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twenty-seven miles of the Polish border; and that the Royal Air Force had bombed Berlin for the ninth straight day.
    I headed for Santa Monica in light traffic. I spent the rest of the afternoon sitting on the beach, looking at girls and watching the waves come in. I read the paper. For part of the time, I kept an eye on a fat couple in their fifties who were taking turns looking at the Pacific through a pair of binoculars. I figured they were looking for a Jap sub so they could be the first to call in the sighting to Civil Defense and get their picture in the paper.
    I put my folded newspaper on the sand and lay back to look at the clouds and wait for the sunset. I fell asleep and woke up to the sound of laughter. A young couple was about thirty yards away. She laughed. He kissed her. I sat up, wondering what time it was. I had missed the sunset. It was dark. The beach was almost empty and the air had a chill.
    Carefully, hoping my back would be all right, I sat up. No problem. Back in the Crosley, I turned on the radio. The news ended, so I knew it was a quarter to ten. I checked my .38 in the glove compartment and then drove the mile to Wally’s.

CHAPTER
    4
     
    Wally’s was at the base of the hills, a gas station on one side and a souvenir shop on the other. The gas station and the shop were closed. There were six cars in front of Wally’s. I tried to figure out which one was Grant’s, if he had even arrived yet. All the cars looked like money. I pulled my Crosley into a spot next to a big fat Chrysler.
    Wally’s was surprisingly long, and darkly amber-lit. The bar ran along the left. There were small booths on the right and space down the middle heading toward the back, where two doors were clearly marked for ladies and gentlemen. Between the two doors was a pay phone mounted on the wall.
    There were five people at the bar talking, a few couples in the booths. Nobody was young. All were dressed casually, but with class, except the guy behind the bar in an apron. He looked a little like Wallace Beery. He looked my way and said, “You Peters?”
    “Yeah.”
    He nodded toward the rear of the place and I headed back. There was a single high-backed wooden booth at the rear. There was no one on the side facing the bar. Grant sat with his back to the bar on the other side, wearing a black knit turtle-neck shirt under a gray sports jacket.
    “Peters,” he said. “You’re right on time.”
    I sat across from him. He had a drink in front of him.
    “Hungry?” he asked. “Wally makes a good spiced chicken sandwich on a Kaiser roll.”
    “Sure,” I said.
    Grant raised his hand over the top of the booth. The bartender came over to the table.
    “A chicken sandwich for my friend,” he said and turned to me. “What’re you drinking?”
    “Pepsi.”
    Wally nodded and disappeared.
    “We’re alone and unobserved,” he said. “Now I can admit that I’m an aesthetic sham.”
    I looked at him.
    “Gilbert and Sullivan,” he said. “The only problem with this booth is that I have to look at the doors to the restrooms if there’s no one across from me.”
    He reached down to the seat next to him and came up with a thick leather pouch about the size of a book. He pushed it toward me.
    “I can’t tell you very much,” he said, “but I can tell you there’s five thousand dollars in that bag.”
    I looked at the bag.
    “You’re still thinking blackmail. No,” he said. “Blackmail’s been tried on me. A few years ago a man who had been fired from RKO publicity tried to get money out of me. He said he had photos and proof that Randolph Scott and I were lovers.”
    He looked at me for a reaction. There was a small familiar smile on his face.
    “He was wrong,” Grant said. “My wives and a small number of young ladies could have told him that. Scotty and I shared a place for a few years. We had lots of visitors, mostly ladies. The would-be blackmailer said it didn’t matter if it was true or not. He had