Let's All Kill Constance Page 12

  “Yes.”

  “Furthermore,” said Fritz Wong in his fine Germanic guttural, “are you free to accept work on a screenplay titled The Many Deaths of Rattigan, starting Monday, five hundred a week, ten weeks, twenty thousand bonus if we finally shoot the goddamn film?”

  “Take the money and run,” said Henry.

  “Crumley, you want me to take his offer?” I said.

  “It’s dumb thinking but a great film,” said Crumley.

  “You don’t believe me?” I cried.

  “Nobody could be as nuts as you just said,” said Crumley.

  “Good God, why have I stood here upchucking my guts?” I sank in my chair.

  “I don’t want to live,” I said.

  “Yes, you do.” Fritz leaned forward, scribbling on a pad.

  Five hundred a week was there.

  He threw a five-dollar bill on top.

  “Your first ten minutes’ salary!”

  “Then you almost believe? No.” I pushed the paper away. “Got to be one of you here gets my idea.”

  “Me,” a voice said.

  We all looked at Blind Henry.

  “Sign the contract,” he said, “but make him sign saying he really believes every word you say!”

  I hesitated, then scribbled my own manifesto.

  Rumbling, Fritz signed.

  “That Constance,” he growled. “Damn! She shows up at your door, flings herself on you like a goddamn snake. Hell! Who cares if she kills herself? Why should she run scared of her own phone books and look up all the stupid people who led her down the garden path? Would phone books scare you? Christ, no! There had to be a reason for her setting out to run, to seek. Motivation. Why, goddammit, why all that work, to get what? Hold on.”

  Fritz stopped, his face suddenly pale, then slowly suffusing with color. “No. Yes. No, couldn’t be. No. Yes. Is!”

  “Is what, Fritz?”

  “I’m glad I talk to myself,” said Fritz. “I’m glad I listen. Did anyone hear?”

  “You haven’t said, Fritz.”

  “I’ll talk to myself, and you eavesdrop, ja?”

  “Ja,” I said.

  Fritz shot me through the heart with one glare. He doused his irritation with a swallow of his martini and said, “A month ago, two months, she threw herself across my desk, with heavy breaths. Was it true, she cried, I was starting some new film? A movie yet nameless? ‘Ja,’ I said. ‘Yes, maybe.’ ‘And is there a part for me?’ she said, on my shoulder, in my lap. ‘No, no,’ I said. ‘Yes, there must be. There has to be. Tell me, Fritz, what is it?’ I should have never told her. But I did, God help me!”

  “What was the film, Fritz?”

  “‘What I’m planning is beyond you,’ I said.”

  “Yes, but for God’s sake, Fritz. Name the film!”

  Fritz ignored me, staring through that monocle into the starry sky, still talking to himself while we eavesdropped.

  “‘You can’t do it,’ I said. She wept. ‘Please,’ she begged. ‘Try me.’ I said, ‘Constance, it’s something you can never be, something you never were.’” Fritz took another swig from his glass. “The Maid of Orleans.”

  “Joan of Arc!”

  “‘Oh, my God,’ she cried. ‘Joan! If it’s the only thing I ever do, I must do that!’”

  Must do that! came the echo.

  Joan!

  A voice cried in my ears. Rain fell. Water ran.

  A dozen lighters took fire and were thrust out toward the sad, weeping woman.

  “Only for my voices, I would lose all heart! The bells came down from heaven and their echoes linger in the fields. Through the quiet of the countryside, my voices!”

  The subterranean audience gasped with: Joan.

  Joan of Arc.

  “Ohmigod, Fritz,” I cried. “Say that again!”

  “Saint Joan?”

  I leaped back, my chair fell.

  Fritz went on: “I said, ‘Constance, it’s too late.’ She said, ‘It’s never too late.’ And I said, ‘Listen, I’ll give you a test. If you pass, if you can do the scene from Shaw’s Saint Joan … impossible, but if you can, you get the job.’ She fell apart. She cried, ‘Wait! I’m dying! Wait, I’ll be back.’ And she ran away.”

  I said, “Fritz, do you know what you’ve just said?”

  “Gottdammit, yes! Saint Joan!”

  “Oh, Christ, Fritz, don’t you see? We’ve been thrown off by what she said to Father Rattigan. ‘I’ve killed, I’ve murdered! Help me bury them,’ she cried. We thought she meant old Rattigan up on Mount Lowe, Queen Califia on Bunker Hill, but no, dammit, she didn’t murder them, she was out to get help to murder Constance!”

  “How’s that again?” said Crumley.

  “‘Help me kill Constance,’ said Constance. Why? For Joan of Arc! That’s the answer. She has to have that role. All this month she’s been preparing for it. Isn’t that it, Fritz?”

  “Just a moment while I take my monocle out and put it back in.” Fritz stared at me.

  “Fritz, look! She’s not right for the part. But there is one way she can be Saint Joan!”

  “Dammit to hell, say it!”

  “Dammit, Fritz, she had to get away from you, fall back, take a long, hard look at her life. She had to, one by one, kill all her selves, lay all the ghosts, so that when all those Constances were dead, she could come for her test, and maybe, just maybe, land the part. She hasn’t had a role like that ever in her life. This was her big chance. And the only way she could do it was to kill the past. Don’t you see, Fritz? That must be the answer to what’s been going on during the last week, with all these people, with Constance appearing, disappearing, and reappearing again.”

  Fritz said, “No, no!”

  I said, “Yes, yes. The answer’s been lying right in front of us, but it’s only when you said the name. Saint Joan is the motive for every woman who ever lived. Impossible dream. Can’t be attained.”

  “I’ll be gottdammed.”

  “Oh, no, Fritz!” I said. “Blessed! You’ve solved it! Now, if we find Constance and say to her, maybe, just maybe, she has a chance. Maybe, maybe—” I broke off. “Fritz,” I said. “Answer me.”

  “What?”

  “If Constance should suddenly appear as the Maid of Orleans, if she were incredibly young, changed in some strange way, would you give her the job?”

  Fritz scowled. “Don’t push me, dammit!”

  I said, “I’m not. Look. Was there ever a time when she could have played the Maid?”

  “Yes,” he said after a moment. “But that was then and this is now!”

  “Hear me out. What if, by some miracle, she should show up? When you think of her, just standing there, don’t think of her past at all. When you remember the woman you once knew, if she asked, would you give her the role?”

  Fritz pondered, took his glass, downed it, refilled it from a frosted crystal pitcher, and then said, “God help me, I think I might. Don’t press me, don’t press!”

  “Fritz,” I said, “if we could find that Constance and she asked you, would you at least consider taking a chance on her?”

  “Oh, God,” Fritz rumbled. “Jesus! Yes! No! I don’t know!”

  “Fritz!”

  “Don’t yell, goddammit! Yes! A qualified yes!”

  “Okay! All right! Wonderful! Now, if only—”

  My eyes strayed, scanning the length of shore to the distant storm-drain entrance. Too late, I glanced away.

  Both Crumley and Fritz had caught the look.

  “Junior knows where Medea is, right now,” said Crumley.

  Yes, God, I thought, I know! But my yell had scared her away!

  Fritz focused his monocle on that storm-drain entrance.

  “Is that where you came out?” he said.

  “No thanks to junior here,” said Crumley.

  “I rode shotgun,” I said guiltily.

  “Like hell! Shouldn’t have been in that sinkhole to start with. Probably found Rattigan
, then lost her again.”

  Probably! I thought. Oh, God, probably!

  “That storm drain,” Fritz Wong mused. “Maybe, just maybe, you ran the wrong way?”

  “I what?” I said, stunned.

  “Here in crazy Hollywood,” said Fritz, “is there not more than one way to go? The storm drains, they head in all directions?”

  “South, north, west, and—” I slowed down. “East,” I said slowly. It’s not easy to say “east” slowly, but I did.

  “East!” Fritz cried. “Ja, east, east!”

  We let our thoughts roam over the hills and down toward Glendale. No one ever went to Glendale, except …

  If someone was dead.

  Fritz Wong twisted his monocle in his fierce right eye and probed the eastern skyline, smiling a wonderfully vicious smile.

  “Gottdamn!” he said. “This will make the great finale. No script needed. Shall I tell you where Rattigan is? East! Gone to earth!”

  “Gone to what?” said Crumley.

  “Sly fox, swift cat. Rattigan. Gone to earth. Tired, ashamed of all her lives! Hide them all in one final Cleopatra’s carpet, roll them up, deposit them in Eternity’s bank. Fade out. Darkness. Plenty of earth there to go to.”

  He made us wait.

  “Forest Lawn,” he said.

  “Fritz, that’s where they bury people!”

  “Who’s directing this?” Fritz said. “You took the wrong turn toward open air, the sea, life. Rattigan headed east. Death called her by all two dozen names. She answered with one voice.”

  “BS!” said Crumley.

  “You’re fired,” said Fritz.

  “I was never hired,” said Crumley. “What’s next?”

  “Go and prove I am right!” said Fritz.

  “So,” said Crumley. “Rattigan climbed down into that storm drain and walked east, or drove, or was driven east?”

  “That,” said Fritz, “is how I would shoot it. Film! Delicious!”

  “But why would she go to Forest Lawn?” I protested weakly, thinking perhaps I had sent her there.

  “To die!” said Fritz triumphantly. “Go read Ludwig Bemelmans’ tale of the old man, dead, put a lit candle on his head, hung flowers around his neck, and walked, a one-man funeral, to his own grave! Constance, she does the same. She’s gone to die a last time, yes? Now, do I put my car in gear? Will someone follow? And do we go aboveground or take the storm drain direct?”

  I looked at Crumley, he looked at me, and we both looked at Blind Henry. He felt our gaze, nodded.

  Fritz was already gone, the vodka with him.

  “Lead the way,” said Henry. “Swear a little now and then to give me direction.”

  Crumley and I headed for Crumley’s old jalopy, Henry in our wake.

  Fritz, in his car ahead, banged his motor, blew his horn.

  “Okay, you damn Kraut!” cried Crumley.

  He thrummed his engine, exploding.

  “Which way to the nearest road rage, dammit?”

  We paused by the storm drain, stared in, then out at the open road.

  “Which is it, smart-ass?” said Crumley. “Dante’s Inferno or Route 66?”

  “Let me think,” I said.

  “Oh, no you don’t!” Crumley cried.

  Fritz was gone. We looked along the beach and couldn’t see his car anywhere.

  We looked to our right. There, speeding off down the tunnel, were two red lights. “Christ!” Crumley yelled. “He’s heading in on the flood channel! Damned fool!”

  “What are we going to do?” I said.

  “Nothing,” cried Crumley. “Just this!” He rammed the gas. We swerved and plunged into the tunnel.

  “Madness!” I cried.

  “Damn tootin’,” said Crumley. “Goddamn!”

  “I’m glad I can’t see this,” Henry said from the backseat, speaking to the wind in his face.

  We raced up the flood channel, heading inland.

  “Can we do it?” I cried. “How high is the flood channel?”

  “Most places it’s ten feet high,” Crumley shouted. “The farther in we get, the higher the ceilings. Floods come down the mountains in Glendale, then the channel has to be really big to take the flood. Hold on!”

  Ahead of us, Fritz’s car had almost vanished. “Idiot!” I said. “Does he really know where he’s going?”

  “Yes!” said Crumley. “All the way to Grauman’s Chinese then left to the goddamn marble orchard.”

  The sound of our motor was shattering. In that thunder we saw ahead of us a tide of those lunatics who had assaulted me. “My God,” I cried. “We’ll hit them! Don’t slow down! Those crazies! Keep going!”

  We raced along the channel. Our engine roared. The history of L.A. streamed past us on the walls: pictographs, graffiti, crazed illustrations left by wandering homeless in 1940, 1930, 1925, faces and images of terrible things and nothing alive.

  Crumley floored the gas. We plunged at the crazed underground mob who shrieked and screamed a horrible welcome. But Crumley didn’t slow. We cut through them, tossed them aside.

  One ghost rose up flailing, gibbering.

  Ed, Edward, Eddie, oh Eduardo! I thought. Is that you?

  “You never said good-bye!” the ghost raved and fell away.

  I wept and we raced on, outpacing my guilt. We left all behind and the farther we went, the more terrified I became.

  “How in hell do we know where we are?” I said. “There aren’t any directions down here. Or we can’t see them.”

  Crumley said, “I think that maybe, yeah, let’s see.” For there were signs on the walls, scribbled in chalk, some in black painted letters.

  Crumley slowed the car. On the wall ahead of us someone had etched a bunch of crucifixes and cartoon tombstones.

  Crumley said, “If Fritz is any guide, we’re in Glendale.”

  “That means …” I said.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Forest Lawn.”

  He put on his high beams and swerved the car right and left as we moved slowly, and we saw a ladder leading up to a grate covered by a manhole in the tunnel ceiling and Fritz’s car beneath it, and him out of the car and climbing the ladder. A series of crosses ran alongside the ladder leading up.

  We got out of the car and crossed the dry wash and began to climb the ladder. There was a thundering clang above us. We saw Fritz’s shape and the manhole shoved aside, and the beginnings of a gentle rain pelting his shoulders.

  We climbed the ladder in silence. Above us, Fritz was directing and shouting. “Get the hell up here, you damn fools!”

  We looked down.

  Blind Henry was not about to be left behind.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  The storm was over but the drizzle stayed. The sky was a loon sky—promising much, delivering little.

  “Are we there yet?” said Henry.

  We all looked in the gates at Forest Lawn Cemetery, a sweeping hillside covered with a cannonade of memorial stones embedded like meteors in its grass.

  “They say that place,” said Crumley, “has a greater voting population than Paducah, Kentucky, Red River, Wyoming, or East End, Azusa.”

  “I like old-fashioned graveyards,” said Henry. “Things you can run your hands over. Tombs you can lie on like statues or bring your lady in late hours to play doctor.”

  “Anyone ever gone in just to check the boy David’s fig leaf?” said Fritz.

  “I hear tell,” said Henry, “when they shipped him over, there was no leaf, so he lay around the north forty a year, under canvas, so old ladies in tennis shoes wouldn’t be offended. Day before the fig leaf was glued on to spoil the fun, they had to beat off a gloveless Braille Institute convention. Live folks doing gymnastics in midnight graveyards is called foreplay. Dead folks doing the same is afterplay.”

  We stood there in the drizzle looking across the way to the mortuary offices.

  “Gone to earth,” I heard someone murmur. Me.

  “Move!” said Crumley. “I
n thirty minutes the rain from the hills hits below. The flood will wash our cars down to the sea.”

  We stared at the gaping manhole. We could hear the creek whispering below.

  “My God!” said Fritz. “My classic car!”

  “Move!” said Crumley.

  We ducked across the street and into the mortuary building.

  “Who do we ask?” I said. “And what do we ask?”

  There was a moment of colliding looks, pure confusion. “Do we ask for Constance?” I said.

  “Talk sense,” said Crumley. “We ask about all those newspaper headlines and names. All those lipstick aliases on the basement dressing-room mirrors.”

  “Say again,” said Henry.

  “I’m talking pure circumstantial metaphor,” said Crumley. “Double time!”

  We double-timed it into the vast halls of death, or to put it another way, the land of clerks and file cabinets.

  We did not have to take a number and wait, for a very tall man with ice-blond hair and an oyster complexion glided to the front desk and disdained us as if we were discards from a steam laundry.

  He laid a card on the desktop and dared Crumley to take it. “You Grey?” he said.

  “Elihu Phillips Grey, as you see.”

  “We’re here to buy gravesites and plots.”

  A late-winter smile appeared on Elihu P. Grey’s mouth and hung there, like a mist. With a magician’s gesture, he manifested a chart and price sheet.

  Crumley ignored it. “First, I got a list.”

  He pulled out all the names I had put together but placed it upside down in front of Grey, who scanned the list in silence.

  So Crumley pulled forth a rolled wad of one-hundred-dollar bills.

  “Hold that, will you, junior?” he said, tossing the wad to me. And then, to Grey: “You know those names?”

  “I know all the names.” Grey relapsed into silence.

  Crumley swore under his breath. “Recite them, junior.”

  I recited the names, one by one.

  “Holly Morgan.”

  Grey flicked through his file.

  “She’s here. Buried 1924.”

  “Polly Starr?”

  Another quick run-through.

  “Here. 1926.”

  “How about Molly Circe?”

  “Right. 1927.”

  “Emily Danse?”