A Graveyard for Lunatics (26 page)

We stumbled in, gasping, and slammed the door.

We turned.

There was a big chair nearby.

And an empty desk.

With a white telephone in the middle of the desk.

“Where are we?” said Crumley.

“By the way he’s breathing, the child knows,” said Henry.

Crumley’s flashlight played over the room.

“Holy Mother of God, Caesar, and Christ,” I sighed.

I was looking at—

Manny Leiber’s chair.

Manny Leiber’s desk.

Manny Leiber’s telephone.

Manny Leiber’s office.

I turned to see the mirror that hid the now invisible door.

Half drunk with exhaustion, I stared at myself in that cold glass.

And suddenly it was—

Nineteen twenty-six. The opera singer in her dressing room and a voice behind the mirror urging, teaching, prompting, desiring her to step through the glass, a terrible Alice… dissolved in images, melting to descend to the underworld, led by the man in the dark cloak and white mask to a gondola that drifted on dark canal waters to a buried palace and a bed shaped like a coffin.

The phantom’s mirror.

The phantom’s passage from the land of the dead.

And now—

His chair, his desk, his office.

But not the phantom. The Beast.

I knocked the chair aside.

The Beast… coming to see Manny Leiber?

I stumbled and backed off.

Manny, I thought. He who never truly gave, but took, orders. A shadow, not a substance. A sideshow, not a main attraction.

Run a studio!? No. Be a phone line over which voices passed? Yes. A messenger boy. An errand boy fetching champagne and cigarettes, sure! But sit in that chair? He had never sat there. Because… ?

Crumley shoved Henry.

“Move!”

“What?” I said, numbly.

“Someone’s gonna bust through that mirror, any minute!”

“Mirror!?” I cried.

I reached out.

“No!” said Crumley.

“What’s he up to?” asked Henry.

“Looking back,” I said.

I swung the mirror door wide.

I stared down the long tunnel, astounded at how far we had run, from country to country, mystery to mystery, along twenty years to now, Halloween to Halloween. The tunnel sank through commissaries of tinned films to reliquaries for the nameless. Could I have run all that way without Crumley and Henry to flail away shadows as my breath banged the walls?

I listened.

Far off, did doors open and slam? Was a dark army or a simple Beast in pursuit? Soon, would a death gun discharge skulls, blow the tunnel, ram me back from the mirror? Would—

“God damn!” said Crumley. “Idiot!
Out
!”

He knocked my hand down. The mirror shut.

I grabbed the phone and dialed.

“Constance!” I yelled. “Green Town.”

Constance yelled back.

“What’d she say?” Crumley peered into my face. “Never mind,” he added, “because—”

The mirror shook. We ran.

The studio was as dark and empty as the graveyard over the wall.

The two cities looked at each other across the night air and played similar deaths. We were the only warm things moving in the streets. Somewhere, perhaps, Fritz was running night films of Galilee and charcoal beds and evocative Christs and footprints blowing away on the dawn wind. Somewhere, Maggie Botwin was crouched over her telescope viewing the bowels of China. Somewhere, the Beast was ravening to follow, or lying low.

“Take it easy!” said Crumley.

“We’re not being followed,” said Henry. “Listen! the blind man says. Where we going?”

“To my grandparents’.”

“Well, now that sounds nice,” said Henry.

Hustling along, we whispered:

“Good God, does anyone in the studio know about that passage?”

“If so, they never said.”

“Lord, think. If nobody knew, and the Beast came every night or every day, and listened behind the wall, after a while he’d know everything. All the deals, the ins and outs, all the stockmarket junk, all the women. Save up the data long enough and you’re ready to cash in. Shake the Guy at them, get the money, run.”

“The Guy?”

“The Guy Fawkes dummy, the fireworks mannequin, the Guy they toss on the bonfire every Guy Fawkes Day in England, November 5th. Like our Halloween, but religious politics. Fawkes almost blew up Parliament. Caught, he was hanged. We got something like it here. The Beast plans to blow up Maximus. Not literally, but rip it apart with suspicion. Scare everyone. Shake a dummy at them. Maybe he’s been shaking them down for years. And nobody the wiser. He’s an inside trader using secret information.”

“Whoa!” said Crumley. “Too neat. I don’t like it. You think no one knows the Beast is behind the wall, the mirror?”

“Yep.”

“Then how come the studio, or one part of it, your boss, Manny, has a conniption fit when he sees Roy’s clay model of the Beast?”

“Well—”

“Does Manny know the Beast’s there and fear him? Did the Beast come into the studio at night, see Roy’s work, and destroy it in a rage? And now Manny’s afraid Roy will blackmail him because Roy knows the Beast exists and no one else does? What, what, what? Answer, quick!”

“God’s sake, Crumley, hush!”

“Hush! What kind of rough talk is
that
?”

“I’m thinking.”

“I can hear the cogs turn. Which is it? Is everyone ignorant as to who hides behind the mirror listening? and so they fear the unknown? Or do they know and are twice as afraid because the Beast has gathered so much dirt over the years he can go where he damn well pleases, collect his money, run back under the wall? They don’t dare cross him. He probably has letters some lawyer will mail the day something happens to him. Witness Manny’s panics, hanging out his underwear ten times a day? Well? Which is it? Or do you have a third version?”

“Don’t make me nervous. I’ll go into a funk.”

“Hell, kid, that’s the last thing I’d want to do,” said Crumley, with a twist of lemon in his mouth. “Sorry to shove you into a king-size funk, but I hate keeping time with your quarterhorse half-ass deductions. I’ve just run through a tunnel chased by a criminal beehive you kicked over. Have we stirred up a nest of Mafia or just a single maniac acrobat? Promises, promises! Where’s Roy? where’s Clarence, where’s the Beast? Give me one, just
one
, body! Well?”

“Wait.” I stopped, turned, walked away.

“Where you going?” groused Crumley.

Crumley followed me up the small hill.

“Where in hell are we?”

He peered around through the night.

“Calvary.”

“What’s that up there?”

“
Three
crosses. You were complaining about bodies?”

“So?”

“I have this terrible feeling.”

I put my hand out to touch the base of the cross. It came away sticky and smelling of something as raw as life.

Crumley did the same. He sniffed his fingertips and nodded, sensing what it was.

We looked up along the cross at the sky.

After a while our eyes got used to the darkness.

“There’s no body there,” said Crumley.

“Yes, but—”

“It figures,” said Crumley and stalked off toward Green Town.

“J. C.?” I whispered. “J. C.”

Crumley called from down the hill. “Don’t just stand there!”

“I’m not just standing here!”

I counted to ten, slowly, wiped my eyes with digging fists, blew my nose, and fell downhill.

I led Henry and Crumley up the path to my grandparents’ house.

“I smell geraniums and lilacs.” Henry lifted his face.

“Yes.”

“And cut grass and furniture polish and plenty of cats.”

“The studio needs mousers. Steps, here, Henry, eight up.”

We stood on the porch, breathing hard.

“My God.” I looked out at Jerusalem’s hills beyond Green Town and the Sea of Galilee, beyond Brooklyn. “All along I should have
seen
. The Beast didn’t go to the
graveyard
, he was entering the
studiol
What a setup. Using a tunnel no one suspects to spy on his blackmail victims. See how much he had scared them with that body on the wall, grab the money, scare ’em again and pick up more!”

“If,” said Crumley, “that’s
what
he was doing.”

I took a deep trembling breath and at last let it out.

“There’s one more body I haven’t delivered to you.”

“I’d rather not hear,” said Crumley.

“Arbuthnot’s.”

“Crud, that’s right!”

“Somebody stole it,” I said. “A long time ago.”

“No, sirree,” said blind Henry. “It was
never
there. That was a clean place, that icehouse tomb.”

“So where’s Arbuthnot’s body been all these years?” asked Crumley.

“You’re the detective. Detect.”

“Okay,” said Crumley, “how’s
this
? Halloween booze party. Someone poisons the hooch. Gives it to Arbuthnot at the last second as he leaves. Arbuthnot, driving, dies at the wheel, smashes the other car off the road. There’s a coverup. Autopsy shows his body glows with enough poison to pile-drive an elephant. Before the funeral, instead of burying the evidence, they burn it. Arbuthnot, so much smoke, goes up the chimney. So his empty sarcophagus waits in the tomb, where blind Henry here tells all.”

“I
did
do that, didn’t I?” Henry agreed.

“The Beast, knowing the tomb is vacant and the reason why maybe, uses it as a base, hoists the Arbuthnot look-alike on the ladder, and watches the scalded ants run in a fright picnic over the wall. Okay?”

“That still doesn’t find us Roy, J. C., Clarence, or the Beast,” I said.

“Lord
deliver
me from this guy!” Crumley pleaded with the sky.

Crumley was delivered.

There was a fearful racket in the studio alleys, some backfires, honks, and a yell.

“That’s Constance Rattigan,” observed Henry.

Constance parked in front of the old house and cut the motor.

“Even when she turns off the ignition,” said Henry, “I can still hear her motor running.”

We met her at the front door.

“Constance!” I said. “How did you get past the guard?”

“Easy.” She laughed. “He was an old-timer. I reminded him I’d once attacked him in the men’s gym. While he was blushing, I roared in! Well, damn, if it isn’t the world’s greatest blind man!”

“You still working at that lighthouse, directing ships?” asked Henry.

“Give me a hug.”

“You sure feel soft.”

“And Elmo Crumley, you old’s.o.b.!”

“She’s never wrong,” said Crumley, as she broke all his ribs.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” said Constance. “Henry? Lead!”

“I’m gone!” said Henry.

On the way out of the studio I murmured, “Calvary.”

Constance slowed as we passed the ancient hill.

There was complete darkness. No moon. No stars. One of those nights when the fog comes in early from the sea and covers all of Los Angeles, at a height of about five hundred feet. The airplanes are muffled and the airports closed.

I gazed steadily up the little hill hoping to find Christ in a drunken farewell-tour Ascension.

“J. C.!” I whispered.

But the clouds shifted now. I could see the crosses were empty.

Three gone, I thought. Clarence drowned in paper. Doc Phillips hauled up in Notre Dame’s midnight at noon, leaving one shoe. And now… ?

“See anything?” asked Crumley.

“Maybe tomorrow.”

When I roll the Rock aside
. If I have the guts.

There was a waiting silence from everyone in the car.

“Out,” suggested Crumley. I said quietly, “Out.”

At the front gate Constance shouted something obscene at the guard, who reeled back. We went toward the sea and Crumley’s.

We stopped at my house. As I ran to fetch my 8-millimeter projector, the phone rang.

After the twelfth ring I snatched it up.

“Well?” said Peg. “How come you stood there for twelve rings with your hand on the phone?”

“God, women’s intuition.”

“What’s up? Who
disappeared
? Who’s sleeping in Mama Bear’s bed? You haven’t called. If I were there, I’d throw you out of the house. It’s hard to do long distance but, get out!”

“Okay.”

That shot her through the chest.

“Hold on,” she said, alarmed.

“You said: Get out!”

“Yes, but—”

“Crumley’s waiting outside.”

“Crumley!” she shrieked, “By the bowels of Christ! Crumley!?”

“He’ll protect me, Peg.”

“Against your panics? Can he mouth-to-mouth breathe those? Can he make sure you eat breakfast, lunch, or dinner? Lock you out of the refrigerator when you get too chunky? Does he make you change your underwear!?”

“Peg!”

And we both laughed just a little.

“You really going out the door? Mama will be home on Flight sixty-seven, Pan Am, Friday. Be there! with all the murders solved, bodies buried, and rapacious women kicked downstairs! If you can’t make it to the airport, just be in bed when mama slams the door. You haven’t said I love you.”

“Peg. I love you.”

“And one last thing—in the last hour: who
died
?”

Outside at the curb, Henry, Crumley, and Constance waited.

“My wife doesn’t want me to be seen with you,” I said.

“Get
in
.” Crumley sighed.

On the way west on an empty boulevard with not even a ghost of a car in sight, we let Henry tell what had happened in, under, through the wall and out. It was somehow fine to hear our flight described by a blind man who enunciated with his head as his dark nose snuffed deep and his black fingers sketched the wind, drawing Crumley here, himself there, me below, and the Beast behind. Or something that had lain outside the tomb door like a landslide of yeast to seal our escape. Bull! But as Henry told it we turned cold and rolled up the windows. No use. There was no top to the car.

“And that,” declared Henry, taking off his dark glasses for finale, “is why we called you, mad lady from Venice, to come save.” Constance glanced nervously in her rear-view mirror. “Hell, we’re going too slow!”