Sally's in the Alley - Norbert Davis (reading tree .txt) 📗

Chapter 9

FORENOONS IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA ARE wonderful, except when they’re not, and in that case there’s no use in discussing the matter at all. This one was ordinarily wonderful. The sun was shining and soft_ breezes_ were slithering, and there were some small, shy, freshly washed clouds distributed where they would do the least good.

“Mr. Doan!”

“Ahem,” said Doan.

“Well, I think it’s about time you should wake up! Goodness, it’s almost noon! I loathe people who sleep late. I mean, it’s not normal, do you think?”

“Ummm,” said Doan. “Where are we?”

“In San Fernando Valley. I came that way because there’s less traffic. We’re just coming to Cahuenga Pass. See?”

“Umm,” said Doan. “Where’s Carstairs?” He untangled his feet and put them down on what should have been the floor, and Carstairs snarled at him sleepily. “How’d he get in here with me?”

“Well, I put him back there because he was leaning on me and snoring in my ear in a very disgusting way. I don’t think people should let dogs ride in cars, anyway.”

“Yeah,” said Doan. “Take the Cahuenga runway and turn to the left at Sunset.”

“Why?” Harriet asked.

“Okay,” said Doan. “Turn to the right.”

“Well, Mr. Doan, there’s no use in getting sarcastic about it, is there? I just wanted to know.”

Doan sighed. “I want to go to a drive-in restaurant, and the reason I want to go there is because I’m hungry, and the reason I’m hungry is because Mr. Blue ate my steak last night.”

“You should have gotten another.”

“Sure.”

They went up and dawn the smooth lift of Cahuenga Pass, and through the underpass, and across Hollywood Boulevard and turned to the left on Sunset.

“Pretty quick now,” Doan said. “There it is. Drive on in.”

The Cadillac rolled up and stopped under the wooden, pagodalike awning. The trim little girl in the red pants and the red jacket and the high hussar’s hat with the plume in it came out and looked at them and went back inside again. They could see her through the plate glass front of the restaurant. She was arguing with the man behind the cash register. She lost. She came out again.

She slapped a card on the windshield and said, “It would be my luck to be on alone.”

“I’m glad to see you again, too,” Doan told her. “Do you suppose you could scare up some warm gruel—warm, not hot—all full of cream and junk for poor old Carstairs?”

“Not for a seven-cent tip.”

“I’m in the chips now. I’ll make it a dime even.”

“Four bits.”

“I’m bleeding, but it’s a deal. What’ll you have to eat, Harriet?”

“Make it heavy, honey,” said the waitress. “For what you have to put up with, you need strength.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Harriet said coldly.

“Then I sure pity you. You’re going to live but not for long or very well if I’m any judge.”

“I’ll have an order of hot cakes and coffee,” said Harriet. “But are you going to let the dog eat here?”

“We’re not any more particular than you are, honey,” said the waitress. “What do you want?”

“Same,” said Doan.

“And three glasses of water, I suppose—”

“Four,” said Doan. “Five, counting Harriet’s.”

“Anything for a gag,” said the waitress, going back inside the restaurant.

“She’s horribly rude,” said Harriet. “I don’t see why you didn’t go to a better place than this. I don’t think it’s good policy to eat in cheap places.”

“I’m saving the government money.”

“Oh, yes!” said Harriet. “I’m sorry. I’d forgotten you had an expense account. I think it’s very decent of you to save on it.”

“Me, too,” said Doan.

The waitress came back with three trays, and gave Doan and Carstairs two in the back seat, and Harriet one in the front. She made an extra trip for the water, and then brought the hot cakes and gruel.

Doan tied into his hotcakes eagerly, pausing only to pour water for Carstairs, and then to shove him off the seat when he tried to climb up on it. He had speared the last portion of hotcake and was carefully mopping up the remains of his syrup with it when Harriet said, “Oh!”

She started the motor, and before Doan could even raise his eyes, she slammed the car into reverse and shot backwards across the graveled lot and straight out into the humming traffic of Sunset Boulevard. Doan cringed. Tires wailed, and horns wapped indignantly from all directions, and then there was a long, lingering, final crunch.

Doan hit the plate on his tray with his face. He straightened up slowly and wiped the syrup out of his eyes with a paper napkin. Carstairs snarled in a manner that indicated that he had had just about enough.

“Double that,” said Doan. “Now what—”

Harriet wasn’t in the front seat any more. Doan opened the rear door and got out and listened to seven drivers tell him what they thought about things in general.

The Cadillac had traveled clear across the street, and was backed half-up over the opposite parking strip. Doan walked around to the back of it. The Cadillac had pinned another car—a topless, nondescript little roadster—right against the base of a concrete lamp post. It had done the roadster no good, at all.

Blue was standing up in the seat of the roadster, surveying the strips of tin that were pleated neatly fore and aft of him. He didn’t seem excited or frightened, just hopeless.

“What did I ever do to you?” he asked Harriet. “Well, I saw you going past,” Harriet said, “and I didn’t know how to stop you.”

“Oh yes, you did,” Blue contradicted.

The waitress tapped Doan on the shoulder. “So. Trying to sneak out without paying, and with the trays and dishes, huh? See what happens to people who try to chisel? Let it be a lesson to you.”

“All right,” said Doan wearily.

“The bill will be one dollar and twenty-one cents—plus four bits—”

Doan gave it to her. The waitress tested the coins one after the other with her teeth, and then got the trays and dishes and strutted back across to the restaurant. She went in the door and came right out again. She stuck out her tongue in Doan’s direction and made a loud, rude noise.

“And the boss said I could! And he says don’t come back!”

They had attracted quite a rooting section by this time, and a policeman came puttering along the boulevard on a blue and chrome scooter, and wheeled around beside them and stopped.

“All right, all right. Now who hit who and why?”

“I hit him,” said Harriet. “I wanted to talk to him.”

“Talk to me instead,” the policeman ordered.

“It’s business of a purely private nature,” Harriet informed him.

“What do you say?” the policeman asked Blue.

“I can’t think of anything,” Blue said.

The policeman pointed at the roadster. “Well, what about this?”

“It’s my contribution to the scrap metal drive,” Blue said. “Tell them to come around and pick it up.”

“Oh, that’s patriotic!” Harriet exclaimed.

“No, it ain’t,” said the policeman. “He just thinks he’s gonna dodge out of a tow charge, but it don’t work.”

Harriet snapped around at him. “Are you trying to hinder the war effort?”

“Lady,” said the policeman, “do you think it would hinder the war effort if I put you in jail?”

“You wouldn’t dare!”

“Just go ahead and dare me, and see,” the policeman invited grimly.

“Tweet-tweet,” said Doan, holding out a twenty dollar bill between two fingers. “Would this cover the tow charge?”

“Sure,” said the policeman, capturing the bill with practiced skill. “And who are you?”

“She’s my driver,” Doan said, indicating Harriet.

“Man, you sure hold your life cheap,” the policeman said. “Now come on, folks. Break it up. Move on. And as for you three playmates, go somewhere else and have fun. I don’t want to find you around this district again in the near future.”

“I want Mr. Blue to come with us,” Harriet said.

“Okay,” Doan agreed. “Anything you say, but I drive from here on in.”

“Now you’re getting half way smart,” the policeman told him. “Come on, folks. It’s all over. No blood and brains. Move on. Break it up.”

Doan boosted Carstairs into the front seat, and slid in under the steering wheel. Blue and Harriet got in the back. There was one last heave and rattle from the roadster as they pulled loose, and then the Cadillac rolled on down Sunset toward Vine.

“Now, Mr. Blue,” said Harriet, “I want to talk to you about the draft.”

“I don’t feel it,” Blue said.

“No, no! Not that kind of a draft. It’s not really a draft at all. It’s selective service, and it’s the way the government chooses the men who are to have the honor of serving in our Armed Forces. Are you registered?”

“Nope.”

“You aren’t! Then you’ll have to go and do it right away!”

“Nope.”

Harriet gasped. “But why not?”

“I don’t wanna.”

“You don’t want to be in the Army?”

“Nope.”

“But why?”

“I don’t like war.”

“Oh,” said Harriet, breathing deeply in relief. “That’s just because you don’t understand the great issues that are involved in this worldwide conflict between the powers of evil and the forces of freedom. Do you?”

“Nope.”

“I’ll explain them to you—”

Doan turned down Vine Street. “Just a moment before you do. How come you followed us to Los Angeles, Blue?”

“Followed you?” Blue echoed. “I ain’t that crazy, Mr. Doan. I came here on business.”

“Name it.”

“Well, I came to see a doctor.”

“Oh, are you sick?” Harriet asked.

“Yup.”

“Do you think you’re too sick to pass the Army examination?”

“If I ain’t, I will be soon,” said Blue.

“Now you’re just being silly. I’m sure you just don’t take care of yourself properly. Do you take deep breathing exercises every morning?”

“Nope.”

“You should. I’ll show you how.”

“All right,” Blue said resignedly.

Doan turned off Rossmore, and pulled the Cadillac in at the curb in front of the Orna Apartment Hotel. A round, sleek little man with horn-rimmed glasses and three strands of blue-black hair slicked across the dome of his skull was standing on the steps. He had his hands clasped behind him, and he was teetering up and down on his toes surveying his surroundings with a proud, proprietary smile.

“Mr. Rogan,” Doan called.

The bald man’s smile curdled. He stared in glazed horror for