The Man Who Shot Lewis Vance Read Online Free PDF Page A

understuffed chair to wait for Teddy to wake up. I closed the door quietly and joined John Wayne in the hall.
    “Things like this happen to you a lot?” he said as we got onto the elevator.
    “When things are going well,” I said. “Only when things are going well.”
    My head began to ache again and I longed for a plate of tacos from Manny’s, a few blocks away. I wondered if I could talk Wayne into a visit.

       2
     
    T alking Wayne into a taco at Manny’s wasn’t too hard. He had already missed his DeMille party and had no place to go. If Manny recognized the Duke when we walked in, he didn’t let on, and since there was only one other customer in the place, a fat guy in the corner who needed a shave and demonstrated that he could snore with his mouth open, no one bothered us.
    We talked about the bad old days in Glendale. We had both listened to station KIEV on the radio out of the old Glendale Hotel. We had both gone to Glendale High, had both downed beers in Dave Burton’s bar, and watched Doug Fairbanks movies at the Alexander Theatre. Wayne didn’t seem to be in any big hurry to go home or anywhere else. In an hour he had lined up seven empty bottles of Drerys Beer with the mountie on the label and I had lined up three.
    Manny smoothed his bandit mustache and turned on the radio to pick up the news and drown out the snorer in the corner. Two Jap carriers had been sunk at Midway, and the Tokyo Armada was running from Admiral Nimitz. The British were moving in Libya, and Rommel was in Tobruk to rally the Afrika Korps.
    “Tried to enlist,” the Duke said, scratching at the label of his beer bottle with his thumbnail. “Too old, too many kids, bad shoulder. I’m gonna try again.”
    I held up my fourth taco to him in a salute to his patriotism. I knew I was too old to enlist, not that I would have, but who knows. My brother, Phil, had lied about his age and made it into the end of the last war. It had almost got him killed.
    “I’ve got to get going,” I said, reaching into my pocket for a couple of bucks. “Tacos and beer are on me. You can leave a tip for Manny.”
    A guy on the radio was excited and told us that first thing in the morning we should run down to the L.A. Furniture Company on South Broadway to buy a rebuilt Royal Eureka vacuum cleaner. Manny didn’t look excited. The idea that a floor might need cleaning was alien to him. He turned off the radio, and the sudden silence almost woke the sleeper, who snorted in fear.
    “Colorful place,” Wayne said.
    “Few people know of it and those of us who do try to keep it to ourselves,” I said. “But you’re welcome to join the elite.”
    “ Hasta luego ,” Wayne called to Manny as we left. Manny nodded back without answering as he started to clear away taco plates and empty beer bottles.
    “Manny is Greek,” I said as Wayne walked to the door.
    Wayne looked back at Manny, the sleeper, and the red leather-covered stools.
    “He looks Mexican,” Wayne said.
    “Part of his exotic image. Adds to his mystique for the clientele,” I explained.
    Outside, the rain had stopped and the night was getting damp and muggy-feeling.
    Wayne looked at the sky and zipped up his windbreaker. The seven beers hadn’t seem to have affected him. I got the impression that he was used to stronger stuff.
    “Helluva thing,” he said.
    “Helluva thing,” I agreed, though I didn’t know what we were talking about—the Vance murder, the Battle of Midway, Rommel, or Wayne’s inability to get into the war. I was wrong on all four.
    “You know where I’d like to go now?” he asked.
    “Back into Manny’s for another round and a chorus of ‘Wang Wang Blues’ with the guy sleeping it off in the corner,” I tried.
    Wayne looked at me, gave me a lopsided grin, and shook his head. “You got one funny sense of humor,” he said.
    “My brother tells me that sometimes.”
    “I’d like to go home is where I’d like to go,” he explained, putting