Let's All Kill Constance Page 9

  “What?”

  “Connie, Helen, Annette, Roberta. Constance didn’t show up for more lessons in changing lives! Last week. She was supposed to come back and didn’t.”

  “I don’t understand,” I yelled.

  “I had taught her things, dark, light, loud, soft, wild, quiet, some sort of new role she was looking for. She was coming back to me to learn some more. She wanted to be a new person. Maybe like her old self. But I didn’t know how to help. Role-playing, Jesus, how do you get actors unhooked? W. C. Fields learned to be W. C. Fields in vaudeville. He never escaped those handcuffs. So here was Constance saying ‘Help me to find a new self.’ I said, ‘Constance, I don’t know how to help you. Get a priest to put a new skin around you.’ ”

  A great bell rang in my head. Priest.

  “Well, that’s it,” said Jean Harlow. “Did I confuse but amuse? Ciao.” Bradford vanished.

  “Quickly,” I gasped. “Let’s call Crumley.”

  “What’s the rush?” said Henry.

  “No, no, Alberto Quickly, the rabbit in and out of the hat, Hamlet’s father’s ghost.”

  “Oh, him,” said Henry.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  We dropped Henry off at some nice soft-spoken relatives on Central Avenue and then Crumley delivered me to the home of Alberto Quickly, ninety-nine years old, Rattigan’s first “teacher.”

  “The first,” he said. “The Bertillion expert, who fingerprinted Constance toenail to elbow to knees.”

  In vaudeville he had been known as Mr. Metaphor, who acted all of Old Curiosity Shop or every last one of Fagin’s brood in Oliver Twist as audiences cried “Mercy.” He was more morbid than Marley, paler than Poe.

  Quickly, the critics cried, orchestrated requiems to flood the Thames with mournful tides when, as Tosca, he flung himself into forever.

  All this Metaphor-Quickly said glibly, happily, as I sat in his small theater-stage parlor. I waved away the box of Kleenex he offered before he treated me to his Lucia, mad again.

  “Stop,” I cried at last. “What about Constance?”

  “Hardly knew her,” he said, “but I did know Katy Kelleher, 1926, my first Pygmalion child!”

  “Pygmalion?” I murmured, pieces falling into place.

  “Do you recall Molly Callahan, 1927?”

  “Faintly.”

  “How about Polly Riordan, 1926?”

  “Almost.”

  “Katy was Alice in Wonderland, Molly was Molly in Mad Molly O’Day. Polly was Polly of the Circus, same year. Katy, Molly, Polly—all Constance. A whirlwind blew in nameless, blew out famous. I taught her to shout, ‘I’m Polly!’ Producers cried, ‘You are, you are!’ The film was shot in six days. Then I revamped her to jump down Leo the Lion’s throat. ‘I’m Pretty Katy Kelly.’ ‘You are!’ the lion pride yelled. Her second film done in four days! Kelly vanished, then Molly climbed the RKO radio tower. So it was Molly, Polly, Dolly, Sally, Gerty, Connie … and Constance rabbiting studio lawns!”

  “No one ever guessed Constance played more than one part over the years?”

  “Only I, Alberto Quickly, helped her to grab onto fame, fortune, and fondling! The golden greased pig! No one ever knew that some of the marquee names on Hollywood Boulevard were names Constance made up or borrowed. Could be she shuffled her tootsies in Grauman’s forecourt with four different shoe sizes!”

  “And where is Molly, Polly, Sally, Gerty, Connie, now?”

  “Even she doesn’t know. Here are six different addresses in twelve different summers. Maybe she drowned in deep grass. Years are a great hiding place. God hides you. Duck! What’s my name?!”

  He did a flip-flop cartwheel across the room. I heard his old bones scream.

  “Ta-ta!” He grinned in pain.

  “Mr. Metaphor!”

  “You got it!” He dropped cold.

  I leaned over him, terrified. He popped one eye wide.

  “That was a close one. Prop me up. I scared Rattigan so, she ran.” He babbled on. “It was only fitting. After all, I’m Fagin, Marley, Scrooge, Hamlet, Quickly. Someone like me had to be curious and try to figure out what year she lived in, or if she ever existed at all. The older I got, the more jealous I became of the gain and loss of Constance. I waited too long over the years, just as Hamlet waited too long to slay the foul fiend who killed his father’s ghost! Ophelia and Caesar begged for slaughter. The memory of Constance summoned bull stampedes. So when I turned ninety all my voices raved for revenge. Like a damn fool I sent her the Book of the Dead. So it must be that Constance ran from my madness.

  “Call an ambulance,” Mr. Metaphor added. “I’ve got two broken tibias and a herniated groin. Did you write all that down?”

  “Later.”

  “Don’t wait! Write it. An hour from now I’ll be in Valhalla harassing the statues. Where’s my bed?”

  I put him to bed.

  “Slow down,” I said. “That Book of the Dead, you say you sent that to Constance?”

  “There was a half-ass semi–garage sale of actors’ junk at the Film Ladies’ League last month. I got some Fairbanks photos and a Crosby song sheet, and there, by God, was Rattigan’s thrown-away phonebook stuffed with all her cat-litter-box lovers. My God, I was the snake in the garden. Grabbed onto damnation for a dime, eyed the lists, drank the poison. Why not give Rattigan bad dreams? Tracked her down, dropped the Dead Book, ran. Did it scare the stuffings out of her?”

  “Oh, my God, it did.” I stared into Mr. Quickly’s grinning face. “Then you didn’t have anything to do with that poor old soul lost on Mount Lowe?”

  “Constance’s first sucker? That stupid old guy is dead?”

  “Newspapers killed him.”

  “Critics do that.”

  “No. Tons of old Tribunes fell on him.”

  “One way or the other, they kill.”

  “And you didn’t harass Queen Califia?”

  “That old Noah’s Ark, two of every kind of lie in her. High/low, hot/cold. Camel dung and horse puckies. She told Constance where to go and she went. She dead, too?”

  “Fell downstairs.”

  “I didn’t trip her.”

  “Then there was the priest …”

  “Her brother? Same mistake. Califia told her where to go. But he, my God, told her to go to hell. So Constance went. What killed him? God, everyone’s dead!”

  “She yelled at him. Or I think it was she.”

  “You know what she yelled?”

  “No.”

  “I do.”

  “You?”

  “Middle of the night, last night, I heard voices, thought I was dreaming. That voice, it had to be her. Maybe what she yelled at that poor damn priest, she yelled at me. Wanna hear?”

  “I’m waiting.”

  “Oh, yeah. She yelled, ‘How do I get back, where’s the next place, how do I get back?’”

  “Get back to where?”

  There was a quick spin of thought behind Quickly’s eyelids. He snorted.

  “Her brother told her where to go and she went. And at last she said, ‘I’m lost, show me the way.’ Constance wants to be found. That it?”

  “Yes. No. God, I don’t know.”

  “Neither does she. Maybe that’s why she yelled. But my house is built of bricks. It never fell.”

  “Others did.”

  “Her old husband, Califia, her brother?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “And you have miles to go before you sleep?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t wind up like this old mad hen that lays eggs any color you place me on. Red scarf. Red eggs. Blue rug. Blue. Purple camisole. Purple. That’s me. Notice the plaid sheet here?”

  It was all white and I told him so.

  “You got bad eyes.” He surveyed me. “You sure talk a lot. I’m pooped. Bye.” And he slammed his eyes shut.

  “Sir,” I said.

  “I’m busy,” he murmured. “What’s my name?”

  “Fa
gin, Othello, Lear, O’Casey, Booth, Scrooge.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  And then he snored.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  I taxied out to the sea, back to my little place. I needed to think.

  And then: there was a blow against my ocean-front door like a sledgehammer. Wham!

  I jumped to get it before it fell in.

  A flash of light blinded me from a single bright round crystal tucked in a mean eye.

  “Hello, Edgar Wallace, you stupid goddamn son of a bitch, you!” a voice cried.

  I fell back, aghast that he would call me Edgar Wallace, that dime-a-dance el cheapo hack!

  “Hello, Fritz,” I yelled, “you stupid goddamn son of a bitch, you! Come in!”

  “I am!”

  As if wearing heavy military boots, Fritz Wong clubbed the carpet. His heels cracked as he seized his monocle to hold it in the air and focus on me. “You’re getting old!” he cried with relish.

  “You already are!” I cried. “Insults?”

  “You get what you give!”

  “Voice down, please.”

  “You first!” I yelled. “You hear what you called me?”

  “Is Mickey Spillane better?”

  “Out!”

  “John Steinbeck?”

  “Okay! Lower your voice.”

  “Is this okay?” he whispered.

  “I can still hear you.”

  Fritz Wong barked a great laugh.

  “That’s my good bastard son.”

  “That’s my two-timing illegitimate pa!”

  We embraced with arms of steel in paroxysms of laughter.

  Fritz Wong wiped his eyes. “Now that we’ve done the formalities,” he rumbled. “How are you?”

  “Alive. You?”

  “Barely. Why the delay in delivering provender?”

  I brought out Crumley’s beer.

  “Pig swill,” said Fritz. “No wine? But …” He drank deep and grimaced. “Now.” He sat down heavily in my only chair. “How can I help?”

  “What makes you think I need help?”

  “You always will! Wait! I can’t stand this.” He stomped out into the rain and lunged back with a bottle of Le Corton, which, silently, he opened with a fancy bright silver corkscrew that he pulled from his pocket.

  I brought out two old but clean jelly jars. Fritz eyed them with scorn as he poured.

  “1949!” he said. “A great year. I expect loud exclamations!”

  I drank.

  “Don’t chugalug!” Fritz shouted. “For Christ’s sake, inhale! Breathe!”

  I inhaled. I swirled the wine. “Pretty good.”

  “Jesus Christ! Good?”

  “Let me think.”

  “Goddammit. Don’t think! Drink with your nose! Exhale through your ears!”

  He showed me how, eyes shut.

  I did the same. “Excellent.”

  “Now sit down and shut up.”

  “This is my place, Fritz.”

  “Not now it isn’t.”

  I sat on the floor, leaning against the wall, and he stood over me like Caesar astride an ant farm.

  “Now,” he said, “spill the beans.”

  I lined them up and spilled them.

  When I finished, Fritz refilled my jelly glass reluctantly.

  “You don’t deserve this,” he muttered, “but yours was a fair performance drinking the vintage. Shut up. Sip.”

  “If anyone can solve Rattigan,” he said, sipping, “it’s me. Or should I say, I? Quiet.”

  He opened the front door on the lovely endless rain. “You like this?”

  “Love it.”

  “Sap!” Fritz screwed his monocle in for a long glance upshore.

  “Rattigan’s place up there, eh? Not home for seven days? Maybe dead? Empress of the killing ground, yes, but she will never be caught dead. One day she will simply disappear and no one will know what happened. Now, shall I spill my beans?”

  He poured the last of the Le Corton, hating the jelly glass, loving the wine.

  He was at liberty, he said, unemployed. No films for two years. Too old, they said.

  “I’m the youngest acrobat in any bed on three continents!” he protested. “Now I have got my hands on Bernard Shaw’s play Saint Joan. But how do you cast that incredible play? So, meanwhile I have a Jules Verne novel in the public domain, free and clear, with a dumb-cluck fly-by-night producer who says nothing and steals much, so I need a second-rate science-fiction writer—you—to work for scale on this half-ass masterwork. Say yes.”

  Before I could speak …

  There was a huge deluge of rain and a crack of fire and thunder, during which Fritz barked: “You’re hired! Now. Do you have more to show and tell?”

  I showed and told.

  The photos clipped from the ancient newspapers and Scotch-taped on the wall over my bed. Fritz had to half lie down, cursing, to look at the damned things.

  “With one eye, the other destroyed in a duel—”

  “A duel?” I exclaimed. “You never said—”

  “Shut up and read the names under the pictures to the Cyclops German director.”

  I read the names.

  Fritz repeated them.

  “Yes, I remember her.” He reached to touch. “And that one. And, yes, this one. My God, what a rogues’ gallery.”

  “Did you work with all or some?”

  “Some I did two falls out of three in a Santa Barbara motel. I do not brag. A thing is either true or not.”

  “You’ve never lied to me, Fritz.”

  “I have, but you were too stupid to see. Polly. Molly. Dolly. Sounds like a cheap Swiss bell ringers’ act. Hold on. Can’t be. Maybe. Yes!”

  He was leaning up, adjusting his monocle, squinting hard. “Why didn’t I see? Dummkopf. But there was time between. Years. That one and that one, and that. Good God!”

  “What, Fritz?”

  “They’re all the same actress, the same woman. Different hair, different hairdo, different color, different makeup. Thick eyebrows, thin eyebrows, no eyebrows. Small lips, large lips. Eyelashes, no eyelashes. Women’s tricks. Woman came up to me last week on Hollywood Boulevard and said, ‘Do you know me?’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m so-and-so,’ she said. I studied her nose. Nose job. Looked at her mouth. Mouth job. Eyebrows? New eyebrows. Plus, she had lost thirty pounds and turned blond. How in hell was I supposed to know who she was?

  “These pictures, where did you get them?”

  “Up on Mount Lowe—”

  “That dumb newspaper librarian. I went up there once to do research. Quit. Couldn’t breathe in all those goddamn news stacks. Call me, I yelled, when you have a clearance! Constance’s dimwit first husband, married when she rebounded off a manslaughter bomb scare. How I managed to direct her in at least three films and never guessed at her changes! Christ! An imp inside a devil inside Lucifer’s flesh-eating wife.”

  “Maybe because,” I said, “you were courting Marlene Dietrich one of those years?”

  “Courting? Is that what they call it?” Fritz barked a laugh and rocked off the edge of the bed. “Take those damn things down. If I can help, I’ll need the junk.”

  “There’s more like this,” I said. “Grauman’s Chinese, the old projection booth, the old—”

  “That crummy lunatic?”

  “I wouldn’t say that.”

  “Why not! He had a missing reel of my UFA film Atlantica. I went to see. He tried to tie me to a chair and force-feed me old Rin Tin Tin serials. I threatened to jump off the balcony, so he let me go with Atlantica. So.”

  He spread the pictures out on the bed and gave them the fiery stare of his monocle.

  “You say there are more pictures like these upstairs at Grauman’s?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Would you mind traveling ninety-five miles an hour in an Alfa-Romeo to get to Grauman’s Chinese in less than five minutes?”

  The blood drained from my face.

 
“You would not mind,” said Fritz.

  He blundered swiftly out into the rain. His Alfa-Romeo was in full space-rocket throttle when I fell in.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  “Flashlight, matches, pad and pencil should we need to leave a note.” I checked my pockets.

  “Wine,” Fritz added, “in case the damn dogs up there on the cliff don’t carry brandy.”

  We passed a bottle of wine between us as we scanned the avalanche of dark stairs leading to the old projection booth.

  Fritz smiled. “Me first. If you fall I don’t want to catch.”

  “Some friendship.”

  Fritz plowed the dark. I plowed after, swiveling the flashlight beam.

  “Why are you helping me?” I gasped.

  “I called Crumley. He said he’s hiding all day in bed. Me, being around half-ass dimwits like you clears my blood and restarts my heart. Watch that flashlight, I might fall.”

  “Don’t tempt me.” I bobbed the light.

  “I hate to say,” Fritz said, “but you give as good as you get. You’re my tenth bastard, out of Marie Dressler!”

  We were higher now, in nosebleed territory.

  We reached the top of the second balcony, Fritz raging at the altitude but happy to hear himself rage.

  “Explain again,” Fritz said as we continued climbing. “Up here. Then what?”

  “Then we go as far down as we’ve come up. Basement mirror names. A glass catacomb.”

  “Knock,” said Fritz, at last.

  I knocked and the projection room door swung inward on dim lights from two projectors, one lit and working.

  I swung my flash beam along the wall and sucked air.

  “What?” said Fritz.

  “They’re gone!” I said. “The pictures. The walls have been stripped.”

  I played my flashlight beam along the empty spaces in dismay. All the dark-room “ghosts” had indeed vanished.

  “Goddamn! Jesus! Christ!” I stopped and swore. “My God, I sound like you!”

  “My son, my son,” Fritz said, pleased. “Move the light!”

  “Quiet.” I inched forward, holding the beam unsteadily on what sat between the projectors.

  It was Constance’s father, of course, erect and cold, one hand touching a machine switch.

  One projector was running full spin with a reel that looped through the projector lens and down, around, a spiral that repeated images again and again every ten seconds. The small door that could open to let the images shoot down to fill the theater screen was shut, so the images were trapped on the inside of the door, small, but if you bent close and squinted, you could see—