Spyfall Read online

  I walked back out to Cahuenga, crossed the street, turned around, and looked west. Yep. Buster Keaton had come running out of that same alley in his 1922 chase movie, Cops. Keaton was a favorite of mine from my first case with Mr. P in the early ’50s. I stood there now thinking about cops and crooks and today’s meeting with Mickey Cohen. Crime marched on.

  Tooling along Santa Monica Boulevard, I finally picked up the Hollywood Freeway back toward downtown Los Angeles. The late afternoon sun had warmed and thickened the city’s smog, but I didn’t care. I was driving a Thunderbird and Sinatra was on the radio singing “High Hopes.”

  I drove down Boylston, parked behind a Packard with a faded paint job, and switched off the engine in the middle of the Chipmunks warbling “Ragtime Cowboy Joe.”

  Norman’s building was a wooden two-story, almost a shack from the turn of the century, hunched forward with a wide porch.

  His tiny apartment reminded me of my first hang-out back when I started living on my own in LA. Both places were almost as cramped as my current office at the Brown Derby. Mine had been a single room in a low-rent hotel at the center of the city, empty of non-essential furniture, with a simple washstand and creaky-spring bed. I’d taped a sheet of paper to shade the low-watt bulb that hung from the dingy ceiling.

  The interior of Norm’s place was brighter and the opposite--in that it was jammed with boxes of records, piles of books, stacks of magazines and comics, all mingled with unidentifiable electronic equipment and parts of TVs, radios, tape recorders, cameras, and, for all I knew, nuclear reactors. Yet, out of all this, had come several useful devices like the phone he had once put in my old car and a pair of tiny, two-way radios. I had to admit that Norman was both the smartest and the most not-with-it guy I knew. All kidding aside about his intellect, he was also the most loyal friend I had, at least on the male side. He respected me almost as much as Number One Son looked up to Charlie Chan. But I had to remind myself not to take advantage of his good nature.

  I handed him the monster magazine I’d brought.

  “Blue blazes,” he said staring at the cover. “Issue number five is out! Bela Lugosi.” Then in a thick-tongued accent: “You got some blood for me? Blah?”

  I picked up a pair of black-framed sunglasses from a cluttered TV tray. “Hey, Norman, can I have these?” During the drive over, my own pair had slipped down into the bucket seat where I’d sat on them, shattering one lens.

  He pulled his head out of the refrigerator and winced in the direction of my voice. A lock of dark hair hung over his own thick specs, so I held the pair of shades higher.

  “Oh, no. They’re not ready yet,” he said, bending back to the fridge. “I’m still working on their gain.”

  The temples of the sunglasses felt thick and heavy. “What’s wrong with them?”

  He stepped over a cascading pile of LPs, an open bottle of Pepsi in each fist. “Nothing wrong. I’m just putting a mini-radio in them. See? It’ll be like a walkie-talkie, but nobody will notice when you transmit and receive signals.”

  I set the glasses down carefully and accepted a cold bottle of pop.

  Norm smiled. “If you added a cowboy hat, you’d have a great disguise as a Texan tourist.”

  I returned his smile, weakly. “That reminds me. I’ve got one for you.”

  He stepped back as if I were about to toss him a medicine ball. “Lemme have it.”

  I said, “‘I’m a cowboy who never saw a cow. Never roped a steer, ’cause I don’t know how.’”

  He quickly finished the couplet: “And I sure ain’t fixing to start in now. Yippie-ki-yo-ki-yay! Okay. Now, I’ve got one.”

  I took a long swig, watching his eyes grow eager behind lenses as thick as the bottle in my hand. “Okay, I’m ready. Hit me.”

  He started in with, “Once she met a deacon and he didn’t weaken, but he shouted ‘Glory be.’”

  This was a tough one, but I was sure that I knew it. “Give me a sec,” I said, staring intently at a Popular Mechanics mag next to a gutted hi-fi. Then, it came to me. “Now she’s going to meet a parson. Have a fifty-cent cigar, son.”

  Norm nodded with gusto and we both sang, “She’s arriving on the 10:10 from Ten-Ten-Tennessee-e.”

  Cheered by this foolishness, I decided this was the truest definition I knew of friendship.

  “Wow.” Norm laughed. “I almost said Great Ganymede.”

  Well, even the best definition of friendship has a limit. “We talked about that, remember?” I told him. “No more ganymedes or jumping blue blazes.”

  He nodded and burped soda. “Have you seen the new comic strip, Sky Masters? It’s all about space exploration and drawn by the artist who was doing the Challengers of the Unknown comic.” He held up the comic page from yesterday’s newspaper.

  I glanced where he pointed, but tried to appear disinterested. “The art is sort of crude and lumpy--”

  Once Norm got going, he was hard to stop. “I’ve got some more of his work here somewhere in The Fly.” He cast around the room’s assembled mess. “Jack Kirby. Jack Kirby.”

  I gave him a stage sigh. “Norman, you can show me later, okay? I need to hear what happened with that impersonator guy, Goshwin, I assigned you to follow.”

  “Gorshin.” He looked up, correcting me. “Frank Gorshin, Mr. Wade. Turns out he was right. Somebody was impersonating him. I found out that he’s up for a role in a Judy Holliday movie. Seems some other guy wanted the part in The Bells are Ringing. A friend of Dean Martin’s. So the other guy went to the audition in Groshin’s place. Later, when the real Frank Gorshin showed up--”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “The casting director didn’t bother correcting the mistake and sent him packing.” It had happened before to another actor I knew who tried to steal a role in a Brando picture. There were sleazy agents who would do anything to get their sleazy clients a big break. “So, what was the deal about the bank robbery, Gorshin mentioned?”

  “Oh, there doesn’t seem to be anything to that at all. I think Mr. Gorshin made it up to dramatically capture your interest and get you to hurry up with his case.”

  That had happened before, too. “Well, we need to be sure. Nice work, Norman. You’re showing real promise as an investigator.”

  “It helps me with ideas for my novel, too,” he said. “Do you want to read my--”

  “Not right now, thanks. But you’re doing great. Keep at it. Maybe I can set up an office for you at Suzi’s agency.”

  “Swell! Does she have an intercom?”

  I was stumped. “I don’t really know, but if not, I’ll bet you could build one.”

  We both laughed, even though what I’d said wasn’t really funny.

  He drank some Pepsi and looked around for a place to set the bottle. “I can’t believe I have so much stuff. I’ve collected a lot of memories.” He picked up a copy of Galaxy Magazine and gazed at the cover as if it told his life story.

  I finished my Pepsi and set the empty on the floor beside the guts of what I took to be a Geiger counter.

  I was checking the time on my brother’s watch when he asked, “Know what my favorite TV show was when I was eleven years old?”

  I heard a siren faintly pass in the distance out on the street.

  “It was Watch, Mr. Wizard,” my friend confessed.

  “Not surprising,” I admitted. “Funny how stuff like that makes a difference when you’re growing up.”

  “What was your favorite at that age, Mr. Wade.?”

  I thought for a moment and then said, “It wasn’t a TV show. Not really a movie either. It was a weekly serial from Republic Studios.

  The rough and tumble fights were staged and performed by Dave Sharpe. That’s why I later became an understudy stuntman.”

  “Kinda like me, huh?”

  I thought for another moment. “You’re right. I was eleven years old in 1941. Josh had already joined the Army Air Corp. I used to go every Saturday to the Jewel theatre with a gang from down the
street to see the Durango Kid, or Hopalong Cassidy shoot and rope and fight the bad guys.”

  “You liked cowboys when you were a kid,” Norm said. “Not detective movies?”

  “No, that came later,” I realized. “But I really liked the crime-fighters in the serials. They drove fast cars, jumped off buildings, and pounded fists into the faces of WWII saboteurs.”

  Norm’s mind had moved to a new topic. He was gesturing at the telephone as I said to no one but myself, “Spy Smasher.”

  “Get a load of what I finished building yesterday,” he called.

  I drifted over to where he stood next to a table attached to a floor lamp. There was a small tape recorder with a relay switch and bundle of wires beside the phone.

  “It’s an answering machine.”

  I waited for more explanation, still half mesmerized by my earlier thoughts.

  “A call comes in and this little armature picks up the receiver. Then, a tape plays my voice to the caller. Listen.”

  The reel of tape spun and Norman’s voice came from a tiny speaker near the telephone. “Hello. This is Norman Weirick. I’m not all here. Please speak clearly after I stop talking to record your message to me so I can play it back later and return your call. Bye for now.”

  “Neato, huh?” the real Norman asked. “After that, it tapes the caller’s voice, so I can play it back later.”

  “Sounds pretty complex,” I responded and his face dropped. “But, it might be...great for use in...gathering evidence for a court of law.”

  That brought his smile back.

  I again checked my watch on its Twist-O-Flex band, this time making more of a show of the action. I told him it was getting late and I had to be shoving off. He waved me out, going back to the tape recorder while cleaning his glasses with a blue tissue that popped up from a Kleenex box.

  After another stirring episode with Norman, I usually needed to calm my wits, so I paused on the porch to enjoy the quiet night air. I stopped humming “Ten-Ten-Tennessee” when a white and maroon Edsel cruised slowly past my Thunderbird, with a guy on the passenger side looking into my car. Then the Ford sped past a STOP sign and moved into the darkness beyond Elysian.

  I caught myself running the side of my thumb back and forth across my lips.

  The Noir Man whispered, ‘Jumping blue blazes.’

  ***

  I checked under the hood and chassis again, using the flame of my courtesy lighter and the faint glow of a distant street lamp. All seemed safe. Poor Max. There but the grace of God.

  I held my breath and turned ignition key. The starter caught and the big V8 came alive in my hands, making me feel the way Chuck Heston had looked during his chariot race in Ben Hur.

  I paused for the STOP sign at the end of the street and then eased forward. They must have been parked on a side street, watching. I had to decide quickly how to play this. I didn’t know if I wanted to pull over right now and confront them on a city street, or if I wanted to try and be more devious.

  The Noir Man said devious was better. I could probably outrun them, but I wanted a terrain-friendly spot where I could obtain a tactical advantage. I accelerated up a hill and saw the Edsel move up fast and slam into my back left bumper, which spun my car onto the shoulder.

  I executed a full 180 and took a left onto Park Drive. The russet and white car followed me around the curve. I spun the steering wheel again like a phone dial and the T-bird squealed around another corner.

  Coming out of the turn, I stomped the gas and the car leaped forward in a neck-wrenching surge. Through the side-view mirror, I saw the lemon-sucking front of the two-tone swing up, as if to pass.

  I hadn’t yet learned how to control this beast and my turns kept going wide and off the road.

  Somehow, we were roaring down an open dirt road in the middle of the city. I realized we’d spun onto the part of Elysian that was being leveled and graded to make way for the new Dodger Stadium. Since the top was down on the convertible, dense clouds of dust clogged my eyes and throat.

  My headlights caught a construction trailer and dormant road-grading equipment to my left. High mounds of earth rose up to the right. The ballpark and its accompanying parking lots would fill more than two square miles when completed. Right now, it was a massive dusty crater of dirt surrounded by access roads for use during the day by steam shovels and dump trucks. In the obscured moonlight, the Edsel cut in front of my grill and hit its brakes with a banshee scream, trying to impact my engine with its wide trunk.

  I swung the wheel hard to the right and bounced over a deep rut onto a one-lane, blaring my horn. The two men in the other car weren’t apologetic or frightened. They were coming around to a position where the passenger could lean out and aim something dark and ugly in my direction.

  I was not ready for gunplay. I punched the button on the dash that automatically released the lock on the trunk. The lid sprang up just in time to provide enough shielding to deflect the two bullets that wanged there.

  I could have shot back with my .38, if I had my .38. I ducked low in the seat, wishing someone would stop saying, “Holy shit.” The back of my head itched, but no more shots came to scratch it.

  I tested the shocks and suspension of the Bird by taking it up and over a mound of soft dirt for a last chance of reaching one of the access roads.

  Stomping on the brakes to avoid going over a cliff in the dark, I almost burst head-first through the windshield.

  My rear wheels spun in loss sand. “Please don’t get stuck here,” I told the V8.

  I shifted into reverse when pair of high beams careened up and out from the dust with a roar like an Atlas rocket aimed horizontally for my head.

  CHAPTER 6

  I wrenched the wheel over again, past a sleeping bull-dozer, and almost rolled helplessly down an incline to the center of the huge construction site. There were a couple of bright lights down there and some movement. I recalled reading that the stadium’s construction was being filmed for a documentary, but I wasn’t sure I’d make it to them, or if I even I wanted to.

  What I desperately wanted was a way out, but the narrow dirt and gravel roadway gave me no chance to turn away. The Edsel behind me tried a new tactic of pushing me forward at a speed that felt like fifty miles per second. If I hit the brakes now, I’d skid out of control down the steep precipice, tumbling off the crater’s edge.

  Over the gunning of the Edsel’s engine, I heard a new sound. A rhythmic thumping, like elevated kettle drums. From out of the sky, a searchlight swept past my windshield. The bright blade of light from the heavens sliced through the thickening dust cloud as a helicopter swung past overhead.

  It must have come from the lighted area and was now hovering and swooping past with an ear-pounding growl, like a giant attacking hornet.

  I stepped on the gas and lost sight of the Edsel while fish-tailing to the bottom of the enormous pit. The chopper darted up the ridge and then circled back in a wide banking turn. Its runners touched down within a dozen feet of the front of my car, and the whirling rotors slowed their cadence. I knew that the police had started using helicopters to monitor traffic on the freeways, but didn’t think they had them flying security around construction sites.

  A bent figure jumped out of the chopper’s bubble, and veered in my direction as the sound of the spinning blades softened to a thousand decibels. “What was that all about?” the man shouted. “Are you all right?”

  I coughed away a mouthful of prime LA real estate. “Yeah--thanks to you. Those guys forced me into this pit. Guess they didn’t know that you were patrolling here, Officer.”

  The light around us was still distant and obscure, but I could make out the man’s wide forehead and grim expression.

  “Not a cop,” he said, leaning down to me.

  I clinched a fist, while the Noir Man prepared to blast the door open into the guy’s hips and torso.

  The man looked up at something on the cliff top. “Who was in the other car?

/>   I recalled seeing this guy somewhere before. He had a fair resemblance to Ken Tobey on Whirlybirds.

  “I’m not exactly certain, but thanks again.” I scanned around, but caught no sign of my pursuers.

  He batted an open hand at the flying grit. “Didn’t you fly with me a couple of months ago?”

  I sneezed from the swirling dust and finally placed his face. “Yeah,” I replied. “We flew to Vegas together. You’ll never get me up in one of those things again.”

  He snapped his fingers. “Right.” Reaching through the window, he said, “Bob Gilbreath of National Helicopter Services.”

  I unclenched my fist and shook his. “Stan Wade.

  “Nice car,” he said.

  “Yeah, the ads on TV say it’s the world’s most wanted.”

  He ran his fingers through his thick hair. “You on official business?”

  “Sort of. But I wouldn’t still be here without your assist.”

  “Funny you’d say that,” Gilbreath smiled, pointing to the ground. “Your car skidded in right where home plate will be when they finish building the ball field.”

  It was a perfect straight line, so I said, “Guess that means I’m safe.”

  We shared a laugh, nervously.

  I’d interrupted a second unit shoot here on location, with my own personal chase scene. The crew was filming long-shot footage of the Bell 47J for an upcoming TV episode. Gilbreath’s helo was equipped with a radio, so he called dispatch to file a police report. Before the aircraft rose and thrashed away, I asked the pilot not to mention my name. He cocked his head and rubbed a shoulder, but agreed to only report the trespassing incident of a red-and-white Edsel.

  ***

  For my part, I aimed the car up the shadowed incline and left the gritty world behind. I kept a close eye out for the attacking car as I slowly drove away, eventually following the traffic flowing along the Hollywood Freeway to Cahuenga Pass. I ended up parking the dusty T-bird in the empty lot of a church a block and a half east of Suzi’s Spanish hacienda-style apartment house. I hoofed it the rest of the way in the dark and rang the bell at her door. I needed some of her homemade TLC.