You Play the Black & the Red Comes Up Up (4 page)

TOO TIRED TO RUN

I
t was nearly noon when I woke. I had been dead to the world. Mamie brought
me breakfast to bed on a tray—
orange juice and toast and boiled eggs and bacon.

"I didn't know if you liked your eggs too soft," she said, "so I did them medium."

I didn't care how they were. I was hungry. She watched me eat. She looked cheerfu
l and up on her toes and differ
ent from the night before. She was all clean and shining and her hair brushed back and a ribbon tied round it the way school-kids do, and she had on a pair of red beach pajamas.

"Don't you have any hang-over?" I asked her.

"Not me, boy friend," she grinned. "I can take it."

"I always get 'em."

"I don't. I can take it."

"Where's Pat?" I asked her.

"Her?" She sniffed. "She got up and went out. Good
rid
dance to her."

She watched me eat.

"I like to cook," she said.

I didn't say anything, just ate.

"You know, I miss cooking for Block. He was a regular horse on food. He used to like breakfast in bed after we'd had a party."

"You know the way to a man's heart," I said.

She went out and I got dressed. When she came back she said, "I thought
you'd like these."

She had a toothbrush and some razor blades, and a newspaper.

"You can use my razor," she said. "Put a new blade in it. You don't mind, do you?"

I was thinking about the newspaper. I wanted to look at it, but I didn't dare. I wondered if she was wise. She didn't seem to be. While I was shaving, she shouted:

"Listen to this, big boy. Right in the Jolly Time Parlor, they pinched a holdup man. That's the place where we were last night."

I came out, still shaving, and looked at the paper over her shoulder.

"That's right, so it was," I said.

She gave me the paper and I read it. The guy I'd held up was dead. It said that Hernandez Felice, a Mexican, had been captured by the police, charged with the holdup and murder of Maurice Gottstein. It said how Felice had held him up and then shot him.

How the police do cover up when they've pulled a boner! The cops themselves had shot the guy by mistake, but they wouldn't ever let that out. I couldn't have shot him. I didn't have any gun.

But in the paper they had it how this Mexican had killed him, and how Gottstein was a brother of Mannie Gottstein, operator of concessions on the beach front.

Then it said the holdup money of nearly ten thousand dollars had disappeared, but they were grilling Felice to make him tell what he'd done with it.

That started me thinking about the bag up in the acacia tree. They hadn't found it, I thought. Or maybe they had and there was some city-slicking going on. I thought about that. Then I thought,
Maybe they know this Felice didn't do it and they're just holding him to fool me. Maybe they know it is someone else. Maybe they have spotted the bag. Maybe they've taken the money out and left the bag there. Maybe they'll have someone watching the place night and day, waiting to see if anyone shows up to get the bag.

It was all city-slicking from beginning to end. I couldn't make head or tail out of it. I couldn't figure why the Mex had taken that dive through the window. Whatever he did it for, it saved my skin.

I went back and finished shaving, thinking all this over. When I was through Mamie looked me over.

"You want to go down the beach?"

"No, I think I'll stay in a while," I said.

She looked at me and I b
egan to wonder if she was wise—
about me being leery of showing up on the streets.

"I know why you won't go out," she said.

"Oh, yes?" I said. "How come you know so much?"

"Because I know men," she said. "Look, you wait here. I'll go out and get you a suit and a shirt and things. Then you'll look all right."

She went out in the beach pajamas. She didn't ask me where I came from or why I was broke or anything. I was pretty leery of it all, I'll tell you. I thought maybe she'd gone to get the cops. But after what I'd been through I was too tired to beat it. I couldn't think of another week like I'd had.

I stayed there and after a while Mamie showed up with a regular layout of new clothes for me.

Patsy moved into an apartment of her own, but she came around to see us. I was still living with Mamie, because I didn't know what else to do.

I didn't know what to do. I wanted to stay near San Diego, because I kept thinking I might hit on some way to get Dickie back. I knew Lois wouldn't move far away from Hollywood. She was crazy for Hollywood.

And then, too, I kept thinking about this Mexican, Felice, and what they'd do to him. They were hanging a murder charge on his chin and really it wasn't him—nor even me. It was the police killed Gottstein.

And then I kept thinking about the bag I'd thrown up in the acacia tree. I kept thinking about all those things.

So I stayed on.

We didn't do much. Mamie and Patsy and I would go down and drink beer in the evenings, and we even went down to the roulette games that Gottstein's brother owned. No one seemed to recognize
me or bother me. So I felt eas
ier, but I'd keep thinking about the Mexican guy that they'd pinched.

Anyhow, it was comfortable. The girls had plenty of money. Mamie told me they both were drawing fifty a week alimony—even before they got the divorces. That's what their husbands had promised them if they'd let them get divorces.

We'd sit home days. Mamie liked to cook. She was a swell cook. Then in the evenings we'd hang around the beer parlors, dancing. I kept thinking I'd shove off, but I didn't. I just hung around.

NEW PROPHET

W
e were sitting in the Nude Eel Cafe, drinking beer
and dancing, when I saw Genter, the movie director, again. I hardly knew him at first. He didn't have on his blue coat and sandals, but he w
as wearing an old bum's outfit—
an old brown suit and a cap and no necktie. But his voice was the same.

He came right over and sat down as if nothing had happened—about him shouting to the police that I had a Tommy gun that night at San Diego. He just said:

"Well, well! I knew we should meet at Philippi!"

"Oh, yeah," I said. I didn't know what else to say. What could you say to a guy like that? Mamie and Pat were staring at him, so I just introduced him as a friend of mine. He didn't say anything about San Diego.

He ordered up a couple of
pitchers of beer and got inter
ested in Patsy's second name, which was Perisho. She started off telling him all about how it was originally spelled Perishault. Then we all danced. He danced with Patsy and seemed to have a good time.

"This is marvelous," he kept saying. "It's almost terrific."

The girls got pretty gay on the beer, and then he decided we all ought to go to his place. We went out and he had a big limousine down the street, with a Filipino chauffeur. The girls were tight enough so they didn't seem to think it funny, a guy dressed like a bum having a chauffeur and limousine.

We went tearing along, up the coast, the Filipino pushing her along well over eighty. He didn't seem to worry about getting pinched. We went right through the towns that way, through Santa Monica
and then along Sunset Boule
vard, and up into the hills. He lived way up on the top of a hill. We went into a big house. Next thing Genter was all changed and wearing a kimono with a dragon embroidered on the back in gold.

He said, "Now, my house and all in it is yours."

And it was. The butler came out with a wagon and all sorts of drinks on it, and we sat in the patio. I had three or four Scotch and sodas and was feeling pretty well oiled. He kept insisting we have more, and he was such a good guy you couldn't say no. Then he showed Patsy his house.

Maybe half an hour later, they came back.

"It's marvelous," he said. "She's a new prophet!"

He was that way—the minute you started talking to that fellow you seemed to tell him your life's history. Pat had been talking to him. She had crazy ideas, anyhow.

"Tell them," he said.

"Well," Pat said, "Mr. Genter doesn't think my ideas are crazy." She gave both me and Mamie a dirty look. "Mr. Genter thinks I have a wonderful idea. I don't see why it wouldn't work. All you do is give everyone five dollars the first week, on condition they've got to spend it within a week. Then the next week you give them six dollars each. And each week you give them a dollar more than last week."

"Who's going to pay the money and where does it come from?" I asked her.

"The State'll pay it, dumbell," she said. "We'll just have a sales tax. Then with everyone buying more and more each week, we'll have bigger and bigger sales taxes each week to pay off the payments, won't we? We'll raise it a dollar a week until in about a year everyone will be drawing fifty dollars a week."

"Children, too?" asked Mamie.

"Every last grownup, chic
k, and child," Pat said. "Every
one. We won't stint anyone."

"It's Armageddon," G
enter kept saying. He was begin
ning to yell in a whisper again. "It's Armageddon!" The funny thing was that when he got excited he yelled, but his voice only came out like a whisper. He yelled in a whisper.

"Well, try and start it," I told her.

"She will," Genter said. "I've given her my word she has a miraculous sociological plan that beats anything any hitherto blasted economist has dared to dream of. All it needs is just a little injection of showmanship."

He went into a huddle with his brain for a while and Pat sat there, beaming at him.

"I have it!" he shouted after a while. "The religious touch. You'll lead everyone to the new economic Canaan. We'll call it the Ecanaanomic Party. That's it! The Ecanaanomic Party—Riches For All! And we'll make it a religion."

Then he went on about how they'd build a temple and Pat should be the high priestess and wear robes of white samite and sandals. And he said they'd have a choir of a thousand voices and seven bronzed boys at the seven corners of a temple swinging censers of frankincense and myrrh, and girls would be garbed in golden sandals and kirtles of floating white silk, and forty virgins with jasper chain-belts would be acolytes at the altar.

He got to yelling in a whisper again.

"I'll have Togomi design the costumes," he yelled. "It's Armageddon, I tell you—Armageddon!"

He talked so's you almost believe it—he was that way. If you talked to him, you told him everything you knew. If he talked to you, you believed it even though it sounded crazy. He was that way. He kept on talking, and we kept on drinking. But the more I drunk the less I could thing about what Genter was saying. I got so that all I could think about was this Mex going to be knocked off maybe for murder.

He was a Mex, all right, but some of those Mexes have been pretty decent to me, especially when I was a kid. And

I couldn't think of anything except him taking the long ride when it wasn't him—or even me—that had done it.

Genter sent us home in his car—but all I could think of was this Mex.

ADVICE FROM A GENIUS

I
t was worrying about Felice that made me go up and see Genter again.

I read in the paper that a bunch of people in the Jolly Time all swore that Felice had been in the joint for two hours and couldn't have shot Gottstein.

But then the two girls and the Johns who had been on the make that night came up and identified Felice positively as the man who'd done the job. That made it bad, because the people who were testifying for Felice were all Mexicans, so the police didn't believe them. It looked like that Mex was really going on the spot.

When I heard that I knew I had to do something. I wanted to ask Genter what to do, because he was smart, all right. But I didn't want to tell him everything. And then, all of a sudden, I got the idea of how I could get Genter to help out. I could tell him the whole story from beginning to end, only instead of letting on it was all true, I would pretend it was a story I was writing for a movie plot and that I couldn't get the right ending, and then I'd ask him what I ought to do.

I felt better after I'd thought that up, and I borrowed the Buick from Mamie and drove up to Beverly Hills. It was late in the evening, but Genter. wasn't in. The butler let me wait inside, so I sat round till after midnight, just waiting and looking at the magazines he had there all in foreign languages. I could get along pretty good with the ones that had Spanish in them.

When Genter came in he was with three young fellows who were actors. He got rid of them soon and I told him the story—making out, of course, it was a plot for a movie I was thinking up. He listened, r
eally carefully, not saying any
thing all the time. He was calm this time and didn't yell or whisper or anything.

"Look," I said. "Now that's as far as I've got. The wrong man is in prison and we've got to get him out."

"Well, that's easy," he said. "Why don't you have the sweetheart of the first man prove him innocent—maybe you could have her turn detective and find the real guilty man."

"But he doesn't have a sweetheart," I said. "And the real guilty man isn't guilty, either. The cops really shot the guy that's dead."

He walked up and down a long time, looking at me and then walking.

"It's a terrific plot," he kept saying. "It's terrific. But I don't know what to suggest. Whatever it is, it must be a great, smash climax that you build to."

"Yeah, that's it," I said, pretending. "I think I could fix up a big climax if I could only figure out some way to get this first bird freed."

He thought a while and then he said he wouldn't want to suggest anything, because he was saturated with movie concepts and cinematic st
ructures and couldn't think any
thing new; while my mind, fresh and untutored he said it was, would probably hit on something beyond the realms of fiction.

"Well, tell me anything you think," I said. "I've got to think up something or go nuts."

He walked a long time. Then he said, "Well, why don't you get the money out of the tree and send it to the police?"

"You mean, have my hero do that?" I asked. I was quick on that one.

"Of course," he said. "What else could I have meant? You have your hero send the bag to the police—that will show them that the man they've arrested is innocent."

"That's what I'll do," I said. It sounded like a swell idea.

"Do you have to run right now?" he said.

"Well, it's late," I said. "And Mamie is alone."

"All right," he said. "Now promise me one thing. I've done you a favor—now will you do me one?"

I said sure I would.

"Then," he said, "don't take your story idea to anyone else. Remember, if you're my friend, I have first call on it. Now keep in touch with me on everything that happens, and get it all written down. How soon could you let me have a draft of the story?"

"Gees," I said. "I write pretty slow. Maybe it'll take a month."

"That's all right," he said. "Take your time. Don't hurry. But remember, I'm always ready to help you."

He was the friendliest fellow I ever saw, that Genter.