A Fatal Glass of Beer (21 page)

I went back through the crowd, moved to the bar, ordered a beer and some sandwiches. I drank some of my beer while I waited and listened to the pool balls clicking, the crowd applauding, and Fields’s voice speaking, though I couldn’t make out the words.

The bartender, a short, heavy man with white hair, wearing boots, black pants, a white shirt, and a black vest that made him look like a down-on-his-luck riverboat gambler, came back with sandwiches and said, “Had one tuna left, one straight cheese with lettuce and mayo, and Spam and cheese with mayo, and a chopped liver on rye.”

“Chopped liver?”

“Short-order cook just moved here from New York City,” he said. “Sometimes we have corned beef a friend of his ships in. Cook used to be a stockbroker. Gave it up. Ulcers, headaches.”

I took the plate of sandwiches and paid the bill. Juggling the beer and sandwich plate through the crowd I approached Fields, who was lining up another shot. He paused to examine the plate, looked at each sandwich with distaste, and settled on the straight cheese with lettuce and mayo.

“Did I pay you today?” he asked while the crowd waited.

“No,” I said.

He pulled bills out of his pocket and handed the right amount to me.

“Expenses?”

“Phone calls, sandwiches—four dollars, rounding it out.”

He handed me a five and I gave him a dollar change. I moved back to the edge of the crowd with my beer and sandwiches and kept on guard against the sudden appearance of the Chimp. I imagined him madly firing his gun in the general direction of Fields or me, bullets thudding into surprised spectators and ricocheting from billiard balls. My plan, to the extent that I had one, was to drop the beer and sandwiches and go for the .38 under my zipper jacket.

But the Chimp didn’t appear, and Fields continued his show and his consumption of martinis for almost two hours more, when the bartender in black shouted, “Closing.”

“I’ll pay twenty dollars to keep the establishment open another half hour,” said Fields.

“Sorry,” said the barkeep. “Curfew. Police’ll be driving by in a few minutes to be sure we’re obeying the city law.”

Reluctantly, Fields hung up his cue and bowed slightly to the small though enthusiastic crowd, which burst into applause.

“That’ll give them something to tell the kids when they get back to Cleveland,” said Fields after he settled his bar bill.

I looked back at the pool table, which I could see, now that people were paying their tabs and heading for the door. Fields had eaten less than half his sandwich.

No one tried to kill us in the street. No longer giving a show, Fields went silent and said nothing all the way to his room. I watched him go in, turn on the lights, and check to be sure the windows were locked and there were no intruders.

“I think I’ll read a little
Bleak House
before turning in,” he said. “Wish the damn place had a barber chair.”

I waited till he locked the door behind me and I went to my room. I opened the door, turned on the light, and found myself looking at Albert Woloski, the Chimp, who sat in a chair facing the door. He had a large gun in his hand.

Nurse, don’t forget the olive in my sedative.

“Close it,” he said.

I closed the door.

“Sit,” he said, pointing to a wooden chair.

I sat.

“You’re gonna listen to me,” he said.

“Damn right,” I said.

Since my .38 was under the left arm of my zipper jacket, I had no plans for a shootout unless I had no choice. In the first place, I’m a lousy shot. In the second place, there was a chance I could survive and find out what he’d done with W. C. Fields’s money.

“You listening?” he said nervously.

“Try me,” I said, hands on my knees.

He looked at the paintings on my walls as if they were particularly fascinating. I waited. I was a good waiter and a good listener. Even my ex-wife, Anne, who was about to marry the movie star, acknowledged that. Her primary complaints were about my “childish attitude,” “irresponsibility,” “lack of ambition,” “the danger of my job,” and my “frequent, sudden absences.”

She was right about all of that, but I was a pretty good listener, especially with a gun in the hands of a possible murderer aimed at my stomach.

“It wasn’t right when you and Mr. Fields took the dwarf with you to drive,” he began.

“Gunther’s a midget, or a little person,” I corrected. “He is anatomically perfectly proportioned.”

“What the hell do I care?” said the Chimp. “You listening or you telling?”

“Keeping things straight,” I said.

“I’ve been keeping loonies and tough guys away from Mr. Fields for three years and I didn’t even tell him,” said the Chimp. “I’m a good driver.”

“The best,” I agreed.

“Don’t do that,” he said

“What?”

“What do you call it … humor me.”

He raised the gun to the general area of my chest.

“I won’t,” I said. “I’ll just listen.”

“I like Mr. Fields,” the Chimp went on. “He didn’t care about my record. Didn’t even check. Pays me well. And he’s funny. I’m not a laugher, but he’s funny. I don’t even mind him calling me Chimp. I know what I look like, and Chimp is better than Albert Woloski.”

I didn’t argue with him.

“Mr. Fields needs protection,” he went on. “I took all my money, two hundred and twenty-four dollars, and followed you to Philadelphia. I was on the same planes as you, got on first, kept my head down and a magazine in front of me. Waited till you got off, and followed in a cab. Airplane took a big chunk of my cash. Now I was taking cabs. I know some guys there, in Philly, I did time with. When I knew where you were staying, I looked up one of the guys. He came up with a car for me, cheap, but it didn’t leave me with much, enough for food, a little backup for gas. I borrowed some tools in case I had to fix the car. I’m good with cars.”

He was waiting for an answer.

“I’ve noticed,” I said.

He nodded and continued. “Started following you way back when you headed for Lancaster. Then I saw the blue Ford. He was trailing you, only not so far back. I saw it all. Saw him shoot at you. When you stopped at night, I slept in my car or on a fire escape, watched Mr. Fields’s room. Days when you didn’t stop, I didn’t stop. That time you caught me, I was sitting on the fire escape at the end of the hall. I heard the two shots and ran to Mr. Fields’s room. There was a guy there standing over the bed. I shot at him. He went out the window. I checked the bed. Mr. Fields wasn’t there. Then you came in. I didn’t want to shoot you.”

“Thanks,” I said, remembering the death threats to me and to Fields.

“So, I went out the window. The next day I started following
him.
He didn’t go into any of the banks. But I did see this tall, skinny guy everyplace we went. He never talked to the guy I was following, had his own car.”

“Burton,” I said. “The tall guy’s name was Lester Burton. He was a forger. He stole the bankbooks. He was getting Mr. Fields’s money out of the banks. He was going to give it back. John Barrymore had hired him to get the money, part April Fools’ joke, part an attempt to protect Fields’s money.”

The Chimp didn’t quite understand, but he nodded at what he could make of it.

“The other guy who tried to shoot Mr. Fields, I followed him to the park the night he killed the tall guy,” the Chimp said. “I saw him shoot. I thought he was shooting at you. I couldn’t figure. Then he ran. I thought he might be running to shoot Mr. Fields. So I went to the hotel.”

“You recognize this killer?” I asked.

“I would now. Never saw him before Lancaster. After he killed the tall man, Burton?”

“Burton,” I confirmed.

“I lost him. Don’t know what he did.”

“He ran to Burton’s room and took all of Mr. Fields’s money.”

The Chimp nodded. It looked like fresh news to him.

“I saw him shoot out your windows when you went to that Klan rally,” he said, getting back to simpler ground. “He followed you, stayed hidden. I looked for him.”

“I saw you,” I said.

“Then I saw him behind some trees,” said the Chimp. “He had a rifle. Aimed it at Mr. Fields. Then, just when I was going to get him, Mr. Fields sent the crowd after me. I can’t blame him. He didn’t know. I had to hide, go back for the car later. I knew the killer was after both of you.”

“What did he look like?”

“About as tall as you, as old as you, darker hair, good build, face like …” Albert looked around, scrunching up his face in an attempt to find the words to describe the man who had Fields’s money and had murdered Burton. “He’s more like me than you that way,” he said.

I’m no prize with my smashed nose and battle scars—the face of an ex-pug who’s been through a few dozen bouts more than he should have. But on a reasonably fair scale, between me and the Chimp were all the homely men in the world. On the other side of the scale were the truly ugly.

“Yesterday, at least I think it was yesterday,” he said. “In Rifle, I saw him drive down the street and park. It was my best chance. I’m running out of money and the car is making noises. I got out and took some shots at him. Lots of shots. I missed. I need to be up close.”

“I know the feeling,” I said.

“He jumped back in his car and drove away,” said the Chimp.

“Which is why he didn’t go to the bank,” I said.

“I don’t know about that,” said the Chimp, “but I’m low on food money, gas money, car-repair money. I’m low on money. I can keep following, but I’m gonna run out soon.”

“And you want me to give you money so you can keep following us?” I asked.

“A loan,” he said. “I can’t leave Mr. Fields alone. That guy’ll get him and you and the little guy. If I don’t get money, I’ll have to steal a car to keep watching your back. You believe me?”

“I’ve been fooled by a lot of liars,” I said, “but I believe you.”

I didn’t add that part of the reason I believed him was that he didn’t seem bright enough to make up the whole thing. Besides that, he had the gun.

I pulled out my wallet. There were a couple hundred dollars in it from Fields’s daily payments and what I had left of my own. I put five twenties on the table next to me.

“Up,” he said.

I stood up.

“Over by the bathroom,” he said.

I moved over to the bathroom.

“Inside,” he said.

I went in.

“I’m tellin’ the truth,” he said, picking up the twenties from the table. “I’ll be watching your back, looking for the guy. I’ll do better. Close the door.”

I closed the bathroom door and heard him moving something. I could hear him coming toward the bathroom door. When I could sense him right outside, I knew I could pull out my .38 and fire through the door four or five times and probably get him, but I believed his story.

I heard my hotel-room door open and close and I pushed at the bathroom door. It opened out. The Chimp had propped a chair under the handle. It didn’t take much to slide the chair back till it fell on the floor. There was no point in chasing the Chimp.

I unzipped my jacket, ready to go for my gun, knowing now there was a man after us or in front of us with a bagful of money and a willingness to kill. I put my ear to Fields’s door and heard something between a snort and a snore. Back in my own room, I took off my jacket, gun, and holster, pulled the blanket from the bed along with the pillows, and placed the gun and holster next to the makeshift bed on the floor. I had learned to gauge mattresses. This one was definitely too soft and I knew that if I tried to sleep on it I probably wouldn’t be able to stand in the morning.

I brushed my teeth, shaved so I would be relatively ready at dawn, packed my things, left the bathroom light on, turned off the other lights after locking my door and putting the same chair under the doorknob that the Chimp had put under the bathroom door. It wouldn’t stop a killer, but it should slow him down long enough to wake me and give me time to reach my weapon.

My plan was to stay nearly awake all night. I lay there trying to figure it all out and failed. In fact, I had successfully failed at everything during this dash across America. The only thing I could point to in my favor was that Fields was still alive, but I wasn’t sure how much of that was due to anything I had done.

I dreamed. I knew Koko the Clown was going to show up, with or without Betty Boop and Bimbo. Even Popeye and Wimpy might make an occasional appearance in my Koko dreams. I get the feeling that the dreams are trying to tell me something, but, like Juanita the fortune-teller’s warnings, I can never figure out what it is. Anne said the cartoon dreams were manifestations of arrested development. Her vocabulary is a lot better than mine.

Cab Calloway was in this one, dressed in white, singing “Minnie the Moocher” while Betty Boop danced. I was the audience, alone except for one dark figure about five tables back. Since Calloway and Betty were looking directly at me, I couldn’t turn and get a good look at the shadow man.

Then, suddenly, Koko was standing on my table, mimicking the movements of Calloway and Betty. Calloway and Betty suddenly disappeared and Russ Columbo was on the small stage, gazing soulfully at me and singing “Juanita.” The shadow man had moved a few tables closer and I was afraid to turn and look. Koko was sitting on the table now, his head spinning around while Columbo continued to sing.

“Listen,” said Koko, his head suddenly stopping. “Listen to the song.”

I did listen and I suddenly remembered, Juanita the fortune-teller in the Faraday Building had said something about two dead men.

Something hard jabbed into the center of my back. Koko said, “Uh-oh,” and disappeared. I woke up.

The sun was coming through the windows and I reached under my back. I had rolled over onto my own gun. I was lucky it hadn’t gone off. My first thought was to check my watch. Habit. It said it was 11:43. I knew it wasn’t close to that. I got up, an ache in my upper back, wondering who the shadow man was and who the second dead man was or was going to be.

Before I did anything else, I called the desk and found out it was a little after eight in the morning. I threw some water on my face, tried to straighten the wrinkles in my clothes, went back in the other room, put on my holster, gun, and jacket, and threw the blankets and pillows back on the bed. A brush of my fingers through my hair and I was ready to go. I had never really unpacked except to get out clean underwear and a shirt.