“You mean someone went through Grundy’s things?”
“You know it, Toby.”
Phil put his hand on my leg and started to squeeze. The nurse came in.
“I’d like some rest now,” I said.
“I’ll see you a little later, Toby,” Phil said, pushing past the nurse.
“That’s my brother,” I told her. She didn’t look impressed.
In the hall I could hear Phil asking the nurse when she came out how long I’d be laid up. She said I wouldn’t be able to move for a day at least.
There was a phone next to the bed. I called Shelly Minck, told him to get to my place, get my last suit, put it in a bag, and come to the hospital. I also told him to pick up a clean white smock, and come up to my room. If anyone asked him, I said, he should identify himself as Dr. Minck.
“That’s who I am,” he said.
“Then you won’t be lying,” I answered and hung up.
The nurse came in with a pill and a newspaper for me. I pretended to take the pill, and I took the paper. It told me that 50,000,000 people were expected to vote today. It told me that the first election results were from Sharon, New Hampshire, where Willkie had taken the lead 24-7. On the next page, a Japanese Ambassador named Yoshiaki Muira from Japan said the United States and his country would not fight over China.
It took Shelly over two hours to get to the hospital. He hadn’t changed into a clean smock, and he came in waving his cigar. The important thing was that he came in and he had a small black suitcase with him.
The room bounced me around while I dressed, and Shelly kept talking about root canals. I almost threw up, but managed to keep it down.
“See if you can get a wheelchair,” I said.
I sat on the edge of the bed waiting for the nausea to pass while Shelly was gone. He came back with a chair, and I climbed in. He pushed me into the hall and down the corridor, talking all the time about tooth decay. I hoped no one stopped to listen to him. We made it out of the hospital with no problems, and Shelly helped me to his car. I didn’t know where mine was. My gun was either in the trunk or Phil had it, unless the killer had gone through the trouble of getting my keys when I was out, then getting the gun and putting the keys back. I doubted it, but what the hell did I know.
Shelly drove around, squinting through his glasses, while I tried to think. His driving was a series of near misses which he didn’t seem to notice. It was hard to think.
Somewhere about 8000 on Sunset he pulled to the curb. His Ford was a ’37 in only slightly better shape than my Buick. I took one of the pain pills Shelly gave me and watched while he bought a map to the stars’ homes. The seller was a guy sitting under a big umbrella. He rocked back and forth on a wicker rocker and had his feet up on a chair whose back had been sawed off. He was in no hurry. He might not be making much money, but no one was trying to kill him. I thought about asking him for a job. I’d take the chair without a back.
Shelly drove on looking for Jack Benny’s house. Somewhere beneath the stitches my brain was working. An idea was coming.
Shelly turned on the radio, and we found out that Hank Greenberg, the Detroit outfielder, had been named Most Valuable Player in the American League. Twenty minutes later we stopped at Awful Fresh MacFarlane for a twenty-nine cent pound of candy in a paper bag. We were somewhere between Union and Hoover, and I asked Shelly to look up an address for me. He found three listings for a James Cash. I borrowed some change from him and went into a bar. What I really wanted to do was go home, but too many people knew where that was. I couldn’t even go back to the office.
The Cash idea was a longshot, but I didn’t have any short ones. My head felt better with Shelly’s pill inside me, and with a hat on I looked almost respectable. I called the first James Cash. It was a Venice number. James Cash answered, and I said he was the wrong one. I called the second in Burbank, and a woman with a very small voice answered. I asked for James Cash, and she told me he was dead. I asked if he was the same James Cash who had worked in The Wizard of Oz, and she said he was; she agreed to see me.
Shelly was tired, and I was feeling better, so I dropped him a block from the office. He wanted to work for a few hours more. We agreed that I’d return his Ford later. He reminded me to vote, and I told him I’d try.
“Go with a winner for a change, Toby,” he said. “Willkie.”
I made it out to Burbank on one more pain pill, a Pepsi, and two chicken tacos. It was a little after noon when I pulled into a driveway next to a sign that readVISIT OUR FURNISHED MODEL HOME. The Ford bumped through the field toward a quartet of small, white wooden homes. They were lined up in a field of mud. Each one was exactly like the one next to it. Some of these developments could line up the little homes for miles. This one was just getting started.
The house I was looking for was on the end. The view must have been terrific from the inside: nothing but rubble, telephone poles, and dirt that had broken the monotony last night by turning to mud.
Cash’s little woman was a very little woman. I leaned over to shake her hand. She was kind of chunky with a pleasant face and dark hair, probably in her thirties. She led me into a living room with normal size furniture and went out to get me a cup of coffee and a piece of banana cake.
“How can I help you?” she said.
“I’m working for M.G.M.,” I explained. “We want to find out just what happened to Mr. Cash.”
“I told the police everything I knew,” she said, “but it didn’t seem to help.”
“Everything?” I said. The cup shook slightly in her little hand. There was no toughness in her, and I wanted to go easy.
“You want to tell me about the movies he was working on?” I said softly.
She started to cry, and I let her. The banana cake was good. I had a second piece and indicated that I would appreciate another cup of coffee. She was happy to get it for me. When she came back, she sat on a chair in front of me. I could see from the brand that she wore children’s shoes.
“James didn’t know I knew about what he was doing,” she said, “but I knew. I think he was trying to get out of it, and whoever did it didn’t want him to.”
“You think he was going to the police?” I said.
“He didn’t exactly say so, but Thursday night he said we could move back East soon.” The tears were coming back. “James had a difficult life. We were only married a few months ago. We wanted children, but all we could afford was this. He was ashamed of what he was doing, Mr. Peters.”
If he was ashamed of it, he was damned good at hiding it if the porno pictures I saw were any evidence, but the lady deserved her grief.
“I’m sure he was, Mrs. Cash,” I said, patting her shoulder. “And you didn’t tell the police any of this?”
“No, I didn’t think it would do James’ memory any good.”
“You did the right thing,” I said. “Did the police look through your husband’s things?”
She said they had, but she had held out one thing from them, an address book he kept hidden.
“I knew those addresses were of the people he was working with.”
“One of them might have murdered him,” I said.
“They probably did,” she said, “but finding the killer won’t bring James back, and letting everyone know what he was involved in might get back East.”
“And you’re going back East?”
“Yes,” she said. “My parents live in Missouri. They’re not little people. They’re getting old, and they want me back. I haven’t got anything but this house, and it’s not paid for. If James was getting a lot of money for what he was doing, he had it put somewhere I don’t know about.”
She got me the notebook and asked me to promise not to tell anyone where I got it. In return for the book I promised to try to keep Cash’s name away from any pornography publicity.
She shook my hand, and I went outside. The sky was dark in the North. Maybe a twister would come and lift Cash’s house out of the mud and carry it over the rainbow. Maybe elephants would shit diamonds.
Glendale was a few minutes away so I drove to my ancestral homeland and went into The Elite Diner, a block away from the police station where I had once worked. The counter man knew me, and we said hello. He had once been a cop, too. He showed me a stomach scar he had picked up since I last saw him, and I showed him my head. He said I was the winner and brought me some coffee; I didn’t want anything with it. Most of the names in Cash’s little green notebook didn’t show anything I didn’t already know. Grundy’s name was in it. So was Peese’s. There
