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wished—that Ann Sheridan would emerge from a doorway, take one look at me, and realize that here was the man she had been waiting for.
    There was a green newsstand at the corner, shuttered and peeling. When I passed it, I left the Lower East Side and entered Prohibition Chicago. Black sedans were parked at the curb and yellow election posters were placed in the smoked windows of O’Casey’s Bar. The Gem Cinema was across the street, but the lights were off and the marquee was blank. The buildings and cars had been used much too often; they appeared to be in bad need of repair, but the magic still worked. I knew this place with the certainty of dream-knowledge; a dozen movies had burned every cornice and bit of masonry into my brain cells. This was the street of swells in tuxedos, of platinum blonds, of gunmen rolling in the gutters. I stood with my hands in my pockets, awed and self-conscious, knowing I didn’t belong here.
    Past the sidewalk cafés and dress shops of Paris, the plaza and bleached walls of a Mexican village, ten yards of downtown Berlin, and into Anyville, U.S.A., identifiable by white picket fences, home sweet homes, and Junior’s jalopy parked out front. It was goyische heaven, as foreign to me as the Casbah, which was right around the corner, a cheat of whitewashed walls and tacky vendors’ stalls. A cobbled alleyway led me out.
    And directly into the Western Street.
    It was the largest area on the whole back lot, a complete frontier town built around a wide dirt street that took a dogleg curve to the right. The street was lined with buildings, real and fake-front, on both sides, but it was too dark to make them out very clearly. It was very quiet, except for the high and low notes of a wind that blew with unobstructed force down the wide and dusty street. Something toppled over in the distance, something small but heavy, like a cart or wheelbarrow. I strained to see Walter walking about, but couldn’t, so I called his name. The wind blew the words back in my face and I received no reply.
    I started up the street, past a hotel, livery stable, blacksmith, and notions shop to my right; to the left lay the inevitable saloon, dry goods store, and a jailhouse with barred front windows and a gallows complete with dangling dummy in the back. I went over to the saloon and pushed through the swinging doors. Inside was a wooden bar, all right, but the rest of the room was a technicians’ chaos of wood shavings, pieces of cable, a large arc light laid on its side, and a muddy porridge of rags and rope and pages of script gathered in a janitor’s careful pile in the corner. The wind blew the doors back and forth, and I backed out of the room in a gunfighter’s crouch, hands at the ready.
    Back on the street, I again called for Walter and drew another blank. I walked around the dogleg bend, past the church, schoolhouse, and large red barn. I tried the barn, tugging hard at a tall jammed door. It screeched open on unoiled hinges. There was no light inside. I cupped my hand around a match and saw more electronic litter strewn about. I walked out, leaving the door open, and traced my steps back down the street, intending to return to the Writer’s Building. I strode past the dry goods store and the jailhouse. The gallows creaked in the wind and the lonely dummy swung to and fro. I stopped in my tracks and stared. A queasy, icy sweat drenched my entire body.
    It was not a dummy.
    It was Walter Adrian.
    Adrian’s dead eyes looked merely surprised. His tongue was protruding and I wanted to put it back where it belonged, but I knew I couldn’t tamper with what was now one hundred and sixty pounds of evidence. Evidence of what, I did not know. I just kind of held Walter, as if to stop the strangling, then figured what the hell, and let go. He swung back and forth, slowly, heavily, and the wooden planks groaned in the evening silence. I’d run into enough stiffs in my