Loring gets his lower lip ripped off.'
Phil signed off, hung up the radio, and stared out of the front window.
I had some ideas, but I knew better than to say anything. A good sigh later, Phil said, 'I'll put a man on Hospodar and one on Varaey,' he said. 'You?'
'Let's just catch him,' I said.
'Just get me a double burger,' Phil said, climbing out of the car.
'You want mustard, onion, and pickles?' I said, stepping out of the hole where there had recently been a door.
Phil nodded and reached for his wallet as we walked toward the Pup.
I stopped him with, 'This one's on Clark Gable.'
We had finished our sandwiches-mine was a Colossal dog with coleslaw instead of kraut-before we discovered that Wally Hospodar was dead.
Actually, I discovered that Wally was dead when I offered him the regular dog with chili and he fell on his face.
There was a hole in his back, a thin hole. My guess was that he was passed out when he died. Phil was sitting in the driver's seat when I told him Wally was dead. Phil snatched the chili dog out of my hand and downed it in three angry bites.
'How could Spelling get back to the car before us when we were on his damn ass?' Phil sputtered through a mouthful of mustard and bun.
'I don't know, Phil,' I said, still standing outside the car next to him and watching the traffic flow by.
'And how the hell do I explain stopping for lunch with a corpse in the back seat, a dead man killed in my own car?'
'I don't know, Phil.'
'Damn,' Phil said, hitting the steering wheel. 'Get hi.'
'I think I'll…'
'Get the hell in the car,' Phil said, tearing at his tie.
I got in.
Chapter 11
I had a headache. Mrs. Plaut fixed a bag of her Aunt Ginger's Yellow Indian Poultice, which she instructed me to apply to the cut on my forehead. Mrs. Plaut also gave me a Boxie Scotch Bromide, yellow crystals dissolved in water, which I was instructed to 'drink down without pause or risk dyspepsia.'
The price I had to pay for poultice and bromide, which had not yet kicked in, was to read another chapter of Mrs. P's never-ending history of her family.
It all began when Mrs. Plaut first rented a room to me, a little over two years ago. For reasons still unclear to me, which Gunther suggested I not explore, Mrs. Plaut believed I was either an exterminator or a book editor, possibly both. So far she hadn't asked me to get rid of the ants, crickets, or funny-looking green things with wings that sometimes got in the house. These she disposed of with her own remedies and frequent applications. No, she turned to me for help with the history of the family Plaut.
I had read more than a thousand pages, written in Mrs. Plaut's neat block letters on lined sheets. The new batch, which she handed me with the poultice and the bromide concoction and more information on changes in the ration-book regulations, was mercifully short.
I couldn't complain. Mrs. Plaut had agreed to let me hold a meeting in the all-day-and-early-evening room, a big fire-placed room with a faded Navajo rug which was reserved for 'quiet' moments and 'music listening' time for the roomers. The room was seldom used by anyone but Mr. Hill the mailman, who sometimes paused to take off his shoes and rest his feet before pulling himself up the stairs. Mr. Hill, in full gray uniform, was known to doze off snoring, clutching his empty leather mailbag to his chest. Once in a while, Mrs. Plaut would come in serious or beaming to wind the Victrola and play such favorites as 'Hindustan,' 'Indian Love Call,' 'Juntos en El Rincon,' and 'After You've Gone.' Most of the records were so old they were recorded on one side only. Most were by Isham Jones and his band, though there were a few Ted Lewis and King Olivers in the scratchy pile.
My headache, the yellow poultice, and I lay on the mattress on the floor going through the pages Mrs. Plaut had handed me. I read:
My brother Bill and his friends Murryhill and Weston were to have charged up San Juan Hill astride their horses right behind Teddy Roosevelt himself. Weston later claimed that Blackjack Pershing was also among their elite company, but Brother was certain that Persh-ing's brother was back at camp tending the backup horses.
Well, anyway, Brother, Murryhill, and Weston assembled on horseback and followed a contingent they thought was the first wave of cavalry. It turned out, as you may have surmised from small hints I have given you, that they were incorrect. Brother Bill always contended, to the day he died in Mineola, that Colonel Roosevelt had not been entirely clear on time or location of assembly.
There is, however, no point in contemplating what can not have been.
Bill Murryhill, who was quite bald and had been since early childhood from what was reputed to be a misapplication to the scalp of Mrs. Tessmacher's Panacea in a Bottle, and Weston lost no time in urging their steeds to the fore and upon seeing a lone rider charge at a gallop up a ridge, Brother opined that it was Teddy and he urged Murryhill and Weston, who had but one eye due to an ice cream machine accident in Toledo, to gallop on to glory with the first wave Rough Riders in their moment of triumph.
When they reached the crest of the hill with no resistance from the enemy who they were convinced had fled at the fearsome sight of determined American cavalry, they looked around for Teddy and back for the rest of the Riders. Of Riders there appeared to be none. Of Teddy, they had been mistaken. The man on the horse, who was no longer on the horse, was sitting with legs crossed on the grass and holding his head. His name was Tom Mix. He had a winning smile and an enormous nose and would go on to greater fame as a movie star and circus curiosity.
Tom Mix had been carried away by the horse he had been breaking, a Roan of ill disposition who now stood munching grass and looking at the small group. Tom Mix had sustained a bump on his head.
At that moment, so Brother recalled, there was a tremendous whooping and hollering from the hill to their right veiled by thick trees. As they discovered subsequently, it was the Battle of San Juan Hill.
The contingent, Tom Mix, Murryhill, and Weston, led by Brother Bill went down the far side of the hill leading their exhausted horses and found themselves in a small town called Rosalinda where the populace greeted them without enthusiasm as liberators from the Spanish yoke. Though Tom Mix claimed to speak fluent Spanish, it turned out that he knew only enough words to get himself in trouble. Remember, however, that he was a young lad at the time and full of suds.
Weston, however, knew enough to announce a fiesta of victory over Spain and a great party was held that evening albeit there was little to eat and drink. Murryhill did not return with Brother, Tom Mix, and Weston the next morning. He fell in with a family named Calles taking up with either the daughter or aunt of the family, Weston's Spanish being too poor to determine which.
Brother Bill reported that Murryhill had died in the charge and he was backed up in this deceit by Tom Mix and Weston. Murryhill became a hero of the charge on San Juan Hill and a statue was erected in his memory in downtown Enid, Oklahoma where he was from. Subsequently, Tom Mix visited Enid and made a fine speech about his partner Murryhill. A children's park in Enid was named in honor of Murryhill. I know not if it still stands but I understand on good authority that it contained the first twenty-foot children's slide in either Oklahoma or Texas.
Weston became a bartender in Florida somewhere along the Suwanee River and Brother married a harness maker's daughter and moved to Healdsburg in the Cali-fornias where he repaired typewriters and telegraphs and wrote many a newspaper article about his exploits with the Rough Riders.
There was more, much more, but not for me. Not today. I closed my eyes and opened them almost immediately. Mrs. Plaut was standing in my doorway, arms folded, wearing a yellow dress with a print of large red flowers and a straw hat with a wide brim.
