The bartender was moving on Phil, who started back toward his stool next to us.
'Stop there,' Phil said, holding up a hand. 'I'm a police officer and I'm in one lousy mood. You want your nose smashed as flat as my brother's over there, just keep coming.'
The bartender threw the bat in the general direction of my brother, but it was so wide and to the right that it had to be a pickoff play or a wild pitch to save face.
'He really a cop?' the woman in red screamed at me.
'Yep,' I said.
'Let's get out of here,' Phil said. 'Before I do something I won't regret.'
I dropped another one of Clark Gable's five-spots. When the bartender glared at me, I dropped another five to ease his pain.
'Get out of here,' the bartender said softly through clenched teeth, in a not-bad Gary Cooper.
Normally, that would have been enough to insure Phil's staying around to do some real personal and property damage. But I was off the stool now and ushering Wally toward the door. The lady in red went into the sunlight just ahead of us as we passed in front of Phil, now glowering at the barkeep.
'I don't want him in here for a month,' the bartender said, pointing at Wally. 'A month. He's trouble and you're it.'
Phil shook his head and joined me and Wally as we went through the Melody Lounge door and onto Main Street. A rain was coming and the lady in red was disappearing into a bar across the street. Nobody paid much attention to us, either because they had seen falling-down drunks before or they had enough instinct to recognize that the hefty guy with the marine haircut was waiting for an excuse.
'What was that?' I asked, leading Wally toward Phil's car.
'Soliciting to commit prostitution. Creating a public nuisance. Catching me when I'm in a bad mood. Hospodar,' he said as I set Wally gently down on the fender, 'what was in that damn report? Have we got conspiracy to cover a possible murder or what?'
Wally's clothes, now that I could see them in the sunlight, were clean and neat. He was shaved and his hair cut. He was holding onto something he had been, but his grip was loose.
'Made a mistake,' Wally mumbled. 'One day a decision had to be made and I'd long lost the ability or desire to decide. I didn't step in when two execs were fighting about something, and one of them broke the other guy's face when I was two feet away. Guy with the broken face was a cousin of Louis B.'s wife. End of career.'
'I'm sorry,' I said.
'And I'm running out of patience,' Phil said.
Wally took a deep breath, let it out, and shook like a dog coming out of water.
'No cover-up,' he said. 'Went through Culver City Police. County attorney's office said it was probably an accident. Dead guy with the sword in his chest was one S. P. Ling…'
'Spelling,' I said.
'… who had outstanding warrants in three states,' Wally went on. 'Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York. Two were felonies, one for attempted murder. He did time on an armed robbery when he was a kid. Got the acting bug in prison. S. P. Ling, Actor Ling. Aliases included Sid Spelling and… I forget.'
Wally was reaching for something in his empty shirt pocket. He managed to get two fingers in the pocket and came up empty.
'And the records were burned?' I asked.
'Fried,' said Wally. 'Fire of suspicious origin. Lots of people out there with grudges.'
'Maybe someone who wanted the Ling file burned,' I said.
'What the hell for?' Phil came in impatiently.
'I had some thoughts on that one,' said Wally. 'Kept 'em to myself though.'
'Get in the car,' Phil said. 'We'll sober you up and talk about it when you get out of the drunk tank tomorrow.'
'He's doing fine, Phil,' I said.
'I'm not doing fine,' Phil said, thumbing himself on the chest. 'Get him in the car. Now.'
We were wedged against the curb, so we walked into the street and I opened the rear door as Phil climbed into the driver's seat. Cars were passing going both ways, so I didn't hold the door open all the way. I wouldn't have looked up at all if the car that was coming at us hadn't burned rubber with a screeching start, definitely an unpatriotic move during a rubber shortage. I still wouldn't have paid much attention if I hadn't looked up to see the car roaring toward us and Spelling, Jr., in the driver's seat. I pushed the dazed Wally into the back seat and tried to dive onto the top of Phil's car. I almost made it. Spelling missed me by a deep sigh and plowed into the open door. The door and Spelling exploded down Main Street. I turned my head and watched the car door spinning in the air. It missed the head of a mailman by about a foot and crashed through the window of a tailor shop, sending glass raining into the street, where people covered their heads and screamed.
'You all right?' Phil said as I slid back to the street on shaking legs.
'Yeah, I think so,' I said.
'Then get your ass in here,' shouted Phil. 'I'm gonna catch that son of a bitch.'
I threw myself into the car as Phil pulled onto Main, scraping the rear fender of the Ford sedan in front of us and almost hitting a green Tudor Chevy that hit its brakes just in time.
'Wally?' I said, but Wally had passed out.
We were going fast on a busy city street. I didn't want to know how fast. Phil wasn't talking. He turned on the radio and Claude Thornhill's record of 'Where Oh Where Has My Little Dog Gone?' blared out. Five minutes earlier, music had driven him over the edge. Now he was fueled by it. All bad signs. I shut up and sat on Wally Hospodar on the floor of the back seat.
'That was Spelling,' I said over the music.
Phil didn't answer.
'I think he's the son of the guy who died,' I went on. 'I wonder why he wanted to kill Wally?'
Phil laughed.
'I saw him coming in the rearview,' shouted Phil. 'You dumb shit. He was after you.'
'Right,' I said. 'Can't you go any faster?'
He tried. Through lights and past scurrying pedestrians. Across a sidewalk or two and through narrow alleys. Phil could have called for help on his radio, but he sang along with the music and hit the floorboard, which would have troubled me less if my brother hadn't been singing between his teeth in German.
'Zu Lauterbach hub ich mein Strump verloren,' Phil sang. 'That's the way the huns sang it.'
Spelling went out of control near the park. His car went into a spin, bounced off a lamp post, and almost rolled over. Phil hit the brake and skidded to a stop next to a fire hydrant upon which a man in a Panama hat was tying his shoe. When we came out of the three-door car, the man in the Panama was shaking and Spelling was out of his car and on his way. He could run. I couldn't and neither could Phil. Not like that. Even when we were kids.
'Get back in the car,' Phil shouted.
I got back in, knowing we weren't going to catch him now. We'd circle the park, but Spelling would go out wherever he wanted, maybe even double back. Phil knew it too, but he wouldn't admit it even to himself.
We went around the park, watching for a sign of Spelling. Nothing. We went around again and then tried streets off of the park. Some of them three times.
Suddenly, Phil turned off the radio and parked next to the Tail of the Pup hot-dog stand. Normally, Phil was a sucker for their kosher dogs. He pounded on the steering wheel with his fists for about a minute and then said, 'You want a burger?'
'Hot dog, if it's a kosher,' I said.
Nobody moved. Not Phil, who shut his eyes. Not me. Definitely not Wally Hospodar, who, for all I knew, was dead.
'What are we doing, Phil?' I finally asked.
'I'm meditating,' he said calmly. 'It doesn't do any goddamn good, but I'm meditating.'
After three or four minutes, Phil took a deep breath, opened his eyes, and used his car radio to call for someone to come for Spelling's wrecked car.
'And I want Loring to go over it. No one else. Loring. You get that? Anyone touches anything on the car but
