted Steve, running up to my side. I held it.
Steve patted me down and found the.38. He pulled it out and gave me a dirty look.
“You almost let me get by with that,” I said with a shake of my head, to indicate that he might be losing his touch. “I won’t mention it to Mr. Lombardi.”
“You’ll get it back on the way out,” he said. “If you go out.”
I knocked on the door as Steve stood back to stand guard and wait for the roar of Lombardi that would end my brief passage on earth in human form. Lombardi said nothing, so I stepped in, closed the door behind me and counted on whatever gods there might be to provide me with the right words.
Lombardi had his back turned, and I started to talk.
“Before you do something you and I will regret,” I said, “let me talk. I’ve told someone I’m coming here. If anything happens to me, he’ll tell the police. I’m supposed to give him a call every fifteen minutes. I don’t want any trouble. I just want to straighten things between me and the police.”
Lombardi said nothing and didn’t turn around. There was something in the atmosphere of the room, something I recognized from experience. It was the silence of death, and since I was still alive and Lombardi wasn’t moving, I placed my bet on him. I went around the desk and found out I was right.
This time the knife was in his chest. Lombardi looked surprised, skewered in his own sausage factory, his plan of corned-beef conquest ended before it really began.
With the departure of Lombardi’s soul, if there were such a thing, went the last clear suspect on my list. I was back at the start-well, almost at the start. Lombardi was now off my list of suspects. Most victims have that as doubtful consolation.
“Everything all right, Mr. Lombardi?” asked Steve outside the door. I could see his shadow on the glass.
“It’s okay,” I said, holding my hand over my mouth. I tried to put some anger in the words, but I didn’t want to use enough words to make him doubt the voice.
“I’ll be right out here,” said Steve.
I grunted and went on, talking in my own voice.
“Okay, so we understand each other. You’ve got my word that I’ll never bother you again, and you agree to let me step out of this with my own skin instead of the one you put on the hot dogs. I appreciate your understanding, and you can count on me.”
My choices were few. I could call Steve in and show him Lombardi’s corpse. There was an outside chance he would believe I hadn’t just walked in and played Zorro. But even if he believed me, there was a chance he might not let me go. I had no gun and could find none on Lombardi’s corpse or in his desk.
Lombardi’s white smock was stained with red now, and he looked like a butcher who had been turned against by one of the steers ready for slaughter. There was no blood on me as I went to the door, saying “Thanks” to the corpse as I backed out and shut the door.
Steve faced me and looked at the office door.
“Mr. Lombardi says he doesn’t want to be disturbed,” I said, putting out my hand for the gun.
Steve hesitated, looked over at his co-worker and handed me my.38.
“Mr. Lombardi is a very understanding man,” I said, going to the front door and turning the handle. The door was locked. I tried not to show panic as I walked past Steve and headed for the door leading to the dark room beyond and the parking lot and the relative safety of my car beyond that.
I was almost touching the door when it opened and Marco stepped in.
“What’s going on?” he demanded, looking at me. “I go out five minutes and this mug is on the premises. You can’t see Mr. Lombardi. He don’t want to see you.”
“I just saw him,” I said. “We’ve got everything straightened out.”
Marco cocked his big bald head and looked at Lombardi’s door.
“I want to hear him say that,” he said.
“It’s true,” said Steve, backing me up with what he thought he had heard. “Mr. Lombardi doesn’t want to be bothered now.”
Marco looked back at me suspiciously as I walked slowly through the door. Once in the dark, panic came, and I rushed toward the spot of light on the far wall that marked the exit. I cracked my knee on something short and hard and hobbled forward without making a noise. The Buick was at least six hundred yards away in the parking lot. Well, maybe it was twenty yards away. I was carrying the ball through mud, knowing the tacklers were not far behind.
The car stalled in the mud and the wheels spun. I took a deep breath, counted to five, took my.38 out and put it at my side, watching the door while I tried again slowly. This time the car moved backward, and I let it have its own head till I felt the wheels touch something solid. Then I tore forward over rubble, leaving the lot and the factory behind.
As I drove, I mused over whether by nightfall there would be any organized group in the Greater Los Angeles area that would not be trying to find me. I wasn’t sure who I’d prefer to take my chances with, Cawelti or Marco and company. The only one I could think of who might frighten both of them was Luis Felipe Castelli, but he had his Fascists, assumed and real, to deal with. My battle was on a less global scale but no less important to me.
My stomach grumbled with hunger. I told my stomach it was just doing that because I was confused and scared. It always tries to distract me when things go wrong, but there is no reasoning with an insistent stomach. I fed it some burgers and a Pepsi and then cursed it for its impatience when I spotted a taco stand a block further on. I stopped for the taco anyway, and my stomach got quiet. Then the Buick began to complain and with good reason. It was out of gas. I coasted for half a block to a Texaco station and pushed the car the rest of the way to the pump.
Next stop: the Big Bear Bar in Burbank. The front door was open, but there was no sound from inside. This time I just stood inside the door while my eyes adjusted. Nothing stirred. In a few seconds I could see Lola across the room sitting at the piano, staring at nothing and not playing. For a second she looked like the girl in
“Lola,” I said quietly.
She turned around and looked at me. Something like a smile touched the corner of her mouth. She automatically reached for a drink on the piano, but it wasn’t there, so she shrugged instead and started playing “In the Good Old Summertime.”
