Eats to Die For! (16 page)

I assumed he knew what a cell phone was.

“And now they think you did it.”

“I actually worked my way out of that one. At least I think I did. But there's someone else that the police suspect, Louie's dunderhead brother, who ran away from the police and was hiding out in my office. But now he's in trouble, too.”

“How so?”

“I'm not sure. He left a call on my machine saying they were after him, but before I could check it out, I got clubbed from behind.”

“That it?”

“No, there's also a dancer named Regina who also got herself murdered, though why I have no idea.”

“What's her connection to the case?”

“She seems to have been the one who got Louie involved. She also appears to have been Louie's lesbian lover.”

Bogie's eyebrows raised and he muttered, “Ohhhhh.”

“She also seems to be tied into a pseudo-church called the Temple of Theotologics. There. I think that's everything.”

“Mm-hmmm.”

“That's all you've got? Just ‘mm-hmmm?”

“What more do you want?”

“Well, you could tell me what, if anything, it all means, and who keeps killing people.”

“You sure you don't know?”

“I haven't a clue, and I mean that literally.”

“Look at it this way, kid,” Bogie said. “You've got a dead dancer, a dead little creep, a dunderhead brother, who by now may be dead for all we know, so what connects them all?”

“Nothing, as near as I can figure, except…oh. Oh, no.”

“Mm-hmmm. The thing that connects them all is the tomato, and she's the only thing, from the sound of it.”

“I can't believe that,” I uttered. “Not Louie.”

“You think I wanted to believe Miss Wonderly was behind all the blackbird carnage? Sometimes you have to face facts. Your tomato disappears and people she knows start turning up dead. It wouldn't surprise me if she was the one who sapped you. Kind of poetic, when you think about it: a sap for a sap.”

“Have you been talking to Mitchum?” I asked.

Bogie smiled. “I overhear sometimes.”

“Okay, there's one thing I forgot to mention,” I said, desperately. “Louie's apartment had been ransacked, like someone was searching for something. I assumed it for was her notes on the Burger Heaven investigation.”

“So?”

“So, doesn't that exonerate her?”

“She could have turned the place over herself to throw off suspicion.”

“Then what about that threatening message on her phone machine?”

“Do you know who left the message?”

“No.”

“Do the police?”

“I have no idea. I don't know if they ever heard it.”

“So you're the only one who heard the message.”

“No, Avery heard it, too. He's the dead little creep.”

“Which means he can't confirm your story.”

“Right, but…hey, what are you saying? That I imagined hearing the message?”

“Well, kid, you have to admit, you do have a history of hearing voices.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but nothing came out. How could I argue with a long-dead movie star that I was not given to imagining things?

Finally I said, “I'm still having a hard time believing that Louie is responsible.”

“Suit yourself,” Bogie said, pulling the car over to the side of the road. “I've done all I can, kid, so here's your stop. Go on, get out.”

I got out of the Plymouth and looked around. To Bogie it may have looked like Stage 7 at Warner Bros., but to me it looked like a real road next to a real cliff that led down to the real Pacific Ocean, but all in black-and-white.

“Do I have to walk now?”

“No, somebody'll be by. Good luck, kid.”

With that, Humphrey Bogart drove away, leaving me on the side of the road. He was right, though; several other cars came by. One was driven by no one, but had the Three Stooges in the back seat. That one I let pass. Another one was a Porsche Spyder driven by James Dean, and that one I
definitely
let pass.

Then a convertible pulled to the side to pick me up. It was driven by Ann Savage, the femme fatale of the no-budget noir classic
Detour
. “How far you going?” she asked, a cigarette dangling dangerously from her lips.

“As far as it takes to find the truth,” I replied.

“I don't think this heap's got enough gas for that. But get in.”

I got in and she pulled back onto the highway. All of a sudden I was aware that it was hot. “I'm glad you came along,” I said.

“I'll bet you are,” she sneered. “What particular truth are you looking for?”

Since unloading the details of the case to Bogart had resulted in a depressing thought, I didn't want to repeat the experience. So I just shrugged.

Besides, since this was all happening somewhere inside my mind, she must already know.

All happening somewhere inside my mind.

“Mind if I ask you a question?” I said.

“You just did,” she replied, her cigarette bobbing, its ash falling on her blouse.

“Right. Well, since you wanted to know what particular truth I'm looking for, here it is. It's not who killed Louie or who killed Regina or what happened to Ricky. I want to know if I'm crazy. I mean, not just a little wacky, but certifiably, lock-him-up insane. So insane that I imagine phone messages. So insane that I talk to dead actors. So insane that I fall for murderers. Am I really that crazy?”

“How the hell should I know?” dead actor Ann Savage, playing a murderer, asked in my imagination.

“Well, because you're me.”

She looked over at me, her eyes scanning me up and down. “I may have had some bad mornings, Poindexter, but I never got up looking like you.”

“What I mean is, you're in my head. I'm essentially talking to myself.”

“No, you're dreaming. There's a difference.”

“This is still taking place inside my brain.”

“'Bout time something did,” she said, turning to smirk at me. “I overhear sometimes, too.”

Can't I conjure up anyone who actually
likes
me, I thought, desperately.

Then it hit me. “My god,
I'm
the one who's always insulting me and insisting I'm a failure,” I said aloud. “It's
me
. That's my problem.”

“Go collect your kewpie doll, Ace,” she said, with something that almost resembled a smile.

Then she glanced in the rearview mirror. “We've got a bigger problem, though.”

“What?” That was when I heard the siren coming from behind us.

“They're onto us. Cops.”

“You sure it's us they want?” I asked.

“You see anyone else on the road? Hang on.” She stomped on the accelerator and the car's tires practically left the pavement.

“What are you doing?” I screamed. “You're going to try to outrun the police?”

“Got no choice. They know what I've got in the trunk.”

I threw my hands up in the air and began to wonder if I shouldn't have gone with the Three Stooges after all.

The siren was getting louder, more insistent. I looked back and saw that the 1940s-style police cruiser was only about four car lengths behind us. I also saw an officer lean out of the passenger window and point a gun at us.

“Jeez!” I cried as the bullet ricocheted off the side of the car.

Ann Savage, meanwhile, looked unconcerned, like she had done this before. “Gonna let a little thing like a bullet spook you?” she asked.

“It can spook me all it wants, I just don't want it to kill me!”

The second bullet pinged even closer.

“You worry too much.”

“Oh, do I? I'll have to bring that up at the next Corpses Anonymous meeting!”

“I think it's cute the way you get so glib when you're scared.”

Swell. I hope she found it just as cute that I got so dead when I was shot.

A third bullet whizzed by, but it was the fourth one that put an end to the chase. It hit one of the rear tires and blew it out, and immediately the car began to weave uncontrollably.

Ann tried to bully it back into the lane by wrenching the steering wheel one way, then the other, but it was too late. We were careening off the highway and onto the shoulder.

Unfortunately, it was the shoulder on the cliff side.

We went to the edge of the cliff, and then over, plummeting straight down to the water's edge.

I had seen such a shot a thousand times in a movie or TV show, but never from the point of view of the front seat!

I'm dreaming I'm dreaming I'm dreaming I can't die in a dream I can't be killed in a dream
… My brain was screaming. Or maybe it was me screaming. I couldn't tell. All I knew is that we hit the water.

I could feel it on my face…

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

I could feel the water on my face, which shocked me back to consciousness.

I opened my eyes and saw someone standing over me, a big, burly guy holding an empty tumbler.

“Sorry,” he said, in such a way that conveyed he wasn't sorry in the slightest and, in fact, had enjoyed throwing a glassful of water into my face. And would like to do it again sometime, only with boiling coffee.

The guy wore a uniform, but it was one I could not place; not quite military, but close, with epaulets on the shoulders of the white, starched shirt. The creases on legs of his black pants could have sliced cheese.

I shook my head, throwing beads of water off in every direction. “Where am I?” I asked.

“The place where bad people go,” the guy said.

I guess that meant I was either in Hell or Washington D.C.

“Why am I here?”

“I just told you.”

“When can I leave?”

“That's up to you.”

“Okay, fine. How about right now.”

The guy didn't smile. He looked like he wasn't sure how. “I can't do that,” he said.

“Then how about this? Why not tell me what's going on. I assume I've been kidnapped, but why?”

“I'm not at the proper adjustment level to give you information,” he said, unlocking the door of whatever holding tank I was in and opening it.

I suppose I could have tried to rush him and get past him, but I was never very good at that sort of thing. Besides, now my head was dully aching.

The bigger truth was, I was disoriented. Maybe this was still part of my dream, but instead of Vera from
Detour
, this time I was in the company of an unbilled extra.

No, 'cause your cranium hurts
,
kid
, Bogart said.
You don't feel pain in dreams
.

Swell.

The guy was out of the room, which gave me an opportunity to inspect it further. It was a regulation prison cell, sized six-by-eight, and came complete with a cot, upon which I had been sprawled prior to being splashed awake, a metal sink and a toilet. The door had a small barred window in it.

Compounding the suspicion that I was in somebody's jail was reinforced by the fact that I was no longer wearing my own clothes, but had instead been changed into an orange prison jumpsuit.

The thing was, I didn't recall any arrest or booking.

There was no need to check for my wallet or keys, since they would have been taken by my captors, and I didn't have to worry about my cell phone, since the police still had it.

My only options at present were to sit down and try to figure out where I was, or wait until someone of a higher “level” showed up to fill me in. Maybe the most surprising thing about this descent into surrealism was the fact that the prison jumpsuit was really comfortable.

With nothing better to do, I sat on the cot, leaned back and closed my eyes, and absentmindedly rubbed my chin in a parody of thought.

And that was when I truly became afraid.

I rubbed my chin again, then my cheeks, my upper lip and my neck. I had at least two days worth of beard stubble.

Going to the small window in the door, I started yelling. I kept it up until someone appeared on the other side, not the guy who had thrown water on me, but someone older, with more pseudo-military decorations on his pristine white shirt.

“What do you want?” he asked placidly.

“How long have I been here?” I demanded.

“Two days, though transporting you here took an additional day.”

“And I've been unconscious the whole time?”

“We couldn't very well have you alert during this process. Someone might have gotten hurt.”

“Who is
we
?” I shouted, having a terrible feeling that I already knew.

“Things will be revealed on an as-needed basis.”

“At least tell me why I've been kidnapped by the Temple of Theotologics,” I said, taking a stab at the truth.

“Kidnapped by the Temple of Theotologics,” the guy repeated. “That sounds paranoid. Have you been diagnosed as suffering from paranoia?”

“I'll bet you have a program to fix that,” I said.

“Oh, many.”

“How about murder. Do you have a program to fix murder?”

The man shook his head. “There you go again. Definitely paranoia. We'll have to have one of our adjusters come in to talk to you.”

“I'll be happy to talk to anyone,” I said. “Ideally someone over your pay grade.”

“Low self-esteem, too. You have to try and tear someone else down in order to make yourself seem more important? I'd say we've gotten you just in time.”

“Since you've brought the subject up, what time is it?”

The man glanced at his watch and then said, “Five thirty-five. Almost dinner time.”

“Great. I'll have a Twin Halo combo.”

“A what?” The fellow looked genuinely confused.

“A Twin Halo, from Burger Heaven. The Temple owns Burger Heaven, don't they? That's why I'm here, isn't it?”