“Nice meeting you!” I shouted. The man in the dark suit took me right to my car door and tucked me in. He made no comment on the bullet holes. I said good-bye and drove down the road. It was dark and the sky was star- filled when I reached the gate and the two men who manned it. One stepped out and handed me my. 38. I said thanks and he said, “You’re welcome, sir.”
I headed back south for an hour or so and decided to stop at a diner. After I ate the spaghetti special, coffee and pie, I drove to a motor court to register. It reminded me of a clean version of my own place. It was called Happy Byways Motor Court, and Mrs. Happy Byways took my two bucks, gave me a receipt, and handed me the key to Bungalow Six, recently painted white. She was too fat to move and was covered with what looked like a blanket. I thanked her and went to Six after she sold me the Sunday L.A. Times.
The radio in the room didn’t work so I read the paper. King Doob was missing and Buck Rogers had to find him. Something was missing for me, too, but I didn’t know what it was. I decided to sleep on it. I had no razor or toothpaste so I just showered and went to bed. Happy Byways seemed safe enough, but I put my gun under my pillow just in case and propped a chair in front of the door. I felt confident enough to leave the light out in the bathroom. I think that confidence saved my life.
Before I went to sleep I felt my stomach to see if it was losing tone. I hadn’t hit the Y for days. My stomach seemed all right, so I closed my eyes and was out.
I dreamed of midgets crawling in under the cracks and through the drains. They oozed through a chimney and went for me with long, thin knives. I fought to wake up and heard a sound at the door, but I was too befuddled to respond. The chair in front of the door slowed my guest down, but just a little. The door broke, the chair flew, and he stood framed against the faint light. The form in the door was no midget. The bed wasn’t in line with the door so I was in darkness. With the bathroom light off he had to take a guess. The guess was good. He hit the bed and one bullet thudded into the wall over my head. I fumbled for my. 38 and fired. I wasn’t even worried about hitting him. I just wanted him to know I was armed. For all I know, my bullet hit the ceiling.
The figure in the doorway backed out fast, and I got out of bed in shorts and ran after him. I fell over the chair that had been propped in front of the door. By the time I got outside, I could see a car pulling into the highway, but I couldn’t be sure of the color, and I couldn’t make out anything on the license.
It was a big, newish car, and I had no chance of catching him. Even if I did want to take a chance, I was standing in my shorts, holding a gun, and people were popping their heads out of the windows of the court around me.
“It’s all right!” I shouted. “I’m the police.”
I walked back into my room slowly and closed the door. My explanation would hold them for about five minutes. I dressed in two and went to the Happy Byways office. The fat woman wasn’t there, but the light was on. The clock on the wall said 2A. M. I reached for the registration book as I heard her grunting to her feet in the next room. I tore out the page with my name on it, jammed it in my pocket, and went out the door before she took a step. I didn’t want to do any explaining.
I drove for about fifty miles, trying to think straight. The impression had been brief, but I had seen a big figure in that door. When I was certain that no one was in sight, I pulled behind a hill on my right and turned off my lights. I had an old picnic blanket in the trunk. I got it out and climbed in the back seat after reloading the. 38. I fell asleep in a few minutes, clutching my gun like a cold teddy bear.
5
Winter is the mischief in me. I heard a scratching sound and sat upright in the back seat. Something was at the front window. I shot. The window shattered and I missed the collie by about a foot. I heard him trotting away and barking in fear. I knew how he felt.
I sat upright and discovered another problem. Sea dampness, dew, and a contorted position for six hours had done in my back. The injury went back to a black guy who didn’t like my kidneys and had told them so. When wet weather hit, I felt as if my vertebrae were welded together, surrounded by a sensitive band of exposed nerves.
The groaning helped a little as I rolled on my side and went through the door. The collie stood on a hill watching. In about two minutes he saw me make it into the front seat and brush away the glass. I had nothing to kill the pain, but I knew someone who did. I got into a position I could barely live with, tucked the. 38 into my holster, cursed the ocean which I could see a few hundred feet below me, and got back on the highway.
Part of the drive back wasn’t bad. I mean I wasn’t in total burning agony. I got hungry in an hour, but I didn’t want to get out of the car. I wasn’t sure I could. Just before noon, I found a place near Santa Barbara where you could honk your horn for service. I honked my horn at the El Camino Drive-In, and a skinny, red-headed girl in a tacky red uniform approached me. She stopped when she looked at my stubble-covered and anguish-filled face.
“You all right?” she said.
“Wife just had a baby,” I explained. “Been up all night.”
“Congratulations,” she said with an accent out of Missouri or Oklahoma. “Boy or girl?”
“Girl. Eleanor Roosevelt Peters.”
She took my groaned order: two egg sandwiches with mayonaise and a chocolate shake.
When I finished eating, I pulled a buck out of my pocket, but Missouri wouldn’t take it.
“Boss says it’s on the house. For the new daddy.”
Her smile was crooked and nice, and I felt like an Italian in Ethiopia. I smiled back and left.
Some time late in the afternoon I pulled in front of the Farraday Building into a no parking zone. The next trick was to get out of the car. While I was trying, Jeremy Butler stepped out for some Lysol-free air and saw me.
“You get shot again?” he asked, taking my arm.
“No, it’s my back. Can you help me up to the office?”
Butler picked me up as if I were helium-filled and walked me into the building.
“I’ve known lots of guys with bad backs,” he said, going up the stairs instead of taking the elevator. I weighed a solid 165 pounds and it was dead weight, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“Know any body builders?” I asked.
“Some,” he said, moving steadily upward. “Different muscles from wrestlers. They’re top-heavy. No center of gravity.”
The pain was still there, but I could tell Butler was doing his best to be gentle.
“I mean personalities,” I said.
“All kinds,” Butler said. “Some fairies, some skirt chasers. A few momma’s boys. All exhibitionists. They want people to look at them. Someone. A mother, father, someone didn’t pay attention, and they’re making up for it. Some of them are good guys.”
“You’re a poet, Jer,” I said as he elbowed his way into the alcove of Minck and Peters. The alcove was barely big enough for both of us. He hurried through. Shelly was eating a sweet roll and smoking a cigar while he read a Western in his dental chair. Butler told him to get up, and he deposited me carefully in the seat of honor. I groaned once for sympathy. Butler wasn’t even breathing hard.
“Get shot?” Shelly asked with more curiosity than sympathy.
“No, buddy,” I said through my teeth. “It’s my back. You got something to kill the pain?”
“Sure,” he said, and went for the needle. “I’ll give you a shot and some pills, but you’re better off going to bed for a few days and letting it take care of itself.”
“I may not have a few days,” I said. Shelly rolled up my shirt and gave me a shot in the lower back.
“I use it on gums,” he said to Butler, “but it’s supposed to work anywhere.”
He gave me an unmarked bottle with about ten pills in it. I took one out and swallowed it, gasping for water. Shelly turned on his dental chair water, and I drank out of the dirty glass cup. I curled over in agony waiting for the shot and the pill to do their stuff. While I waited, I told Shelly and the landlord about Judy Garland, the dead Munchkin, and the two attempts on my life. Shelly had heard part of it before, but he had been so busy saving the tooth of Walter Brennan’s double that he had forgotten.
“Let me try something,” Butler said, picking me up. I didn’t want to be picked up; the dental pain killers
