The Sixteen Burdens (21 page)

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-N
INE

O
NCE
THE
CONVERTIBLE
had pulled around the corner, a fog lifted from Elsie. She had no doubt Fairbanks planned to do Gray harm; the man had radiated greed and guilt from the moment they hopped into the car. Her best bet was to go straight home and call Chaplin.

She clenched the Eye in her fist and walked quickly through unlit side streets dotted with seedy bars. Men appeared from shadowy doorways and whistled as she walked by, her glittery dress drawing attention like a mirror ball in a nightclub.

When she finally made it home, she was so relieved, she didn’t stop to consider why no girls were waiting for her in the common room to ask about her glamorous evening. Bedroom doors shut like dominoes as she walked down the hall.

Elsie opened her bedroom door, and found Jack Siegel there, sitting on her bed. His small, greasy hands were on her sheets, touching the place she slept. She nailed a wooden smile to her face.

“You’re back early from your trip,” she said. “Did you have a nice—”

“Shut up.”

Siegel was smoking a cigar, and he tapped his ash on her bedspread. She clenched the Eye tightly in her right hand, holding it down and slightly behind her.

“I’ve never seen you wear that dress before. Or those earrings.”

“I borrowed them from one of the girls.”

Siegel blew a big puff of smoke at the dress.

“You look nice. Real spivvy. Like a high-society woman. I think I’ll have you wear that dress every night at the casino.”

“Every night?”

He stood and got right in her face.

“Yes, every night until it’s spotted with sweat stains and spilled drinks. Until the smell of cigar is so deeply infused into the fabric that no amount of washing can get it out. Until the seams pull apart and you begin to look like what you are—a filthy low-class quiff who won’t do as she’s told.”

“It’s just that I had the night off and I—”

He clamped his hand around her chin.

“You don’t get nights off! I own you.”

“For how long?”

“For as long as I say!”

He took a drag of his cigar and blew it in her face. His breath was stale and smelled strongly of whiskey.

“Where were you tonight?”

“At the movies.”

“You got this dolled up for a stinking movie?”

“It was a movie premiere. A special event.”

Siegel sneered.

“Whatsa piece of trash like you doing at a
special
event?”

Elsie didn’t answer.

He’s the one who’s trash.

Siegel grabbed Elsie’s left hand roughly.

“You seem to have an obedience problem. You leave your job while I’m away. You don’t answer my questions. I’m apparently too soft on you.”

Siegel removed his cigar cutter. It was like a handheld guillotine, with a hole in the center where a blade sliced off the tip of new cigars. He grabbed Elsie’s pinkie and forced it into the cigar cutter.

“Please, no!”

“Think of the time you’ll save. One less nail to paint.”

He pinched the cigar cutter lightly and brought the blade in contact with her finger, just below the first knuckle.

“Ready? Snip, snip!”

Siegel retracted the blade back to give it maximum force on the way down. Elsie screamed and grabbed Siegel’s arm to push him away. Terror shot through her, into him. He jolted and kicked her away; she hit the wall behind her, then slid to the floor.

Siegel stumbled back up, his eyes bug-eyed and his mouth agape.

“How are you doing that?!”

“What?”

“How are you manipulating me like that?”

He grabbed her by the wrist and bared his small teeth.

“Tell me, or so help me I’ll have your entire hand!”

“I don’t know!”

“You do know!”

Elsie tried to slip the Eye behind her dresser, out of sight. Siegel grabbed her arm.

“Don’t try sleight of hand with a guy who runs a casino.”

He knocked over the dresser and picked out the Eye from behind.

“Is this how you’re manipulating me?”

“No! It’s not, I swear!”

But Elsie felt herself protesting too eagerly. She was panicking. And Siegel could tell. Every emotion she had, she was telegraphing to him.

He pulled her up to her feet.

“Let’s go.”

“Where are we going?”

“To my place. You’re going to stay there until you tell me how this thing works.”

“But I don’t know!”

He dragged her across the floor by the hair.

“You’ve got plenty of fingers and toes. I’m sure you’ll remember.”

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY

G
RAY
WAS
THROUGH
with people for the night, but it seemed people weren’t yet through with him. When he reached the base of Chaplin’s winding driveway, he noticed the gates were open and he saw the outline of cars parked in the roundabout at the top. Lots of them.

He saw lights and heard the murmur of voices. A party. At least Chaplin hadn’t been worried about where he had gone.

The long walk back to the mansion seemed to ease the swelling in his hand, and it gave Gray time to think. He had decided he would tell Chaplin where the Eye was, and then he’d leave. There was nothing else he could do to help Pickford, and he’d be better off alone. Better to leave before Chaplin or one of the others let him down too.

When he reached the top of the driveway, he saw that there was a gathering of sorts, but not like any he’d want to attend. The front yard and house were full of cops and squad cars. They milled about, talking in sullen tones as if they had been invited to a petting party only to discover there were no frails to pet.

He walked to the front door but hit a wall of flatfoots in their dark uniforms. Their backs were to him. In the spaces between the men, he saw a flash and heard the crackle of a photographer’s camera.

Gray muscled his way through and found himself in a ring of officers circled up as if they were placing bets in a cockfighting ring. There was something at the center, lying on the bottom steps of the staircase. It was small and hairy—an animal maybe? If there had been a fight this thing had lost; a streak of red stained Chaplin’s white carpet. Gray took a step toward it. That’s when he saw what it was: a human head.

It was Nina Beauregard—or what remained of her.

Gray turned his head in disgust but his eyes refused to follow. A sniffling sob finally snapped his attention away. Off to the side, Chief Barry Stoker struggled to compose himself.

“That English girl was right. I should have listened to her. But how would I know?”

The man was blubbering as if he were at his own mother’s funeral. A subordinate officer patted him on the shoulder.

“It’s OK, chief,” the cop said. “No one could have known. A man intent on this type of violence, you can’t stop him.”

“Any sign of the others?”

“No, the rest of the house is clean. He must be keeping them somewhere else.”

“She was the best actress the movie screen ever saw,” Stoker said. “I will avenge her death, if it’s the last thing I do.”

Gray forced himself to look at her again. Her face looked shriveled and old. Whatever beauty Newton’s Eye had imparted on her had left when she died. Atlas must have planted the head there. But why?

To take Chaplin out of the picture.

Gray stepped forward.

“Can’t you see this is a setup?”

Stoker sniffed hard.

“Who’re you?”

“Charlie Chaplin didn’t do this. Why would he leave evidence on his own staircase?”

Stoker walked over to him and furrowed his brow, which presumably meant he was thinking.

“Why do you look familiar?”

He tapped his own forehead with his finger until finally his face lit up.

“You were here that night I dropped the girl off. She said you knew about the missing women too.”

“Maybe he’s the Star Stalker’s accomplice,” an officer said. “You know, maybe he lured the broads down a dark alley by acting lost. We should take him in and question him.”

Now I know why Chaplin never wanted to involve the police.

“Where’s Mr. Chaplin?” Gray asked.

“At the Hollywood station, rotting in a cell,” Stoker said. “Not fast enough.”

Gray needed to see Chaplin. That was all that mattered.

“Fine. Take me in for questioning.”

Gray’s gamble paid off—they cuffed him and threw him in the back of a squad car, as rough-and-tumble as cops in the movies.

Down at the station, Chief Stoker couldn’t think of half a dozen questions to ask him. Stoker had no evidence Gray was in on any kidnapping conspiracy. In fact, he had no evidence against Chaplin aside from the head and a conveniently anonymous tip they had received.

“He’s an actor,” Stoker had said when Gray insisted on defending him. “Of course he seems innocent. He’s
acting
.”

Stoker pulled out a piece of gum and began to chew on it angrily.

“It’ll all come out soon enough. He was cagey the night I was over there, trying to send me away without so much as a night cap.”

Gray sat opposite Stoker, a big desk in-between them. He was like a man who had decided the Earth was flat, and no amount of evidence to the contrary was going to change his mind.

“Worst part is, he’ll get away with it,” Stoker said. “Bigwigs like him always do. Well, I’m not going to let that happen. I’m not going to let Nina Beauregard’s murderer go free.”

He clenched his teeth and shook, a child on the verge of a tantrum.

This guy is completely nerts. 

The phone rang. Stoker huffed out a few breaths and then answered it.

“Put him through,” he said.

He listened for a moment. The nasal voice of Farrell Partridge on the other end was impossible to mistake.

“We have him here,” Stoker said, looking at Gray. “We’re not a taxi service. Come get him yourself if he’s so important to you.”

Gray could only imagine what Farrell would do if he got a hold of him again. Farrell collected grudges the way other people collected stamps. He stored them away in the picture book in his mind, carefully preserved until the day he needed to pull it out and point at the offense. Gray’s leaving would be the crown jewel of his collection.

“You stay here,” Stoker said. “I gotta fill out some paperwork.”

The police chief slipped a flask in his side pocket and left his office, closing the door behind him. Gray tried the door. It was locked from the outside.

Gray would have loved to have Panchito’s talent so he could turn the lock. Or even Elsie’s talent to soften up Chief Stoker. But he didn’t. All he had was a head full of street smarts; surely they were worth something.

He looked out of the office window and saw a junior cop with a Mount Everest of paperwork. His name tag glinted off the overhead lights: Potts. Gray picked up the phone and waited for the operator. He asked to be patched through to the police station. It worked. He waited for an answer, then asked to be transferred to Officer Potts. He heard the cop’s phone ring at his desk.

“Potts here.”

“Um, hi. I was just in the station and my brother wandered off. You seen him anywhere? Dirty blond hair, fifteen years old, in a tuxedo.”

“I ain’t a babysitter. There’s no one—”

Potts looked up toward Stoker’s office. Gray had the receiver on the opposite side of his face, with his head resting on his closed hand as if he were bored.

“I see him.”

Potts slammed the phone down and Gray quickly hung up his own receiver. The officer opened the door.

“Your brother’s outside. Scram.”

Gray smiled deferentially and darted out of the office. The building was a maze. Hallways were narrow and doors were unmarked. Finally, three floors and two long hallways later, Gray managed to find the detention area, which he slipped into while two guards flipped through a new calendar of pin-up girls for the upcoming year.

Chaplin was sitting on a bench in a small clean cell, flipping a coin. He spotted Gray.

“Ninety-two tails out of a hundred flips. Not bad.”

“Mr. Chaplin! You’re OK.”

“I am most certainly not OK. I’m missing
Amos n’ Andy
!”

His suit was ruffled but he sat languidly as if in a waiting room at the dentist.

“How did they arrest you?”

“The police were waiting for me when I got home. I barely got a glance at the…remains.”

Chaplin closed his eyes, but the way he shuddered suggested the image of the head wasn’t so easily forgotten.

“Did you know Nina Beauregard?” Gray asked.

“We weren’t close,” Chaplin said. “And yet now I’ll never get her out of the carpet.”

He smiled apologetically.

“Sorry, it’s how I cope. What happened to you?”

Chaplin reached through the bars and gently touched bump on Gray’s forehead.

“We found the Eye!”

“What?”

“And Mr. Fairbanks tried to steal it from me.”

“
WHAT?
”

Gray told Chaplin the whole story. Chaplin sat silently, but Gray watched as the man’s hands closed around the jail bars, flexing tighter and tighter until the skin looked as if it would tear off his knuckles.

“Take the Eye, and get on the first train out of here,” Chaplin said. “Ask Paulette for some money so you can buy a ticket. If he’s willing, take Panchito with you. Tell no one else.”

“But what about you? You’re in jail for murder!”

Chaplin brushed away the thought.

“That’s nothing,” he said. “Every celebrity ends up in jail for murder at some point. It’s a rite of passage.”

“Don’t be so sure. Chief Stoker has it out for you.”

“Stumbling Stoker? He couldn’t solve a one-piece puzzle. Besides, I have truth on my side. Truth, and luck.”

Gray looked at the coin in Chaplin’s hand.

Ninety-two flips out of a hundred.

“Even luck runs out, Mr. Chaplin.”

Chaplin grabbed Gray by the arm firmly.

“Just promise me you’ll leave town.”

“I promise.”

Gray offered a hopeful smile and then left Chaplin alone in his cell.

I hate lying to people I like.