High Midnight: A Toby Peters Mystery (Book Six) (17 page)

I felt a little sorry for the two figures in the blue Ford coupe who pulled onto the highway behind me. They had followed me from Los Angeles and probably slept in the car to be sure they didn’t miss me. Maybe they had actually grabbed something to eat during the night, but maybe they hadn’t taken a chance. In any case, I was in much better shape for losing them than they were for following me. Not only were they tired,
I
knew where I was going. At least I thought I did. I missed the turnoff a hundred yards beyond the Santa Fe Wines Billboard that Cooper’s mother had told me about. I wouldn’t have turned onto it anyway, but I would have liked the satisfaction of spotting it.

About ten miles further I came to a small town overlooking the ocean. I went down the main street slowly, with the Ford cautiously behind me. When I found a corner, I turned right and as soon as I was out of sight stepped on the gas and took another right turn. When I was back on the main street going toward the highway, I could see the Ford just making the first right around which I had disappeared.

Twenty minutes later I found the turnoff and drove down a narrow dirt road full of rocks. In about a mile the road gave out, and I pulled onto a grassy patch and parked. After locking the car and checking the directions in my notebook, I started up a narrow path through the trees. It was a great place to appreciate the outdoors, which I didn’t. I don’t like the rain. I don’t like the sky over my head when I sleep. A nice, safe, enclosed room with artificial light and a steady temperature beats communing with bugs any night or day.

The shirt I bought from the motel clerk was a little tight, and by the time I wound my way up the hill, it was drenched with sweat. The cabin was right where Cooper’s mother said it would be, a small, brick house built in the woods. It looked as if someone had designed it for a movie, right down to the pile of wood outside with an ax ready in a tree stump.

I went to the door and knocked. There was a shuffle inside and some voices before the question came, “Who is it?”

“Toby Peters,” I said.

The wooden door unlatched and opened, and Cooper stood before me wearing a hunting jacket that looked like a cleaned-up version of the one Gable wore in
Red Dust.

“What are you doing here?” Cooper said, stepping back to let me in.

“How about what are
you
doing here?” I countered. “You told me you were going to Utah.”

Cooper shrugged and grinned sheepishly, “Just a little place I like to hide away in.”

“If John Wilkes Booth had hidden here, he’d be alive today,” I said, realizing that we were not alone.

The room was the room of men with furnishings most men couldn’t afford. It was big, with a double bunk in one corner and a single bunk across the room. An Indian rug lay on the floor, colorful and new, and the redwood furniture with brown corduroy pillows helped the hearty-men image. A new oven stood in the corner next to a shining sink and refrigerator. If this was roughing it, I could take it. So, apparently, could the other two men in the room.

One of the men was a burly guy of about forty who stood over six feet and had the start of a gray-brown beard. He wore a lumberjack shirt and had a rifle cradled in his arms, aiming at the floor but ready to move on me. He stood next to the refrigerator as if guarding its contents from hungry intruders. The other guy in the room was dark and wiry, with a nasty scar that ran from the bridge of his nose, across his left eye and into his hairline. The scar was indented, and the man wearing it looked up without fear from the chair in which he sat.

“It’s okay,” said Cooper to the two men. “Mr. Peters works for me. That business I was telling you about with the Western.”

The man with the rifle pushed away from the refrigerator and lowered the weapon. His face still showed distrust. The dark guy in the chair didn’t move at all.

“Toby Peters, Ernest Hemingway and Louis Castelli,” Cooper said by way of introduction.

“Luís Felípe Castelli,” corrected the man in the chair.

Hemingway stepped forward and offered his right hand as he examined my face. He was interested in something he saw. I didn’t outsqueeze him, but I held my own.

“Did some fighting, didn’t you?” Hemingway said with interest.

“Not with gloves on,” I said.

“I think I like him,” Hemingway said with a friendly smile to Cooper.

I was hot and getting irritable and I didn’t give a turkey’s tassel what Hemingway thought of me. No one had asked me what I thought of Hemingway.

Cooper looked out the window and moved to one of the chairs, which he sat in slowly, cocking his head with his good ear in my direction.

“Hemingstein here,” he said pointing a finger at Hemingway, “wanted to get away quietly. Buddy Da Silva is trying to get him to look over the screenplay of
For Whom the Bell Tolls
, and the Great White Hunter is not ready to make any decisions.”

“So it’s better to hide here than in Cuba?” I said, letting everyone know that I too knew who Hemingway was.

Cooper shrugged.

“Good hunting around here,” he said. “Wild pigs. Some deer, even a cougar or two.”

“Snakes,” said Castelli with a distinct Spanish accent. “Rattlesnakes. Lots of them.”

“Right,” said Cooper, unperturbed.

“I’ve got reason to believe that one or more of the people on the
High Midnight
project might want to do you in,” I said.

“Do me …” began Cooper.

“In,” I repeated. “Shoot you, push you over a mountain or put one of my kitchen knives in your back.”

He asked why and I explained; at least I explained everything but the possibility that I might be the one who planted the idea in the not terribly fertile minds of Fargo and Gelhorn. I also told him about the Ford coupe I had lost on the road.

Castelli leaped from his chair and went to the window with clenched teeth.

“The Fascisti,” he said.

Hemingway went to the window and put his hand on Castelli’s shoulder. “No, why would they follow Mr. Peepers?” he said.

“No, Mr. Heminghill,” I said, looking around the room casually, “they just want to kill Gary Cooper.”

Hemingway turned from the window, unsure of whether to smile or tear me off at the neck. “Your friend has a sense of humor,” Hemingway said to Cooper.

“Every crowd should have at least one person with a sense of humor,” I said over my shoulder.

“Meaning I don’t,” Hemingway said, moving toward me with clenched fists.

“I wouldn’t know,” I said. “I don’t know you well enough, and I haven’t read much of your work, but I’ve seen the movies.”

“The movies of my work are crap,” he growled.

“I like them,” I said, “but what do I know?”

“Hold on,” said Cooper, stepping between us. “Let’s just figure out what to do while we have some lunch.” Everyone agreed to that, and Castelli and Hemingway brought out bread, sliced chicken and beer.

“I think a man needs good hot mustard to tell him he’s alive,” said Hemingway, passing the mustard to me.

I turned it down. “Do you think you might tell me what’s going on now?” I said to Cooper between bites and gulps.

“I’ve got to tell him,” Cooper said to Hemingway. Both men had downed three sandwiches to my one. Castelli had been at about my pace. Hemingway agreed reluctantly.

“Luis here is in the country illegally,” said Cooper. “He was a Loyalist, even though his family was nobility.”

“I
am
a Loyalist,” Castelli corrected. “The battle is not over. It is only delayed.”

“Which,” jumped in Hemingway, “may be why the Spanish Fascists have tracked him across Europe and up South America. I got him out of Mexico one fart ahead of a trio of killers.”

“They tried to split my head,” Castelli said with a wild grin, “but they cannot kill me so easily.”

“Glad to hear it,” I said, to stay on his good side.

“The American government isn’t exactly looking for Luis,” Cooper explained, “but they aren’t exactly welcoming him either. Franco says he’s an international criminal and demands that he be found and sent back. Just to make sure, he’s sent some people to try to get rid of him.”

“And Tillman threatened to expose your part in this?” I said.

“Tillman?” asked Cooper, pausing in his consumption of sandwich to look puzzled.

“The number-two corpse in my room. The guy who looked like a brick.”

“Right,” Cooper said. “That, the business with Lola Farmer and a few other things that would not only embarrass me but my friends, particularly Hemingstein over here, who has committed a few indiscretions in his day.”

Hemingway laughed, and the laugh made it clear that he and pal Coop were talking about wild sex and uncontrolled orgies, or at least hinting at them.

“The guy accused Coop of being a homosexual,” Hemingway chuckled.

Cooper grinned and looked sheepish again.

I had fallen in with a den of boy scouts tittering about girls and bodily functions on their annual outing. I didn’t laugh. Hemingway didn’t seem to like the fact that I didn’t laugh. He didn’t mind that Castelli didn’t laugh, but then again it was clear to all of us that the whack in the face that Castelli had sustained had done his brain no great good.

I finished my beer, and Hemingway finished his second or third. His hands were flat on the table, and he was considering something.

“What do you propose I do, Peters?” Cooper said, pursing his lips.

“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “Probably stay here for a while, while I try to defuse the whole thing and find the killer. The police think I did it. I don’t think you can stay here long, though. They might not be able to get the location from your mother, but one of you hunters must have left a trail here through a friend or a note or something. I’ll stick around for a while to be sure the guys on the road don’t double back and figure out where we are. I doubt it, but it might happen.”

“Fair enough,” agreed Cooper.

“How many of them are there?” Hemingway asked, touching his beard.

“Two,” I said.

“There are four of us,” he said. “Are we four grown men hiding from two guys?”

“I think it would be a good idea,” I said. “They’re after Coop, not the other way around.”

“In the jungles of Africa, the countryside of Spain and China, I learned the hard way that the best way to keep from getting killed is to attack the animal, not give him a chance to go for you,” Hemingway challenged.

“In the neighborhoods of Los Angeles, I learned that people with guns and knives and cars can hide anywhere and come at you when you least expect them,” I answered. “It’s the trouble with city living; the animals don’t know the rules.”

“Ever been in a war, Peters?” Hemingway said evenly.

“No, not the kind where they choose up sides,” I said just as evenly.

“I almost lost a leg in Italy,” said Hemingway. “Torn to pieces. I carried a man a mile with my leg mangled.”

“I understand,” I said. “You don’t like to talk about it.”

In a minute we would be one-upping each other with bullet wounds. I probably had Hemingway beat, but from the look of Castelli, he was the all-around winner. The man’s face showed more defeat and dignity then any I’d ever seen. It was also touched with madness.

Castelli and I cleaned off the table while Cooper watched the windows, at my suggestion.

“How about a little exercise to get rid of some of this beer?” Hemingway said playfully.

“I can do without exercise today,” I said.

“I’ve got a couple of pair of gloves with me,” Hemingway said, looking at me with a clear challenge. “Luis doesn’t fight, can’t because of his head, and Coop can’t throw a punch.”

“Never had a fight in my life,” Cooper admitted from the window. “Never learned to throw a punch. Still have trouble faking a reasonable-looking punch for a picture.”

“My friend can’t fight or play baseball,” Hemingway said with mock pity. “But he can sure act What do you say, Peepers? Just a little limbering up, no one gets hurt?”

I declined a few more times, and Hemingway upped the ante. In a few minutes he might actually slap me in the face with one of the gloves and give me his Authors’ Guild card, if he had one. Hemingway was younger than I, heavier than I and probably a better boxer than I. He fished out some gloves and took his shirt off before putting on his pair. His chest was hairy and his shoulders broad. His stomach was a little fuller than he might have liked. Castelli pushed back the furniture and the rug and helped me put on the gloves. Hemingway got his on quickly and easily. Beware a man who carries his own boxing gloves and can put them on alone.

“That’s a bullet wound,” Hemingway said, staring at the scar on my stomach.

“One of those nonwars I was in,” I said.

Cooper looked over at us and shrugged hopelessly in my direction to make it clear he didn’t condone his buddy’s idea of fun, but what could you do when an acknowledged genius wanted to play games. I marveled that Cooper could get all that into a little shrug, but that was his trade. Mine was staying alive.

Hemingway’s arms were longer than mine, and he tapped me gently a few times. I pawed his hands away. Neither of us danced. Castelli stood to the side, leaning against the wall and watching silently. We went on doing nothing for a few minutes until I thought Hemingway had had enough.