I returned to O’Hale’s Bar to find Dr. Charlotte Cheese and barkeep Ed Jaublowski cowering behind an overturned table. The unlikely foxhole confreres were hiding out from the gunfight at the O.K. Corral, which was being reenacted with live ammo in the speakeasy’s men’s room.
The desiccated barfly who’d been keeping the time-traveling cowboys in check had filled her tank and pulled off to the side of the road. She was currently sleeping it off on the torn vinyl seat of the booth in which I’d last seen her scrounging for drinks.
“Ya yellow-bellied sidewinder!” one of the cowboys was screaming as he let loose a concurring fusillade from the barrels of his six-shooters.
“Yee-haw!” he added, and dove into the toilet stall. Judging by the subsequent clunk and “hell an’ tarnation!” he’d hit his head plumb hard on the porcelain.
Cover fire erupted over the top of the stall, indicating a second gunman was already hiding inside, the lack of visible boots suggesting he was standing on the commode as he emptied his Colt at a target across the room.
“Zzzzz!” snored the barfly loudly, rolling off the booth’s seat and falling insensate to the floor. But for the fact that she cracked her skull on the table in the fall, was bleeding pretty goddamn profusely, and was utterly oblivious to it all, the drunk dame was evidently auditioning for the part of comic relief in the bullet-riddled showdown.
“Ya ornery sassafras!” another echoing voice hollered from the other side of the men’s room.
Somebody unseen, presumably another cowboy, returned fire from the direction of the urinal. More gunfire exploded from yet another invisible gunman who, in lieu of a stagecoach or convenient cactus, was using the overflowing rubbish barrel by the door for cover. Holes erupted in the side of the toilet stall, spitting fiberglass shards all over the mildewed tile.
Dr. Charlotte Cheese had her index fingers plugged deep in her ears when I belly crawled up between her and Jaublowski.
“Jinx!” the barkeep cried. “They’s shootin’ up everything in sight!”
“Fortunately, Ed, there is nothing in this dump that would not be cosmetically improved by having a couple million rounds shot into it, present female company excepted. Actually, I even except you, Ed. Ordinarily, I’d say a homely bastard like you could only look better with a .45 caliber facelift, but I need you alive and in the pink to get me drunk.” To Dr. Charlotte Cheese, I said, “We need to go.”
“They’re killing each other!” the dame doctor panted.
“Nah, they’re just blowing off steam. And you’ll notice that not a single shot has exited the door of the men’s crapper. I take the fact that there are no bullets zinging over my head as a good sign for the evening. Let’s leave before they switch targets. You coming Ed?”
The barkeep held one of the gold pieces with which he’d been massively overpaid by the cowboys. He rubbed the coin between sweaty thumb and forefinger.
“It’ll probably die down soon,” he reasoned. He pocketed the coin.
Ed was a hideous, greedy gargoyle, but I had to admire the unexpected display of bravery in his decision to stay with his sinking ship, even if it was motivated by unadulterated avarice and a desire to bilk the rowdy cowboys of every last red cent of pilfered stagecoach loot in their saddlebags.
The dame joined me on the floor. We abandoned Jaublowski behind his four-legged maple shield, and the two of us kept mostly to our stomachs all the way outside.
“Mind the horse shit,” I warned once we were out in what could only be humorously referred to as fresh air.
The sun had set during the time it took me to get to the morgue and back. The streetlights were flickering on in the gloaming of what might turn out to be my last night on earth, precursor to my first full day six feet under it.
I had been acutely aware of everybody I passed, of every dark corner around which I turned and of every car that slowed down or sped up within ear- and eyeshot. I had learned some at Doc Minto’s place, but I still was no closer to uncovering exactly who it was that had dumped me in that alley two nights running, let alone why. Every shadowed figure might be a blackjack wielding maniac with an obsessive compulsive need to finish unfinished business, namely the killing of me. Every car might be the Rolls Royce that may or may not have been driven by the bastard who’d twice creased my skull, but which definitely was involved in dumping my body in that grimy alley.
Night in the city is the great equalizer. The fat cat in the Art Deco penthouse and the garbage man in the coldwater, third-story walkup who dare venture out after dark are both the same in the eyes of the hungry punk with murder in his eye and nothing to lose. Even arrogant Dr. Charlotte Cheese seemed cowed.
“I called Burt like you asked,” the lady doc whispered huskily as we walked.
“What did your dopehead spy have to say?”
“Nothing. He wasn’t at work. So I called the ER and tracked down his girlfriend. Oh, don’t give me that look, Banyon, I’m a doctor. I was discreet.”
She punctuated her likely bullshit assertion with the orange glow of a flicked lighter that cast her beautiful face in eerie shadows.
“She didn’t know anything about ambulances,” she concluded, exhaling twin streams of smoke from her nostrils like an angry cartoon bull. “In fact, she said the ER has been quiet for weeks as far as ambulances are concerned. They get walk-ins, but almost no ambulance calls. She said she hadn’t heard anything about the rest of the city.”
I was already inclined, for several reasons, to think that whatever was going on was confined to Holy Mackerel U Hospital.
“You didn’t happen to ask about this afternoon?” I queried.
She flashed a sexy smile that competed with the glow of the streetlight under which we were walking.
“Not one of the Bum Days victims arrived at the ER. She was on duty all afternoon. She said there were no ambulance calls today.” Her brow furrowed. “She also said she didn’t know why Burt didn’t call me. He was supposed to be at work.”
“I’m shocked,” I said. “Junkies are usually among the most reliable people you’re likely to meet, which is why they’re always America’s top accountants, bascule bridge operators and lighthouse keepers. Although, frankly, if he only missed nearly every day of work he’d still be a step up from Doris. Tell you what, if he ever climbs down off the ceiling and gets in touch with you, tell him to send in an application. Provided he can type more than two words a week, he’ll be an improvement. Tell him he can snort whatever Maybelline products Doris has abandoned in her desk.”
The M.D. babe wasn’t interested in giving her hophead friend a boost up the corporate ladder of success.
“Forget Burt,” she said, “what did you find out? And where did you run off to when you abandoned me alone in that dump?”
“First, I am deeply offended that you’d call a fine shit-hole like O’Hale’s a dump,” I informed her. “Actual garbage dumps filled with actual garbage are regulated by federal, state and local agencies. O’Hale’s hasn’t seen a Federale come through the front door in forty years. Ed Jaublowski avoids governmental entanglements by not adhering to any health or safety requirements whatsoever, thus flying completely under the regulatory radar. EPA pains in the ass can tag all the seagulls they want at the local landfill, but if one flaps through the front door of O’Hale’s, it is as free as a bird to die of cholera like the rest of us. That’s America, sweetheart. I’d wipe a tear from my eye, but I was just crawling on the floor of that feculent armpit and I don’t want to give myself leprosy of the cornea. As for your questions, I was downtown at the morgue. I found out who sicced the Rolls on us, among other things. At least I think I found out some other things. My brain isn’t in the best shape of its life right now, so it might be kidding me that it’s back on the job and is really just humming the theme songs from 1960s sitcoms to itself. It’ll let me know when it finishes working out whatever it’s processing.”
“Who sent the Rolls Royce to kill us?”
“Me, not us, kitten. I’ll tell you who when I figure out why.”
She didn’t appreciate being kept in the dark. I didn’t appreciate being kept waiting in a small room for forty-five minutes in my underwear. Score one for the rest of the human race v. the medical goddamn profession.
The dame didn’t know where I was taking her, but once we’d walked only two blocks she emphatically decided that wherever it was we were going she wanted to take a cab to get there. I informed her that I was reluctant to flag one down, since for all I knew it was a cabbie who’d whacked me on the head the previous two nights. Subway trains and buses are cheaper, and engineers or drivers don’t keep the doors locked and blackmail you for a tip when they do their job and get you where they’re supposed to.
“Besides,” I pointed out. “I haven’t a dollar to my name, and cab drivers are notoriously unforgiving rat bastards when it comes to free rides.”
“I’ll pay,” she said.
“Taxi!”
* * *
The cab dumped us out on a familiar street corner.
“What are we doing back here?” Dr. Charlotte Cheese asked.
We were walking past the dark and locked front door of Fat-Ass Dave’s Plus-Size Furniture Emporium. Further down the street, the Pops family newsstand was boarded up for the night. Presumably there was a homecoming celebration currently going on at the Pops estate, with celebratory bricks being tossed in the air and dancing until the floors collapsed. The old buzzard couldn’t party too hearty, since he would need to be back manning his newsstand in -- I checked my watch -- ten hours.
The lights were just switching out on the neighborhood What the Tux?, and as we walked along I saw the manager who’d felt me up exit the front door. He locked the joint up and hustled off alone down the sidewalk in the direction opposite us.
I wondered briefly how Mannix had fared with the other franchises around town. There were too many tuxedo joints for even Mannix, the very pinnacle of elf efficiency, to have gotten them all out of the way that afternoon. If he hadn’t already tracked down the store that had sold a tux to Amanda Johnson’s old man, he’d have to complete his assignment in the morning. Assuming I lived through the night I’d give him a call in the a.m. to see how he’d fared.
At the moment, my client’s missing father was only part of my larger problem.
“Why are we stopping here?” Dr. Charlotte Cheese asked.
I was not, in fact, stopping, I was merely pausing for maximum dramatic effect, which the dame clearly didn’t appreciate and which would have been a nice little introspective goddamn moment had she not utterly sucked the life out of it.
The alley where I’d twice been left for nearly dead was an ominous, unlit void down which all manner of evil might be lurking.
Bravery is nothing but stupidity that’s lucky enough to get out alive to tell the tale. I wasn’t being brave when I stepped back into the alley next to the furniture store. Truth be told, I’d rather have been dodging bullets and downing shots back at O’Hale’s. But I’d been abandoned two nights in a row down that dank, narrow passage and while I ordinarily preferred to get as far away from danger as the cheapest airline would allow, this spot had for some reason become the focal point of my unconscious existence.
“Isn’t this where you woke up the last two days?” Dr. Charlotte Cheese asked, keeping her voice low as she followed me into the shadows.
Her nervous hand sought out the crook of my elbow. I led her forward.
“As I told you, this is also where a bunch of bums other than me have been dumped, too,” I said. “I’m not all that confident in the source of that information, so maybe that isn’t the case. But there’s still me. If there’s a chance sitting here all night helps me figure this thing out, it’s worth it. It’s either a stakeout here or spend the rest of the night jumping out of my skin every time somebody taps me on the shoulder and asks for directions to the ruins of Jaublowski’s john. Not to mention that I’d be so twitchy I’d wind up whacking them in the side of the head with a bottle of whiskey, and I hate to waste bad booze.”
“What if you get attacked in the alley?” she suggested.
I stopped dead. “The thought had occurred to me. But we’re the only ones here. Do you plan on smashing me on the head with that rusted pipe you just nearly tripped over?”
“At the moment, no,” she droned. “But I reserve the right to change my mind.”
We were roughly in the spot where I’d awakened that morning. The water was still dripping from the roof.
I looked up.
The ambient light of the city scrubbed all starlight from the sky. The reflected light on the ugly orange-pink clouds backlit one lone pair of dirty underwear that still hung out high on the tenement clothesline. The shorts would be damp with dew by morning, which would further upset the already unhappy yellow smiles that were frowning down at us in the dark.
My own mood mirrored that of the abandoned underwear. There was a very slight chance that I was wrong about Dr. Charlotte Cheese. What had led me here on this, the third night, might have been a word-for-word rerun of the previous two nights. Hopefully the lady doctor wouldn’t crease my skull with whatever blunt instrument was at hand or, if she did, she’d make a better job of it than the last two days and finish me off once and for all.
I found a couple of old crates behind a Dumpster that would keep us hidden from sight but still give me a pretty good view of the mouth of the alley. I patted a crate for the doctor dame, and she sat down with such ferocity she nearly cracked it.
I settled in on my own warped and slightly reeking front row seat for what I fervently hoped was not the third time in as many goddamn miserable days.