CHAPTER SEVEN
The cop was rapping at my car window with white knuckles, and the sunlight of morning crept around him. I had slept through the night and missed Lola’s exit. I rolled down my window.
“What are you doing here, fella?” he said softly.
I sat up, tried to force my eyes open wide and touched my chin, which bristled for a shave I couldn’t give it.
“My wife,” I said, trying to find a sob. “I followed her and my best friend to that bar last night. I was waiting for them to come out. Must have fallen asleep.”
“What were you planning to do when your wife and friend came out?” the cop said, examining the interior of the car.
“Follow them,” I said. “Confront them. I don’tknow.” I looked up at the sun through my dingy windshield and squinted. A tear of pain formed in my right eye. I closed my eyes tightly so it would touch my lower lid. I looked at the cop without blinking.
“You live in Burbank?” the cop said with a touch of sympathy.
“No,” I said, “Pasadena.” It didn’t matter what I told him. If he looked at my identification carefully, I was in trouble. I beat him to it by pulling out my wallet and digging out one of the dozen business cards I had picked up in my travels. I handed him the card and he read it.
“Well, Mr. Dubliclay,” he said, handing the card back, “I suggest you go back to Pasadena and have a nice quiet talk with your wife. She probably went straight back home last night.”
Translated, this meant if you want to blow the head off your wife and best friend, get the hell out of Burbank to do it.
“Thanks, officer,” I said, wondering if he would ever know how close he came to capturing public enemy number one.
I drove to Lola’s apartment and made my way up the stairs without thinking about what I was going to tell her. No one answered my first knock. I tried again harder and Lola’s voice said, “Just a second.”
In just a second the door flew open and I found myself looking at Marco, who was pointing his hefty pistol at my chest.
“In,” he grunted, motioning me in with his free hand. I stepped in, and he moved behind me to kick the door shut.
The room was small, hard and not inviting. The sofa and two chairs looked uncomfortable but durable, the way furnished-apartment furniture always looked. Sitting in one of the armchairs, Lola looked uncomfortable, too, but I couldn’t vouch for her durability. She was curled up in a ball, one arm hugging her knees, the other one holding her hair back to look at me. She was wearing pink two-piece pajamas that made her look like what she wasn’t, an innocent little girl. There was a fear in her eyes, too, that little girls only had when they woke up from nightmares.
When Marco prodded me with his gun, and said, “Have a seat and …” I turned around with my elbow out to hit his gun hand. This time it didn’t work. He backed up a step and drove his gun into my back. I staggered and Lola whimpered. I went into the wall, trying to make it look as if the blow had taken everything out of me and the crack of the wall had reduced me to bubble gum. I suppose if I had had time to think about it, I would have realized that the charade wasn’t far from the actual feeling, but I told myself otherwise. Marco strode toward me, in command, hand cocked, ready to smash any disobedience that might be left in me. I kept my head down, watching with my eyes rolled up toward him. His blow wasn’t as cautious as it should have been. I stepped inside it and the gun and threw a left into his stomach. The gun dropped to the floor, and Marco fell back on his behind. I wasn’t sure how to attack a gorilla of a man who was sitting down on the floor. I couldn’t jump on him or sit next to him. I could punch him while he sat, which would have worked out just fine, but some stupid nagging morality from old Gary Cooper movies stopped me.
My hesitation gave Marco a chance to recover. He went to his knees and dived at my legs. I started to back away, but he caught my left leg and I went over the sofa, landing at Lola’s feet.
“Don’t worry, I’ve got him now,” I told her and got to my feet to beat Marco to the gun. It turned out to be a tie. In the next fifteen or twenty seconds we managed to prove once and for all that furniture in furnished apartments is not as durable as it should be. We went at it with more enthusiasm than the Underwriter’s Laboratory could ever hope to get from a mere paid employee. I discovered that the leg of a walnut end table will not stop a charging thug. Marco, in turn, learned that a sofa pillow will not always hold up under the pressure needed to smother a detective. I was sure, as we thudded into the bookcase, that we would rate all the furniture very low for combat use.
We might still have been at the battle if Marco hadn’t found himself at Lola’s feet, following one of my better efforts at using my head as a battering ram.
“Don’t be apprehensive,” he told her and pushed his great body from the floor for another bruised charge at me.
“Hold it,” I shouted, trying to catch my breath. I held out both hands to hold him. He hesitated. “Why did
“I’m protecting her,” he said.
“From who?” said I.
“You,” he said.
The fear in Lola’s eyes was clear now. She was afraid of me, not Marco. I think I laughed. I know I groped my way to what was left of a chair. Marco picked up his gun and stood over me.
“What the hell made you think I wanted to hurt Lola?” I said.
“Mr. Lombardi said you maybe killed Larry and another guy and maybe you was planning to eradicate everyone in the Cooper movie, get them off Cooper’s back.”
“You thought I’d kill six or seven people just so Gary Cooper wouldn’t have to make a movie?” I laughed. “Who would kill for anything as-”
“Lots of guys,” said Marco, trying to button his shirt but unable to find the button I had chewed off. “I know guys have iced four, five other guys for less than five bills.”
“Right,” I said, thinking that Marco might be just such an icer. “But I told you I didn’t kill your brother-in-law, Larry? I didn’t even know his name and I don’t kill people.”
“I didn’t like Larry much,” Marco said, “but he was family and-”
“I know,” I stopped him. “What’s your wife going to say?”
“So?” he said.
“So Lombardi sent you to protect Lola from me?”
“You got it,” he said, finally finding a button and a buttonhole, though they didn’t quite match.
“Lola, you really thought …?” I smiled sadly, but it was clear that Lola really did think it was possible.
“You ever stop to think that maybe Mr. Lombardi had another reason for sending you to guard Lola with this bull-fiddle story about me? Maybe he just wanted to keep you busy, take your mind off finding out who stitched Larry?”
“Mr. Lombardi wasn’t culpable for Larry’s getting his,” Marco said, trying now to straighten his few strands of hair. We had broken the only mirror in the room, so he had to do it by feel. He managed to get two tufts up on the sides so that he looked like Porky the Devil. Then he pushed it back, but a crop of hair popped up in back, making him look like Tony Galento doing an imitation of Dagwood Bumstead. He was not a visually impressive mug, but he could throw a kidney punch with the best of them.
“Think about it,” I said.
Marco’s mind was not adapted to extended thought about much of anything. The idea of “thinking about it” seemed to cause him pain. He squinted to force the thought into action and gave it up.
“You’re pulling a fast one,” he said warningly.
“Suit yourself,” I said. “Lola, you have broken my heart. I thought we were music together.”
“Off-key,” she said protectively. I couldn’t tell if she was knocked-out drunk or shaky sober.
“Maybe,” I said. “I’m not after you.”
“Out,” Marco ordered.
