A Graveyard for Lunatics (22 page)

The three crosses were empty.

“J. C.,” I whispered, touching his picture folded in my pocket, and realized suddenly that a rich presence had been following me for some time.

I looked around at Manny’s mob of fog, his gray-shadow Chinese-funeral Rolls-Royce, crept up behind me. I heard the back door suck its rubber gums as the soundless door exhaled wide, letting out a cool burst of refrigerated air. Not much larger than an Eskimo Pie, Manny Leiber peered out from his elegant icebox. “Hey, you,” he said.

It was a hot day. I leaned into the refrigerated Rolls-Royce cubby and refreshed my face while I improved my mind.

“I got news for you.” I could see Manny’s breath on the artificial winter air. “We’re shutting down the studio for two days. General cleanup. Repainting. Crash job.”

“How can you do that? The expense—”

“Everyone will be paid full time. Should’ve been done years ago. So we shut down—”

For what? I thought. To get everyone off the lot. Because they know or suspect Roy is still alive, and someone has told them to find and kill him?

“That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard,” I said.

I had found that insult was the best answer. Nobody suspected you of anything if you, in turn, were dumb enough to insult.

“Whose idea was this dumb idea?” I said.

“Whatta you mean?” cried Manny, pulling back into his refrigerator. His breath steamed in jets of frost on the air. “Mine!”

“You’re not that dumb,” I pursued. “You wouldn’t do a thing like that. You care about money too much. Someone had to order you to do that. Someone above you?”

“There’s no one above me!” But his eyes slid, while his mouth equivocated.

“You take full credit for all this, that’ll cost maybe half a million in one week?”

“Well,” Manny flinched.

“It’s gotta be New York.” I let him off. “Those dwarfs on the telephone from Manhattan. Crazed monkeys. You’re only two days away from finishing
Caesar and Christ
. What if J. C. goes on another binge while you’re repainting the stages—?”

“That charcoal pit was his last scene. We’re writing him out of our Bible. You are. And another thing, as soon as the studio reopens, you go back on
The Dead Ride Fast
.”

His words breathed out to chill my face. The chill spread down my back.

“Can’t be done without Roy Holdstrom.” I decided to play it even more blunt and naive. “And Roy’s dead.”

“What?” Manny leaned forward, fought for control, then squinted at me. “Why do you say that?”

“He committed suicide,” I said.

Manny was even more suspicious. I could imagine him hearing the report from Doc Phillips: Roy hanged on Stage 13, cut down, carted off, burned.

I continued as naively as possible: “You still got all his animals locked in Stage 13?”

“Er, yes,” Manny lied.

“Roy can’t live without his Beasts. And I went to his apartment the other day. It was empty. Someone had stolen all of Roy’s other cameras and miniatures. Roy couldn’t live without those, either. And he wouldn’t just run off. Not without telling me, after twenty years of friendship. So, hell, Roy’s dead.”

Manny examined my face to see if he could believe it. I worked up my saddest expression.

“Find him,” said Manny, at last, not blinking.

“I just said—”

“Find him,” said Manny, “or you’re out on your ass, and you’ll never work at any other studio the rest of your life. The stupid jerk’s not dead. He was seen in the studio yesterday, maybe hanging around to break in Stage 13 and get his damned monsters. Tell him all is forgiven. He comes back with a raise in salary. It’s time we admit we were wrong and we need him. Find him, and your salary is raised, too. Okay?”

“Does that mean Roy gets to use that face, that head, he made out of clay?”

Manny’s color level sank. “Christ, no! There’ll be a new search. We’ll run ads.”

“I don’t think Roy will come back if he can’t create
his
Beast.”

“He’ll come, if he knows what’s good for him.”

And get himself killed an hour after he punches the time clock? I thought.

“No,” I said. “He’s really dead—forever.”

I hammered all the nails into Roy’s coffin, hoping Manny would believe, and not close down the studio to finish the search. A dumb idea. But then insane people are always dumb.

“Find him,” said Manny and lay back, frosting the air with his silence.

I shut the icebox door. The Rolls floated off on its own whispering exhaust, like a cold smile vanishing.

Shivering, I made the Grand Tour. I crossed Green Town to New York City to Egyptian Sphinx to Roman Forum. Only flies buzzed on my grandparents’ front-door screen. Only dust blew between the Sphinx’s paws.

I stood by the great rock that was rolled in front of Christ’s tomb.

I went to the rock to hide my face.

“Roy,” I whispered.

The rock trembled at my touch.

And the rock cried out, No hiding place.

God, Roy, I thought. They
need
you, at last, for ten seconds anyway before they stomp you into paste.

The rock was silent. A dust-devil squirreled through a nearby Nevada false-front town, and laid itself out like a burning cat to sleep by an old horse trough.

A voice shouted across the sky: “Wrong place! Here!”

I glanced a hundred yards over to another hill, which blotted out the city skyline, a gentle rolling sward of fake grass that stood green through every season.

There, the wind blowing his white robes, was a man in a beard.

“J. C.!” I stumbled up the hill, gasping.

“How do you like this?” J. C. pulled me the last few yards, reaching out with a grave, sad smile. “The Mount of the Sermon. Want to hear?”

“There’s no time, J. C.”

“How come all those other people two thousand years back listened and were quiet?”

“They didn’t have watches, J. C.”

“No.” He studied the sky. “Only the sun moving slow and all the days in the world to say the needful things.”

I nodded. Clarence’s name was stuck in my throat.

“Sit down, son.” There was a big boulder nearby and J. C. sat and I crouched like a shepherd at his feet. Looking down at me, almost gently, he said, “I haven’t had a drink today.”

“Great!”

“There are days like that. Lord, I been up here most of the day, enjoying the clouds, wanting to live forever, because of last night, the words, and you.”

He must have sensed my swallowing hard for he looked down and touched my head.

“Oh,
oh
,” he said. “You going to tell me something will make me drink again?”

“I hope not, J. C. It’s about your friend Clarence.”

He snatched his hand away as if burned.

A cloud covered the sun and there was a surprising small spatter of rain, a total shock in the midst of a sunlit day. I let the rain touch me without moving, as did J. C., who lifted his face to get the coolness.

“Clarence,” he murmured. “I’ve known him forever. He was around when we had real Indians. Clarence was out front, a kid no more than nine, ten, with his big four-eyes and his blond hair and his bright face and his big book of drawings or photos to be signed. He was there at dawn the first day I arrived, at midnight when I left. I was one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse!”

“Death?”

“Smartass.” J. C. laughed. “Death. High on my bony ass on my skeleton horse.”

J. C. and I both looked at the sky to see if his Death was still galloping there.

The rain stopped. J. C. wiped his face and went on:

“Clarence. Poor stupid, dependent, lonely, lifeless, wifeless son of a bitch. No wife, mistress, boy, man, dog, pig, no girlie pictures, no muscle monthlies. Zero! He doesn’t even wear
Jockey
shorts! Long Johns, all summer! Clarence. God.”

At last I felt my mouth move.

“You heard from Clarence… lately?”

“He telephoned yesterday…”

“What time?”

“Four-thirty. Why?”

Right after I knocked on his door, I thought.

“He telephoned, out of control. ‘It’s over!’ he said. ‘They’re coming to get me. Don’t lecture me!’ he screamed. It curdled my blood. Sounded like ten thousand extras fired, forty producer suicides, ninety-nine starlets raped, eyes shut, making do. His last words were ‘Help me! save me!’ And there I was, Jesus on the end of a line, Christ at the end of his tether. How could I help when I was the cause, not the cure? I told Clarence to take two aspirins and call in the morning. I should have rushed over. Would you have rushed, if you were me?”

I remembered Clarence lying in that huge wedding cake, layer upon layer of books, cards, photos, and hysterical sweat, glued in stacks.

J. C. saw my head shake.

“He’s gone, isn’t he? You,” he added, “did rush over?”

I nodded.

“It was not a natural death?”

I shook my head.

“Clarence!”

It was such a shout as would shake the field beasts and the shepherds asleep. It was the start of a sermon on darkness.

J. C. leaped up, head back. Tears spilled from his eyes.

“… Clarence…”

And he began to walk, eyes shut, down the Mount, away from the lost sermons, toward the other hill, Calvary, where his cross waited. I pursued.

Striding, J. C. asked:

“I don’t suppose you got anything on you? Liquor, booze. Hell! It was going to be such a
sweet
day! Clarence, you idiot!”

We reached the cross and J. C. searched in back and snorted a bitter laugh of relief, pulling out a sack that made liquid sounds.

“Christ’s blood in a brown bag in an unmarked bottle. What
has
the ceremony come to?” He drank, and drank again. “What do I do now? Climb up, nail myself, and wait for them?”

“Them?!”

“God, boy, it’s a matter of time! Then I’m spiked through the wrists, hung by my ballistics! Clarence is
dead
! How?”

“Smothered under his photographs.”

J. C. stiffened. “Who
says
?”

“
I
saw, J. C., but told no one. He knew something and was killed. What do
you
know!?”

“Nothing!” J. C. shook his head terribly. “No!”

“Clarence, outside the Brown Derby two nights ago, recognized a man. The man raised his fists! Clarence ran! Why?”

“Don’t try to find out!” said J. C. “Lay off. I don’t want you dragged down with me. There’s nothing I can do now but wait—” J. C.’s voice broke. “With Clarence killed, it won’t be long before they think
I
put him up to going to the Brown Derby—”

“
Did
you!?”

And me? I thought. Did you write to ask me to be there, too!?

“Who was it, J. C.
They
, who is
they
?! People are dying all over the place. My friend Roy, too, maybe!”

“Roy?” J. C. paused, furtively. “Dead? He’s lucky. Hiding? No use! They’ll get him. Like me. I knew too much for years.”

“How far back?”

“Why?”

“
I
might be dead, too. I’ve stumbled on something but I’m damned if I know what. Roy stumbled on something and he’s dead or on the run. My God, someone has killed Clarence because
he
stumbled on something. It’s a matter of time before they figure, What the hell, maybe I know Clarence
too
well, and kill me, to be
sure
. Damn it, J. C., Manny’s shutting the studio for two days. To clean up, repaint. God, no. It’s for Roy! Think! Tens of thousands of dollars out the window to find one crazy goof whose only crime was living ten million years back, who ran amok with one clay beast and has a price on his head. Why is Roy so important? Why, like Clarence, does he have to die? You. The other night. You said you were high up on Calvary. You saw the wall, the ladder, the body on the ladder. Could you see the face of that body?”

“It was too far away.” J. C.’s voice shook.

“Did you see the face of the man who put the body
on
the ladder?”

“It was dark—”

“Was it the Beast?”

“The
what
?”

“The man with the melted pink wax face and the fleshed-over right eye and the awful mouth? Did he shove that fake body up the ladder to scare the studio, scare you, scare me, and blackmail everyone somehow for some reason? If I must die, J. C., why can’t I know why? Name the Beast, J. C.”

“And
really
get you dead?
No
!”

A truck veered around the studio backlot corner. It ran by Calvary, throwing dust, blowing its horn.

“Watch out, idiot!” I yelled.

The truck dusted off.

And J. C. with it.

A man thirty years older than I, running fast. Grotesque! J. C. a-gallop, robes flapping in the dusty wind, as if to take off, fly, shouting gibberish to the skies.

Don’t go to Clarence’s! I almost shouted.

Dumb, I thought. Clarence is too far ahead. You’ll never catch up!!

Fritz was waiting with Maggie in Projection Room 10. “Where you been?” he cried. “Guess what? Now we got no
middle
for the film!”

It was good to talk something silly, inane, ridiculous, a madness to cure my growing madness. God, I thought, films are like making love to gargoyles. You wake to find yourself clutched to the spine of a marble nightmare and think: What am I
doing
here? Telling lies, pulling faces. To make a film that twenty million people run to or away from.

And all done by freaks in projection rooms raving about characters who never lived.

So, how fine now to hide here with Fritz and Maggie, shouting nonsense, playing fools.

But the nonsense didn’t help.

At four-thirty I excused myself to run to the Men’s. There in the vomitorium I lost the color in my cheeks. The vomitorium. That’s what all writers call restrooms after they’ve heard their producer’s great ideas.

I tried to get the color back in my face by scrubbing with soap and water. I bent over the washbasin for five minutes, letting my sadness and alarm rush down the drain. After one last session of dry heaves, I washed up again, and staggered back to face Maggie and Fritz, thankful for the dim projection room.