“Let’s get your sister,” I said.
“Not home.”
The siren was close, very close now. It whined down, and the lobby door rattled. It was two uniformed cops and Detective John Cawelti of the Wilshire District. I put it together fast as the doorman ran back to let them in. I had asked Pete Bouton at the Pantages where Gwen lived. He had told the cops. I hadn’t asked him not to. They had come after me. Wounded woman. Hated private detective.
I got into the elevator, flicked the switch, and pressed the button for the fourth floor. As the doors closed, I could hear the sound of at least three sets of feet clapping against the tile floor.
“What’re you doin’?” Gwen screamed.
I held out my hand to calm her.
“Getting out at four, sending you back down to the lobby. “You’ll be alright.” The elevator started up. “You never saw the guy who shot you and Cunningham?”
She closed her eyes tightly.
“Hurts?” I asked.
“No, I’m trying to think. There was something familiar about him, but … I don’t know. I’m gonna live, right?”
“I don’t know if you’re going to live
The elevator stopped, and the doors lazily opened. I reached back in and pushed the lobby button.
“You’ll be fine,” I said as the doors started to close.
I smiled and gave her a thumbs up. Then the doors were closed and she was gone and I looked for a way to get out of the building.
I ran past the steps next to the elevators. No point in going down. The police would see me when I hit the lobby. The hallway was wide with worn-out but reasonably clean green carpet. Someone was blaring a radio behind a door on my right. Johnny Mercer was singing
“What did they do just when everything looked so dark?” Mercer sang.
In my case, when everything looked dark, I ran for the window at the end of the hall. Beyond the window was a fire escape. The window went up easily and I stepped out, closing it behind me.
Down or up? I looked down. Narrow driveway. No one in sight. I started down, heard something below, looked and saw someone on foot turning the corner into the driveway. A cop. I started up. Too noisy. I took off my shoes and climbed. I didn’t look back till I was on the roof.
I saw someone dart from behind a whirling metal air vent I was more surprised than I had been by Blackstone’s floating lightbulb. The shooter had gone up, too.
He was lean and fast and about thirty feet away. I couldn’t see his face, but I could see that he was carrying something in one hand. I had no gun, but he did, a very little one that shot pellets, but enough of a weapon to make a hole in Gwen’s chest and, with a lucky or accurate shot, take out an eye and lodge in whatever small brain I may have had.
He dashed. I followed. And then he was gone. I stopped and looked around, panting. A chimney a few feet from a square brick seven-foot-high block with a door. The door was closed. I was pretty sure it hadn’t been opened.
I stood waiting, still panting.
“Come out,” I said. “Hands out and empty.”
Nothing. I took a step forward.
“There are two guns up here,” I said. “Mine, which shoots real bullets, and yours which shoots little balls. If I find you with a gun in your hand.…”
He stepped out from behind the wall next to the door, gun at arm’s length and fired. He was a damned good shot. The pellet thudded into my left shoulder. I spun around. The door opened. Yellow light beamed out. I had a clear shot at his back, if I had a gun. With an electric ache in my shoulder slowing me down, I headed for the open door looking around for a weapon, a brick, a stick, something, anything. I came up with nothing.
A few feet from the door, I suddenly felt like I was going to lose my last meal, a couple of tacos, and a Pepsi at Manny’s on Hoover.I stopped and leaned over. By the light of the open door, I watched blood dropping lazily from the wound in my shoulder.
There was no point in chasing him. I hoped the cops downstairs would stop him.
I stood up and moved toward the open door. Three steps below me was the turban, its green stone catching the yellow light. A few steps further down were the beard and mustache. I had seen a collection of guns in Ott’s house. I had seen a poster of a man with a beard and mustache in a turban on his wall. And the turban, right down to the green piece of glass, looked just like the one on the steps. Not proof, but I didn’t need proof. I was a private investigator, not a cop. I went down, slowly picking up the evidence.
When I reached down to pick up the turban, a young cop, with very pink cheeks, the visor of his cap perfectly balanced over his eyes, stepped out and leveled his gun at me.
“Don’t move,” he said.
I froze.
“Arms up and come down slowly,” he said.
I got my right arm up. My left throbbed with pellet pain, but I managed to get it almost to shoulder level.
“You’re bleeding,” he said as I came down the last few steps.
“I’ve been shot. Did someone come past you on the way up?”
“No,” he said.
“I need a doctor,” I said.
“There’s one downstairs with the woman you shot,” he said backing away, gun leveled at my chest.
“I didn’t shoot her,” I said.
“Tell the detectives,” he said.
He moved behind me and picked up the turban, beard, and mustache.
It didn’t look great for me, but I was reasonably sure I could talk my way out of it. This time, I’d just tell the truth. With about three quarters of the detectives in the Los Angeles Police Department, it would have worked.
But it was John Cawelti waiting for me in the lobby of the Blue-dorn Apartments.
Chapter 6
Lay a pencil, telephone, hat, watch, glasses, lipstick, and a book on a table. Seven objects. Ask someone to pick an object, but not tell you what it is. Turn your back and tell them to arrange the objects any way they wish. Tell them to think of the first letter of the object shown. Tell them to then spell the object silently and slowly as you touch the objects saying one at a time, “First letter,” etc. When the person finishes spelling, your hand will be on the object they chose. Solution: Each object has a different number of letters in it. It doesn’t matter what the first two objects you touch are. There are no objects with only one or two letters. One of the first two objects you touch might even be the one the person thought of which will make the trick even better because they’ll think you have missed the chosen object. If the person selecting the object says “stop” at the number three, your hand will be on the hat. At four it will be on the book, etc. Thinking of the first letter is a meaningless red herring.
At the L.A. county hospital emergency room, a kid doctor plucked the pellet from Gwen’s chest and said she would have to stay overnight. Then he took the pellet from my shoulder and patched me up.
“I’ve never seen so many scars on a living human,” the kid said.
“And each one has a story,” I said.
“War?”
