Noir

  “That’s a pretty good tying job,” I told the Cheese.

  She just winked at me, which meant “thanks.” Pretty sure.

  “Now you, Rusty,” I told him. “Have a seat.”

  The ginger sat in the chair I had seen Stilton sitting in, a basic oak kind of thing, and Stilton had him trussed up in a couple of minutes. “Gag ’em?” asked the Cheese.

  “Why not,” I told her.

  She went to a little bar cart on wagon wheels I hadn’t noticed until now. Wagon wheels? Fuck these guys. She found a couple of bar towels, which she fashioned into gags. “Now, Rusty,” said the Cheese, very gentle and kindergarten-teacher-like, “open up. I’m not going to make it hard for you to breathe or anything, but if you yell, Sammy will come back and shoot your dick off.” She grinned at me like a kid in the school play who just hit his mark for the first time.

  “That’s it,” she said when they were both gagged. “Let’s blow this dump.”

  “We gotta go through the woods, doll, you can’t go in those heels.” She was wearing some tall Mary Janes that matched the polka dots on her dress but did not look suited for running through the forest.

  “You watch me,” she said.

  Once we were out the door, she closed and latched it, then threw her arms around my neck again and squeezed the breath out of me. “I was so scared,” she whispered wet into my ear.

  “Really?”

  “I saw them take the general and that blonde girl away.”

  “What was all the bit with Jeff?”

  “I was improvising. Give you a chance to get the drop on Rusty.”

  I smooched her lightly, gave her a squeeze. “I like a dame can think on her feet.”

  “And off,” she said. “It was creepy. The general—”

  “We gotta go,” I said, letting her go. “Tell me while we run.” I took her hand and led her to the back of the camp, where she side-saddled over the split-rail fence. We followed the same route out that I took in, but now it was completely light and there were a lot more fat guys wandering around peeing on trees. Some ranger guys were building fires for them, I guess to give them something to stand around while they drank their coffee.

  As we went the Cheese whispered, pausing her story when we dashed to the next tree.

  “The general likes me, I guess,” she whispered. “So I play up to him, so Myrtle and that other girl can get away.”

  “Pearl,” I provided.

  “How do you know?” she said.

  “Myrtle got away. I helped her hide in the city. She’s okay.”

  “Aw, ain’t you just the ant’s pants?”

  She pinched my butt, which was not something I was accustomed to, but apparently it was a sign that I was out of the doghouse. We crouched behind the same tree I had paused at on the way in, or one that was very similar, and I started to make the final dash for the River Road, but she yanked me back. “No, we gotta get something.”

  “Doll, those guys that took the general away are very bad guys. We do not want to be here when they get back.”

  “The general is no choirboy himself,” said the Cheese, somewhat urgently. “Look, when he gets me alone at that cabin, he gets very creepy—like he’s never talked to a dame before. And I’m not having it. So he starts telling me how important he is, and how arranging to have us girls come up here was a mistake, he realizes now, but after the Bohemians see what he brought them, he’s going to be one of the club. And on, and on. About which I do not give a warm squirt of pee. So then he says he’ll show me, and he opens this metal box he has stashed in the cabin, like a big beer cooler, and shows me his special thing. And I think, Uh-oh, this is trouble. So I bashed him over the head with this big crock they have under the bunks, thing must weigh a ton, and knock him out, and I take his prize and run. But it’s too big for me to get it back to the city, so I stashed it. I figured I’d come back tomorrow and get it, but Jeff and Rusty caught me, so now we gotta go get it.”

  And before I could say anything, she grabbed my hand and pulled me right into the camp, instead of away, where it was sane—right to the big dining hall, right up to one of the big surplus ice machines, where she threw open the lid and said “Ta-da!” in the spirit of a magician who has just presented as whole a broad previously sawed in half.

  “Ice,” I observed.

  The Cheese looked into the machine, where there was, as I have pointed out, ice.

  She started digging like a dog at the beach, and ice was going every which way, and I was looking around very nervously, because it was not a quiet process, but she was determined and apparently in charge, so I kept trying to peek around her, because there was not enough room in the ice machine for me to help. Then she seemed to have found something, tossed a few more handfuls of ice behind her, and stepped back, once again with the “Ta-da!”

  I looked in. I didn’t know what I was looking at. Maybe a rubber puppet. “What—?”

  “It’s a moonman!” said the Cheese.

  21

  The Moonman

  As much as I would have loved to stand there making surprised noises and give in to going completely wacky over the Cheese’s moonman, I instead snatched that rascal up and commenced to repeating, “Holy shit, a friggin’ moonman!” over and over as we ran. The Cheese assured me she had had a similar reaction when she first swiped him, and repeated, “I know, a friggin’ moonman!” in response to my refrain. When we finally got the moonman back to the car, Pookie O’Hara, the naked, heroin-addled vice cop, was gone.

  I looked around, but there was no sign of Pookie. His clothes were gone, too, along with the little leather box with the loaded syringe I had left in the rumble seat with him, and half of my meat loaf sandwich, which I had been saving for the Cheese in case she needed sustenance after her ordeal. At least Uncle Ho had the big cop’s gun, or I might really have had something to worry about. Pookie’s hat was still on the seat, so there was a good chance he was not firing on all cylinders when he scrammed.

  “It’s okay,” I told the Cheese. “I still have my receipt.” I slung the moonman over one shoulder and pulled the receipt from my jacket pocket. The moonman weighed no more than a small kid, maybe forty pounds, I’d guess, but I’d been carrying him for a couple of hundred yards through the woods and he was starting to get heavy.

  The Cheese snatched the receipt out of my hand. “Well this is no good,” she said. “It’s in Chinese. Why’d you bring a knocked-out cop along, anyway?”

  “Look, doll, you are on very thin ice judging the company I keep,” I said, tossing my head in the direction of the rubbery gray passenger I had over my shoulder. “I’ll explain on the way.”

  “On the way to where?”

  “Not here,” I said. I put the moonman in the rumble seat and started to pack him down. He’d fit fine. I just might not be able to get it closed, unless I mashed his melon a little. The dead moonman’s body was skinny-kid size, and only four foot or so tall, but his noggin was large economy size—shaped a little like a lightbulb, with big almond eyes that were glossy black; in fact, they kind of matched the lacquered pearl-black finish on Jimmy Vasco’s Ford, only more lifeless.

  “Prop him up in the corner,” said the Cheese. She grabbed the kimono that Pookie had left behind and tied it around the moonman’s head like a scarf, then wrapped him up in the blanket, so he looked like someone’s granny who might be sleeping. Stilton does not mess around when it comes to getting stuff done. “There. Let’s go.” She climbed in the passenger side and I got behind the wheel and after a last quick look around for Pookie, we pulled out of the gas station to the River Road just as a big black Chrysler went by and turned into the driveway to the Bohemian Grove.

  I turned the other way and took off nice and easy, trying to catch my breath, which had nothing to do with carrying the moonman. The Cheese saw them, too.

  “Where did those guys take the general?” she asked.

  “The general is dead, kid,” I said. I slid the copy
of the Examiner across the seat to her. It was ferry-folded open to the plane crash story.

  She picked it up, read, “Two others were killed in the crash, San Francisco saloon owner Salvatore Gabelli and an unidentified woman.” She looked up. “Pearl?”

  “Yeah, and that’s what they were going to do to you. I guess it’s all been about hiding the moonman.”

  “But Pearl didn’t see the moonman.”

  “Neither did Myrtle, but they are definitely after her, too, but it’s just you three, I think. The other girls were sent back to Mabel’s.”

  “So that’s what the ranger guys were holding me for? So those guys could put me in a sack?”

  “Something like that. But first they would have hurt you until you gave up the moonman.”

  “Never. He’s mine. Hey, when did this paper come out, anyway? I saw the general and Pearl last night late.”

  “Trucks were throwing out the morning edition when I was leaving the city, maybe five this morning.”

  “It says the plane went down in the hills outside of Napa. That’s an hour out of the city. Even if someone got to the crash right away, how could the Examiner know about the general and the other two so fast?”

  “They couldn’t. Those guys in the black suits had to have called it in. For one thing, Sal wasn’t killed in a plane crash. He was dead long before that plane went down, and I had his body stashed in a box full of ice in the back of the saloon.”

  “You killed Sal? He was a douche bag, but—”

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  “Whew, you had me going—”

  “My snake did.”

  I let that news settle a little, as I was trying to figure where to start.

  The Cheese spun on the seat, leaned back against the car door, folded her arms across her chest. Gave me the cocked eyebrow of inquisition, which I am sure she learned from me.

  “I’m gonna explain,” I said.

  “Well?”

  So, as I drove I explained about the snake-whiz noodle joint, about the South African merchant marine getting me a black mamba so Moo Shoes and I could make a fortune, about Lone clocking Pookie and stashing the cop with Uncle Ho, who knocked him out with heroin, about finding Myrtle and hiding her with Lone, although I left out the bit about Myrtle and Jimmy Vasco, as that was not my tale to tell, about the rats, about searching high and low for her, about Uncle Ho dumping Pookie on me at the last minute, and I finished up with busting into the Bohemian Club in the city and taking the map. Then I took my eyes off the road for a second to see how the story went over.

  She said, “So these tax men are going to be very upset that I have their moonman?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “I don’t see what the big deal is. The general said they have two others. A flying saucer crashed on the base that he is—was—the boss of, so they have extras.”

  “And he brought one here just to impress the Bohemians?”

  “Yeah, I get the feeling that the general is not the flying ace of keeping secrets. Not an ace with the ladies, neither, if I do say so myself. A very awkward old guy, and I have known some awkward guys in my time.”

  “What are you trying to say?” I asked.

  “Oh, not you, Sammy. I mean other guys.”

  “Then you didn’t come up here because you were sore at me?”

  “Nah. I agreed to come up here before you acted like a shit heel. I came up here to make an easy hundred bucks.”

  “I didn’t know you were hard up for cheddar. I’d have helped you out.”

  “Don’t make it sound desperate. I said, easy. Besides, Myrtle wanted to meet some rich guys. How’s a girl supposed to get by now? I know a hundred girls can run a bead with an arc welder as well as any guy, but what are they doing since the war? Typing memos or answering phones, if they’re lucky—folding shirts and changing diapers if they ain’t. And the real unlucky ones, well, you know what they’re doing. Besides, Sal said there would be dancing.”

  “I didn’t know you liked dancing.”

  “I didn’t want to mention it, what with your bad foot and whatnot.”

  “That was nice of you.”

  “Yeah, I got my moments. Hey, you got anything to eat in here? I could eat a horse.”

  “I brought you half a meat loaf sandwich, but Pookie took it, that fuck. But there’s some coffee in a thermos under the seat. Cup down there, too.”

  “You fix it like you like your women?”

  “Yep, sealed in a metal tube with a screw top.”

  She dug under the seat, came up with the thermos, dove again for the cup, surfaced with the cup and a big grin. “So, you get what I mean, about the general being awkward?”

  “I do,” I said, because I do. “So, you have this moonman—”

  “Strictly speaking, I think he’s probably from Mars or Jupiter or some other place, but I like the sound of moonman.” She poured herself a cup, offered me a sip, I shook it off.

  “Me too,” I told her. “But now you got him, what are you going to do with him?”

  She lit up like a kid on Christmas. “Are you kidding? I’m going to sell him to Ripley’s Believe It or Not so they can put him in the museum down on Fisherman’s Wharf. Charge tourists two bits to take a look at him. I’ll be rich. I might even tunnel out a couple of extra bedrooms in my place. Heck, I might dig out a closet big enough to put a chair in so I can look at all my new outfits.”

  “That is an excellent angle, but I think first we have to take him to the Chronicle and let them take pictures of him and you, because these tax men seem quite determined to send any and all witnesses of the moonman to the bottom of the bay, so to speak, and if they will scrag an air force general, I don’t think they will hesitate to ice a couple of feisty kids like us.”

  “So we should take him to the city?” she asked.

  “Yeah, to the Chronicle, or the Examiner, or both.”

  “Oh, okay, then according to that sign back there, we need to go the other way.”

  “I knew that. I just went this way because I thought you’d want to see the ocean. Besides, if we go back to the city, there is a chance that Pookie O’Hara will be more than sored up at me and my friends and will put us all in a sack, different sacks, although he will need an extra-large sack for Lone Jones.”

  “Every plan has a few bugs,” said the Cheese.

  “I shoulda just popped one in Pookie’s noodle when I had the chance.”

  “Ooh, tough guy. You know the safety was on when you handed me that heater back at the cabin, right?”

  “Someone coulda got shot.”

  “Turn this jalopy around, you gotta buy me breakfast and make me famous.”

  * * *

  It took Clarence most of the night to find his partner Potter wandering around the hills of Sonoma County. As it turned out, Potter was a decent pilot, a skill that Clarence was not aware he possessed until it was needed, and Potter had done a bang-up job of crashing General Remy’s DC-3. What Potter was not quite as good at was skydiving, as he had only done the requisite emergency training for pilots during the war, of which calculating altitude and wind drift were not a part. He had also neglected to take a field radio with him, so consequently, when the wind took him several miles from where he and Clarence had agreed to rendezvous, he wandered the countryside for several hours before he encountered a road, which he walked on for several more hours until Potter found him and picked him up. By the time dawn broke, both were quite angry, as well as forty miles from where they needed to be.

  “We should have just put a couple of slugs in their domes and buried them in the woods,” said Clarence. He had not been a pilot during the war.

  “Where did the plane go down?” asked Potter.

  “Nowhere near where you bailed out. North of Napa. It’s already in the papers. The other team called it in.”

  “How many other teams do you think there are?” asked Potter.

  “I don’t know. Don’t ask me about
operations,” said Clarence. He hadn’t eaten for twelve hours or slept for thirty, and Potter’s blue suit was stupid and he hated it and he wished Potter had died in the crash with the other fucking idiots. His mood deteriorated when they returned to the Bohemian Grove and found the two local yokels, Jeff and Rusty, had been tied up by the missing blonde, and she had been rescued by a guy with a gun. The subject was still missing.

  “We should process these two,” Clarence said. “Witnesses.”

  “They are not witnesses,” said Potter. “Those guys don’t know anything.”

  “Security,” said Clarence.

  “Your ass,” said Potter. He checked his watch. Almost eight. “We need to find a phone and report in.”

  “There’s a phone at the gatehouse,” said Rusty.

  “See,” said Potter. “You process him, we’ll never find the phone.”

  They headed down the path, back to the Chrysler. They’d parked in the most remote corner of the parking lot. As Potter unlocked the car, someone called to them.

  “Hey, you bums cops?” A large, apparently drunk guy in a very rumpled suit stumbled out of the forest toward them.

  “No,” said Potter. “We’re just tourists. Nothing to see here, sir.”

  The big man kept coming toward them.

  “Don’t give me that shit,” he said. “I saw it all. I remember it all.” He was pulling something from his pocket. “Where the hell did you guys bring me?”

  “That’s close enough,” said Clarence. “We can’t help you.”

  The big man stumbled forward, carried by the slight slope out of the forest. He caught himself on the front of the Chrysler, then pushed himself back and squinted at Potter. “Someone sapped me and you know it.”

  “What’s in his hand?” Clarence whispered.

  “Looks like a sandwich,” said Potter.

  Clarence drew his gun and shot Pookie O’Hara in the chest. Pookie fell back, dead. “Things are not always what they seem,” Clarence said.

  Potter approached Pookie’s body, poked him with his toe, then, when he got no response, crouched down and examined the remains. “No, it was a meat loaf sandwich.”