Death Is a Lonely Business Read online

  A. L. Shrank, the fraudulent psychiatrist.

  John Wilkes Hopwood.

  Constance Rattigan.

  Mr. Shapeshade.

  With an addition. No, cross him out.

  Myself.

  Crumley turned the list upside down and backward, eyeing it, rereading the names.

  “That’s quite a menagerie you got there, buster. How come I’m not in your sideshow?”

  “There’s something broken about all those people. You? You got your own self-starter.”

  “Just since I met you, kid.” Crumley stopped and turned red. “Christ, I’m getting soft. How come you put yourself on the list?”

  “I’m scared gutless.”

  “Sure, but you got a self-starter, too, and it works. According to your logic, that should protect you. As for those others? They’re so busy running away fast they’ll run off cliffs.”

  Crumley turned the list upside down again, refusing to meet my gaze, and read the names out loud.

  I stopped him.

  “Well?”

  “Well, what?” he said.

  “It’s time,” I said. “Hypnotize me, Crum. Elmo, in the name of the sweet Lord, put me under.”

  “Jesus,” said Crumley.

  “You’ve got to do it, now, tonight. You owe it to me.”

  “Jesus. Okay, okay. Sit down. Lie down. Do I turn out the lights? God, give me hard liquor!”

  I ran to fetch chairs and put them one behind the other.

  “This is the big train at night,” I said. “I sit here. You sit behind.”

  I ran to the kitchen and brought Crumley a slug of whiskey. “You got to smell like he smelled.”

  “For this relief, much thanks.” Crumley belted it down and shut his eyes. “This is the dumbest damn thing I have ever done, ever.”

  “Shut up and drink.”

  He finished a second one. I sat. Then I remembered and jumped to put on Crumley’s African storm record. It began to rain all through the house, all around the big red train. I turned down the lights. “There. Perfect.”

  “Shut your yap and shut your eyes,” said Crumley. “God, I don’t know how to do this.”

  “Sh. Gently,” I said.

  “Sh, it is. Quiet. Okay, lad. Go to sleep.”

  I listened closely and carefully.

  “Easy does it,” drawled Crumley, behind me on the train in the night in the rain. “Serenity. Quiet. Lazy. Easy. Around the curves softly. Through the rain, quietly.”

  He was getting into the rhythm of it and, I could tell from his voice, beginning to enjoy.

  “Easy. Slow. Quiet. Long after midnight. Rain, soft rain,” whispered Crumley. “Where are you, kid?”

  “Asleep,” I said drowsily.

  “Asleep and traveling. Traveling and asleep,” he murmured. “Are you on the train, kid?”

  “Train,” I murmured. “Train. Rain. Night.”

  “That’s it. Stay there. Move. On the straightaway through Culver City, past the studios, late, no one on the train but you and—someone.”

  “Someone,” I whispered.

  “Someone who’s been drinking.”

  “Drinking,” I mourned.

  “Swaying, swaying, talking, talking, muttering, whispering. You hear him, son?”

  “Hear, talk, murmur, mutter, talk,” I said quietly.

  And the train moved down the night through dark storm and I was there, a good subject well transported and asleep but hearing, waiting, swaying, eyes shut, head down, hands numb on my knees....

  “You hear his voice, son?”

  “Hear.”

  “Smell his breath?”

  “Smell.”

  “Raining harder now.”

  “Rain.”

  “Dark?”

  “Dark.”

  “You’re underwater on the train, there’s so much rain and someone swaying behind you, behind you, moaning, speaking, whispering.”

  “Yesssss.”

  “Can you hear what he says?”

  “Almost.”

  “Deeper, slower, going, moving, swaying. Hear his voice?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s he say?”

  “He says—”

  “What’s he say?”

  “He—”

  “Deeper, sleeping. Listen.”

  His breath fanned my neck, warm with alcohol.

  “What, what?”

  “He says—”

  The train screamed around an iron bend in my head. Sparks flew. There was a clap of thunder.

  “Gah!” I shrieked. And “Gah!” and a final “Gah!”

  I writhed in my chair in my panic to escape that maniac breath, the flaming alcohol beast. And something else I had forgotten. But it was back now and it blasted my face, my brow, my nose.

  A smell of opened graves, abattoirs, raw meat left too long in the sun.

  Eyes slammed tight, I began to retch.

  “Kid! Christ, wake up, God, kid, kid!” yelled Crumley, shaking me, slapping my face, massaging my neck, now down on his knees, yanking at my head and cheeks and arms, not knowing where to grab or shake me. “Now, kid, now, for Christ’s sake, now!”

  “Gah!” I shrieked and flailed a final time, and floundered straight up, staring about, falling into the grave with the terrible meat, as the train ran over me and the rain showered into the tomb, with Crumley slapping me and a great gout of sour food jetting from my mouth.

  Crumley stood me outside in the garden air, made sure I was breathing right, cleaned up, then went inside to mop up and came back.

  “Jesus,” he said, “it worked. We got more than we wanted, yes?

  “Yes,” I said, weakly. “I heard his voice. And he said just what I thought he would say. The title I put on your book. But I heard his voice clearly, and I almost know him now. Next time I meet him, wherever it is, I’ll know. We’re close, Cram, we’re close. He won’t escape now. But now I’ll know him an even better way.”

  “How?”

  “He smells like a corpse. I didn’t notice that night, or if I did I was so nervous I forgot. But now it’s back. He’s dead, or next to dead. Dogs killed in the street smell like him. His shirt, his pants, his coat, are moldy and old. His flesh is worse. So—”

  I wandered into the house and found myself at Crumley’s desk.

  “At last, I have a new title for my own book,” I said.

  I typed. Crumley watched. The words came out on the paper. We both read them.

  “Downwind from Death.”

  “That’s some title,” he said.

  And went to shut off the sound of the dark rain.

  There was a graveside service for Fannie Florianna the next afternoon. Crumley took an hour off and drove me over to the nice old-fashioned graveyard on a hill with a view of the Santa Monica mountains. I was astonished to see the line of cars outside the place, and more astonished to see the queue of flowers being carried in to be placed by the open grave. There must have been two hundred people there, and a few thousand flowers.

  “Criminently,” said Crumley. “Look at the mob. See who that is over there. And just beyond. King Vidor?”

  “Vidor, sure. And that’s Salka Viertel. She wrote films for Garbo a long time back. And that other chap is Mr. Fox, Louis B. Mayer’s lawyer. And that one there is Ben Goetz, who headed up MGM’s unit in London. And—”

  “Why didn’t you tell me your friend Fannie knew so many big people?”

  “Why didn’t Fannie tell me?” I said.

  Fannie, dear Fan, I thought, how like you, never to tell, never to brag that so many of these came up and down the tenement stairs over the years, for a chat and a remembrance and a song. Lord, Fannie, why didn’t you let me in on it, I would have liked to have known. I wouldn’t have told anyone.

  I looked at all the faces gathered near the flowers. Crumley did likewise.

  “Think he’s here, kid?” he said, quietly.

  “Who?”

  “The one you
claim did this to Fannie.”

  “I’ll know him when I see him. No, I’ll know him when I hear him.”

  “And then what?” said Crumley. “Have him arrested for being drunk on a train a couple of nights ago?”

  I must have shown a terrible frustration in my face.

  “Just trying to ruin your day,” said Crumley.

  “Friends,” someone said.

  And the crowd grew very quiet.

  It was the best land of graveside service, if there is such a thing. Nobody asked me to speak, why would they do that? But a dozen others took a minute or three minutes and said things about Chicago in 1920 or Culver city in the mid-Twenties when there were meadows and fields and the false civilization of MGM was a-building and ten or twelve nights a year the big red car pulled up on a siding behind the studio and Louis B. Mayer and Ben Goetz and all the others piled on and played poker training out to San Bernardino where they went to the movie house to see the latest Gilbert or Garbo or Novarro and come home with fistfuls of preview cards: “Lousy!” “Great!” “Terrible!” “Fine!” and sort out the cards along with the kings and queens and jacks and spades to figure out just what in hell land of hand they had. And pull in behind the studio at midnight, still playing cards, and get off smelling of Prohibition whiskey with happy smiles or grim smiles of determination on their faces, to watch Louis B. toddle to his limousine and go first home.

  They were all there and they spoke with great honesty and clarity. There were no lies. A true grief lay just beneath every word that was said.

  In the midst of the hot afternoon, someone touched my elbow. I turned and was surprised.

  “Henry! How’d you get here?”

  “I sure didn’t walk.”

  “How’d you find me in all this mob?” I whispered.

  “You’re the only Ivory soap, the rest is Chanel and Old Spice. I’m sure glad I’m blind on a day like this. Don’t mind listening, but I surely do not want to see this.”

  The tributes continued. Mr. Fox, Louis B. Mayer’s lawyer, was next, a man who knew law but who rarely went to see any of the films they made. Right now, he remembered early days in Chicago when Fannie …

  A hummingbird darted among the bright colors. A dragonfly hummed by soon after.

  “Armpits,” said Henry, quietly.

  Startled, I waited and whispered, “Armpits?”

  “On the street outside the tenement,” whispered Henry, staring at a sky he could not see, speaking from the corner of his mouth. “Inside, the halls. By my room. By Fannie’s room. The smell. Him. The one.” A pause. A nod. “Armpits.”

  My nose twitched. My eyes began to run. I stirred my feet, wanting to get away, go see, find.

  “When was this, Henry?” I whispered.

  “The other night. Night Fannie went away forever.”

  “Sh!” said someone nearby.

  Henry shut up. When there was a change of speakers I whispered, “Where?”

  “Crossing the street early on,” said Henry. ‘That night. Powerful, real powerful smell. Then, later, seemed to me the armpits came into the hall behind me. I mean, it was so strong it cleared my sinuses. Like having a grizzly bear breathe on you. You ever smell that? I froze halt-across the street, like I been hit with a baseball bat. Thought, anyone smells like that’s got a grudge against God, dogs, mankind, the world. Step on a cat rather than walk around. Bad-ass mean. Armpits, like I said. Armpits. That help you any?”

  My whole body was frozen. I could only nod. Henry said, “That smell’s been around the halls some few nights now, but just got stronger is all, maybe because that dumb son-of-a-bitch was getting closer. I was tripped up by Mr. Smell, I know that now. I got it figured.”

  “Sh!” said someone.

  An actor spoke, and a priest, and a rabbi, and then the Hall Johnson Choir from the First Baptist Church on Central Avenue filed through the tombstones and gathered to sing “Great Day in the Morning,” “In the Sweet Bye and Bye,” and “Dear God, Toy Me When I’m Gone.” And their voices were the voices I had heard in the late Thirties, chanting Ronald Colman over the snow peaks and down into Shangri-la, or standing on white clouds in the fields of the Lord in Green Pastures. By the end of their radiant singing, I was overflowed and joyed and Death had had a new coat of sunlight and time, and die hummingbird came back for nectar, and the dragonfly sank down to scan my face and go away.

  “That,” said Crumley, on the way out of the graveyard, with Henry walking between us, “is the way I want to be sung out of the world. God, I’d love to be that whole damn choir. Who needs money when you can sing like that!”

  But I was staring at Henry. He felt my stare.

  “Thing is,” said Henry, “he keeps coming back. Armpits. You’d think he’d had enough, sure? But he’s hungry-mean, can’t stop. Scaring people is like Cracker Jack to him. Hurt’s his byword. Pain is a living. He figures to get old Henry, like he got the rest. But I won’t fall again.”

  Crumley was listening with some seriousness.

  “If Armpits comes again—”

  “I’ll call you, immediamente. He’s fiddling around the rooms. Caught him fiddling Fannie’s locked door. It’s padlocked and pasted over by the law, right? He was fiddling it and I yelled him off. He’s a coward for sure. Got no weapons, just goes around putting his foot out so blind men take a whole flight of steps in one jump. Armpits! I yelled. Scat!”

  “Call us,” said Crumley. “Can we give you a lift?”

  “Some of the ugly ladies from the tenement brought me, thanks, and will take me home.”

  “Henry,” I said. I put out my hand. He took it swiftly. It was almost as if he had seen it coming.

  “How do I smell, Henry?” I said.

  Henry sniffed and laughed. “They don’t make heroes like they used to. But you’ll do.”

  Driving back toward the beach with Crumley, I saw a big limousine pass us at seventy miles an hour, putting a lot of space between it and the flowered graveyard. I waved and yelled.

  Constance Rattigan did not even glance over. She had been at the graveside somewhere, hidden away to one side, and now she was roaring home angry at Fannie for leaving us all and maybe angry with me for somehow bringing Death to present a bill.

  Her limousine vanished in a great white-gray cloud of exhaust.

  “The harpies and the Furies just screamed by,” observed Crumley.

  “No,” I said, “only a lost lady, running to hide.”

  I tried calling Constance Rattigan during the next three days, but she wouldn’t answer. She was brooding and mad. Somehow, in some dumb way, I was in cahoots with the man who stood in halls and did terrible things to people.

  I tried calling Mexico City, out Peg was off lost forever, I was sure.

  I prowled around Venice, staring and listening and sniffing, hoping for that dreadful voice, searching for the terrible smell of something dying or long dead.

  Even Crumley was gone. I stared, but he was nowhere up ahead, following.

  At the end of three days of failed phone calls, unmet killers, furious with fate, and confounded by funerals, I did what I had never done before.

  Around ten o’clock at night I strode down the empty pier not knowing where I was going until I got there.

  “Hey,” someone said.

  I yanked a rifle up off the shelf and, without checking to see if it was loaded or if anyone was in the way, I fired it, fired it, fired it, sixteen times!

  Wham, wham. And wham wham. And wham wham, and someone was yelling.

  I didn’t hit any of the targets. I had never handled a rifle in my life. I don’t know what I was shooting at, but yes I did.

  “Take that, you son-of-a-bitch, take that, you bastard!”

  Wham, wham, and wham wham.

  The rifle was empty but I kept yanking the trigger. I suddenly knew it was impotent. Someone took the rifle away from me. Annie Oakley, staring at me as if she had never seen me before.

  “You know what yo
u’re doing?” she asked.

  “No, and I don’t give a damn!” I glanced around. “How come you’re open so late?”

  “Nothing else to do. I can’t sleep. What’s wrong with you, mister?”

  “Everybody in the whole damn world is going to be dead by this time next week.”

  “You don’t believe that?”

  “No, but it feels like it. Give me another rifle.”

  “You don’t want to shoot any more.”

  “Yes, I do. And I haven’t money to pay, you’ll have to trust me!” I cried.

  She stared at me for a long time. Then she handed me a rifle. “Sock ’em, cowboy. Kill ’em. Bogie,” she said.

  I fired sixteen times. This time I hit two targets by mistake, even though I couldn’t see them, my glasses were that fogged.

  “Had enough?” asked Annie Oakley, quietly, behind me.

  “No!” I shouted. Then I said, lower, “Yes. What are you doing outside the gallery on the boardwalk?”

  “I was afraid I’d get shot in there. Some maniac just unloaded two rifles without aiming.”

  We looked at each other and I began to laugh.

  She listened and said, “Are you laughing or crying?”

  “What’s it sound like? I got to do something. Tell me what.”

  She studied my face for a long time and then she went around shutting off the running ducks and the bobbing clowns and the lights. A door opened in the back of the gallery. She was silhouetted there. She said:

  “If you’ve got to shoot at anything, here’s the target.” And she was gone.

  It was a full half minute before I realized she expected me to follow.

  “Do you behave this way often?” asked Annie Oakley.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  I was on one far side of her bed, she on the other, listening to me talk about Mexico City and Peg and Peg and Mexico City so far away it was a dreadful ache.

  “The story of my life,” said Annie Oakley, “is men in bed with me bored silly or talking about other women, or lighting cigarettes or rushing off in their cars when I go to the bathroom. You know what my real name is? Lucretia Isabel Clarisse Anna-belle Maria Monica Brown. My mom gave me all those, so what do I choose? Annie Oakley. Problem is, I’m dumb. Men can’t stand me after the first ten minutes. Dumb. Read a book, an hour later, it’s gone! Nothing sticks. I talk a lot, don’t I?”