I hadn’t thought of that.
‘Maybe I could come to you…’
‘How bad is the trouble?’
‘As bad as it can be.’
He must have picked up the panic in my voice for he said soothingly, ‘Keep your shirt on. I’l get Sam to handle it. When it’s dark, huh?’
‘Not before.’
‘Okay. I’ll be over,’ and he hung up.
I went back to my room and waited. It was a long wait, and I was in a pretty bad way by the time the sun went down over the bay and the lights went on in the honky-tonk bars and on the gambling ships. At least there now seemed safety out there in the growing darkness.
A little after nine o’clock I saw Rusty’s Oldsmobile come around the corner, and I went down the stairs and had the front door open as he came up the steps.
We climbed the three flights of stairs in silence. It was only when he was in my room and I had shut the door that the tension in me eased a little.
‘Thanks, Rusty, for coming.’
He sat on the bed, his fat, blue jowled face shiny with sweat, his eyes anxious.
‘What’s the trouble? That girl?’
‘Yes.’
I picked up the evening paper and gave it to him, pointing to the paragraph with a shaking finger.
He read it, his face screwed up, his expression blank.
Then he looked up and stared at me.
‘For Pete’s sake! You didn’t do it, did you?’
‘No, but she did. I must have been out of my mind. I wanted five thousand dol ars for her cure. She told me we could find the money in the casting director’s office. I fel for it. We went out there, broke in, but there was no money. The guard caught me. She was behind the desk, out of sight. She shot him.’ I sat on the upright chair and hid my face in my hands. ‘I was against the wal , with my back turned to him. Listen. Rusty, I swear I didn’t do it.’
He put the paper down, took out a crumpled pack of cigarettes, shook one out into his large hand and lit it.
‘So you’re in trouble. Wel , I warned you, didn’t I? I told you she’d be a load of grief to you.’
‘You told me.’
‘Wel ? What are you going to do?’
‘I want to get out of here. I want to go home.’
‘That’s about the first sensible thing you have said since I’ve known you.’ He put his hand inside his coat and took out a shabby wallet. ‘Here you are: as soon as I heard the state you were in, I raided the till.’
He offered me five twenty dollar bills.
‘I don’t want al that, Rusty.’
‘Take it and shut up.’
‘No. Al I want is my fare home. It’l be ten bucks. I’m not taking any more.’
He got to his feet, cramming the bills back into his wallet.
‘You’d bet er not travel from L.A. Station. They may have the joint pegged out. I’l drive you to
’Frisco. You can get a train from there.’
‘If they stop us and find me with you…’
‘Forget it! Come on: let’s go.’
He went to the door and started down the stairs. Picking up my suitcase, I followed him.
In the lobby, Carrie was waiting.
‘I’m going home, Carrie,’ I said.
Rusty moved on into the street, leaving us together.
‘Here.’ I offered her my last two five-dollar bins. ‘I want you to have these…’
She took one of the bills.
‘That’ll take care of the room, Mr. Jeff. You keep the rest. You’l need it. Good luck.’
‘I didn’t do it, Carrie. No mat er what they say, I didn’t do it.’
Her smile was weary as she patted my arm.
‘Good luck, Mr. Jeff.’
I went out into the darkness and got into the Oldsmobile. As I slammed the door, Rusty shot the car away from the kerb.
II
We had been driving for ten minutes or so in silence, when I said, ‘It’s a funny thing, Rusty, but al I can think of now is to get home. I’ve learned my lesson. If I get away with this mess, I’m going to start my studies again. I’m through with this kind of life – through with it for good.’
Rusty grunted.
‘It’s about time.’
‘You heard her sing. She had a voice in a mil ion. If only she hadn’t been a junky…’
‘If she hadn’t been a junky, you would never have met her. That’s the way it is. If you ever see her again, you run for your life.’
‘I’ll do that. I hope I’l never see her again.’
We reached San Francisco around three o’clock in the morning. Rusty parked by the station while I waited in the car, he went to check on the trains.
When he came back, I could see he was worried.
‘There’s a train to Hol and City just after eight: eight ten,’ he said. ‘There are two cops at the booking office. Maybe they aren’t looking for you, but they’re there. You can by-pass them. I bought your ticket.’
I took the ticket and put it in my wallet.
‘Thanks. You leave me now, Rusty. I’l go and sit in a café and wait. I’l pay you back. You’ve been a real pal to me.’
‘You go home and settle down to a job of work. I don’t want the money back. You keep clear of Los Angeles from now on. The way to pay me back is to settle down and do a real job of work.’
We sat side by side in his car, smoking, dozing and talking while the hours crept by.
A little after seven o’clock, Rusty said, ‘We have time for a coffee, then you can get off.’
We left the car and walked over to a coffee bar. We had coffee and doughnuts.
The time came when my train was due. I took Rusty’s hand in mine and squeezed it.
‘Thanks.’.
‘Forget it. Let me know how you make out.’
He gave me a slap on my shoulder, then walked fast to his car.
I walked into the station, holding my handkerchief to my face to hide my scar.
No one paid any attention to me.
Long before the train got me home, something happened that made the murder of a film studio guard no news at alclass="underline" an event that had such a tremendous impact that the hunt for a man with a scar on his face became something of no importance.
An atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
Under cover of this momentous news, I got home in safety.
By the time Japan had surrendered, I was back in college. By the time the world began the tricky business of peace making, I was qualified as a consulting engineer: two years exactly from the first time I had met Rima.
I wasn’t to meet her again for another eleven years.
PART TWO
CHAPTER ONE
I
A lot can happen in eleven years.
Looking back on those years, I can say now that they were the most exciting and most invigorating of my life.
The one black spot was when my father died, two years after I had qualified as a consulting engineer.
He died from a heart attack while working in the bank: the way he would have wanted to die if he had had the choice. He left me five thousand dollars and the house which I sold. With this for capital, plus my qualifications as a trained engineer, I went into partnership with Jack Osborne.
Jack had been in my battle unit when I had gone to the Philippines. We had landed on the beaches of Okinawa together. He was five years older than I was, and had completed his training as an engineer before he had gone to war. He was thick set, short and tubby with sandy coloured hair, going thin on top and a brick red face, covered with freckles.
But what a ball of fire! He had a capacity for work that left me standing. He could work twenty hours of the day, snatch four hours’ sleep, and then start again with the same dynamic drive.