“Mrs. Shatzkin sure plays around a lot,” Cawelti said with acrid sarcasm. “Even if you’re right, what about Shatzkin’s dying statement that Faulkner killed him?”
“I’m working on that,” I said, looking over at my brother’s door, which had just opened. He and Seidman walked out. Cawelti spotted them and sat forward businesslike, finding a pencil.
“And what were you doing following that Thayer guy into the Culver City apartment?” Cawelti said evenly, letting his eyes but not his head turn toward the advancing Phil and Seidman.
“I promised the janitor a five if he called me when he heard anyone go in the apartment.”
Phil and Seidman were in easy earshot now.
Cawelti attacked. “Rouse called you, left a message at your boarding house, and you arrived two minutes later? And you live over on Heliotrope in Hollywood? You made good time.”
“I was trailing Newcomb. He had tried to run me down because I was getting too close to him. I was protecting some innocent cop like you who should have been digging up what I was digging up and worrying Newcomb instead of sitting here trying to prove what it means to be a true pisshead.”
Cawelti started to get up and threw a look at Phil, who didn’t move, just watched without a word. Seidman looked at his watch.
“You got a report on whatever’s going on here?” Phil asked as Cawelti reached forward and grabbed my jacket, pulling me out of the wooden chair. The chair went skidding across the squad room, ramming the table with deli refuse and sending it tumbling along the floor, where it would feel right at home.
Cawelti paused but didn’t take his eyes from mine or his fist from my jacket.
“Let him go,” Seidman said softly.
Cawelti looked at Phil, who had moved to his desk to get the report. “Do what you think best,” Phil said, looking down at the report and loosening his tie to the point that it was no longer tied at all.
What Cawelti thought was best was to throw an open fist at my face. It caught my nose and cheek and a corner of my eye. I spun around and started to fall but grabbed the edge of the desk. I knew I had wanted Cawelti to do that and that I was going to hit him as hard and fast as I could, but I was too late. Phil had moved around Cawelti’s desk like a handball on a hard court and had him by the neck.
Cawelti’s bewildered face turned red and then redder as he tried to pry Phil’s fingers off.
“You ever touch him again,” he said through teeth that looked as if they would break from the pressure, “you won’t be able to eat anything but jello for a long time. You understand?”
Cawelti tried to talk, but Phil’s hands around his neck wouldn’t let him. He was turning slowly from red to blue.
“Phil,” Seidman said without moving, “Enough.”
Somewhere deep inside, Phil heard and slowly responded, letting Cawelti slip from his reluctant thick fingers. The part in his hair showed Cawelti’s crimson scalp as he staggered back against a desk.
I didn’t say anything.
“Come with us,” Phil said over his shoulder in my general direction and went to the door with Seidman trailing back to be sure I didn’t throw one at Cawelti, who was choking.
“I think you have a sore throat,” Seidman said to Cawelti. “Go on home, gargle, stay in bed till noon tomorrow.”
Hate would have been bliss compared to the look Cawelti shot me as he staggered back to his desk, gasping and holding his neck. I limped quickly and caught up with Seidman and Phil, who was reading the Newcomb report as we walked.
“Phil,” I said.
“Shut up,” he hissed, going down the stairs. “Just shut up. I don’t like what I just did, and I may do it to you, which I would like. So shut up.”
“We’re on a call,” Seidman said as we went through the lobby, stepping over an overturned garbage can that almost blocked the doorway.
“Clean this thing up, Swartz,” Phil shouted at the old cop on the desk.
“I’m Clayton,” the old guy shot back, “and it didn’t happen on my shift. Some guy tried to run. Swartz should have cleaned it. If I stopped and…”
Phil stopped and turned to face Clayton, who shut up.
“I’ll clean it up now, Lieutenant,” he said softly, and out we went into a car at the curb.
When we were in the car with Seidman driving and Phil next to me in the back seat, Phil put down the report and said, “Now talk. No jokes, no lies, no errors and you’ll have a no-hitter.”
I talked as we shot through the early morning darkness, headed I didn’t know where. I told him the truth from start to finish including the Shatzkin and Lugosi material.
“So,” said Phil, “what do you make of it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “There’s no link between the two cases. It’s crazy.”
“There’s a link,” said Seidman from the front seat. I could see his sunken-eyed skull of a face in the rearview mirror.
“Yeah,” I said. “Me. I’m the missing link.”
“And…?” said Phil.
“I’ll work on it,” I said. “How’s your knee?” Phil said, turning his head away from me out the window.
That was the blow I almost couldn’t handle. My mind went blank, and I reviewed more than four decades of life with Phil. Three had never been anything like this.
“Ruth told me,” he explained.
“Told you?”
“The money,” he said.
Seidman pretended to hear nothing.
“I thought you’d break my head if you found out,” I said.
Phil’s hands were in his lap. They wanted to do something, but his mind was stopping him.
“I don’t like it,” he said, “but I need it.”
“Then why are you holding your hands like that? If I forgot your words, I’d think you wanted to crush my head.”
“Different reason,” he said. “You scared the hell out of Dave. You were supposed to take him to see Dumbo. You took him to see some zombie movie. He had nightmares last night. You forget he almost died last year after the car hit him? He’s eight years old and living with the idea that he was almost killed.” “I was wrong,” I said quietly.
“You’ve been wrong ninety-nine times out of one hundred since you were…”
“Since I was eight,” I finished. “Where are we going?”
“Mrs. Shatzkin’s friend Haliburton just had an accident,” said Seidman.
We didn’t say anything more. Seidman drove and turned on the police radio to break the pained silence. It purred numbers and addresses to us, soothed us with reports of vandalism and possible mayhem, made us think about something besides ourselves.
We got where we were going in about ten minutes. It was a downtown hotel on Main Street a few doors from the bus depot. A sign outside said rooms were two dollars and up, with separate bath.
When we hit the lobby, the desk clerk came around the counter and moved toward us, his mouth open to speak. Phil held up his hand to stop him from saying anything and told Seidman, “Talk to him.”
A young cop, his face pale, sweat on his collar and his LAPD badge new and shiny, was waiting at the elevator. The lobby, which wasn’t much beyond some sagging stuffed chairs and three stunted palms, was empty.
“Elevator’s out, Lieutenant,” the young cop said. “I’m Officer Rnzini. The crime was on the fourth floor.”
“I think I can walk it without a heart attack,” Phil shot back.
“I didn’t mean…” Rnzini began, but Phil was already taking the stairs two at a time, trying not to pant. I followed behind Rnzini, trying not to smell the building’s rancidness.
“It’s crazy,” Rnzini whispered confidentially to me but loud enough for Phil to hear. “The guy looks like he was shotgunned, but he was alone in a locked room, window locked tight, looks like it hasn’t been opened in years. Doesn’t make any sense.”
Phil stopped suddenly on the stairs, and Rnzini had to throw himself against the wall to keep from bumping
