Herbie's Diner Read online

  “You got this all figured, don’t you?” Arlene said at last. She was on her fourth cigarette since I had returned from making my phone call.

  “Do you have a better plan?” I asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “I said ‘maybe’, and anyway, you aren’t calling the shots around here.”

  “Okay. What do you think?”

  “I like the part where we get the money, but I don’t like you getting a cut, no matter how small.”

  “It’s like I said—”

  “Yeah, I heard what you said. And I don’t like the girl getting to live, not after she’s seen our faces.”

  “My face. If we play this right, you’re going to run the diner, same as always.”

  “We got a girl on tomorrow, named Jolene. What do I tell her?”

  “Tell her you need to switch shifts with her.”

  “Okay. I can do that.”

  “Then you sling coffee, and Muncey handles the kitchen, just like always, until about a half past four. That’s when he slips out to handle the Arthur Hands business. What time is your rush?”

  Arlene snorted. “We don’t never get a rush. We may have some regulars in, though.”

  “See to them. I’ll handle the rest. That way, she’ll never know it was you or Muncey who was working with me.”

  “What about this Hands guy?”

  I dragged a thumbnail across my throat. Muncey smiled.

  Arlene nodded. “I like that. That means the only person who knows we were even in on it is you.”

  “Yeah, but don’t get any funny ideas about me. After this, I’m going to be a ghost. By the time I show my face to the world again, you two should be somewhere else, preferably Mexico or Canada.”

  “You ain’t worried about the girl fingering you to the cops?”

  “To say what, that I stole the money she and her husband stole from a major movie studio? I’m not worried. Chances are, she’ll find a nice hole to hide in for about a year until she feels like she can stick her head out again. After that, who cares what she does? Look, as plans go, this one is just about the best for all those concerned. The only hitch is that Peters is dead. If he were alive, it would be perfect. As is, the girl will be upset. Hysterical, even. But she’ll get over it. No dame ever really loves so hard that she’ll pine the rest of her life away over it. That only happens in the storybooks. Give her three months, and she’ll be on some other sucker’s elbow, drinking martinis and ordering her cabana boy to bring her more crackers with olive spread.”

  Arlene grunted. That outlook was just cynical enough for her that she was sold. She poured me a cup of coffee, and we toasted on it. Muncey handed me my cigarettes, minus a holding fee, but I didn’t get the Zippo. They weren’t trusting me too much, I guess. I smoked and drank my coffee. Muncey asked if I was hungry. I said yes, and he fixed us burgers and hashbrowns on the griddle. I ate with gusto. Muncey watched me eat with an approving look on his face while Arlene made herself scarce for a while.

  When I was done Muncey showed me to the little trailer they kept behind the diner. It was a rundown thing that would never have been out of place atop a junk heap, but it kept the rain out, I supposed. There was a tiny bedroom in the back, but that belonged to them. I was given a lime green couch at the front and a ratty blanket to use as a cover.

  By then it was about eight o’clock, maybe nine, and I feigned exhaustion and lay down with my face turned inward toward the backrest. I made a good play of pretending sleep, laying stock still for what felt like three hours, but was probably one at most. Arlene came in at some point, and eventually I heard snoring down the hall. I very much wanted another cigarette, but I didn’t dare move. I waited a while longer just for good measure, and then turned over. It was a good thing I had foregone the cigarette, for I would have likely sucked it down my throat in shock when I saw Muncey sitting ten feet away from me in a straight-backed chair, still as a stone, and watching me with very bright, very alert eyes.

  “Don’t try any funny stuff,” he said.

  I put on a muzzy front. “Just getting up to use the john,” I replied. “Don’t you ever sleep?”

  “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” he replied. “Go shake the dew off your lily and get back in here.”

  I did as told and managed to eke out something from nothing, just to make a show of it. Afterward I went back and curled up on the couch again, but this time I seriously went to sleep. I figured if they wanted me dead, they could make me that way at their leisure. It wouldn’t hurt any, then, for me to grab a few hours of shut eye. Tomorrow was my big scene, after all.

  I woke again as the gray light of morning was making the room glow in black and white. I rolled over to find Arlene in Muncey’s spot, sitting just as still as he had, only the smoke of a recently lit cigarette betraying anything.

  “Don’t try any funny stuff,” she said.

  “I’m not,” I said. “Do you and Muncey have the same dialogue coach?”

  “You know, I’m just about tired of your funny.”

  “That’s fine. I’m just about tired of your grumpy. At least today we can get all this behind us, eh?”

  “Assuming your plan works, or that I don’t change it in the meantime.”

  I found my cigarettes and tucked one between my lips. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Just what I said.”

  “Look, Arlene, if you’re planning to ruin a perfectly good plan, I wish you’d just take me out back and shoot me right now.”

  “I can arrange that.”

  “Then why haven’t you?”

  She said nothing, instead preferring to smoke her Lucky. The fact she was talking about it told me maybe I was going to see my way out of this alive. If she was staying mum about it, or started giving me claps on the back and attaboys, I would get nervous. It could still go that way, so I kept my eyes sharp for anything that might give her away.

  Arlene woke Muncey a little while later, and they went to open the diner. I convinced them of my good intentions and got to stay behind. They let me, but I knew they were watching me, just in case I tried to pull a fast one. I showered first, then brushed my teeth with a strip of toothpaste on my finger. There wasn’t much room in the trailer, but I made use of the ironing board so my suit didn’t look slept in.

  I didn’t bother searching for a weapon. By now they surely had removed everything I could use. I did find my Zippo, though, which pleased me.

  I wondered as I arrived at the diner where they had put my piece. I kept my service .45 in a shoulder holster, which they had stripped off me before tying me to the tree yesterday. The question was at what point did they take it? If it was still in the diner, that could come in handy in case everything went south. If it was in their car, I could still make a play for it, though it seemed unlikely I could scrounge a reason for it. I needed something, anything. The brass knucks would even do the trick, but they were gone, too, along with my knife. I know it’s a cliché, but I felt naked.

  I walked around the side of the diner rather than go in through the back door. Two new cars were already parked out front. Inside Arlene was working the counter, pouring coffee for a couple of men dressed like laborers. She watched me as I went to my car, probably realizing for the first time that my plan had created certain conditions that left her all but helpless if I should suddenly decide to walk out and start hitchhiking. On the passenger side seat was a battered dime store historical I’d brought along for the slow stretches in my investigation. I grabbed it off the seat and went inside, taking up the same booth I had occupied the day before. Arlene glared at me as she brought me coffee. I ordered ham and eggs for breakfast; that didn’t improve her mood. I figured they could take it out of the twenty they’d copped from my wallet.

  There wasn’t much left to do but wait, and keep a sharp eye out for the next play. I speculated on what that might be for at least an hour before I gave it up. There was no way to divi
ne it out of thin air. I didn’t know the faux Mrs. Peters, but I knew desperation. I’d seen some of it when I was in the service. I’d felt it once or twice myself after the war, when I couldn’t get work because I’d played one part perhaps too well and no one could see me as anything but. You get a twitchiness of character to match the look in your eyes. Your laugh suddenly becomes a little too wild, and your smile is all teeth. The main thing with desperation is you start to do things a little crazier than usual. You take chances you never would, normally. The most outlandish ideas start to sound credible. If there could be a real story of how I transitioned from playing a detective to being one, it was somewhere within that irrational playground. Luckily for me it had worked out well; it could have just as easily gone in the other direction, ending with me maybe turning to petty crime to keep bread on the table, or worse. I did not like to think about the “or worse” part of it.

  The faux Mrs. Peters was feeling desperate right about now. Even with forty grand in the bank, times were lean in the Peters household. Her man was gone, leaving the joint cold and gloomy. Money went to fund two households because he was on the run. There was his right-hand man lurking around all the time, keeping an eye on her that she did not do anything too rash. The real money was tied up with a movie, or perhaps several movies, and there was no telling if or when they would see the payout. And there was the anticipation of knowing that, soon, she might be a very rich woman. That’s a lot for one dame to handle.

  Now throw me and my hare-brained scheme into the fray. Her little Morty was in the clutches of nefarious street trash, who was holding him in some dirty diner in Darkest Northern California. They wanted all the money, and they were talking with knives and pistols. They were already disappointed to find out there wasn’t nearly as much as they thought there should be. The story I’d fed her was that Mort was claiming millions. That told her that Mort was still looking to get out of this alive, and that further subterfuge was necessary. Mrs. Peters had not been smart enough to lie to me, instead tipping her hand immediately. She had the money, and she knew that forty grand was not enough to entice someone like me into letting her husband go, so she was going to bring help with her when she came. Here was the desperation. She was going to do exactly what I had told her not to do, and she was all but explaining to me that this was so by admitting the truth when the lie would have served her better.

  That left Arthur Hands. I didn’t know the man, but I knew the kind. I’d seen it when I was in the service. There were majors and generals aplenty out there, all of whom thought they knew the play, and every jack one of them had a plan for how, with a crash and a bash and a holler, we could penetrate enemy lines straight to Berlin. And every one of them had a man on their staff, a guy with small, black eyes, whose sole use in this world was that he could make hackneyed dreams come true. Those guys had to go somewhere after the war, and they returned to their old profession upon rotating back to the free world. You saw them in the employ of the rich and powerful, eyes as black as ever, and hands all too willing to do the work their masters’ hands dare not.

  Recall, then, that when Mort Peters’ car was fished from the bay that there had been a body in it. A man like Peters would never sully his hands in such a way. In fact, it took a special kind of person, the black-eyed sort, who could pull the trigger on such a thing. You had to get very practical, far more even than that of a widowed mother of three on Skid Row trying to make ends meet. You had to look past all the pleasant things about a person and find the ugliest. That meant you had to look for imperfections, the moles, the scars, the general stoop to the shoulders, all the things that we try to erase from our appearance, yet the very same things that give us our character.

  Mort Peters was a vain man, as were most men in his position. He could never have found that man walking the streets, the one with a similar black mole on his jaw line, or the burn scar I had noticed on the hand that had taken my Zippo from me back at the diner. A fellow like Arthur Hands could. He could find that person and track him for days, perhaps weeks, getting to know his every move, where he went with his best girl, the places he hung out with friends, what he liked for dinner, how much money he had in the bank, where he worked, whether he was Democrat or Republican, even how he shaved in the mornings. He could get to know such a fellow as intimately as a lover might, down to counting the hairs on the back of his head. He could come to see the man as something like a friend even, such was his knowledge of him, and in a different world, he would muse, the two might have been steadfast chums. A guy like Arthur Hands could do all of that, and then, when the time came, he could put the snatch on the guy, haul him off to some place where single light bulbs dangled from long cords on the ceilings and swayed the light back and forth at the slightest disturbance. He could assure the guy that all would be well, and that soon he would be going home. He could share with him cigarettes, help him eat, clean him up, change his clothes, but then again, when the time came, he could also do other things. Like make a scar on his hand in case one hadn’t been there in the first place, give it time to heal up and hair over, and then put the guy down for an eternal rest, all so his boss could pull the big con on his employers.

  This was the kind of monster I was unleashing on Arlene and Muncey, not that they didn’t deserve it.

  I pretended to read the historical while I ate. This put further distance between me and Arlene, who I could feel was still watching me like a hawk. Even so, some sense of propriety kept her away from me, save to occasionally come by and fill my cup. The steady ebb and flow of customers did its part, too.

  One of the guys at the counter left, but was quickly replaced by a salesman type in a checked suit and a ridiculous hat that looked like he was auditioning to be Red Skelton’s stand-in. He brought his showcase in to try and work a few sales over a meal. Arlene let him know in no uncertain terms soliciting in the diner was prohibited. The guy didn’t lose his smile, but he desisted in selling toilet brushes. I took out a ballpoint pen from my pocket and began circling words in the historical.

  A family of five came in, looking exhausted and harried. Their clothes had the look of having been slept in. They piled into the booth nearest the john and said nothing to each other. The man was ready to go ape. You could see it. There was such tension behind his eyes, you’d think he didn’t have any organs left inside, just an endless amount of blood. If he hadn’t struck his wife or one of the kids yet, he would, and soon. The wife’s back was to me, but I could see by the slump of her shoulders she was trying to make herself as small as possible so maybe she escaped his attention. The children were just tired, and scared. They didn’t understand why they were having to leave from wherever they came from and go wherever it was they were headed. They certainly didn’t understand that it was their father’s failure that was the cause, and so when he finally gave one of them the business, whether it be here or somewhere else, they wouldn’t understand that, either. I felt a measure of sympathy.

  Arlene brought them menus and said virtually nothing to them as she took their orders, only to ask the necessary questions.

  I went to relieve myself, and when I came back two more men had come in to sit at the counter. One had struck up a conversation with the salesman about fiberglass bottom boats; the other sat reading the newspaper. As I returned to my seat I heard the grumbling of a powerful engine pulling up. Outside, some young guy was hopping off a motorcycle. He was dressed in dark, denim jeans rolled up at the cuffs, sturdy boots, and a leather jacket. He had a leather bombardier’s hat strapped to his head, but he immediately pulled this off to reveal a wild shock of hair that could have used a barber. He slapped a slouching cap over the top of it and swaggered inside, making a show of sidling over to a booth in such a way I was sure he must be a regular. Arlene gave no sign that she recognized him. Fresh kid, then. She’d love that.

  When Arlene came to drop a menu he said, “Nah, don’t bother with that, Mom. Gimme two eggs over easy, a pot of coffee, and some hash
browns. I’m starved.”

  “You look it,” Arlene snarled at him. He made a move like he was going to swat her rump as she walked past, but Arlene gave him a look that made him think otherwise.

  He caught me staring and smiled. “She’s just playing hard to get, huh?” he said, laughing. I smiled back at him. He looked maybe twenty, but the tattoo on his forearm when his sleeve rode up said otherwise. I’d seen a few during the war. He’d been in a carrier group, probably in the Pacific Theater. I put his age instead as a youthful thirty, maybe as much as a few years younger than I.

  He chewed a grubby nail and gave me a closer once-over. “Say, do I know you from somewhere?”

  “I get that a lot. Where are you from?”

  “Around. San Fran, mostly.”

  “Think billboards,” I said.

  His eyes lit up, and he snapped his fingers. “You’re that guy! The detective!”

  “Johnny Hardwood, of Hardwood, Smoller, and Tate.”

  “That is swell! You’re a regular celebrity,” he said.

  “Now I don’t get that a lot. You’re all right, kid.”

  “Thanks. Hey, what’re you doing this far upstate?”

  I shrugged. “Just seeing what can be seen.”

  He winked at me. “Oh, I get it. Must be a big case.”

  “Getting bigger by the minute.”

  “Man, your kind of work must be exciting.”

  “Not really, no.”

  “Come on! On the level: it’s bullets, broads, and bull malarkey, right?”

  “Yeah, but there’s little payout for that kind of thing. The real score is in working for big companies, and their kind of business isn’t usually so glamorous. It’s more sitting around in motel rooms, eating bad Chinese, and playing the waiting game.”