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.

When she opened the door, I saw her blonde hair bundled up in a scarf tied haphazardly at the side of her head. One tail of a short-sleeve shirt hung out the front of her blue pedal-pushers. It was one of my shirts. There was a dust-mop in her left hand and tiny beads of sweat on her upper lip. Her coral-blue eyes switched from surprise to mild anger. She actually said, “Eck,” and then I kissed her.

After I finished smelling the tang of bleach on the entranceway tiles where she had put me with a hip flip, I hobbled to the low couch that sat in front of her console TV. Red Skelton was clunking around as Freddy the Freeloader, in color.

“What are you doing here at this time of night?” She folded her arms and then unfolded them. “Without giving me some sort of warning.”

“Hi, babe. Forgot to tell you. I almost got blown up yesterday.”

“Damn,” she said. “I’d have paid good money to see that.”

My ego and hip were bruised. “I’m not kidding. A federal agent got killed in the explosion.”

She stepped over and switched off the TV, serious now. “FBI? Who?”

I told her about Max and the way he’d died.

“That’s terrible, Standy.” She put down the rag mop and came to sit next to me, giving my cheek a light kiss. “Who did it?”

I decided to let it all out. “Walt thinks it was the brother of that commie-nut who died up in Santa Barbara last summer.”

“August Reed, your old duck guy?” I nodded and she straightened the dust rag on her head and finally removed it. “Why do you believe him?”

“Who?”

“Walt. Why do you believe him when he tells you these things?”

I rubbed my sore hip. “I don’t know. Because he’s Walt, I guess.”

“I always feel that he’s not giving you the whole story.”

“I have to agree with you there,” I said, sharing the details of this evening’s car chase and shoot out at Dodger city.

“How do you know they won’t come here?” she asked.

“Believe me, I made extra certain I wasn’t followed. I even parked in a church lot down the street.”

“The Living Hope Fellowship?”

“I guess--”

“That’s my church.”

“Uh, you have a church?”

She smiled faintly, pretending not to have heard me.

I stretched my arms and back. “Sooo, how goes your puppy-napping investigation?”

“Not nearly as threatening as the one you’re working on for Walt. But I may have to go to the dog fights in Tijuana.”

“You always get the easy cases,” I half complained.

“I’m trying to keep my stress down.”

“You’ll be out of the country,” I reminded her.

“Not a problem,” she said. “Travel is good for you.”

“As long as someone else foots the bill.”

She was quiet for a moment. “I’ve changed my mind. I think you’d better have a talk with Walt.”

Before I could answer, her cat announced his entrance and I immediately protested, “I thought you got rid of that fur-ball.”

“He came back. Didn’t you, Phooey?”

The yellow tom heard his name and went, “Murp?”

I sat up straight in obvious disgust. “You know I’m allergic.”

“Why do you think I’m cleaning?”

Phooey jumped into her lap, washed her left ear, and hopped down again to go stretch out under an end-table and thump the floor with its tail.

“You sure that’s not a dog?”

“Ha,” she said. “Now you’re jealous.”

“That’s poppywash and hogcock. Why do you want me to talk to Walt? I thought you just said you didn’t trust him.”

“I’m still not sure that I do, but you should at least warn him about what happened tonight. You want to do the right thing, right?”

“I’m not so sure this time--”

“You have to, Standy. For your sake and maybe his, too. It’s who you are.”

Her earnestness caught me off guard. “You’re talking mighty strange lately, little lady.”

I watched her try to decide something. At last she got up and pivoted on one flat-sole shoe, announcing, “I need a shower.”

Without a thought, I said, “I’ll join you.”

She began to loosen my belt buckle while nuzzling my neck and we were thus joined the rest of the night.

***

“Hurry up,” she called, with surprising urgency. “I want you ready to go when I am.”

Forking scrambled eggs and catsup into my mouth, I snickered, “That’s what you said last night, too.” I sat at the chrome and Formica table in my socks and shorts, eating the breakfast she’d prepared and watching a rosy sunrise through her kitchen window.

She came in, pinning a silver broche to the left shoulder of her Sunday-go-to-meeting outfit. She was even wearing dainty white gloves and a pill-boxy hat.

I heard myself swallow loudly. “We going somewhere?”

“You have to get your car.”

A ten-watt light came on in my head. “Oh, no--”

“Come on,” she ordered, looking at her silver sliver wristwatch. “We’ll be late.”

I’d already shaved, so it only took a few minutes for her to force me into a fresh shirt, suit, and midnight blue tie before we were out the door, walking down the sidewalk. As we approached the non-denominational church, where my car sat among half a hundred others, I thought desperately for one last reason not to go inside.

“This is against my religion.”

She steered my forearm toward the entrance. “You have no religion.”

As we climbed the stone steps, I heard an off-key piano and people wailing inside.

The Noir Man said, ‘Listen. They’re being eaten alive!’

Suzi lead me toward the altar to sit in the sixth row on the right. I clinched my jaw. Why was I fighting this? What was I afraid of? I took a deep breath and tried to slow my heartbeat.

There was more singing. Then scripture reading.

I turned to look at Suzi’s face.

She winked at me.

A white-haired, thin man with a sash around the neck of his flowing dark robe gave us all a sermon about the coming of fall season. The old guy managed to blend in a reference to another fall and then joyfully told the congregation about the joy of redemption.

As a group, we rose and sang again and read some lines from the litany book, or whatever it’s called.

When the plate was passed, I opened my wallet and paused. It had been a long time since I’d been to church--ever since my parent’s passing. That’s what I’d been afraid of, I realized. I took out all the paper money I had and laid it in the plate. Suzi all but suppressed a smile.

Then we sat quietly together with the piano playing a tune I’d long forgotten. During the silent part of the prayer ceremony, I thought about sparing Suzi and others from the kind of trials I’d lived through--that somehow the price I’d paid in losing my parents, my brother, and now Max would balance the equation in my friend’s favor.

Suzi leaned toward me and whispered, “This is where we’ll have our wedding soon.”

“I kinda figured that out,” I mumbled back, “’cause I’m a detective.”

Soon the music grew louder and we were walking out, shaking hands and chatting with friendly folk whom I’d never met before. On the stroll past my car, heading back to her apartment, Suzi opened her little pocketbook. “Here, you’ll need this.” She handed me two twenties, folded to the size of a matchbook.

Once safely back inside her place, I used the princess phone to call Walt’s office, but it being Sunday, he wasn’t there. The person who was, however, said he’d gone up to something called Golden Oak Ranch and gave me directions. At further urgings from Suzi, I decided I should go there and warn him of latest developments.

I kissed my girl goodbye and promised to meet her that evening at the Blue Phrog, a special bar and grill that we favored. I caught myself whistling a hymn off key, as I walked back to my car, checked it for tampering, and drove over to Highland Avenue to catch the Hollywood, Ventura, and then Golden State freeways. I had a lot of driving and thinking to do.

Thank God, it was a nice day.