Herbie's Diner Read online

  “Why do you think that?”

  Of all the movies I’ve seen, none strike me so acutely as the ones where the good guy doesn’t realize the fix is in until just the moment when the bad guy is ready to strike. His indication always seems to be from something external, too. For me, it was the loud crash from the john. Mort Peters chose that very moment to fall unconscious and hit the floor. Arlene gave me a flat smile.

  “Call it a hunch,” she said. “You’re right. You ain’t much of a detective, after all, but you’re done lying to me, hear? When we’re through with you, you’re gonna tell me everything.”

  “Arlene, what are you talking about?” And just then, the first wave of dizziness hit. Just like that, I knew she had me. Any second Muncey would come out of the back, bringing something significant with him: a bag, a rope, a gun. That’s how it happened in the movies. My eyes clouded up, and Arlene started to get fuzzy. I tried my arm, and it moved, but it felt like it had lead weights attached.

  I turned sideways in the booth and leaned back against the wall, took out a cigarette, and struggled with lighting it.

  “Not putting up much of a struggle, eh?”

  “What’s the point? Mickey Finn is gonna have his way with me regardless of what I do.”

  “You’re right about that.”

  “Am I going to wake up?”

  Arlene laughed a little. “You’ll just have to wait and see. You gonna finish the rest of that cigarette?”

  I’d pulled the cigarette from my lips what felt like only a second ago, but looking down at it I saw that it had burnt down to the halfway point. How long had I been sitting there?

  “No,” I said. “It doesn’t look like I am. You want it?”

  “Maybe. Been on my feet twelve hours already.”

  “Your relief coming soon?”

  “You wish.”

  That was the last thing I remembered.

  *

  I woke sometime later. At first I thought I’d come to in an athlete’s dirty sock drawer, only it turned out to be the bandana tied across my eyes had seen some use and hadn’t been washed before becoming my blindfold. I was tied to something cold and hard and round and broad enough in its trunk that my hands didn’t touch when they were tied behind me. It could have been a column of some sort, but it was more than likely a tree. I felt a breeze, but that could have been anything. Everything around me was deathly silent.

  My mouth was dry, and I wished I had a cigarette. I coughed some the way I did when I woke in the morning. Coffee would be nice, too. My stomach growled. None of the previous discomfort remained. I wondered what had happened in that regard.

  “You awake?”

  “If this is a dream I’m firing my agent.”

  “Still cracking wise, huh? Well, we’ll see about that.”

  “Is Muncey gonna come ’round and give me the business? That’s a pretty funny thing to do after you’ve gone to all the trouble to tie me up in the middle of nowhere.”

  “It ain’t the middle of nowhere, but it’s close enough. And yeah, Muncey will see to your wise-cracking face soon enough. You won’t like what he does with it once he has it, though.”

  “Tell him to stay away from the eyes, but have fun with the rest. I’ve always wanted to do horror. Universal can save on makeup if Muncey does a real number on me.”

  This actually elicited a chuckle from her. She was moving around me, doing something that I couldn’t see or hear. It sounded like she was flicking a lighter over and over again, but even that was a stab in the dark. Was she lighting candles around me, or torches? She could have been starting a forest fire, for all I knew.

  “So what is all this about, Arlene? Do you make it a habit of kidnapping people and killing them in the forest where no one can see you do it?”

  “Not everyone. Just liars like you.”

  “Like me? What have I lied about?”

  “You know you’re a detective. All that about you being an actor is bunk. I seen you on that billboard.”

  “And I told you the truth about that. I was hired to pose for that photo.”

  “Bunk.”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “Bunk!”

  I sighed. “Believe what you will. I can’t stop you.”

  “Then why were you in the diner today? And don’t give me any of that about you going up to Sacramento to do theatre stuff. Muncey and I worked in the theatre for years. The Carlisle up there went belly up a year ago. And there ain’t another house to be had. Unless you go up there in a time machine, your story was bunk. No two ways about it.”

  “You were in the theatre? What’d you do?”

  “Make up. Muncey did lighting.”

  “Where’d you work?”

  “None of your business, that’s where.”

  “Did we do a show together, maybe?”

  “I wouldn’t know. I had a hundred pretty boys like you in my chair at one time or another. You’re a face in the crowd, mister.”

  “I was dashing enough you remembered me from the billboard.”

  Arlene chuckled again. She was standing in front of me now. I heard her light up and pull from a cigarette. My mouth started to water for the taste of one. My fingers twitched to hold it to my lips.

  “Listen, I think you have the wrong idea about me. Truth time, all right? All on the table. I can guess you’re in trouble. You were in the theatre. Swell. But something must have happened so you aren’t anymore, and now you can’t go back. I can hear it in your voice. You want to go back, don’t you? I don’t know what you did, Arlene, and I don’t care. I’m a private eye. You’re right. But I never lied to you. I’m also an actor. Only, when I took that job for Hardwood, Smoller, and Tate I got a reputation. I don’t know how, or why. Who can know? Only, when I’d show up to read for a part I’d get the aren’t-you-that-guy questions, and no one would hire me. Later I found out that Hardwood, Smoller, and Tate was a front for a high-end smash and grab operation. I was out of work a while. Nearly destitute. So I decided if people could only believe I was a detective, I’d become one. I got my license. I even took the name Johnny Hardwood so people would believe I was the real thing. And yeah, I’m on a case right now, but it has nothing to do with you.”

  There was a long silence. I could hear Arlene smoking, could feel the stillness of her standing there, lax posture, sizing me up with her eyes and ears. After a while she asked, “So why were you there?”

  “The other guy in the diner. His name is Mort Peters. I don’t know how you can check that out, but that’s his name. He goes by a number of aliases, including Wyatt Link, but his name is Mort Peters. He was a big shot at All-American Studios for a while, a behind-the-scenes kind of guy who handled funding for pictures.”

  “A producer.”

  “Yeah. A producer. A few months ago he absconded with some money. A few million. He hid it all over the place. Ten thousand here, twenty there. Then he pulled a disappearing act, too. Cops found his wife’s Bentley in a lake. There was a body in it, only the fish had gotten to it so bad an ID couldn’t be made. I was put on the case to make certain he was dead and not pulling a fast one. I discovered an insurance policy with his wife as benefactor, only by then she was living hand-to-mouth in a hotel back East in Red Hook. Someone impersonated her in California and got the payout, then disappeared just like Peters. This made me think our guy wasn’t dead after all, but working with people to make a little retirement money. Through a series of lucky breaks I found a cousin in Sacramento. I was up there to check it out when, two days ago, who did I see walking out of a laundry service? I’ve tailed him ever since. Followed him here because I figured he was picking an out-of-the-way place to contact whoever is working with him. He made several phone calls from your joint; you must have seen that.”

  “The guy’s loaded?”

  “Like Fort Knox.”

  There was another pause. Finally, Arlene said, “Wait here.”

  “I’ll try, but I’ve got a bu
siness meeting at four.”

  She said nothing to the wisecrack, and I heard her walk off, crunching leaves underfoot.

  I ran down my situation. First, I tested my bonds. The rope was thick, like the kind you’d see mooring a boat to a dock. Or the kind used in the theatre to suspend curtains and the like, the kind that didn’t break or fray because lives depended on it holding together. I wasn’t bound tightly. My arms ached, but I’d live. No injuries to my body, either. At least Muncey hadn’t gotten squirrely with me after I’d passed out. That told me plenty. These two were in control of themselves. I wondered what they had done to score themselves so much heat. Theft? Murder? Either one would have had the police jumping like salmon.

  I wriggled my hips to feel for that tell-tale lump in my pants. It wasn’t there. So they had my wallet. It had my ID, my fake ID with the Johnny Hardwood alias, and my detective’s license. It also had my SAG card as well as a small booklet full of names and numbers of agents, all of whom had neglected to return my calls after the offers had started to dry up. That meant they knew what I’d told them about my identity was square. If they’d bothered to go through my jacket pocket they’d find the photo I had of Peters. If they hadn’t they probably wouldn’t believe me. Of course, none of that mattered now. They’d tipped their hand to me, and they couldn’t allow me to leave, not on the off-chance I’d rat them out to the authorities. I needed an angle.

  I was in the middle of not knowing what that angle would be when I heard the shouting. I couldn’t tell how far away it was, but I could recognize Arlene’s raw, gravelly voice and another, a man’s, which I could only take for Muncey. Certainly the voice was higher pitched than I’d have imagined it, given Muncey’s size, but I don’t judge. A big guy didn’t mean he had a low, rough voice any more than being fat meant a guy was a glutton.

  Arlene’s voice became louder and more pronounced, which said she was moving closer to me and arguing with Muncey at the same time.

  “—for, ya bum,” were the first words I could make out clearly. Trouble in paradise.

  “Something the matter?” I asked.

  “Don’t you never mind,” Arlene said. “I swear, you men don’t have the brains God gave a pig.”

  The moment wasn’t right for me to tell her pigs were intelligent, I could feel it. “I couldn’t help but overhear you arguing with Muncey.”

  “Really? What’d you hear?”

  “Not much, just angry voices. Something I can help with?”

  “Oh, I’ll bet you could help us out real good, couldn’t you?” she sneered. “Well, your story checks out, at least about being an actor and a detective, but I guess you know that.”

  “Yeah. I had a feeling it would. You can keep the twenty bucks, by the way.”

  “Y’know, you’re gonna get it a lot easier around here if you ixnay on the wisecracks, Hardwood.”

  “Probably, but then that wouldn’t be in character, now, would it? Come on, Arlene, tell me what’s wrong. If I can help, I will. You have my word on that.”

  “What can you do?”

  “I can’t know that until you tell me.”

  The frustration was plain, and when Arlene spoke her voice shook, like someone who was gesturing violently. “Ah, who needs it, anyway? I told that man to go easy on your pal. Such a well-put-together guy, you know? Figured him for a banker or something. We could maybe make a little scratch off him. ‘Go easy,’ I says, but does he listen?”

  “Muncey did something to him, Arlene?”

  “I’ll say.”

  “What happened?”

  The silence was all I needed to know.

  “So Peters is dead. That’s disheartening.”

  “Yeah. Doesn’t bode well for you, does it? Muncey’s gone to dump the body, and I expect we’ll tend to you when he gets back.”

  “Doesn’t make sense to dump the bodies one at a time. Why not call him back?”

  “You’re an awful easy customer for somebody who’s staring down his maker.”

  “Because I know something that might make killing me a boneheaded move.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Get Muncey back here before he takes off and does something stupid, and we’ll talk. I want both of you to hear it.”

  “He’s probably already left.”

  “A couple million dollars might light a fire under you to find out.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. Go.”

  The bluff worked. Arlene took off like a shot. Her gone gave me the breathing room I needed, but it wouldn’t last long. I had to work fast. Think, Hardwood. This was the moment in the movie where the detective always pulls something clever out of his hat. Only, this wasn’t the movies. This was real. The worst kind of real. Muncey was apparently a casual gee when it came to violence, and Arlene was complicit in his crimes, maybe even the brains behind the brawn. They would make a corpse out of me just as fast as Muncey had done for Mort Peters. Maybe quicker. There was the wisecrack about Muncey’s chicken, after all, and some guys have no sense of humor. Arlene certainly didn’t, and that was not playing in my favor. All we had in common was that we didn’t like the current situation, and that we all wanted some kind of payoff for the day going to hell. That gave me a hole card, at least.

  Arlene returned with Muncey in tow. I could hear his breathing. Big guys tend to put out a lot of wind, but he was otherwise keeping to himself. “Okay, we’re here,” Arlene said. “What did you want to say?”

  “I think I can get you Peters’ money. Some of it, anyway.”

  “How’s that?”

  “He’s been talking to someone on the phone all day. I think it’s the fake Mrs. Peters who got the life insurance payout. She’s probably some girl he had on the hook and thought maybe he would make her a permanent thing when he ditched the real Mrs. Peters and took off with All-American’s loot. Five’ll get you ten she knows where at least some of the money can be found.”

  “How much?”

  “I can’t tell you that. But it has to be enough to keep her happy. I don’t know the fake Mrs. Peters, but I know the type. If she can’t have her man, she’ll need some kind of distraction: shopping, pedicures, new hairdos. Women like to pamper themselves when there isn’t someone along to do it for them.”

  Arlene snorted.

  “Present company excluded, I suppose.”

  “So how do we get that money?”

  I shook my head. “That’s for me to know and for you to figure out.”

  “You got a lotta nerve, Hardwood. What’s to stop us from putting two in you right now?”

  “Do that, and you have two dead bodies and only a twenty and some change to show for it. Sounds like lousy pay for a day’s work to me.”

  “You got a lotta nerve!”

  “Don’t be thick, Arlene. You two have gotten this far by playing it smart. Don’t louse it up now. You gotta know I’m looking to get out of this alive. Knowing the particulars of this caper keeps me that way. If I were to tell you everything now, what’s to stop you from sending me to join Peters in some shallow grave?”

  Muncey chuckled.

  “Okay. So we have to trust each other for a while,” Arlene said. “What do we do?”

  “You start by taking off this blindfold.”

  Muncey did so. The first thing I saw was his big face glaring at me. This, of course, was his intent, to let me know there was to be no funny stuff while he was on watch. I had no intentions of taking any chances until I had a better idea of my circumstances.

  Evening had set in. We were in a clearing in the midst of an old-growth forest. The world was suddenly very close and suffocating. The sounds I had heard earlier of Arlene playing with my cigarette lighter had been her lighting a number of tiki torches that she had set up around the edges of the clearing. The ground was well-trampled, and a number of cast-off items lay around me. Apparently I was not the first person brought to this spot. It made me wonder how long this had been occurring, and if
I was smart in playing games with a couple of psychopaths. Not that I had a choice. It took little deduction to see that they had intended—and probably still intended—to kill me.

  Muncey produced a large hunting knife and sawed through my bonds. The ropes fell away, and I rubbed my wrists, not because they were sore, but more as an automatic reaction. Muncey returned to stand next to Arlene. They had changed out of their diner uniforms and were dressed more like lumberjacks in flannel shirts, denim jeans, and sturdy workbooks. Arlene had her hair tied back with a shoelace. She, too, had a knife. Muncey’s knuckles, I noticed, were scraped and bloodied, presumably from the working over he had given Peters. If I had to choose a way to go, being beaten to death by a gorilla was not high on the list.

  “What time is it?”

  “A little after six.”

  “Okay, we need to get back to the diner.”

  “Why?”

  “I need to make a phone call or two.”

  “To who?”

  “My stock broker.”

  Arlene looked at Muncey. “You see what I’m talking about? Can you imagine me letting some two-bit pretty boy like him get so fresh with me?”

  Muncey smiled to placate her. As far as he was concerned, they weren’t going to suffer me much longer, at any rate.

  Arlene extinguished the torches, and we walked in near-total darkness for what seemed like a hundred miles, but was probably no more than a hundred yards. The trees broke in a brief respite that was probably a trail or lane. The broken-down Ford was parked nearby. They led me to the car. Arlene got in behind the wheel, and Muncey gestured for me to sit in the front seat. He slid into the back seat directly behind me. Arlene started the car and backed it slow and easy down the lane until we hit the main road. She turned south, and we started driving.

  “Just curious,” I said, “but where have you got Peters?”

  “The trunk,” Arlene said. “Why?”

  “Just wanting to know where all the players are.”

  “How do you figure Peters being a player?” Arlene asked.

  “He plays a big part in this. Like for instance, if you get stopped by a cop, you should know I’m going to start singing like a canary.”