think he would. A lot of my survival lately was based on my judgment of human nature. If the past was any indication, I was living on borrowed time.
CHAPTER NINE
There was a character named Moneybags Farrell who ran a newsstand on Highland near Selma. He was called Moneybags not because he was rich but because he never handled his customers’ money. He collected it in a leather bag. You dropped your money into it and he gave you change. Moneybags filled up the bag and took it into the restaurant on the corner every few hours. There he went to the washroom and washed the money before he handled it Moneybags was convinced that money was the prime carrier of disease in the modern world. I told him once that others agreed with him, but he was the only one I knew who took it literally.
Because of his nickname, he had been held up twice by punks who thought he had sacks of gold salted away under
I sat in my car with the motor running, listening to the Aldrich Family and reading the paper I had bought from Moneybags, who looked a little like my fantasy of Silas Marner from required grade-school reading.
I wasn’t tired, and my mind was leaping with thoughts and fears. I considered heading for one of the hotels and checking in under a false name. I’d done it before and could probably get away with it again for one night, even though Phil would have guessed at the possibility. I didn’t think the cops had the manpower to follow up on me that quickly. But I had work to do. I went to a phone booth and tracked down Cooper’s mother. She answered after five rings. I reminded her that I had met her with her son at Don the Beachcomber’s.
“I’ve got to reach him right away,” I said. “Urgent business.”
She made it clear that he didn’t want to be found, that he wanted a few quiet days and needed the rest. I countered by saying I was sure he would want to hear what I had to say and that I’d take full responsibility. I wanted to add the words “life and death” but didn’t.
Finally she agreed and gave me directions to an area on the coast in the hills just beyond Santa Barbara. It was clear that she was reading the directions.
“I thought he was going to Utah,” I said.
She had no reply other than to tell me that she hoped what I was doing was really important. I thanked her, hung up and found a broken pencil in my pocket. I chewed away enough so I could scratch out the directions she had given me in my small notebook.
Ignoring the warning signs of my car, I got as far as Santa Barbara and decided to pull in at a rickety motel just outside of town. I’d stopped there before. They charged little, gave little and asked no questions. I told the scrawny guy at the desk to wake me at seven. He said they didn’t wake people. I gave him a buck and he said he’d have the cleaning girl wake me. I gave him another two bucks to buy one of his shirts. He brought one out from his room behind the office and gave it to me without a question. I had the feeling that I could have asked him for his left arm and he would have given it without a whimper if the price was right.
There was no bath, just a shower stall, but the water was hot and the soap clean. The radio in the room didn’t work, which was just as well. I slept and dreamed of Sergeant York picking off Nazis and turkeys. With each shot Cooper as York moistened the front sight and squinted before he shot. The Nazis turned into familiar faces- Lombardi, Costello, Marco, Tillman, Gelhorn, Fargo, Bowie and finally Lola and me. I tried to shout to Cooper that I was on his side, but he just lined up his sights, gobbled like a turkey and fired.
I woke up as the bullet sailed toward me in slow motion. I couldn’t move, and I was sweating even though the room was underheated. Someone was knocking on the door and wearily saying, “It’s seven. You in there?”
“I’m here. I’m up,” I said, and up I got. The bed had been too soft, and my treacherous back ached slightly, but a second hot shower made it feel better. I overpaid the scrawny guy, who was still on duty but probably going off soon, for a razor and went back to my room, where I shaved while the maid began to clean up.
She was an undersized woman who looked like a walnut and sang something unintelligible and irritating, which hurried me through my shave and out of the room. Breakfast at a nearby roadside drive-in was corn flakes, sliced banana and a cup of coffee. I was back on the road by 7:40.
I felt a little sorry for the two figures in the blue Ford coupe who pulled onto the highway behind me. They had followed me from Los Angeles and probably slept in the car to be sure they didn’t miss me. Maybe they had actually grabbed something to eat during the night, but maybe they hadn’t taken a chance. In any case, I was in much better shape for losing them than they were for following me. Not only were they tired,
About ten miles further I came to a small town overlooking the ocean. I went down the main street slowly, with the Ford cautiously behind me. When I found a corner, I turned right and as soon as I was out of sight stepped on the gas and took another right turn. When I was back on the main street going toward the highway, I could see the Ford just making the first right around which I had disappeared.
Twenty minutes later I found the turnoff and drove down a narrow dirt road full of rocks. In about a mile the road gave out, and I pulled onto a grassy patch and parked. After locking the car and checking the directions in my notebook, I started up a narrow path through the trees. It was a great place to appreciate the outdoors, which I didn’t. I don’t like the rain. I don’t like the sky over my head when I sleep. A nice, safe, enclosed room with artificial light and a steady temperature beats communing with bugs any night or day.
The shirt I bought from the motel clerk was a little tight, and by the time I wound my way up the hill, it was drenched with sweat. The cabin was right where Cooper’s mother said it would be, a small, brick house built in the woods. It looked as if someone had designed it for a movie, right down to the pile of wood outside with an ax ready in a tree stump.
I went to the door and knocked. There was a shuffle inside and some voices before the question came, “Who is it?”
“Toby Peters,” I said.
The wooden door unlatched and opened, and Cooper stood before me wearing a hunting jacket that looked like a cleaned-up version of the one Gable wore in
“What are you doing here?” Cooper said, stepping back to let me in.
“How about what are
Cooper shrugged and grinned sheepishly, “Just a little place I like to hide away in.”
“If John Wilkes Booth had hidden here, he’d be alive today,” I said, realizing that we were not alone.
The room was the room of men with furnishings most men couldn’t afford. It was big, with a double bunk in one corner and a single bunk across the room. An Indian rug lay on the floor, colorful and new, and the redwood furniture with brown corduroy pillows helped the hearty-men image. A new oven stood in the corner next to a shining sink and refrigerator. If this was roughing it, I could take it. So, apparently, could the other two men in the room.
One of the men was a burly guy of about forty who stood over six feet and had the start of a gray-brown beard. He wore a lumberjack shirt and had a rifle cradled in his arms, aiming at the floor but ready to move on me. He stood next to the refrigerator as if guarding its contents from hungry intruders. The other guy in the room was dark and wiry, with a nasty scar that ran from the bridge of his nose, across his left eye and into his hairline. The scar was indented, and the man wearing it looked up without fear from the chair in which he sat.
“It’s okay,” said Cooper to the two men. “Mr. Peters works for me. That business I was telling you about with the Western.”
The man with the rifle pushed away from the refrigerator and lowered the weapon. His face still showed distrust. The dark guy in the chair didn’t move at all.
“Toby Peters, Ernest Hemingway and Louis Castelli,” Cooper said by way of introduction.
“Luis Felipe Castelli,” corrected the man in the chair.
Hemingway stepped forward and offered his right hand as he examined my face. He was interested in
