“So we are crouched behind one of these giant trees, and Pearl starts snapping pictures with her little camera and starts to creep up so she can get a better look, but Tilly holds me back, whispering that this looks sorta screwy. Which it is. But Pearl is hunkered down almost right behind the guys in the last row, clicking away with her camera.
“All of a sudden, a bunch of old guys dressed like dames come out from behind the owl. But not like day-to-day dames, but like with the Roman robes and stuff, and little crowns in their wigs, vestigial virgins.”
“My favorite kind,” said Jimmy.
Myrtle shot Jimmy a tough, shut-up look, which Sammy seconded.
“So the guys in drag—and I don’t mean to be unkind, but they make for some very ugly broads—march out this little casket they are holding in the air, with like a little kid in it. And the head robe guy, who you know is the head guy because he has a stick, starts saying this long speech about the cremation of care.
“And Tilly says like, ‘They are going to burn that little kid.’
“And I get ready to scream, because I am against the burning of anyone, especially little kids, but Tilly puts her hand over my mouth and says like, ‘Hush, the kid is already dead and they are just giving him a sendoff.’
“So then the drums get real loud and the vestigial virgins put the kid on this big pile of sticks and two of the robe guys put torches to the sticks and that’s just about it—I’m going to scream either way, and that’s when Tilly gets yanked back, someone’s hand over her mouth, and I got another hand over my mouth, then two guys in ranger shirts run by me and grab Pearl, and before we know it, we are being dragged away from the ceremony and stashed in this little cabin nearby.
“Then as soon as they let go of Pearl, she yells ‘Alton Stoddard the Third!’ at them. And I gotta tell you, what scares me the most is, the ranger guys seem more scared at that point than us. And these poor mugs tell us to stay put, and then they lock the door and leave us there. And we hear one say to the other, ‘Run up to Dragons Camp, ask them what to do.’ Then they are gone.
“So I asks Pearl, ‘Who is this Alton Stoddard the Third?’
“And she says, ‘Fuck if I know, but the way his name makes these mooks jump, I’d think he’s someone we should get to know.’
“She is a very cool customer, is this Pearl broad, even for a hustler. I hope she makes it out of there.”
“You don’t know where she is, either?” Sammy said.
“No, that’s what I’m getting to. See, we’re looking around this little cabin for ways to get out, and it is very ooky, no kitchen or icebox, just a little bar counter, bunks for sleeping, with only a couple of windows that don’t open, and a metal latch on the door. And the ranger guys take the latch handle from our side with them. So we can’t figure. But then Tilly starts digging around in the bar and comes up with a knife. So I tells her right then, ‘You got to stab them in the throat, otherwise they scream.’ And she looks at me like I’m daffy or something, and she goes over and starts to work the knife through the crack on the door by the latch, which is a relief, because the ranger guys don’t seem like bad guys at all, you know, just doing their jobs. So she just about has it, and we hear voices outside the door, and quick-like, Tilly chucks the knife under one of the bunks as this guy comes through the door in full military uniform. Like a general’s uniform. With lots of medals and stuff. And he says ‘dismissed’ to the ranger guys who bring him, like they are soldiers and not a bunch of Sonoma County rubes. And they say, ‘Yes, sir, General,’ and start to leave. But he gets the handle of the door latch from one of them before he sends them off.
“So Pearl tries the Alton Stoddard the Third angle on him, but the general ain’t biting. He says like, ‘Yes, I am acquainted with Mr. Stoddard.’”
Here Myrtle put on a big-man voice. “‘Ladies, I’m afraid a mistake has been made. You are not allowed to be here.’
“And it turns out this guy is some kind of muckety-muck general in the air force, and he arranges for us to come up to their campout, which is a surprise to me, because all the time I think Sal Gabelli set this all up. Anyway, this general guy, Ramsey or something.”
“Remy?” Sammy said.
“Yeah, that’s it. Anyway, he don’t seem like he belongs here with those other guys. For one, he’s in uniform, and the other guys are casual. And second, he’s stumbling around the cabin like he’s trying to figure out what to do. Sweating and mumbling and stuff.”
Big-man voice again: “‘I had no idea when they said no women, they really meant no women. I thought that was a ruse for their wives. Well, you’ll all have to stay here until we determine what to do with you. I need to discuss it with the members. I’m just a guest. But I don’t believe that will be the case after tonight. Perhaps we’ll keep you here until I’ve made my presentation.’ He’s thinking-like, pacing and mumbling. Me and the girls are looking at each other like we are at the mercy of a loony.
“So Tilly says, ‘What you do need to determine is where our hundred bucks apiece is.’
“And the general says of course and he’ll get right on it and so forth. He even checks his wallet, and he only has like a hundred and fifty bucks, so he gives us each fifty and promises the rest, we just have to hold tight. Then he asks, did we see anything of the ritual?
“And we are all shaking our heads and acting like we just woke up five minutes ago and found ourselves in the woods. See, Pearl managed to stash her little camera up under her Dorothy dress somewhere, so even she was acting like she fell off the turnip truck earlier in the evening.
“So Tilly says, ‘Oh no, buster, a hundred bucks each, right now, or I’m gonna start screaming, and my pals here are gonna scream right along with me.’
“But the general makes like he don’t have it on him. Says he already pays a guy, so Tilly tells him okay and puffs up to scream, at which point the general tells her wait, he is staying at Dragons, which is another camp, and has to go get it. And Tilly says fine, but she is going with him, and quick as you please she is on his arm, saying, ‘Just you and me, General, you know, we’ll go get that money together’ and ‘We might be a while.’ She gives me a wink.
“Well, the general is like he has never been spoken to by a dame before, because he goes all red-faced and shy and goofy, and says ‘of course’ a lot, and Tilly has him. She can have that effect on a guy.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Sammy, feeling another stab in the heart at the thought of the Cheese making time with the general.
“So,” Myrtle went on, “Tilly goes to give me a little kiss on the cheek, toodles, and says in my ear, ‘Get the knife, open the door, you guys run,’ and then loud she says, ‘Don’t wait up.’ Then she’s out the door on the general’s arm, and of course, that jerk takes the door handle with him. So I’m feeling horrible about Tilly, but in a jiffy Pearl is under the bunk and back working the door latch with the paring knife, and before you can say ‘Open, Sesame,’ it’s open. The ranger guys are long gone.
“So I start to run back to where we left the other girls, but when I turn around, Pearl has pulled out her little camera and is headed the other way. She says to me, ‘Go on, I got a little side job I gotta do.’ And I try to talk her out of it, but she won’t listen, so I run down to the dining hall. I tell you, I feel awful about Tilly, but I figure maybe with all the other girls we got safety in numbers; we can make them bring her out and we can all go home. Just a big misunderstanding. I’m thinking this as I’m dodging from each one of these little camps to the next in the dark. They’re like fenced off, and some got cabins, some just got a fire ring and some benches, some big tents, but all of them are full of older guys that are three sheets to the wind and going on four.
“And when I get to the dining hall, all the other girls are gone, the bartenders and kitchen staff are even gone. So now I don’t know what to do. And there’s no telephone anywhere. So I run back down the road, and up in the woods, around the gate, until I get to
the little town, which is just a gas station with a general store at the end of the drive. And there I find a pay phone and I call Jimmy, and then I hide behind the gas station in the dark untils he comes to get me.”
Jimmy said, “Normally an hour and a half to Monte Rio, but I got there in under an hour.”
“Jimmy’s a swell driver,” said Myrtle. Then: “Oh, Sammy, I’m so sorry. I feel like a yellow-bellied coward leavin’ Tilly like that, but what could I do?”
“She’s a good kid,” said Jimmy. “She was just scared. Don’t be too hard on her.”
Sammy dismissed the notion with a wave. “Myrtle, can you draw me a map of this place?”
“I don’t know, Sammy, it was dark. I was just following Tilly and Pearl.”
“I can give you directions there,” said Jimmy.
Sammy thought about it for a second, but only a second. “Look, I’m going to go after Stilton, but you two need to know, there are some guys about two steps behind me looking for Myrtle. They were at her place right after I was, so if I found her, I’m guessing they’ll find her, and these are not good guys.”
“That lousy Sal,” said Myrtle.
“It was probably Phil at the five-and-dime told them, Myrtle. Sal’s dead.”
Jimmy stood up. “These guys that are after Myrtle scragged Sally Gab?”
Sammy considered his answer, the whole snake-and-noodle angle, and said, “They are carrying his body around in the trunk of their car.”
“Well that’s it, then,” said Jimmy. “If these guys are two steps behind finding Myrt, you got to take a step they don’t know. You got to hide her, Sammy, in a place where she’s never been, and where I won’t know where she is.”
“I could do that, Jimmy, but I don’t even have a car.”
“How were you going to get up to Monte Rio?”
“I hadn’t figured that far.”
Jimmy reached into her pocket, pulled out some keys. “Take mine. It’s the black Ford coupe in the back.” To Myrtle, Jimmy said, “Pack a bag, doll. Quick-like. Grab the stuff I brought from your place and a toothbrush. Couple of my dresses. They’ll be short on you, but no one will complain.”
Sammy raised his eyebrows at the mention of dresses.
“What?” said Jimmy. “Sometimes I enjoy being a girl, and sometimes I just enjoy a girl, and sometimes both. You gonna bust my balls about it?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
Jimmy led him out the office door and down the hall, toward a steel fire door at the back of the hallway. She stopped by the door and said, “North on Highway 101. Get off on the River Road past Santa Rosa. Twenty miles and you’re in Monte Rio. That’s where the Bohemian camp is.” Then she drew a small Walther automatic out of the pocket of her trousers. She pulled back the slide and let it snap shut, lowered the hammer, then presented it to Sammy. “Take this. Loaded and ready to go.” He thought about turning her down, telling her it was okay, he had a guy, but then he realized that his guy was only nine. He took the gun.
“Safety there, clip release there.” Jimmy pointed to the spots on the gun, pulled an extra clip from her other pants pocket, gave it to him. “Any of those nobs gets near Myrtle or gets in the way of you finding Stilton, you blast the cocksuckers.”
Sammy smiled. “You ever think about adopting? I know a kid I think you’d hit it off with.”
“Nah, I think the mother train has left the station for me.”
“Don’t sell yourself short,” Sammy said. He nodded to Myrtle, who now stood behind Jimmy, holding an overnight bag.
“Wiseass,” said Jimmy. “I ain’t that much older than her. C’mere, doll.” With that the petite emcee laid a backbreaking Argentine tongue tango on Myrtle that left the redhead still gasping as Sammy pulled her out the door.
16
This and That, Now and Then, Here and There
Bennie the backup bartender might not have been the sharpest spoon in the drawer, but he could take a message like a champ. He was sweeping up when I swung by in Jimmy Vasco’s Ford, around 2 a.m., Myrtle in tow. I didn’t introduce them. Myrtle waited in the doorway, shifting from foot to foot like she had to pee.
Bennie said, “So a guy called Eddie Shu calls and says you need to call him or go by his work as soon as you can.”
Fucking Moo Shoes. What now? More rats?
“Anything else?”
“Not for you. Couple of calls for Sal.”
“Sal asks me to take those messages for him,” I lied.
Bennie parked his broom and went to a pad by the phone. “A guy named General Remy calls, doesn’t leave a number, and a dame called Mabel, also no number. She says to tell Sal she wants her money and she wants her pearls back or she is going to have his nuts cut off. She sounds kind of steamed. She calls back a couple more times, says Sal knows how to get hold of her.” Bennie looked up from the paper. “Sal knows a general?”
Bennie had been an infantry grunt who humped a BAR all over Europe during the war and he never even saw a general, so that is what stuck with him.
“Air force,” I said. “Not a real general.”
“Oh, okay.”
“Bennie, Sal is going to need you to cover tomorrow night, too. Can you handle that?”
“That’d be great.” Bennie grinned like a fat kid in a bakery. He was usually over the moon if he just made it through a shift without blowing a fuse, and this being a night shift, with more pressure and cheddar, he was so far over the moon the cow was airsick. A couple of times Sal called me in when Bennie went around the bend in the middle of a day shift—it was a sad and distressing sight. Sal kept Bennie on because the poor mope would work for tips only, and Bennie stayed on because otherwise he would be living in a doorway down on Third Street with the other broken soldiers.
I made a sign to put on the door to alert the day drunks of the later hours, then went to the register and opened it. There was maybe a hundred bucks and change in there. “You had a good night,” I told Bennie.
I planned to take the cash and pay Milo’s rent so I could borrow his taxi, but now I took sixty for operating expenses, left ten in the drawer for change, and gave the rest to Bennie, who lit up like the Fourth of July when the cash hit his paw.
“You sure?”
“Yeah. Emergency bonus. Sal’s orders. Don’t drink it.”
“Oh, I won’t. I know better.”
I hoped so. I needed Sal’s delicate condition to remain secret until I figured out where his stiff was. Although, strictly speaking, Sal was no longer my problem, and the snake crate was gone, too, so the last anyone heard, Sal was going camping with Pookie O’Hara. No matter what, the saloon needed to stay open, at least at night.
“Look, kid,” I said to Bennie, who was maybe two years younger than me, “I need you to take any messages, and if anyone comes in looking for me, you tell ’em Sal is away camping, I was here, and I took the cash out of the drawer. Tell ’em all that.” I figured the bad guys already knew anything else Bennie could tell them, like where my apartment was, so no reason to make them feel like there was more to learn. “But you don’t mention that dame over there and you didn’t take any messages, you got that?”
“I got it,” Bennie said, shaking his big blond head like a lion with a flea in its ear.
I bid Bennie adieu and asked Myrtle if she had to pee.
“Nah, I’m just nervous. Where we going next?”
“I have no idea, doll,” I told her, because I didn’t.
I was starting to get a feel for driving the Ford coupe and it was decidedly easier driving over here from Jimmy’s Joynt than it would have been climbing over Telegraph Hill on foot, although it was the first time I had to drive in Bay City fog, and it was like trying to find your way in a bruised martini full of lightning bugs. I headed up Grant Avenue into Chinatown because I knew it wasn’t a one-way street and the way I needed to go was to Club Shanghai.
Even at two in the morning there’s no parking on Grant, so I double-parked
the Ford out front and left the engine running. I told Myrtle, “Anyone comes by, tell ’em I’ll be right back and if they don’t like it I’ll blast ’em.”
“What if it’s a cop?”
“Leave out the blastin’ part.”
The doorman had gone home for the night so the first person I saw inside Club Shanghai was Eddie Moo Shoes, leaning on the host’s podium, wearing a red-sequined dinner jacket, smoking a cigarette.
“What’s the riff, Biff?” he said, by way of greeting.
“You look like you should be hangin’ on a friggin’ Christmas tree,” I said, by way of reply.
“Master of ceremonies went home early with the trots, so I been filling in. You go by Uncle Ho’s?”
“Earlier. Dropped the rats. Just got your message. I been busy.” So I explained about being shadowed by the guys in the black suits, about them being the ones taking Sal’s stiff, about finding Myrtle, et cetera. I summed up with a quick overview of the business with the Bohemians and my urgent need to find the Cheese.
“So Jimmy gives you her car?” said Moo.
“And her dame, both of which are double-parked out front.”
“You do not seem enough of an operator to be on the run, Sammy.”
“That would explain why I am not particularly good at it, Moo. So, keep an eye out for these goons in the black suits.”
“As it happens, those goons have already been here and left. I spotted those phonus bolognus tax men outta the gate.”
“Tax men?”
“Yeah, they say they are investigating for the IRS. In the middle of the night. Wearing sunglasses. Evidently, to them, I appear to have just fallen out of the stupid tree.”