Starlight Over Naples
by Bill Schweizer © 2007
Every school kid knows Caesar chopped Gaul into three parts. Well, not exactly on personal knowledge, as the lawyers say, but on very reliable hearsay. Besides, it sounds very true to form for Caesar. Brutus might have gone for quarters but, for Caesar, three pieces was very much in character.
This inane logic coursed through my foggy brain as I assaulted the keys of my Royal portable amidst a mound of crumpled paper balls. I stared a little longer at the freshest sheet of blank paper waiting to receive unsatisfactory typing.
Benton Quentin Boyle, “Ben or B.Q.” to my small circle of intimates, erstwhile student of literature, emeritus bombardier in the employ of the US Army Air Corps and would be chronicler of post war mores and foibles, exercises his Imperial privilege and divides Hollywood into three parts, the Hills, the Flats and the Boulevard. Very neat, very logical and very obvious.
Boyle, that's me, would be novelist and modern day Caesar presides over the domain of the Flats, a small corner of the Flats that is. Formosa Avenue, Date Palms Motor Court. The address is exotic but the reality has – well- more a flavor of the Midwest than the Far East. The Date Palms, or affectionately “The Date” to its dozen dreamy or, should I, say comatose, tenants, is a collection of twelve almost-bungalows circled around an improbable center courtyard of banana trees that miraculously occasionally fruit with miniature bananas. Jimmy J, the musician of Cottage 4, remarked that the plant life thrived far better at The Date than the animal life. Actually, I thought the animal life in the Hollywood flats did quite well, especially the human varmints.
The denizens of The Date were a motley assembly of society's orphans who, for the most part, had perfected the lost art of minding their own business. They all, like yours truly, unfortunately had very little business to mind. Except for yours truly they all were ambitious to make it in Hollywood but all shared the same inertial plan to tread water until some intrepid producer or agent banged on their door begging them to be America's next darling. So far this strategy had very little success.
I live, or more precisely, I occupy space, in cottage 8. Like all the other “cottages” it is a glorified shoebox, with a bedroom the size of a pygmy's coffin, a kitchenette too small to poach a quail's egg, and a parlor big enough for a couch and chair and the card table upon which my Royal was royally ensconced. As a final joke the deranged architect of these bungalows attached bathrooms that would have shamed the Ritz. They were bigger than the rest of the cottage combined, separate shower and bath, double sinks, casement windows on two walls and upholstered window benches below each window. When either of the one or two people I know who remotely qualify as friends stops by, I entertain in the bathroom. I think Louis the XIV used to do the same. Well not in Hollywood but wherever it was he lived. Anyway, someone named Louie.
The “Date” is where I live and work or rather where I sleep and pretend to work. I'm supposedly writing a novel. I say supposedly because so far total production has been limited to a daily quota of two bushels and one half peck of paper wads. Don't know why it's so tough. The anguish of the world is inside me waiting to gush forth. I've written a book already, not a novel of course and actually published. That one was easy. Took only about a month. It's kind of a memoir of my bomber crew. The original Title was “From Libya to Naples” but a farseeing editor changed it to “Starlight Over Naples” the best writing in the whole book. This title change created a small but enthusiastic audience of generally ladies who were misled by the title into thinking it was another type of book. Funny thing is when they read it they liked it and I get frequent letters addressed not really to me but to other of the more dashing crewmembers. Since it would be pointless to forward these letters to the Veteran's Cemetery I answer them myself.
Forty copies of “Starlight” and two shoeboxes of letters pretty much comprise the rest of my furnishings.
Every now and then a blue haired lady would come to the door asking for their book to be inscribed, which I would do with great pomp and considerable circumstance and a soupçon of smugness.
This time when the doorbell rang, or should I say tinkled (nothing at the Date powered by electricity operated at more than forty per cent efficiency), I expected another adoring fan of middle years. I looked through the peek hole and saw another eye of deep cerulean blue peeking back. Since my eyes are an inscrutable slate gray with flecks of gold this couldn't have been a reflection. I opened the door cautiously.
Standing on the porch was a woman almost my height but way better designed and definitely not my usual caller. Blonde hair, lightly tanned, she was wearing what might euphemistically be called a sundress. Louis the Fourteenth the Sun King (him again) would have been proud to put his royal crest on that frock. A light yellow check it was sleeveless with a modest neckline. In the back however it had an open V that plunged like Moby Dick with the second harpoon. Her legs started at ground level and just went up and up right up to the hem of her dress.
I was about to embark on a perilous voyage of conjecture as to where they went after that when she cut things short by speaking. "You're Mr. Boyle." A statement or a question. I wasn't sure. Her voice sounded like gravel in a blender but not in a bad way.
This dame was standard Government Issue trouble and just what the doctor did not order and don't even think about bringing her home to mother. In other words, exactly my type.
I stepped backward. "You know who I am. Why don't you come into my parlor and let me try to guess your identity. Can I eliminate Rumpelstiltskin?" Not even a smile.
She clearly had no sense of humor, which was strike one against her, but looking at the dress again I decided she could have four strikes this inning.
I led her through the tiny room to the bathroom without explanation. She didn't bat an eyelash and made herself comfortable in one of the window seats.
“What brings you to Devil's Island?” Still no smile. Strike two.
“I was told you have a knack for getting things done-dispensing with formalities-cutting red tape. True?”
“I don't know who you've been talking to. For most of the last five years I've been living dangerously. Now that I've returned to the island of Ithaca, I mean Hollywood, some of the things that faze a solid citizen don't bother me. My survival instinct is slightly impaired. Yeah, I've helped some people out of jams. Are you in a jam?”
She shifted position and a shaft of sunlight through the window fell across her torso like a sash in a beauty pageant except that it didn't say Miss California. “Not a jam really. Someone has some property of mine. A fur coat. I'd like to get it back.”
“That's all. Why come to me? Let me guess. You lost your receipt.” Still no smile. Strike two and a half.
“Not exactly. A friend who put me up for a while when I first got to town is keeping it. It means a lot to me. I can pay you.”
“I charge---” before I could quote a fee she handed me two fifties. Bang. Zowie. Triple to right field.
“Apparently this guy who has your coat is a very big man?”
“Big enough. Can you do it? There's another hundred when I get the coat.”
For two C notes I would skin a grizzly, stitch on ermine lapels, and sew the buttonholes myself. “How about a name?”
“He calls himself Sid Shaw.”
“No, I mean your name sister. Who am I talking to?”
She handed me a slip of paper. “That's his address”
She stood up. “One more thing. There's a ticket in the pocket. Please don't lose it. I'll come for the coat on Sunday with the rest of your money. But I need the ticket right away. Put it under your mat and so if I'm in the neighborhood late I can pick it up without bothering you. I'll find my way out. Doesn't seem too complicated.”
“You wouldn't be bothering me. At least not any more than you're bothering me now. Besides, I'm nocturnal.”
She turned at the doorway “Too bad, I'm not.”
Taking one last look at the backless sundress I thought it would be a large pity if she put on any kind of coat before Christmas.
It was obvious that the creative writing clinic was closed for the day so I decided to see if Mr. Shaw was receiving guests for luncheon. Yes, perhaps he was right that moment cutting the crusts off some cucumber sandwiches. I had a mental picture of Mr. Sid Shaw as an urbane chap, much given to wearing smoking jackets and smoking Turkish cigarettes from an ivory holder. He would most certainly see that the civilized thing to do was return the coat he held in trust for my client, if I might take the extreme liberty of calling her that.
The address was on Cherokee very near to my tarot reader. Yes, I have a tarot reader and no further questions on that subject are necessary. Let's just say that an author like a cop needs reliable informants from time to time and leave it at that. Shaw's house was a once white bungalow with enough weeds in the front yard to start a hay fever epidemic in India. An open window and some music playing were signs of habitation.
An old flying jock pal of mine espoused the view that once you became fifty-one per cent certain that you were in for a fight it was imperative to strike the first blow. His trouble was that it was an all the time type proposition. Looking at the Neanderthal in the doorway I calculated the probability of inevitable conflict to be an unambiguous fifty-two per cent and without further ado I clocked him right where his single eyebrow should have divided. Fortunately for my tender typing fingers I had had the foresight to protect them with a set of molded brass rings. Caveman went down like the temperature on Lake Superior in November. He would sleep for a couple of hours. His bulky carcass filled the doorway, and I gave myself a headache trying to slide him back into the apartment.
Once inside I closed the door and went to get a drink of water. Thirsty business retrieving outerwear.
I pitied him the size of his bathroom, hardly big enough to fit five or six people. The medicine chest beckoned, and I perused his small collection of pills and snake oil. A bottle of sleeping tablets, which he definitely did not need at the moment, had a label with the patient's name typed out as Algernon Leadgriddle, which I ardently hoped was an alias. I committed his noble name to memory and then continued to rummage. I found a large bottle of aspirins and remembering that I was fresh out at home pocketed it. On second thought I spilled out a couple of tablets for my sleeping friend, who I expected might have need of them when he came to. The tap water was darker than the coffee at Blair's so I decided to pass on refreshments for the time being.
The coat was in the closet, genuine housecat grade mouton and shedding like the last dandelion of summer. The pockets were inside. Just as predicted I found a small envelope with a single concert ticket. Hollywood Bowl, Thursday evening, row K. The coat and ticket together were clearly not worth my fee, so what was the sun lady after? If she were that big a Mahler fan she could have easily upgraded to Row J on the open market for considerably less than she was paying me. I felt the inside lining. Nothing. I poked a hand down one of the sleeves. Bingo. Turning the sleeve inside out an envelope poked out of an open seam.
The envelope contained two slightly yellowed pieces of onionskin paper with pencil drawings, numbers, and more deltas, zetas and lambdas than Sophocles' bar tab.
I'm no Einstein. We can agree on that. Sartre, Camus, maybe, but not Einstein. Still, I had dropped enough bombs on the enemies of civilization to recognize a picture of a bomb when I saw one. And this was no ordinary bomb. The calculations had enough exponential numbers to make it obvious that this melon could squash Cleveland. This answered the question of why the coat was worth two hundred smackers but raised a legion of other troubling questions relevant to my own personal safety and I guessed the safety of the world. I preferred not to think about them anymore right away. For the moment there was a grilled trout at Musso and Franks that had my name, rank and serial number on it and a bourbon old fashioned that was waiting to say howdy to my tonsils.
On the way to dinner, I stopped by the box office at the Hollywood Bowl and bought a single ticket for Saturday night's concert. The ticket girl was puzzled when I insisted on Row K even though there were a few free single seats close to the reflecting pools. Next I checked the coat with the bellboy at the Roosevelt Hotel, and then I stopped at the Library on Ivar. I decided to stash the pages in my own personal safe deposit box.
Cervantes is by all accounts a great author and Don Quixote a beloved masterpiece, but in my experience, which is the experience of a world traveled lit major, I know of no one who has actually read any of it.
Occasionally a high school student checks it out but almost certainly never opens the darn thing. I opened it. At page 47 there was my ten-dollar bill left in case of emergency. I saw from the front jacket that the book had been checked out the previous month, and the presence of my sawbuck was mute proof of my literary theory.
I folded the diagram and placed the onionskins at page 65. They were safe for the time being.
I swung by the Date and put the new ticket under the mat as I promised. After all, when I'm paid to do a job I do it even if I insist on doing it my own way.
At the restaurant Jake Sparks was at his usual table. We used to call him Lucky Jake. He claimed it was because of his addiction to Lucky Strikes but really it was because he was the fool luckiest guy ever born, cards, horses, women, flying, you name it. He finished eighteen missions without a scratch. I had some scratches, nothing that a tarp couldn't cover, and the rest of the crew- well- they had below average luck. Jake had a charmed life.
He looked up as though he was expecting me and handed me his untouched drink as he ordered another for himself.
“How goes the war comrade?”
“War's over. We won. Remember?”
“Not that one. I mean the war between Boyle and the crass commercial publishing conspiracy.”
“You need to finish something to have it published. First things first.”
“Well you must be making some money. You're out on the town.” Sparks ate here every night and always picked up the tab, but I never met him unless I had money in my pocket. Point of honor.
“I have a few bucks. Helped out a damsel in distress who preferred to pay in cash.”
“Another pesky boyfriend to scare away?”
“Something like that.”
Sparks didn't explore the subject and I didn't volunteer. We were friends. In fact he probably qualified as my only friend. He motioned a toast “To absent friends” and I seconded the motion. We ate and talked about the absentees. We toasted ourselves. “We few, we happy few”. Jake loved Shakespeare.
It was after nine when we left, and I refused a ride. I walked down the Boulevard to the Roosevelt where I had left my car and went into the bar to think things over. I wasn't sure if the Martini had been invented yet but I ordered one anyway. The barkeep seemed to know the ingredients. I savored the drink, took two of the aspirins I had liberated and then ordered another.
It was obvious that I was up to my silk scarf in the worst type of crime, espionage. To top that it was the worst type of espionage, stealing the plans for the biggest bomb that the bomb makers had yet invented or ever would invent. And to top that there was no doubt whatever that some very bad person or persons unknown were going to be looking for those two sheets of paper very soon.
I looked into the immediate future and saw myself entering my bungalow, trying the light switch which would be suspiciously and inevitably broken and then being clubbed over the head from behind. Looking into the more distant future I saw myself being tied to a post, blindfolded and asked if I had any final words. Both prospects were very unappealing, especially the clubbing part, so I ordered another Martini gulped it down and then went into the lobby and checked into the hotel under the name Michael Cervantes.
I usually skip breakfast but I was in no hurry to go anywhere. I fortified myself with some hot cakes and four cups of black coffee and returned to the bungalow on the hypothesis that in broad daylight the light switch would not be a factor. As often the case I was mostly right but not completely right.
Sitting side by side on my couch were two obvious bulls, one in a gray suit and hat and his sidekick in brown. Gray hat was a dandy with spats and French cuffs. Brown hat was the one with human intelligence but no taste or hygiene. His suit was a month away from its last pressing and his shirt was looking wistfully backward on its third day.
“You gentlemen must be from the Nobel Prize Committee.”
“Why, are they giving out prizes for homicide these days?” gray hat speaking.
That was one of the heavier H words in the thesaurus and got my attention.
Brown hat took the podium. “Fella named Sid Shaw left his hotel room on the ninth floor of the Alexandria Hotel last night at eleven hundred hours. Both the elevator and the stairs must have been out of order because he left via the window. You wouldn't have observed his departure?”
“You must think I did. Why.”
“Well, for starters, you were seen entering his house over on Cherokee. You were seen leaving his house, and you were also seen punching him in the forehead. You would agree that the punch in the forehead might seem suspicious. And then there's this.”
He tossed over a copy of my book. “He was reading this just before he decided to kiss the sidewalk. Must be a very depressing story.”
I riffled the pages. “Everyone's a critic these days. Sounds like Mr. Shaw had high standards. I'm sorry to lose a discerning reader. Besides, he sounds like a suicide not a homicide.”
“Shaw was a thug, and thugs like him don't punch their own tickets. They punch yours. Look, we checked you out. Decorated aviator, scribbler, small time strong-arm artist, and patron of the arts. Doesn't seem like you and Shaw ran in the same social circles but you never know. Right now there's no better suspect than you but his wife and since he apparently didn't have a wife, as first runner-up you win the spotlight. What you have going is that Mr. Shaw had a long list of detractors including some very nasty people which should take a good week to check. By the way, you wouldn't happen to have an alibi for the ten o'clock hour last night?”
“As a matter of fact yes, I do. At that time I was defending thirty inches of bar space at the Roosevelt against all comers. I paid the bartender with a fifty, and if he doesn't remember me I'm taking my trade to a new establishment.”
Both men seemed satisfied. Brownie spoke for them both. “Listen and listen good. If you do know anything we want to know it too. And if you hear of anything we want to hear it before its on the hit parade.”
“I'm pretty sure I don't know what you're talking about,” I was fifty per cent sincere. If they knew about the bomb plans they would have already peeled off the wallpaper.
Now gray hat chimed in. “You don't know what you're messing with. Work with us or you're going to find yourself at the bottom of a well with no bucket, no rope and no whistle. Verstehen mein freund.”
“Ah, I see by your German you've been vacationing recently in the Rhineland.”
“Yeah Fly Boy, I was on a walking tour, Brest to Berlin. Got a bit snowy at the halfway point. My feet are still sore but I guess you junior birdmen wouldn't know about that. Enough of the travelogues. Take some advice. You didn't make it back to the States alive to spend your life in a box." He looked around. "Come to think of it you'd probably have more room in a cell. Anyway fly in a straight line Fly Boy and we'll get along.”
Brown hat took back the copy of Starlight. “Sorry, that's evidence.”
Brownie softened a little. “I read a little of your book. It's really not that bad. That was a really funny part when Sparks stole the petrol, the gas I mean, from those Brits and then traded it right back to them for beer and fresh eggs. That Sparks was a character. Whatever happened to him?”
“You mean before or after the Brits found out and kicked the plum pudding out of him?”
He shrugged.
So my book was evidence in a homicide. It had to be a homicide. The book wasn't that depressing. I couldn't decide if that was a career advance or retreat so I arbitrarily picked the former.
I took their card and walked them to the porch where I watched them cross the street. Across the Court, Jimmy J was sitting in a high backed wicker chair with his saxophone on his lap. As the cops walked by he picked it up and played a reedy rendition of the funeral march.
After they drove off I shouted to Jimmy, “Thanks for the recessional JJ.”
“For friends of yours, any time B. Q..” He went back to daydreaming, and I went back to worrying.
No sooner had they left then Sparks came in. “What was the Gestapo doing here?”
“Looking for someone who knows more than me.”
“That could be anyone. Could be me. I know more than you.” Jake went into the bathroom and emerged with my bottle of best and only Scotch and two glasses.
“Make yourself at home why don't you.”
“So this is a home. I thought it was a telephone booth. Listen pal, as I see it you're into something that I need to know about. You romantics always make fatally flawed decisions when you're not taking orders. Spill it comrade.”
I wasn't spilling anything. The less Jake knew the better for him. “Ancient history. They wanted a history lesson. I told them USC was down on Figueroa last time I checked.” I took one of the glasses of Scotch and changed the subject and when the drink was gone Jake left. For a refreshing change I decided to take a nap in my own bed. I needed some beauty rest. After all, I had a ticket for a concert at the Bowl.
I took a long leisurely bath in my marble tub and then took my tuxedo out of the closet. Yeah, I own my own monkey suit- a graduation present that remarkably stills fits. The point of the monkey suit was to be noticed. You never know when you are going to need an alibi and until I found a reason not to, I wanted to stand out.
There was an irritating wait getting into the bowl but once inside Row K was empty. It occurred to me that this was the closest to the stage I'd ever made it.
I was expecting the sundress girl so when Sparks sat down next to me it went beyond a surprise. Something like a shock. Like a bomb exploding.
“Nice threads buddy. Are you auditioning for the stage version of Casablanca?”
“Not really. I was expecting to meet someone better looking than you and wanted to put my best foot forward. Clothes make the man you know.”
“That would be Sonya. Trouble is you're sitting in her seat. I expected her as well. I'm more disappointed than you are.”
“I have a feeling she'll be attending Saturday night.”
Jake shook his head. “When you mentioned a damsel in distress I never imagined it was Sonya. She is definitely a damsel but the only distress she knows about is what she causes. Anyway, welcome to the world of intrigue and deception. You wouldn't happen to have some secret documents in that dinner jacket for me would you?”
“Not for you or anybody. It's your turn Jake. Spill it. What insanity are you mixed up with?”
“I guess the one word answer would be Sonya. You met her. Face like a Botticelli, more curves than a Roman viaduct, and a heart like the shell of a Blue Point oyster. Even so, I figure two out of three ain't bad. Is that insane enough for you?” He would get no argument from me on that.
“And the papers-where does that little detail fit in?”
“We've got a buyer for those little transparent sheets of paper who is waiting to pay us more money than you could count if you grew an extra set of fingers. After that we're going to travel together, at least for a while. Maybe the South Seas, maybe go back to the other side- see some of the war memorials that they haven't built yet. How could you not approve of that?”
“What happened to that guy Shaw? Who was he?”
“He was what you might call a competitor. Sonya doesn't like competition. He got the coat and the papers away from Sonya and was trying to make his own deal. Sonya was going to try to get the coat back and meet me here. I didn't know you were part of the equation.”
The amphitheater started to fill rapidly.
Jake picked up where he had stopped. “We were talking about Shaw. Lucky for me, I'm prettier than he was. I heard he was trying to feed pigeons on the windowsill and accidentally stepped on a banana peel.”
I cringed.
“Don't worry. I had nothing to do with that. Look, Sonya's no angel. She would stab me in the neck to steal my class ring and she didn't even go to my school. It's just that with her and me there's a certain destination we share. I don't know where. I just know that this is a mission I accepted and I've got to see it through. I've got to follow her lead.”
“Jake, we've both done some things that can't be undone but we're both still sucking in oxygen and breathing out CO2. And what we did on the other side counts for something doesn't it? Haven't you had enough playing with fire? And since when were you desperate for money? You're a natural. Play your own game. Not Mata Hari's.”
“Ben, let me put in words you can appreciate. Mark Twain works days driving a riverboat. It's a tough haul but he's saving up for a trip abroad. During coffee breaks he writes down his experiences. Life on the Mississippi. When he decides to quit and take off for California his boss says ‘Hey Sam, where are you going with my book? You wrote that on company time.' What would you say to that boss? Go scratch? Same situation here. Sonya knows a man. That man works all day in a lab and sees that his bosses don't know Jack about Jill. They're motoring upstream. He's swimming against the current and falling way behind. He scribbles down his own ideas. You like to scribble. He thinks he can make a better mouse trap. His bosses are on the side of the mouse. They don't want his ideas. Why can't he retail them to someone who does?”
“Come on Jake. This is crazy. This isn't a better mousetrap. It's a better way of blowing us all to kingdom come. Besides, last time I heard, betraying your country was prohibited.”
Jake sighed. “Lighten up Ben. Are all those German scientists working for us now betraying their country? What was it Shakespeare said? If treason prosper no one dare call it treason. I'm looking to prosper. Anyway this is inevitable. You were in the last war. Didn't both sides have planes, tanks, and rifles? Germans didn't have gasoline and chocolate but they almost had this gadget. So how long can a secret stay secret?”
He pulled a silver flask from his jacket and took a drink. I turned one down.
“Jeez Jake, what was it you were just saying about flawed decisions?”
The concert began and we sat for a long time without talking.
At a quiet moment he turned to look at me. “Where is the coat now?”
“The bell captain at the Roosevelt has it.”
“I guess I can assume from your ready disclosure that all he has is the coat?”
“That's all he has.”
“And the papers where are they?”
I got up. The music had picked up in volume and Jake was shouting as I left.
“Where are you going now?
“To save somebody.” He didn't ask who and I couldn't have answered if he had.
As I made my way out I made sure to step on every foot between Jake and the aisle. That would guarantee me twenty witnesses to my whereabouts at 9:05. I didn't really think I would need an alibi, but why not put one in the bank.
It was a soft warm evening with a scent of jasmine in the air. As I walked down Highland toward the Roosevelt I thought about my friend and about what I owed him, which was nothing less than my life. I sat for a while in the bar before deciding to leave my car and take a taxi home.. On the way out I stopped at the bell desk and handed over the coat check with a dollar. As the bellboy handed me the coat I had a second thought. “Keep it buddy”
He looked baffled. “Keep it? Keep the fur coat?”
“Yeah keep it. Give it to your wife, girlfriend whatever. The owner doesn't need it anymore, she's moving to the tropics.”
Tomorrow I would burn the diagrams and save my friend from himself and maybe, with a little luck, rescue him from Lucrezia Borgia at the same time. Tonight I planned to sleep in my own, bed that is if I could sleep at all.
I opened my front door, stepped inside and hit the light switch and guess what? My electric bill was paid up so there was only one other possibility. In the fraction of a second that I waited for the sap to crash down on my skull I had a fleeting recollection of the second half of my premonition. I remembered the blindfold and after that nothing.
When I woke up I realized two things. One, I was alive or just barely alive, and two, I was stretched out on one of the window benches in my bathroom. Sitting on the other window bench was Sonya. This time she was wearing a red dress and the plunging part was in front now. Funny the things a guy notices about a girl when he first wakes up.
Jake was standing near her.
“Shouldn't I be tied up? I could make a break for the shower and you'd never find me.”
“I would save the jokes for the next life because you're awfully close to being there.” She stood up. Definitely no sense of humor. Strike three.
“You have my coat and my papers. I'll settle for the papers.”
“Too late. My landlady needed some liners for her parakeet cage.”
Sonya took a step forward. “We searched this dump. Where are they?”
Jake interrupted. “I'm sure she doesn't really think it's a dump. She's just a mite impatient. I told her the papers are history. I know you. You would have tucked them into one of your books and if they're not there they're nowhere.”
I could now see scattered and trashed on the bathroom floor my forty personal copies, I assumed all forty, of Starlight.
I was mad. This was censorship.
Sonya unfolded her plan. “You are going to tell us where you have my property. If you don't tell I am going to give you a second lump on your head and then a third and then a fourth and so on until you tell or you stop talking permanently.”
For the first time I noticed that she had a slight accent, which definitely wasn't a Texas twang.
“Name, rank, and serial. That's all you get sister.”
She took a couple of quick steps in my direction. It looked like she had a police special in her right hand and I didn't see her wearing a badge.
Jake stepped in her way. “No Sonya, it's over.”
She looked at me and then at Jake and then fired twice rapidly, putting two holes in the bull's eye of the pack of Lucky Strikes in Jake's shirt pocket.
He had rushed her and his momentum continued after the bullets hit. He had careened into Sonya and knocked her over and fell on top. Her head struck the tile floor hard with a sound like a rifle crack. She was flat on her back squirming helplessly under 190 pounds of dead weight. Screaming.
I kicked the gun away from her hand and sat down for just a second.
She wasn't going anywhere. I got up and crouched over Jake pressing his carotid. Nothing. History's longest lucky streak was over. I also remembered that Jake had quoted Shakespeare earlier that night. He would go straight to heaven. He was wrong after all. He and Sonya had different destinations.
Sonya was screaming. “He's crushing me. I can't breathe.”
I rolled Jake away from her slowly and with respect. She was gasping and her neck was bent at an angle that wasn't on her original blueprints. She continued to scream but softer. “I can't breathe.”
She turned out to be right.
Brown hat and gray hat didn't need to be called. The sound of two shots and Sonya's head cracking did that. They let themselves in almost immediately. Brown hat explained, “We had you staked out.” He looked around. “Mother Macree, you got an explanation for all this?”
“Sure thing. I can explain everything.” After the endless dry spell my author's imagination awakened. “What I'm going to tell you involves greed, murder, but primarily mistaken identity. This unfortunate woman seemed to think she knew Mr. Sparks, but she really didn't.” She really didn't.
Brown hat nodded knowingly and, surprisingly, gray hat looked like he was receptive to a good yarn. “Alright Flyboy. Give us all the details and make it good. We have to sign our own names to this one. By the way, have you got any Scotch around here?”
I never mentioned the diagrams to anyone and nobody came looking for them. They would be obsolete in a year or two and I thought there would be no point messing up that nice service they gave Jake.
The library was almost empty when I walked in and nobody was in the fiction section. Neither was Don Q. I hurried to the desk to investigate the Cervantes revival movement.
My favorite prim librarian was at the desk. I wondered briefly if I might marry her someday. She predicted it might be in the returns. It was. I quickly flipped to page 65 and there were my onionskin diagrams intact and unmolested. At page 47 I found the reassuring ten-dollar bill. I pocketed the diagrams, which I knew I should probably burn, and I closed the book. I heard a soft thud and saw a teenage boy slap a book on the counter for checkout. Delight and amazement. It was my great debut opus, Starlight Over Naples .
“You like flying?” I asked the kid.
“Why?”
“Well your book- it's a terrific flying story. The best. I've read it several times.” It was hard for me to suppress the superlatives, and I actually had read the thing several times.
“Its not for me. My grandma asked me to get it for her. Say, I wonder if she knows it's about flying.”
I opened Don Quixote again, grabbed the ten-spot and handed it to the kid. “Here, put this toward college and be nice to your grandma.”
Hollywood never disappoints.
Nobody in town could choke down a dozen pages of Cervantes but Grandmas were sending out for early Benton Boyle.
As I stepped out onto the sidewalk outside the Library the bright sun burst like a camera flash. I closed my eyes for a minute, sucked in some oxygen and exhaled some CO2.
Good books, good friends, the sun in your face. That's what life is all about.
Well, anyway, one out of three ain't bad.
The End