'Her mother's a widow,' I explained.
Tools gave out a sound like air escaping from a balloon. We all looked at him.
'Got a picture of your mother?' Cop Two asked.
'No, but there's one in my purse,' Connie said brightly. 'Down in the hotel locker room. I can run down and get it.'
'You do that, miss,' Cop Two said.
Connie looked at me, at Tools, and at the two cops before she went through the door. 'Spunky,' Cop Two said. 'Just the word I'd use,' I said. 'Let's sit down and wait,' said Cop One. And we did.
Chapter 10
The Melody Lounge on Main was almost empty when Phil and I got there. It was early afternoon. The drunks had mostly slid away for a few hours to try to give the impression that they had something to do besides drink in a dark bar where the ceiling fan whined like an engine trying to rev up. The soldiers, sailors, and marines hadn't started their evening yet and the businessmen and women from the neighborhood were still sitting in their offices, watching the clock and listening to Duke Ellington's version of 'C Jam Blues.'
I had been escorted to Phil's office by two silent cops, and Phil had listened quietly to my story.
'So,' I had concluded, talking fast. 'The way I see it, Spelling is out for revenge for something that happened to his father.'
'And,' Phil had said, touching his forehead to be sure it was still sweating, 'you think his father may have been shish-kebabed with a sword while Atlanta burned?'
'Something like that,' I said.
Phil had nodded.
'Security records were destroyed at Selznick,' I said,
'but the security guy on duty that night was Wally Hospo-dar.'
'Jolly Jowly Hospodar?' asked Phil. 'Used to work prostitution on the beaches?'
'Same,' I had said. 'I'm planning to hit the bar where he hangs out and see what he remembers. You checked with Culver City Police about the guy who caught the sword in his stomach in '38?'
'John Doe,' said Phil. 'Suspicious accident. No witnesses. Short report. Busy season. Case closed.'
'Let's go see Wally Hospodar and open it again,' I said.
Phil had folded his hands and put his thick white knuckles to his lips. I sat quietly waiting, fighting the almost irresistible urge to prod him with the right word.
'Let's go,' he finally said, standing up.
And we went.
Now we were in the Melody Lounge in search of what had once been Wally Hospodar. We found him on the last bar stool in the comer, biting his lower lip and looking off into mirrors inside of mirrors, trying to remember something or someone. Phil and I sat on either side of him. He looked at us in the mirror and we looked at him. He was ruddy-faced and long past jowly.
'That clarinet,' Wally said. 'Barney Bigard. Ellington's a goddamn genius. G-C, sol-do, variations. That trombone, right there? Tricky Sam Nanton. You missed Ray Nance's opening violin solo.'
'You know a lot about music,' I said.
'I know a lot about sitting here,' Wally said, looking up at us in the mirror behind the bar.
'The brothers Pevsner,' he went on, finishing a whiskey and reaching for a bottle of beer. 'You each take a round if I perform magic and tell you why you're here?'
'I'll take two rounds, Wally,' I said, waving to the bartender, who was rinsing out some mugs for me and Phil. We looked like the beer type.
'Fine,' said Wally. 'You want to know about the guy who died that night in '38 at Selznick.'
'You got it,' Phil said impatiently.
Wally smiled at his empty and sucked his teeth.
'Knew it. Angelina said some guy called, fishing around about me, the night the guy got killed.'
'He say anything else to Angelina?' Phil asked, waving away the barkeep and refusing a drink after Wally had his refill.
'Not so's she'd tell me. I met Angelina in Fort Worth.'
'That a fact?' Phil said.
'I'll have a beer, draft, whatever you've got,' I said to the waiting bartender, who clopped away.
Wally was looking into an eternity of mirrors, moving away from the Melody Lounge, from here and now. He was well on his way to being lost in dreams of Fort Worth.
The song on the jukebox ended.
'Angelina says she loves you and doesn't want you to come home.'
'I'll drink to that,' he said, draining his glass and pointing to his empty as the bartender, a lanky cowboy in boots, clopped back in our direction. 'And plenty more where that came from.'
'Maybe not,' the barkeep said, glumly picking up Wally's glass. 'You know the War Production Board just made eighty alcohol plants switch from the drinking stuff to industrial?'
'I knew that,' I said, turning to Wally, but the bartender, who needed some Sen-Sen, a shave, and a better sense of timing, went on.
'And the Woman's Christian Temperance Union met a month or so back in Birmingham, more than a thousand of them. And you know what they want?'
I could see Phil's fists clenching just below bar level.
'What?' I asked.
'Total prohibition again,' the bartender said. 'Through the war and after.'
'Never happen,' Wally said.
'Listen,' the bartender said, pulling a folded newspaper clipping from the pocket of his plaid shirt.
'You,' Phil said, putting his hands palm-down on the bar, a very, very bad sign.
'Just take a second,' the bartender said, ignoring Phil and unfolding the clipping to read. 'This was what the president of the W.C.T.U. said. Her name's Ida B. Wise Smith. Listen. 'There is hardly an activity of the home front of more importance to the American cause. Liquor is our most widespread and dangerous saboteur, and it is our patriotic duty to halt its ravaging of manpower, material, resources and physical stamina.''
The bartender looked at us as he stuffed the clipping back in his pocket. 'Nothing in there,' he said, 'about the time and work wasted, or the trains and buses and cars wasting gas and tires to get to Alabama.'
'Trains don't have tires,' Wally said.
'I was just lumping,' the bartender said with a shrug. 'It's the pouit, not the details, if you know what I mean.'
'I know what you mean,' I said.
'Get the man his drink,' Phil said, doing his best to contain himself.
The bartender gave Phil a sneer, turned, and went for the bottle.
Music suddenly drummed through the floor. A woman of the afternoon in a red dress and a bad mood was giving us an I-dare-you look and swaying to the opening notes of 'Tangerine.'
'What was in the report, Wally?' I asked as the bartender came back with my beer.
'Turn off the jukebox,' Phil said, rubbing his gray hair with the palm of his hand. A very bad sign.
'Lady's got a right,' the bartender said with a shrug.
'Then turn it down,' Phil said as the bartender turned away.
The bartender just walked and the music rose. It seemed to be pushing Wally into alcoholics' dreamland. Phil got off his stool and strode toward the lady in red, who gave him a knowing smile and held up her arms, waiting to dance. Phil walked past her and kicked the jukebox right in the speaker. It groaned and shut up.
'What the?…' the woman screamed.
'Hey, asshole,' the lanky bartender shouted, coming over the bar with a sawed-off bat hi his hand.
'It was on fire,' Phil said. 'I just saved your bar. You owe me one.'
