“Please,” I said.
“The briefcase,” Shelly said. “You don’t really have …?”
I opened the briefcase and tilted it so Shelly could see the bills.
“Twenty-five thousand,” he sighed.
“Holy shit,” exclaimed Mr. Shayne, miraculously resurrected by the sound of money.
Shelly turned to his patient. “That’ll cost you another five bucks. You ruined my mold.”
“I’m not paying,” said Shayne, spitting out the chunk of pink gook.
My office door opened and Dali, paper in one hand, pencil in the other, watched doctor and patient shout at each other, their faces inches apart, Shelly’s cigar dangerously close to Shayne’s nose. Dali smiled at me and I left.
I could make San Pedro in forty minutes, Avalon to Anaheim, and then down Pacific. I could have made it in forty minutes. I could have, but I didn’t.
The first problem was the pumpkin bum in the sunglasses. He was standing in front of my Crosley, arms folded, legs spread apart. Clutched in one of his fists was a rusted and slightly bent piece of metal that looked as if it had been ripped from one of the wrecks. His legs were a little wobbly, but he looked determined.
“You did a good job,” I said, trying to reach past him to the passenger door.
“Don’t touch the car,” he warned.
“It’s my car. Remember me? I offered you two bits.”
“Other guy gave me a finif.”
“I was with the other guy. He gave you three bucks.”
“Yeah? What’d he look like?”
“A skinny little guy in a velvet suit with a pointed mustache a foot long.”
“What else?” asked the rotting pumpkin.
“Get out of my way,” I said.
I hadn’t worked out in weeks and my leg wasn’t back to subnormal. I didn’t want to do battle with the demented of Los Angeles. It would be a life-long losing task, and time was ticking away. Besides, the guy was doing his job. There was honor in the alley-misplaced, confused, but honor. I didn’t want to hit him and I sure as hell didn’t want him to hit me with his corroded club.
“Let him pass,” came a voice I recognized from above.
The pumpkin man took off his sunglasses and looked up. So did I. There, on the sixth floor, in the window of my office, Dali leaned forward, arms folded across his chest. Then his right hand came out and pointed upward. “Dali has spoken.”
“What’d he say?” asked the pumpkin.
“He said, ‘Dali has spoken.’”
The bum stepped out of the way. I opened the car door, threw the briefcase on the floor, and scooted across to the driver’s seat. The bum threw away the metal bar and leaned in the door.
“Is he, you know, one of Jesus’s helpers? Like the elves and Santa Claus?”
“Yep,” I said.
“I tried out for Santa Claus at Macy’s,” he said.
I motioned him back and leaned over to close the passenger side door. Through the window I could hear the bum say, “Least I wanted to, but you know something? I couldn’t find Macy’s.”
Since I didn’t have a working watch, the only way I could tell the time was turning on the radio or looking in store windows for clocks. When I’m late, I want to know the time, but I don’t want to be told. It makes me nervous. So I try to find music. I could sing or think. I didn’t feel like doing either.
I did a fair job of girl, clock, and people watching all the way to San Pedro. I parked a block away from Slip 4, got out, looked around for yet another clock, and hurried toward the shipyard.
There was a war on and there were ships being built. Beyond the gate about a hundred yards away giant cranes hovered over the hulls of massive Liberty ships, feeding them steel beams the way a bird feeds worms to its fat new babies. Flashes of fire and sparks from welder’s arcs crackled over the decks.
Then there was the noise. A clattering of hundreds of air hammers, the growl of crane horns, the clang of flangers’ mauls on bulkheads.
There were not only two guards in gray uniforms at the gates, but two armed Naval Shore Patrolmen with black holsters and serious personality problems. There was no other way in. When a guard looked my way, I walked right up to the gate.
One of the guards, who looked about twenty years older than the forty he had looked like from across the street, stepped out to greet me.
“Can I help you?” he shouted.
“I’m late,” I shouted back. “Car broke down a block away. Kelly in payroll’s waiting for this.”
I held up the briefcase.
“Kelly?”
“Kelly, Kennedy, some Irish name,” I yelled with irritation.
“He means Connelly,” came the second guard, moving to join us. The second guard was even older than the first.
“Connelly didn’t leave any message about … What’s your name?”
“Bruno, Bruno Podbialniak, First Security Bank of Hollywood,” I said, reaching into my pocket for a business card. I really had one somewhere among the dozens of other cards I’d picked up over the years. When I had need of a bank or a banker, Bruno was it. I cost him more in cards than he and First Security made on investing my few bucks.
I knew where Bruno’s cards were in the wallet, at the bottom of the pile in the bill compartment, right in front of one that read: “Kirk Woller, Mortician to the Stars.” I handed a card to both guards who looked at them and then at each other.
“I’ll give Connelly a call,” said the second guard.
I looked at my father’s watch impatiently. I was going with the punches. Don’t think, I told myself. Just run the combinations.
The two Shore Patrolmen kept their distance but watched me carefully, their hands hooked into their belts very close to their holsters. The Shore Patrolmen were a good ten years younger than I had thought from across the street. One of them looked like my nephew Dave, only bigger. I watched the second guard go to a phone just inside the iron-mesh gate and make his call while the first guard read Bruno’s card seven or eight times.
“One of my kids, Al’s a banker,” the first guard said. “Got four kids and a bad ear. Four-F.”
I nodded and looked at my watch.
“Connelly wants to talk to you,” the second guard called from the phone.
I strode through the gate past the teen Shore Patrolmen and took the phone from the guard.
“Connelly?” I said with irritation. “My car broke down and I’ve got other stops to make. Will you tell these people to take me to your office?”
“Who are you?” asked Connelly, who was a woman.
“Bruno Podbialniak. Your boss called and said to bring you this cash now. If you don’t want to sign for it …”
“My boss? Monesco?”
“I guess,” I said wearily. “Will you talk up. It’s noisy out here. I’m late and I’ve got to get to Lockheed by four.”
“Monesco isn’t here today,” she said. “He’s-”
“Okay,” I interrupted. “That’s it. Porter can send someone else and you can tell your Monesco that-”
“Wait,” said Connelly. “You have cash?”
“Cash.”
“Show it to the guard who was on the phone.”
I handed the phone to the guard and opened the briefcase to show him the bills. He shook his head and spoke to Connelly.
“Man has a lot of dollars,” he said. “Okay.” And then to me, “She wants you to give it to me and I’ll give you a receipt.”
